Street Fighter II

aka: SF 2, Street Fighter II: The World Warrior
Moby ID: 6239
Arcade Specs
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Conversion (official) Special Edition See Also

Description official descriptions

Street Fighter II is a fighting game. Players select from one of eight characters: Ryu, Ken, Blanka, E. Honda, Zangief, Chun Li, Guile and Dhalsim to do battle with. They must then use their combat strengths to defeat the other seven fighters followed by four boss characters: M. Bison, Vega, Sagat and Balrog. Each character represents a certain country and has his or her own reasons for wanting to win against the others.

Each character has his or her own selection of basic fighting techniques based on three styles of punches and three styles of kicks. The effect of each of these changes depends on the characters orientation (ducking, airborne or standing still). Street Fighter II has a "button combination" style of gameplay used to unleash powerful moves specific to each character. These include the ability to project fireballs, channel electricity or capture the opponent in a tight suplex.

Spellings

  • ストリートファイターⅡ - Japanese spelling
  • 스트리트 화이터 II - Korean spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (Arcade version)

33 People (29 developers, 4 thanks) · View all

Planner
Character Designer
Programmer
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 80% (based on 48 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 195 ratings with 8 reviews)

Serious candidate for the worst port ever made of any game.

The Good
I guess there's no need to note yet again the immense impact that Street Fighter 2 had on the videogame world, and back in it's day, being able to play it at home was like owning a frigging Ferrari for any kid. It was for that reason that when the much delayed PC port finally came out I, along with hundreds of Street Fighter fans around the world, rushed out to get a copy. Of course, if I had only known that US Gold had brutally raped Capcom's masterpiece into a whimpering mess of a game, then there's a good chance that today I would be a decent, productive member of society. Instead this thing traumatized me into what I am today. US Gold, I blame you!!!

I guess however, since this is the "good" part, that I should note that the entire cast is there, and so are their moves, taunts, stages, etc...

The Bad
It's hard to believe how bad the DOS port of SF2 is, yet this is the kind of thing that gave PCs a bad reputation as far as action games were concerned. The graphics are horribly grainy and washed out, and to top that off there are so many missing frames you'd swear the animations play at 4fps or so, not to mention altogether missing ones like the breaking barrels, crowds, etc. The sound department is equally botched, with wimpy and noisy translations of the original music tunes and the SFX and voices are so garbled as to be almost unrecognizable (HARr-OOOURGH-KRHRHEN!!) but the worse hit is taken by the gameplay.

What was once a fast and engaging action masterpiece is now rendered a slow and dull monstruosity were characters slug around the screen trying to execute their moves without crashing your computer. Just jump towards your opponent and you'll think you are playing Virtua Fighter, as your character slowly flooooooats from one point to the other. The AI sure as hell didn't seem to be such a pushover in the arcades, and attempting to play a two-player vs match is a thing better left for the daredevil types out there willing to somehow live with the ensuing embarrassment for the rest of their lives.

But you want to know what is the worst thing? SNES owners had access to what's today a legendary port with near perfectly translated graphics, sounds and gameplay while we tried to make do with the shitty version US Gold handed us. AARGHHHHH!!!!!!

The Bottom Line
Probably the worst port in the history of the universe on account of taking one of the coolest games ever at it's peak of popularity and turning it into digital dog excrement. If you think the Spider-Man 2 Movie game is an example of catastrophic porting then give this bad boy a chance and you'll see what catastrophic really means. Anything that can turn Ryu into a poorly animated, slow and wimpy mess is just plain evil dude.

DOS · by Zovni (10504) · 2004

A great game, too bad I suck at it.

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.

SNES · by Asinine (957) · 2011

The best arcade conversion to Super NES

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!

SNES · by Depth Lord (934) · 2004

[ View all 8 player reviews ]

Trivia

C64 version

One interesting quirk about the Commodore 64 version of the game is that the special moves printed in the manual for each character were just plain wrong.

Modul size

Street Fighter II for Super NES was the first game for the console to feature 16 Megabits (2 Megabytes) of memory. At the time, the biggest games released for both Super NES and Sega Genesis had 12 Megabits.

Ryu and Ken

Something few people (at least nowadays) realize about Street Fighter II is why on the original release Ryu and Ken where carbon copies of each other. Sure, the tradition of having two very similar main antagonistic characters is present on pretty much all 1-on-1 fighting games since it works as a standard dramatic component, but the reason for said tradition's creation on SF2 was purely practical: the original arcade version of the game didn't come with different palettes, so there was no way to have two players controlling the same character without getting confused. Thus having Ryu and Ken available was the only real way in SF2 to have a fair and completely even fight.

