Streetfighter 2: The World Warrior Yoga-fire! Had-uken! A-shab-dap-whoo-jit! In the early 1990s, such was common playground talk up and down the country, as children re-enacted their Streetfighter 2 fantasies, and dinner-ladies looked on in bewilderment. Streetfighter 2: The World Warrior Eight controllable characters was something of a revelation 20 years …
I was going to post the same thing about the arcade. That's the experience that made that game for me.
I remember seeing a preview in C+VG/Mean Machines (I can't remember which) before the release and poring over the screenshots for weeks. Once it finally arrived - wow... Hordes of kids stood around the cabs, piles of 10p pieces by the joysticks for the unwritten 'next player' rule of the arcade, and those magical moments when someone from out of town would turn up and play like a god with some character you never bothered with before.
I was one of those SNES importers (through Dream Machines I think it was back then) and this cart hooked up on the pass-through converter provided me with far, far too many hours in front of the TV. What nostalgia tends to ignore though is the hideous NTSC-PAL issues which saw us over here with ~100 lines more vertical resolution (i.e. huge black bars top and bottom), and the fact that the game ran at about 85% of the true speed thanks to the 60Hz/50Hz refresh difference.
It didn't matter though, I still remember pulling the blinds and having 'best of 99' battles with my mates :)
To be fair, you'd only notice the speed issue if you played the original JPN version on a JPN Super NES. It wasn't really massively noticeable. The borders were though - good thing my parent's TV had a "525-line" mode that removed (most of) the borders.
You probably saw the preview in Mean Machines - I remember screenshots of that. They also showed screenshots of Street Fighter '92 in development (the latter of which eventually became "Champion Edition").
Shame on YOU boatman! As others have pointed out, what we know as Balrog was originally M Bison (and still is) in Japan. Vega was originally Balrog and M Bison was originally Vega. Article is right - the name switcheroo was down to a fear of possible litigation.
In fighting circles, we simply call M Bison/Balrog "Boxer", Balrog/Vega "Claw" and Balrog/M Bison "Dictator" to avoid confusion with gamers from the west and gamers from the east (Japan).
Playing Ryu against my mates it ended up like a game of chess to begin with, with fireballs of varying speed making their way across the screen.
The moment someone mis-timed a response, a jump etc all hell would break loose and game over. One mistake!
It took hours of my life this game, don't regret one of them.
Oh, just a minor point: the name is "Street Fighter" (two words) - generally accepted to be that by Capcom and the SRK community. Screenshots are the Super NES version too - while that's fine, it would be even more authentic if you used screenshots from the arcade version for the article.
But yeah I STILL play the successors now! The first version I played was "Champion Edition" (the rejigged 'sequel') and my main character was at first Chun Li (Hundred Foot Kick being really easy to use) followed by Guile, then Ryu and Ken, then the rest of the characters. I then was playing the original "World Warrior" version as that was the main version that they had in the chip shops in my neck of the woods, then played "Hyper Fighting", then "Super". When "Super Turbo" (or, to give its full name "Super Street Fighter II Turbo" came out in the arcades in Croydon, seemingly every kid in the borough piled into that one arcade just to see the new moves and rules. Seeing Sagat blat opponents with a five-hit Tiger Uppercut caused a big collective "WOAH!" to be heard all the way down the road.
Since then, I've bought many home versions on the Super NES, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable and Gameboy Advance. I've progressed onto the Alpha series, SFIII, SFIV, the X-Men/Marvel/Marvelvs series and SF v TK. However, for me, "Super Turbo" remains the best ever and purest version of Street Fighter. In fact, I think "Super Turbo" is probably the best game ever and the gaming equivalent of Chess. Such an amazing game.
Surely the "championship edition" version (SF2 Turbo) on the SNES was the best at the time? This allowed you to play the bosses, two players could be the same character (with different colours) and it was so much faster. In fact, with the old U D L R combo, you could pump the speed up to faster than NTSC/arcase speeds even on the PAL version.
I loved SF2. I used to take my SNES into school sometimes in a backpack and keep it in there while it was hooked to the old TVs they'd have knocking around classrooms. I think the crowning achievement was using an RF splitter to display the game on two screens, such was the interest!
I don't know if they ruined the series with the million sequels, or whether I'm a stick in the mud.
Actually (and I apologise in advance for starting with that word), SF2 Turbo on the SNES was based on the third arcade iteration of the game, "Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting".
When Capcom announced that the game was coming to the Mega Drive, it was originally going to be the second iteration, "Champion (not "ship") Edition", but apparently when they learnt that Turbo/Hyper was to be released for the SNES, they quickly went about adding the "Hyper" mode (air Tatsumakis, Chun Li's fireball), and allowing players to switch between both versions, and called the game "Special Champion Edition".
Yep. I remember the screenshots in Mean Machines and the general crowing coming from the SEGA magazines about how the Megadrive was getting Champion Edition. Nintendo Magazine System (NMS) then followed up a month later with screenshots of "Turbo" on the Super NES with a subtitle in a box saying "Who needs Champion Edition now?" - CLASSIC.
