Street Combat

"In the future, blonde mullets will reign supreme"

Street Combat is quite possibly the first game I have ever beaten. A milestone such as that should be treasured by the gamer in question and the particular game should be special to them. Unfortunately, Street Combat is a terrible game that is so barebones I hardly have anything to write about. There is no excuse for a game like this to ever be released. So, why didn't it get a score worse than a five? Read on to find out.

Street Combat is, obviously, a fighting game, a very, very terrible fighting game. One of the most important parts of any game like this is to have a wide cast of characters for you to play as, but I can count the characters featured in this title on two hands. Some of these characters are pretty cool, like the clown Dozo or the dangerous robot Helmut. However, you can only go through the game with one character, a weird blonde guy with a mullet.

You fight everyone and then you win. That's the end of the game. You can change the difficulty setting if you want, but really the game's difficulty depends on if you won the first round or not. If you win the first round, your opponent will fight aggressively, but if you lose the first round then you should have a smooth ride for the rest of your right.

The next most important part of any fighting video game is the combat system. This is where Street Combat does do some things right. Everyone gets their own special moves and all of your moves are simple to pull off so you don't have to remember fifty page long combos like in a Mortal Kombat game. Unfortunately, some characters are noticeably superior to other characters, and on top of that, you can spam to win any match you're in.

Now that I've gone over that one gameplay mode, it's time to go over the next. Well, it's a two-player versus mode where you and a friend can choose between the characters featured in the game and take each other on in different levels, of which you can't even choose which ones you fight in.

Even though I feel like I shouldn't have to mention it, I might as well. This game takes after almost every other fighting game released during the fourth generation. You have a health meter and there are two rounds. In the event of a tie, then there is a third round.

These characters seem to be beating the crap out of each other for no reason because there virtually is no story in Street Combat. The only thing I could come up with is that some weird blonde guy with a mullet who occasionally wears a big blue combat suit that makes funny noises wants to beat up a bunch of bad guys. Seriously, games had stories during this generation and there's no excuse for this game to not have any rhyme or reason to what's going on.

The levels look decent and are varied, but there isn't very much going on. All of the characters have detail to them, but there aren't very many characters for you to choose from in the first place. Also, the game does seem to be a little bit racist. There is a black character that is named Tyrone. I am not kidding. There is a minimum of graphical glitches though and I guess that's a good thing. The fighting animations are better than other more popular fighting games released for the system, so that's a plus.

Characters have really corny names like G.I. Jim and “Steven”. Thankfully, nobody says their name in this game so you won't have to groan every few seconds. Terrible background music takes the place of this though and will annoy you for the rest of your life…though it is a little catchy I have to admit. Which is a good thing I guess if you like terrible music from twenty years ago haunting you for the rest of the day. I mentioned weird noises coming from the characters and this is true. Their bodies make weird exhaust-like sounds and while they're not necessarily bad, they do seem out of place.

After a few minutes of this game, you will become very bored of its unremarkable progression, but there is just something about this game that will make you want to beat it. I don't know what it is, but you won't want to stop until you complete it, even though you're not really having that much fun. The multiplayer mode is just as bad as the main gameplay mode because you can't choose where you fight at and there isn't very many characters to choose from, plus a lot of the character feel broken. There are different difficulty settings if you're interested in that, but after you take the half an hour to complete this game, you'll be done with it.

I don't hate this game, but I really, really dislike it. I had almost nothing positive to say about it in this entire review except for a few words of praise sprinkled here and there, but overall Street Combat ends up being an unremarkable and inferior fighting game. I guess if you find it somewhere for a few cents you might as well pick it up just to say you have it, but don't go out looking for this title by any means.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 07/17/08

Game Release: Street Combat (US, April 1993)