Street Figther II review by Tyson
Overall
Buy
Street Fighter 2 is probably one of the best arcade to home ports. The power of the SNES is clearly used in this game.
Gameplay
Street Fighter 2 is a fighting game where 8 fighters are fighting in a tournament to win get their ultimate prize. Each fight is a one on one scenario where the first player to win 2 rounds is declared the winner. If you are able to beat every opponent then you will win the tournament. Winning the tournament will generally result in a character specific ending depending on what difficulty you are playing the game on.
What makes Street Fighter 2 so fun is that the game has a good mixture of basic and advanced gameplay mechanics. The basic mechanics are your 6 basic attacks that are quick, medium, and hard punches and kicks. The advanced mechanics are the characters various special moves. Each character has a few moves that only they can do and this really changes up the gameplay a lot. I ended up really enjoying the specials moves. I also found the fighting mechanics to be balanced as well. I never felt that one character would have a huge advantage over another. There always felt like there were ways to get past what ever offense or defense that your opponent throws at you.
Another aspect of the game I really enjoyed was each of the 8 fighter’s uniqueness’s. Everyone one had their own personality and unique effects on the gameplay. How Chun-Li plays is way different then how Ryu plays which is different then how Zangief plays. I have to say that Chun-Li has become one of my favorite video game characters. I really loved her outfit and how she could jump around the screen in ways that the other fighters couldn’t.
I also want to give props to the games bonus stages. These were a fun distraction in the game. Every few fights you will get to destroy a brick wall or destroy a car. I found it very fun to do these bonus stages.
Control
The SNES controller feels so natural with this game. The direction pad is used for character movement while the other buttons are used for your attacks. The fact that the SNES controller has enough buttons for everything is awesome as well.
Graphics
While the game doesn’t look as good as the arcade version it does look fantastic on its own. I feel that the power of the SNES is definitely being used for this game. Each of the fighters animate well and look awesome. I also loved how many of the backgrounds had their own animations as well.
Sound
The audio of the game is another area where the game excels. I really enjoyed the background music (especially Chun-Li’s stage background music). There is also a good amount of voices in the game as well. The fighter will make some kind of noise when ever you perform a special move.