Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting

Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting, released in Japan as Street Fighter II Dash Turbo: Hyper Fighting (ストリートファイターIIダッシュターボ -HYPER FIGHTING-^?, stylized as Street Fighter II′ Turbo),^[1] is a competitive fighting game released for the arcades by Capcom in 1993. It is the third game in the Street Fighter II sub-series of Street Fighter games following Street Fighter II: Champion Edition. Released less than a year after the previous installment, Hyper Fighting introduced a faster playing speed and new special moves for certain characters, as well as further refinement to the character balance.

Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting was the final arcade game in the Street Fighter series to utilize the CP System hardware. The next game in the series, Super Street Fighter II, switched to the CP System II hardware.

Game System

Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting featured the following from the game system inherited from Street Fighter II: Champion Edition.

Increased game speed

As evident by its subtitle, Hyper Fighting increased the overall game speed from the previous game. As a result, the commands for special moves, as well as the timing of following one move with another during a combo, was even more severe than in Champion Edition, with easier opportunities to make a mistake. The faster game speed also allowed players to reach into battle quicker, as well as to counterattack quicker.

New special moves

With the exception of Guile and the four Grand Masters (Balrog, Vega, Sagat, and M. Bison), each returning character was given at least one additional special move, such as Chun-Li's Kikoken projectile attack and Dhalsim's Yoga Teleport. These special moves were added to compensate for certain weaknesses in the previous games. Other moves were also modified to allowed for more balanced competition. For example, M. Bison can no longer trap his opponents into a corner with his Scissors Kick.

New color palettes

Every character has a new alternate color palette instead of the ones they used in Champion Edition. With exception of M. Bison, each character's new color palette is selected by pressing any attack button, while the original color palette is selected by pressing Start.

Single-player mode

The single-player mode and endings are identical to those of Champion Edition. However, there's an additional scene which shows the player character standing in first place on a victory stand. The characters who appear in this scene varies between the character used by the player. Usually it shows the player in the center, with M. Bison to the left and Sagat to the right. If either of the latter two is being used by the player, then it will show the player in the center, Sagat or M. Bison to the left, and Vega to the right.

Home versions

Super NES

Hyper Fighting was ported to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System under the title of Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting^[2] on July 11, 1993 in Japan, on August 1993 in North America and the PAL region. The port was developed using the SNES port of the original Street Fighter II as its base, but with a larger cartridge size of 20 Megabits. This version actually features two game modes: a "Turbo" mode that plays like Hyper Fighting, and a "Normal" mode that plays like Champion Edition. The game's speed is adjustable in Turbo mode. There are secret codes that allows player to adjust the game's speed in Turbo mode to up to ten stars (instead of the default four stars), enable and disable specific Special Moves in Versus Mode, or play through the single-player mode with all the Special Moves disabled.

The change of volume in the characters' voices when they perform a different variation of their Special Moves based on the strength level of the attack was removed, but the voice clips of the announcer saying the names of each country was restored, along with the barrel-breaking bonus stage that was removed in the first SNES port. The graphics of each character's ending were changed to make them more accurate to the arcade version. Sound effects featuring people or animals shouting after a round ended were added as well, however, these were not included in the original arcade version. These sound effects were later added to Super Street Fighter II (both, arcade and SNES versions).

Sega Genesis

The Sega Genesis version of Hyper Fighting, titled Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition in North America and Europe, and Street Fighter II Dash Plus: Champion Edition in Japan, was released on September 28, 1993 in Japan and on October 1993 in North America and Europe. It was first of two Street Fighter II ports for the Sega Genesis and came in a 24 Megabit cartridge.

The Genesis version was originally announced simultaneously with the PC Engine version and was intended to be a straight port of Champion Edition as well. The first screenshots released to the public had the top part of the background cut off where the characters' health gauges, scores, and time limit were displayed. However, the game was delayed in order to make the graphics more comparable to the SNES and PC Engine versions and content from the SNES version of Turbo were added, resulting in the name change to Special Champion Edition. A six-button controller for the Genesis was released around the same time, which was created primarily for Street Fighter II. The game can be played with the original three-button controller, in which the three action buttons are used for attacks (light, medium, and heavy), while the Start button is used to toggle between punches and kicks. Since the start button is being used for playing purposes, the pause function is removed when using a three-button controller.

Special Champion Edition consists of a "Champion" mode with Champion Edition rules and a "Hyper" mode with Hyper Fighting rules, similar to the Normal and Turbo modes in the SNES Turbo version. This was the first console version of a Street Fighter II to feature the original opening sequence which depicted two generic martial artists fighting in front of a cheering public (the Japanese version features a white fighter hitting a black opponent, while the overseas versions replaced the black opponent with another white fighter). The ten-stars speed settings in "Hyper" mode, which were only accessible in the SNES version through a cheat code, is available by default in the Genesis and a secret code to adjust the speed setting in "Champion" mode was added as well. Special Champion Edition was also the only home version at the time of its release to feature "simultaneous button cancels".

Special Champion Edition was released as a plug'n play system in 2005 as part of the "Play TV Legends" series by Radica. It also included the Genesis version of Ghouls'n Ghosts.

Other releases

Hyper Fighting is included in Street Fighter Collection 2 (Capcom Generation 5) for the Sega Saturn and PlayStation. The PlayStation port was later included in Capcom Classics Collection Vol. 1 for PlayStation 2 and Xbox, as well as Capcom Classics Collection: Reloaded for the PlayStation Portable. A stand-alone re-release of Hyper Fighting was also released for the Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade which features an online versus mode.

References

Further reading

• Studio Bent Stuff (Sept. 2000) (in Japanese). All About Capcom Head-to-Head Fighting Games 1987-2000. A.A. Game History Series (Vol. 1). Dempa Publications, Inc.. ISBN 4885546761. 

External links

• Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting at the Killer List of Videogames