Back in the ’90s, there were several animated adaptations of popular video games, and two of them are headed to Blu-ray soon. Discotek has officially announced that the Street Fighter and Darkstalker TV series will be getting the Blu-ray treatment, which includes brand-new cover art and a surprising amount of extra content.

Just to be clear, these shows are products of a time when animated series followed a set of family-friendly guidelines. Violence was naturally toned down since the shows were aimed at younger audiences, and the storylines mixed references to the games with plots that were designed to get you to buy licensed action figures. Still, there’s a certain charm to these classic cartoons, and Discotek is packing quite a few extras on each release.

Street Fighter: The Animated Series is a wonderfully weird adaptation, as it revolves around Guile leading an international task force of martial artists against M Bison and his Shadaloo syndicate. Yes, it’s basically GI Joe but with more sonic booms and hadoukens. For the Blu-ray release, all 26 episodes have been included, you can view the original intro for the show in storyboard mode, an art gallery has been included, and there are game-inspired menus.

All 26 episodes come with commentary tracks narrated by notable members of the fighting game and YouTube community, like Matt McMuscles, Maximillian Dood, Justin Wong, Arin “Egoraptor” Hanson, Alexs Le, Lythero, and Guile Win Quote. Interestingly, the cartoon is a sequel to the iconic live-action film starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Raul Julia, and if you’re looking to get that film, a really nice steelbook version was released not too long ago. It even comes with 100 Bison Dollars, which will be worth quite a few British Pounds once the King of England has been kidnapped and new exchange rates have been set.

Alternatively, you can pick up the recent 4K release of Street Fighter 2: The Animated Movie. This is a 4K HDR transfer of the original cut of the film, and both the uncensored and PG-13 versions are included. For the extras, you’re getting the original Japanese and English dubs, production art, promotional materials, and several other extras.

The Street Fighter 1994 movie, considered by many to be the Citizen Kane of video game movies.

Darkstalkers only got a single 13-episode season, and it was a major departure from its source material. Loosely based on the first Darkstalkers game, the TV series was aimed at a younger audience and had a much more lighthearted tone in comparison. It also had animation that varied wildly in quality, nonsensical plots, and hilariously bad voice acting.

If you’re looking for something that is so bad that it goes full circle and actually becomes good, then this time capsule of Saturday-morning-cartoon energy might appeal to you. Extras haven’t been confirmed for the Blu-ray yet, but if the Street Fighter release is any indication, then you can count on Discotek to unearth some interesting archival material for this release.



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