Street Fighter II

"Capcom brings the fighting game that started it all to the Super Nintendo."

Capcom released Street Fighter II to the world years ago, and it was an instant hit. They decided to bring their masterpiece to the home consoles, and its a near-perfect translation.

Each of the eight World Warriors are fighting for their piece of the world championship. The eight World Warriors selectable in this game are Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Blanka, Guile, E. Honda, Zangief, and Dahlsim. After you choose your World Warrior and defeat the other seven, you take on the four bosses in the game: Balrog, Vega, Sagat, and the final battle, M. Bison. Each character has their own story, although it is just a little bit vague, and it isn't revealed until you beat the game with a given character on a difficulty of four stars or higher (out of eight maximum).

Every character also has his or her own independent move list and fighting style. From Ryu and Ken we get the famous Down, Down-Forward, Forward + Punch Fireball, which we affectionately know as the Hadouken, and we also get the famous anti-air Dragon Punch and air spinning Tatsunaki Senpukayku, the Hurricane Kick to those of you not familiar with the Japanese language. Chun-Li is lighter, so she is quicker. Zangief is a big, burly Russian bear wrestler, so he is slow and powerful with the devastating Spinning Piledriver slam.

The graphics are detailed and smooth and made a perfect translation to the Super Nintendo from the arcade, unlike many games. There is no lull or breakdown at all in the graphical aspect of the game.

The sounds is decent at best. Every character has a stage, and every state has its own background music, but it goes get repetitive after time. Each move, when contact is made, makes a certain sound effect, and its a nice thwacking sound.

Control is easy to learn and its your basic fighting-move controls. The default controls are HP and HK as L and R, LP and MP are X and Y, and LK and MK are B and A, all respectively. These are fully customizable, allowing you to make your own fighting style.

Overall: 8/10
This is the game that started the fighting game revolution. However, if you're looking to get into Street Fighter, I would go with Super Street Fighter II, as it simply has more options and more characters to choose from. All of the subsequent games released are just upgrades to this very fine base game.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 10/20/02, Updated 10/20/02