Sheng Long

Remember the Sheng Long controversy? Whenever Ryu won a match he would say his trademark phrase just as anyone else, but his was a little more cryptic than the others: "You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance" Who the hell is Sheng Long?? That was what most western SF2 players though. The answer as usual was in a botched translation effort: Sheng Long is the chinese pronunciation of Sho-Ryu, as in Sho-Ryu-Ken, aka the Dragon Punch. Ryu was saying that you had to master his technique in order to beat him, but for some odd reason that we'll never know English, Chinese and Japanese got all mixed up in some poor translator's head and the "Sheng Long" was phonetically transcribed as it was, and coupled with Ryu's cryptic message gave the impression that he was talking about some hidden character.

The rumor flew around from day one (among other famous SF2 hoaxes like the one about you being able to ride Guile's Jet or beating up the bystanders in some stages), but it really spread like wildfire when as an April Fool's joke EGM published an article about how there really was a secret character named Sheng Long unlockable via ungodly gaming prowess (beating all characters in "perfect" matches). Regardless of how ridiculous the rumor was, every kid out there poured coin after coin in the SF2 machines and spent hours in front of the home versions in an effort to unlock said character.

References to the game

  • In the music video Juicy, by The Notorious BIG, he has a couple of homeboys play Street Fighter II for SNES on a big screen. Even in the song, after the chorus, he starts the third verse by saying: "Super Nintendo, SEGA Genesis, When I was dead broke, man I couldn't picture this!"
  • In the 1993 movie City Hunter starring Jackie Chan, there's a part where Jackie, who is playing private eye, fights villains on a shipboard. Accidentally he gets smashed into arcade machine... with Street Fighter II running on it. After electric shock he transforms into Honda, then Chun-Li, Guile, Dhalsim (stretching limbs included) and fights an enemy who transforms into Ken.

References

In Zangief's ending former Russian prime minister Mikhail Gorbachev does a cameo.

Sales

According to publisher Capcom, Street Fighter II has sold 6.3 million copies worldwide since its initial release (as of June 30, 2016).

Street Fighter II games

Street Fighter II is the first of no less than five Street Fighter II games:

  • Street Fighter II - the original that started it all.
  • Street Fighter II': Special Champion Edition - allowed you to play the boss characters Balrog, Sagat, Vega and Mr. Bison.
  • Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting - introduced new moves, faster game speed and different colors for the character costumes.
  • Super Street Fighter II - this one introduced characters Cammy, Fei Long, Dee Jay & T. Hawk and added even more moves.
  • Super Street Fighter II Turbo - final and most polished version, this one introduced secret character Akuma.

SFLIU

Since the (US Gold) DOS version release was rather late, some PC enthusiasts 'released' a home-made clone of the game in the meantime. Though not being an exact 1:1 copy, the project (referred to as SFLIU, more details on http://syste.ms/sfliu.html) features the basic fighters' moves and specials and even allows for the specific arcade sound effects (like Ryu screaming out "Hadoken!") to be played via PC speaker, a feature not implemented in the official US Gold release. Unfortunately, the SFLIU graphics and gameplay are poor compared to the real thing, but some hacks and patches that came later on provided some new innovating moves not found in the original Street Fighter game.

Awards

  • Commodore Format
    • July 1993 (Issue 34) - Modern Classics: Beat-'em-ups
    • November 1994 (Issue 50) – #19 The All-Time Top 50 C64 Games
    • November 1994 (Issue 50) – #9 The Bottom 10
  • EGM
    • July 1992 (Issue 36) - Game of the Month
    • 1993 Buyer's Guide - Best Game of the Year
    • 1993 Buyer's Guide - Best SNES Game of the Year
    • 1993 Buyer's Guide - Best Video Game Ending
    • 1993 Buyer's Guide - Hottest Video Game Babe (Chun Li)
    • November 1997 (Issue 100) - ranked #3 (Titles That Revolutionized Console Gaming) (Arcade version)
  • Game Informer
      August 2001 (Issue #100)
    • #22 in the "Top 100 Games of All Time" poll
  • GameSpy
    • 2001 – #30 Top Game of All Time
  • Power Play
    • Issue 02/1993 – #3 Best SNES Game in 1992
  • Retro Gamer
    • October 2004 (Issue #9) – #27 Best Game Of All Time (Readers' Vote)
  • The Strong National Museum of Play
    • 2017 – Introduced into the World Video Game Hall of Fame
Information also contributed by Apogee IV, JayBee, Mumm-Ra, PCGamer77, Robbb, Virgil, WildKard and Zovni

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  • MobyGames ID: 6239
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Alexander Schaefer.

SNES added by Richard Firth. Wii added by Corn Popper. Commodore 64 added by Shoddyan. Wii U added by ResidentHazard. ZX Spectrum, Atari ST, Amiga added by Martin Smith. Arcade added by The cranky hermit. Browser added by glik.

Additional contributors: Roedie, Shoddyan, Mumm-Ra, Alaka, Freeman, samsam12, CalaisianMindthief, Patrick Bregger, Rik Hideto, Victor Vance, FatherJack, SoMuchChaotix.

Game added May 4, 2002. Last modified March 8, 2024.