Street Fighter 2 (NES Review)

/ Reviews - NES / By
You put your left leg in, your left leg out
You put your left leg in, your left leg out

Capcom are clever people.  So clever that they decided not to have anything to do with the NES version of what is one of the most important SNES titles ever released.  The fact that this version was produced by Hummer and published by Yoko Soft really tells you everything you need to know.  Getting SF2 to the 16-bit was a headache in itself, how on earth Hummer thought they would get away with this I’ve no idea.  From the opening credits you can sense bad things are a comin.

 

Thanks but no thanks Chun Li…
Thanks but no thanks Chun Li…

Hummer haven’t animated it, it’s a still of two guys facing off but the guy in the white tee doesn’t deck the other guy.  The first thing you’ll notice is that half of the characters have been culled (culled – they’re still alive somewhere…) leaving only Ryu, Zangief, Guile and Chun Li.  You choose one and have to beat the other three –simple.  Except it’s not simple at all.  There is only one difficulty setting – very bloody hard!  I didn’t win a single round in an hour of playing this game, it didn’t improve the day after either.  The sprites are quite beefy as you’d hope and the stages are fairly well designed for the NES (Ryu stage holds up the best) but then everything starts to go horribly wrong.

 

For godsake get some help woman, my hands are on fire!!
For godsake get some help woman, my hands are on fire!!

Both sprites will blur straight away meaning collision detection (extremely ruddy important, especially in a fighting game) is almost non existent.  The kick and punch buttons feel unresponsive and the only special moves you’ll be able to pull off is the hadoken (of course!), The helicopter kick and Chun-Li’s thousand foot thing.  Guile suffers the worst as you’ve not got enough time to recharge the sonic boom or flash kick.

The game is ridiculously quick with the CPU pulling off special moves left right and centre.  What you’ve signed up for is to be a punching (and kicking) bag.  And the sound, even for the NES it is awful.  Your character wouldn’t be able to punch his/her way out of a paper bag so the bag-like sound effects seem apt.  Apparently Viga (M Bison to us) appears as the boss but you gotta have some skills or a Game Genie to see the bloody guy.

Crikey O’Relly, SF2 wasn’t intended for the NES and my should it have stayed that way.

sf2-nes-score

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