Street Fighter II

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.

The Good
Street Fighter II made history. Released for the Arcades in 1991, it turned the heads of players all over the world. They would forget TMNT, Final Fight and any other hits of the past to concentrate the attention in the most sophisticated game ever. All other fighting games before this one (including the first version of Street Fighter) were either primary or action-like (such as Double Dragon or Final Fight).

The revolutionary Street Fighter II brought unique characters, detailed graphics, big sprites, elaborated moves, smooth animation and involving sound. Then somebody would inevitably do the question: is it possible to do a game conversion? To which console?

Well, the next year the game was released exclusively for Super NES. Would be enough to say that this sole release rocketed the console sales? Or that Super NES only became a real challenge for Sega Genesis (in terms of sales numbers) because of this game? Or that Sega would invest millions of dollars in game production just to make its 16-bit console attractive to the costumer after the development of Street Fighter for its rival?

I'm not exaggerating. Nobody would ever imagine such a good Arcade translation could be done. Street Fighter II for SNES was more than a faithful conversion: it was nearly the same as the Arcade.

Technically, the game was perfect. Excellent in every aspect. Grand. It was the first 16-bit game to consume 16 Megabits of memory (not considering the Neo Geo ones), what guaranteed its superb quality. No other SNES or Genesis game could dare to compete to this one.

The quality of the graphics had no precedent. The sprites were not only big, but beautifully designed and carefully animated. Even the clothes of the characters followed the move of the wind (for a 1992 game, it was almost a miracle). The backgrounds were rich and animated, and they moved following the characters.

The sound quality was also awesome. Every stage had its own music, which became more intense with the victory of one of the players. The sounds contributed to a realistic impression of the game, as it was common to hear the voices of the characters.

Outrageous graphics and sound, but what about gameplay? Well, that's the best part! No other game had ever made such use of Super NES 6-button gamepad. The Arcade Street Fighter II used 6 buttons (3 for punches and 3 for kicks, of different intensities) and so did the SNES version. The combination of buttons generated new and special moves. The control, although easy, was complex and brought an unprecedent variety of moves to a game. And there were 8 characters available, each behaving differently. They were all balanced: there was no character much better than the other, it would depend on the player's preferences.

What else? The game was not too difficult and not too easy. There were 10 levels of difficulty so the player could choose the most adequate.

The Bad
The game is perfect in almost every aspect and has no major problems. Just some minor ones.

First, Capcom could have included a cheat to allow players control the four bosses.Everyone wanted to control the bosses as Street Fighter II Champion Edition hit the Arcade. But there was no option or cheat for that.

The action could have been a bit faster. There is some slowdown. This is a problem with the Super NES slow processor and not with the game itself. But it irritates sometimes.

Also, the bonus stages were not the same. Capcom substituted the cool "barrel" bonus stage for the somewhat boring "bricks" bonus stage. It does not spoil the game, but the original bonus stage could have been kept.

It can also be said that the Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not very, uhu, intelligent. But so was the Arcade. Indeed, Street Fighter II had a good AI, but the gamers could sometimes predict the opponent's move. And that would make it easy to win the fights.

The Bottom Line
TRUE CLASSIC. If this game is not perfect, I don't know what could be.

The Good
It is part of the history of all of us, brings a lot of memories, i felt in love with SF2 in the arcade and im still with that conversion, really great, big sprites, nice digitalized voices, beautiful and colorful backgrounds and one of the best points: the music, every song captured perfectly the personality of each character.

Each character has his story and his reason to end with M.Bison, there are a lot of feelings in there: self-acomplishment, vengeance, showing to the world how cool you are...

The Bad
I always missed playing with the four bosses and some attacks maybe were too powerful and you could kill your enemy with only two or three of these.

The Bottom Line
One of the best games in videogaming history. Select your character and prepare to become a true World Warrior!