Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo

"*sigh*... whatever."

Grumble. Sure, I love Street Fighter as much as the next guy. And I absolutely love cutesy superdeformed artwork. But if Capcom wants to add yet another Street Fighter game to the shelves, they had better stick to what they know, which obviously doesn't include puzzle games. I had high hopes for Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, but unfortunately it didn't deliver.
The concept of SPF2T is inherently similar to many other games. Multi-colored jewels fall from the sky, which you have to arrange into matching groups of any size. The twist here is that in order to destroy the jewels, you have to drop an activator crystal next to them to set off the reaction and crack the group of jewels into powder. In Puzzle Fighter, you are always playing against someone, whether it be a friend or the computer. Every time you set off a big chain reaction, blocks are dropped onto the opponents side to get in their way. These blocks have a counter on them that counts down from 5, and five turns later they turn into jewels that can be gotten rid of. The first person to fill their side to the top with jewels loses.

Graphics: 7
One doesn't expect much from puzzle games graphically, but SPF2T manages to spice things up a bit. You can pick any of several well known Street Fighter and Darkstalker characters (heck, they even threw in Devilot from Cyberbots) who go head to head with the opponent's character in the middle of the screen while you play. If you are playing as Ryu, and a particularly big combo is scored, Ryu lets loose with a big old ''HaDOOOOOken!'' on your enemy's character. The characters are drawn all cute and superdeformed, perfect for a silly game such as this. Downsides? The quality of the graphics isn't quite up to the standard of Pocket Fighter (neither is anything else, but we'll get to that shortly) and looks a bit on the dark side. Also, the pictures that appear on the ''So-and-so vs. Whoever'' screen are woefully out of place with the rest of the game.

Sound: 9

This is excellent. The music is all very peppy and catchy. The sound effects within the matches are quick, snappy, and sometimes hilarious (Some of Morrigan's sound effects are a little... shall we say questionable... if played in the sound test). As an added bonus, you can unlock a pop song ''I want to know'' performed by Sakura! Kawaii!

Gameplay: 4

I'm getting really tired of this. Why is it that programmers just toss in a bunch of ideas that seem to add up, without actually PLAYING the game for more than 15 minutes? If they had, this game would have surely been retooled. It all sounds good on paper, but this game has in actuality very little strategy in it, which spells doom for a puzzle game. Similar concepts have worked in games like Puyo Puyo, but SPF2T makes a very big error. The blocks that are sent over to your opponent in the middle of a match are useless to them. You may say ''Ha! Serves them right for losing!''. But realize that in Puyo Puyo, if you sent 50 blocks at once to your opponent (something that is much less likely to happen there than in this game), it is at least theoretically possible for them to throw the blocks back at you, by matching them up into fresh groups. In Puzzle Fighter, it takes 5 turns for those blocks to turn into jewels. Meanwhile the player who got them is pointlessly trying to stay alive, while the opponent is sending more and more blocks over every turn. Again, this may not sound that bad, but every match in this game turns out the same way. Through some astounding feat of luck, a player manages to send 50 blocks to their opponent and they effectively win the game. Only when you play Puzzle Fighter can you truly realize how annoying this is. Keep in mind that I am not being a sore loser. I win far more games of Puzzle Fighter han I lose. But when I win, I don't feel proud of myself. I'm just bored, since I know that nothing I did really affected the outcome of the match that much.
Another problem I had was this. Every character has a unique pattern. This pattern dictates how the blocks you send to your opponent fall, and in what color formation. This was a very bad move. Some patterns are far more useful than others, meaning that if you are playing as one character, you have next to no chance, while with another, you really have to try to lose. The hierarchy of characters is so one sided that if you pit a better character against a weaker one, nine times out of ten the outcome is a forgone conclusion. This could be seen as some sort of added difficulty setting, except that it's boring playing as the same character just because he has the best pattern. I didn't really realize this until I read a FAQ of this game. My advice to you is to not read the FAQ. It will just weaken the game even more.
So essentially, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo is a bad game that people are calling good because they see the cute superdeformed characters and don't hold it to the high standards of a ''serious game''. But listen here, if you want to see superdeformed street fighter characters fighting it out then go out and buy Pocket Fighter, which is a great game. I could see someone being entertained by this for a weekend, so I suppose it's a good rental. My advice is to stay away. The only reason I still have my copy is that when I try to sell it, I am offered no more than five dollars and then they tell me ''Hold on to that game, it's very rare and will be worth a lot of money''. Something tells me I haven't been let in on the joke.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 07/04/00, Updated 07/04/00