Entry 4- Super Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting

     Welcome back mates, we are now on entry 4 of this blog and I am very excited to be doing todays review because its a game I have been going back to recently and I have been in quite the mood for it. This one is a bit different as this was not a game I initially grew up on, but I have become a fan of it thanks to an online friend of mine. It is considered one of the greatest fighting games of all time and helped start the fighting game competition craze we all know today. That's right today we will be looking at Street Fighter 2 Super Turbo: Hyper Fighting, released on the SNES in 1993.

   Street Fighter is another one of those series where you have at least heard of the name before, it has been referenced countless times ranging from rapper Nikki Minaj, to Family Guy and even by the demonic clown Pennywise himself. It is one that needs no introduction, but for context, 1 or 2 players pick from a colorful cast of various characters from different parts of the world with different stories and backgrounds as they fight each other in order to catch up to and defeat the game's main villain: M.Bison. Street Fighter 2, which is often regarded as the best in the series, began development in the late 1980's as a sequel to Capcom's Street Fighter arcade cabinet which released in 1987. The game took roughly about 2 to 3 years for development and eventually hit its way onto the arcade scene in 1991. The game was a huge success and is to this day regarded as one of the best selling arcade machines of all time. That same year the game became very popular at tournaments at local arcades and family fun centers throughout the 90's, with crowds forming around the cabinets as  they watched the best players compete for cash prizes. As the 2000's came in and video game tournament conventions like EVO became a thing, more and more people began to fly in from all over the world to see who would be the champion of the year and the world. While the later sequels have become big hits as well and have a huge following in themselves, they all have SF2's success to thank for their creation, so let's take a look and see how well this game holds up today. HADOUKEN!

    Street Fighter 2 can technically be considered its own subseries as each game in the franchise gets multiple remakes and rereleases over the years, sort of like how DLC is common for modern games today. The game has also seen countless ports for all different kinds of consoles for Nintendo, Sega, PlayStation, Xbox and PC. The version I will be mainly discussing was released for the Super Nintendo in 1993. This version was also available on the SNES classic mini which has 21 games built into it, a really cool collectors item I got for a Christmas gift in 2021. The reason I got into this game was from my friend Aki from Sweden, she has been a professional player since she was a little girl and after playing online matches with her, I decided to try the game out on my own.                                             

    First, lets discuss the single player mode. You pick from one of 12 characters from different parts of the globe: Ryu, E.Honda, Blanka, Guile, Balrog, Vega, Ken, Chun Li, Zhangief, Dhalsim, Sagat and M.Bison. Each character has their own unique story line and relationship with each of the cast members, as well as beautiful stages themed around to whichever part of the world they are from. The game features many iconic characters and while everyone has their own favorites to play as, my personal favorite is Chun Li from China. Her story involves going after M. Bison to avenge her murdered father. She is a fun character who you want to see succeed in her goals. Other characters include The Russian Zangief, who has become an LGBT icon in the gaming world in recent years, as well as the Patriotic American Guile, Indian monk Dhalsim, and young Ken and Ryu who have a unique relationship to each other as former partners. You cannot go wrong with whichever character you pick. Each character has their own unique combo moves to implement with the in-game system, and figuring each one out is always a treat worth going back to. You play through 12 rounds and must win to continue the game. The story mode is very short if you are good at the game, roughly taking about half an hour, but as an arcade game its difficulty is very high as the AI can be brutal even on the lowest difficulty. This was done to keep players coming back and putting in more quarters for the arcade version but thankfully this is not a problem for the console and PC versions. The interaction cutscenes after you win or lose a fight are fun as well as each character has a unique line for which fighter they were up against. After you finish the final boss you get a unique cutscene concluding your characters story nicely.

    Next lets talk about how the game looks and sounds. To put it bluntly, its very timeless. Despite being over 30 years old the game still looks and sounds great, with great visuals on both the characters and the stages. The voices are a bit compressed depending on which version you play but that adds to the charm of it in my personal opinion. The game's soundtrack is also one of the most beloved in video game history, being composed by Yoko Shimomura and Isao Abe. The former being one of the biggest woman composers in all of gaming, composing the entire Kingdom Hearts series alone. Each character has their own unique theme along with their stages and they are all bangers. The most recognized one is without a doubt Guile's theme, which became a meme back in the early 2010s for how groovy it was, and how it could fit into almost any fight scene.

    Now onto the controls, depending on which way you play the game it might differ vary but most people would play with d pad controls and the A and B buttons for the SNES version. This is where my biggest gripe with the game comes into play. As much as I enjoy fighting games, I am not very good at them at all. The game requires you to memorize button combinations to trigger combos to blast your way through your opponents, and while that's fine and dandy, my ADD brain can barely remember all of them. Of course you can look up guides for these things and or write them down like people did back in the day, but for me that would still be a challenge to do. I often find myself just pressing random buttons back and forth to see what combos I will get, which is not the ideal way to play if you want to be in the competitive scene. Oh well!

    So Overall, what are my final thoughts? This game is an absolute classic that while very difficult to master, almost anyone can pick up and play very easily. The real fun for me comes from the multiplayer mode, where you can grab a buddy and just kick the crap out of each other over and over again. The single player mode is good do not get me wrong, but you have to be really good in order to get very far in it, even at the easiest difficulty, but thankfully the game does have training modes to help you practice and learn the combos which is very nice indeed. Its a fantastic game, a 9/10 from me, I just wish they would have gone a little easier on novice players, but oh well practice makes perfect.

    That is it for this weeks review, thank you all for joining me once again. Join me next time for another exciting game review, but until then stay nerdy my friends. Iron Pearl Out.