In 2012, Vanity Fair published an oral history of The Sopranos and I realized I hadn’t seen anyone cover games that way. So a couple years later, I copied the approach to look back at the best game ever made.

Going into it, I liked the format because of how it lets you mix firsthand accounts with back-and-forth banter, similar to what you might see in a documentary. There were also a lot of gaps in what we knew about Street Fighter history, at least in English media, so it seemed like I could fill some of those holes.

I didn’t realize how much work it would end up being, not only in terms of the number of people I’d need to interview, but also how long it would take to edit everything together in a way that was accurate and flowed well. But I can’t complain, especially when I got to work with Mick McGinty to reimagine the Super Nintendo Street Fighter 2 box art.