IIRC Andee's recollection of the addition of "Turbo" to "Champion Edition" is generally right, but I also remember that there was a belief that at the time, Nintendo scored an exclusive for "Turbo", but SEGA were determined to get round it, so (presumably after looking closely at the terms of the exclusivity) authorised Capcom to add "Turbo" to the game while not actually describing the game as "Turbo" (the full title was Street Fighter II: SPECIAL Champion Edition) and defaulting to the Champion Edition mode. "Turbo" came out first though, as I remember having to go to HMV Oxford Street where they had a special event on the first floor to promote it (and pay £60!). The SEGA version was delayed by a month or so, I think because of a legal challenge or something, probably from Nintendo (at least that was what the rumours stated).
The Turbo Hyper Fighting SNES version was the definitive SFII for me. I spent countless afternoons on that game, sharpening my skills until I could finish the one-player "story" mode on the maximum difficulty and speed levels without losing a single round (a special screen would appear then, congratulating the player for having "mastered" the character he played with).
Contrary to most SFII players I knew, who tended to gravitate towards Ken or Ryu, I specialized in controlling Guile. I would jump over their fire balls from just the right distance, teasing them into delivering a Dragon Punch - and when they missed, I would greet them back with a hard punch, followed by a lowered hard kick (Guile was unusual in that his "lowered hard kick" consisted of two consecutive attacks, so many a player would block the first kick, then get up in an attempt to counter-attack and unwittingly get hit by the second swing), a Sonic Boom (which most experienced players blocked, but served to keep them on check) and another lower hard kick. At this point the bloke usually tried to jump over Guile's head, only to be sent back by a Flash Kick.
After the SNES phased out I pretty much stopped playing games, so in my mind SFII remains the apex of the fighting genre. I still replay it on emulators from time to time, and I always get amazed at how easily my reflexes return, even after so many years. The mind may have moved on, but the hands never forget.
An amazing game and I still spend countless hours playing it. The depth of tactics, counter attacks and combos that you can do against different characters is immense and you just don't get that with games these days.
My SNES is the only console that's been hooked up to my TV constantly since I bought it. Playstations and XBoxes have all had their few years of use. SNES games like Mario Kart, Mario World, SF2 Turbo, Unirally, Donkey Kong are the only games that I still play on a regular basis.
Icon... yoga flame!
I and my friends must have lost literally months of our childhood to this. We played it in the arcades ages before it came to the SNES and we must've made the corner shop owner a small fortune. We pumped in 10p pieces like they were going out of fashion!
I don't remember the choice of characters that you alluded to though. EVERYONE immediately selected Ryu or Ken, with the odd person going for Guile. The girls always played with Chun-Li though
Yeah, similar here. Everyone loved playing as Ryu or Ken - clearly because of the devastating Dragon Punch. I played as Guile though, because originally I couldn't do the quarter-circle movements, let alone the Dragon Punch one, until I was taught how to do it by a classmate (when the Super NES version was out).
great retro article as usual, only thing to mention was the "social" aspect was more everyone hanging round the streetfighter 2 ARCADE than the console, back in the days when heading to the arcades was the more social aspect of gaming with your mates, and beating them in public to show your social geek status
Does everyone remember the many bugs in this game? Guile's handcuffs? Guile being able to throw characters even when he was nowhere near them? Others?
What about the legendary EGM "Sheng Long" April fool that had everyone amazed and probably contributed significantly to Capcom's coffers (as everyone piled even more money into the arcades trying to get the mysterious "Sheng Long", making the game so popular arcade operators would order more machines in).
We loved this in Selby arcade but had to wait for the SNES version to do proper multiplayer because the player 2 stick in our arcade couldn't do 8 directions originally. I was the first kid to complete it on one credit in our arcade. With E Honda if I remember. The first time I got Zangief's ending though was a big wtf moment.
Still playing variants to this day.
The best version is the japanese arcade version of turbo (Mame - sf2j)
Street Fighter II' Turbo - Hyper Fighting (Japan 921209)
Sucks you cannot buy it here though (Or even in Japan unless you can find the arcade machine which is rare as it is) (I think I have bought about 5 versions of Streetfighter and none are as good as that).
I remember the original street fighter at the arcade just on the edge of Chinatown (London). There were two pressure sensitive pads for punch and kick respectively... Depending on how hard you hit the pad affected which move was triggered. Fun times.
I suspect that after (not too long, I remember it being there for about 3 months) a while it got damaged enough that they made the 6 button version because it was cheaper to maintain.
Still, Ken for the win. It was downloadable on the xbox360 a while ago it does bring back the memories.
This was the sole reason behind my purchase of a SNES, lost many hours to trying to complete it, broke several joypads through throwing them down in disgust and even bought a programmable joystick to try and finish it with some of the trickier characters. Ahh happy days.
Go on YT and search for Damian Warlock, he does Slayer-esque covers (maybe more like Die By The Sword era Slayer not the later works) and you will love it. You will make love it so much you will cry out for Chun Li and her thick yet still sexy thighs to wrap around you in joy as you listen. He only covers Guile stage and Ken but they are amazing.
*He does a little Ryu teaser at the end of the Ken song which for some reason he has not completed yet.
This is probably ironically, both a hardcore game and a causal one. Wack the difficulty level all the way down, mash some buttons and everyone can play this! I think it has a lot to do with just how funny the sound affects and background graphics are let alone game play.
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