Street Fighter II

"Great classic that still is fun to play"

Street Fighter II. The game that set the mark for every single one-on-one fighter to come. This game also came out for the Genesis, but the SNES controller was perfectly suited to play it without dishing out the money for a 6-button one (what Genesis users had to do). At it's time, the graphics were impressive, and the game handled like a dream. Just like the arcade. But does this game still have it after 11 years?
The answer is, yes.

GRAPHICS: 9
It'd be unfair to compare a first-gen SNES game with the games of 2002, but for its time, the graphics were amazingly similar to the arcade. The sprites were extremely detailed, the animation fluid and the backgrounds incredible. A point is taken off because the animation slows down considerably when a special power hits (???), and some backgrounds are different from the arcades.

SOUND: 6
I didn't quite like the sound in this game. Every single fighter, apart from Chun-Li, seems to have the same voice. The music is not exactly as in the arcade, which wasn't great to start with. And the announcer has a really annoying voice, which wasn't THAT bothersome in the arcades. Still, you'll be able to play without turning the volume down.

GAMEPLAY/CONTROL: 8
The game plays as smooth as ever. Every single move is faithfully represented from the arcade. Points taken off because it's REALLY annoying to have the strong kick/punch buttons (probably the ones you'll be using the most) on L and R, which makes special moves really hard to perform. Also, I have a complaint about Ryu and Ken's Shoryuken; I never seem to be able to pull it off when I need to, something I was able to do in the arcades. Also, Zangief's Piledriver is HARD to pull off, but it was also hard to do in the original so I'm not complaining.

REPLAY VALUE: 9
As long as you're eager to beat the game in a considerably hard difficulty 8 times just to see the endings, it has a lot of replay value. Besides, when you finally finish that task, 2-player games will keep you entertained for long.

Buy/Rent/Not?
I got this for 3 dollars and got a blast out of it. I'd only not reccomend this game if you don't like fighting games at all. Oh, and if you can find SFII Turbo, but that over this one. Same game, only a bit faster and you can play Bison, Sagat, Vega and Balrog.

FINAL SCORE: 8,4, rounded to 8 for GameFAQs.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 10/25/02, Updated 10/25/02