Street Fighter II

The Good
How many of you were as enthralled as I was the first time EGM ran an early picture of Guile in Blanka's stage with an article about this "16 Meg monster" hitting the SNES in the future? Did you grab for an earlier issue and try to compare it to the arcade?

Reigning around half a decade over a span of 5 versions, Street Fighter II was the biggest thing to hit the arcades since Pac Man. With huge sprites, detailed animation, and the pseudo-3D effect of layered backgrounds coupled with warping floor sprites, a home version seemed like a pipe dream to many fans, including myself. Needless to say, the surprise screenshot and confirmation of a home conversion were enough to send an obsessed fan into shock.

Weighing in at a hefty 16 Megs (Excluding Neo-Geo, it was the biggest home game to date. Super Street Fighter II would double that a few years later.), Street Fighter II brought the phenomenon home.

The visuals took only a small hit, but you'd be hard pressed to notice. The characters are big, colorful, and well animated. The vast majority of animations made it in (we'll get to the omissions later). Almost every detail in the backgrounds were retained as well.

The sound is wonderful, though not everything is here (again, later). Everyone shouts their little saying for their special moves, though it seems that Capcom slipped a little something extra in. Unlike the arcade version, the speed and pitch at which they spout their signature lines (such as "Hadouken!" and "Sonic Boom!"), is different based on which strength of attack button is used. Use jab for a fireball, and "Hadouken" is said slower and deeper. Use fierce, and it's said at normal speed. Needless to say, a savvy player can learn to judge when they should jump in to attack and when they should block, leaving a little less room to be caught in the face with a surprise fast fireball. This home version of Street Fighter II is also the bassiest. When a fierce punch connects and the bass is cranked, you're going to know it. It really added to the experience.

The music turned out very well on the SNES. In some cases, I actually prefer the way it was arranged for the SNES. No complaints here.

The gameplay is where this game shines. I can't think of a single combo from the arcade that won't work here.

The Bad
So, missing animation frames. There's not too much to complain about. Ken and Ryu's jumping straight-up Short was altered (same type of kick as jumping straight-up Medium kick), but I can't remember any other moves that may have been changed due to space considerations. One of Zangief's win poses took a hit. Like I said, not much that you're going to notice, outside of a few moves and some altered ending sprites (corrected to match the arcade in later versions, like Turbo and Super).

In sounds, the glaring ommission is "You Win!" You see it on screen, but you don't hear it. We loved mimicing the announcer, so that was kind of a drag.

One odd thing about the gameplay, you could counter Guile's flash kick with Ken and Ryu's jumping short (flying knee). This is the only version I have ever seen this possible in. I got used to using it, which would backfire on me at the arcades.

The Bottom Line
I bought this at the same time as my SNES. The SNES was $99.95, Street Fighter II was $81. Sounds like alot, but this game was an investment. This wasn't something you played through and set aside. Street Fighter II went to my friends' houses, where we'd play all night and complain about our thumb hurting the next day. It turned a room full of kids hanging out into an arcade competition. Every few minutes, you'd hear "NEXT!" "NOOOOOOOOOO!" and "I got winner!" Street Fighter II wasn't a game. It was a pasttime.

The Good
I'm glad I could buy Capcom's Street Fighter II for my DOS system, if this was still 1992. The graphics are dead-on, and the game doesn't eat too much disk space, but . . .

The Bad
. . . the slowest game of 1992, I'd say. Let's see . . . the Super NES is using the same CPU as an Apple II GS, except it's running at 3.75 MHz or so, has very little RAM (kilobits, mind you), and the game is on a 2 MB cart with extreme compression . . . the average 1992 PC is running a 386 or 486 CPU, either which is 32-bit, and the slowest clock speed is at around, if memory serves me right, I think between 10 and 33 MHz . . . yet the game runs slow. Then the digitized sounds have either a "white noise" or is "tiny", depending on if the card is a SoundBlaster 2.0 or 16. Also, no GravisPad support, and the joypad was at least one year old, no more than two, but was the new joypad standard for PC, Mac, and CD-i. To top it off, keyboard is impossible, and the two buttons used on any joystick or joypad relys on you pressing the button longer to select which "arcade" button is chosen for the moves. This leaves you with, well, a terrible experience topped with the bad sounds.

The Bottom Line
If you see a box at CompUSA or Best Buy that reads "Street Fighter Series" for PC CD-ROM, and it's only like $1.99, avoid it like the plague, a world war, intergalactic invasion and the Wrath of God all rolled into one. This game IS THAT BAD!

The Good
The graphics are pretty good for the Super Nintendo, I especially like the very detailed backgrounds that have actual animations. The fighters look pretty good as well and you can clearly who and what they are (except for Blanka, I have no idea what he is supposed to be).

The game requires a certain amount of strategy and you have to understand all the different moves the characters can perform. I know so because I played it and I sucked horribly. I am new to the Super Nintendo, so my first reaction was to tap random buttons like a monkey in a space simulator. Randomly tapping buttons or spamming the few attacks you do know will get you so far, but it won't help you beat the entire game.

The settings in which you fight are all very nice and varied even though Japan shows up quite a lot, the same goes for the fighter although (oddly enough) there aren't any Japanese in the roster. Who would you like to play as; the Indian guy with elastic arms, the schoolgirl with upper legs you can only get from bicycle pumps, the overconfident sumo wrestler/torpedo or the Green Goblin? There are roughly a dozen characters you can play as and every single one of them has his or her own map.

This game is a guaranteed favorite on parties (although the guy who plays as Dhalsim is going to end up with so many feet up his ass that he'll be coughing up shoelaces for three months), it's fast, it's chaotic and it's a lot of memorable fun. There is also a lot of satisfaction to be found in pulling off one of the special moves and making everybody go "wow".

There is an options menu where you can change quite a lot of the settings, even the difficulty can be changed (you can even put it on zero).

The Bad
I just really suck at fighting games, Super Smash Bros. aside, I just can't figure out how to play them. Each character has his or her own moves and you have to study all these special moves, people keep recommending me to use a joystick which is even more confusing then the normal SNES controller and that schoolgirl keeps kicking my butt. The only way I managed to make it as far as I did was to take Dhalsim and stick to the corners where I just spammed punches and kicks.

The game is all about travelling around the world and challenging fighters, but the design of the map and the locations of all the countries is completely cocked up. Here is a quick geography lesson; Brazil isn't located in Australia, There is only one Japan and America isn't an island in the sea above Japan.

The Bottom Line
This review is very hard for me to write because I just don't know what a good fighting game is supposed to look like. My only experience with them is from playing Super Smash Bros. which is so unique in it's gameplay that you can't use it as a proper comparison. I had fun with Street Fighter II, so the average gamer might have the same. Fans of the genre will sadly have to find their consumer advice somewhere else.