| Super Street Fighter II | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Capcom |
| Publisher(s) | Capcom |
| Designer(s) | Planners: Noritaka Funamizu (Poo) Haruo Murata (Mucchi) |
| Composer(s) | Isao Abe Syun Nishigaki |
| Platform(s) | Arcade Computers: Amiga, FM-Towns PC-DOS, Sharp X68000 Consoles: PlayStation, Sega Saturn, Mega Drive, SNES, Virtual Console |
| Release date(s) |
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| Genre(s) | Fighting |
| Mode(s) | Up to 2 players simultaneously |
| Cabinet | Upright |
| Arcade system | CPS-2 |
| Display | Raster, 384 x 224 pixels (Horizontal), 4096 colors |
Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers (スーパーストリートファイターⅡ -The New Challengers-) is a head-to-head fighting game produced by Capcom originally released as a coin-operated arcade game in 1993. It is the fourth game in the Street Fighter II sub-series of Street Fighter games, following Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting. In addition to refining and balancing the existing character roster from the previous installments, Super Street Fighter II also introduced four new characters. It was also the first game to be developed on Capcom's CP System II hardware, which permitted more sophisticated graphics and audio over the original CP System hardware, used by the previous versions of Street Fighter II.
Super Street Fighter II was followed by Super Street Fighter II Turbo, a fifth version of Street Fighter II released during the following year 1994, which further refined the balance between characters and introduced additional new features.
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Super Street Fighter II featured the following changes from Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting.
All of the stages, face artwork and even the HUD feature all new graphics. The original opening sequence which featured two generic characters fighting in front of a crowd was replaced by a new opening featuring lead character Ryu launching a Hadoken projectile towards the screen. New animation frames were drawn for all the characters for their basic and special moves, as well as new victory poses. For example, all four boss characters now have new animation frames for basic attacks (Vega and Sagat, did not have jumping punches in the previous games, and Bison and Balrog had new drawn artwork), while Chun-Li now has a new animation for her Kikoken projectile technique. The music and sound effects were also remade and new voice samples were recorded for some of the characters (Ken, Guile, and the announcer were given new voices).
Super Street Fighter II features a new scoring system which kept track of combos, first attacks, reversals and recoveries made by the player and awards the player with bonus points by performing such deeds.
Each character now has available eight color schemes, depending on which button is pressed to select the character. Players could choose between a character's original color scheme, their color schemes from Champion Edition and Hyper Fighting, or one of five new color schemes featured in the game.
The faster game speed introduced in Hyper Fighting was reduced back to the same speed level as Champion Edition. The faster game speed would return in Super Turbo.
In addition to the standard single and two-player game modes, Super Street Fighter II also feature an exclusive eight-player single-elimination tournament mode dubbed Tournament Battle. This mode is only available when four Super Street Fighter II arcade game cabinets are connected together and all of them configured to "Tournament" mode. The Tournament Mode consists of three sets of four simultaneous matches: the initial eliminations, the semifinals and the finals. After the first set is over, the players are re-arranged accordingly based on their position: the winning players sent to either of the first two cabinets, whereas losing players sent to one of the other two. In the finals, the players competing for first place are sent to the first cabinet, the third-place players to the second cabinet, and so on.
All twelve characters from the previous Street Fighter II games returned, with many having their basic and special techniques refined to adjust the overall balance.[1] Some of the characters received new special techniques such as Ryu's Fire Hadōken (renamed Shakunetsu Hadōken in the Street Fighter Alpha series), a flaming Shoryuken for Ken, Zangief's Atomic Buster and M. Bison's Devil Reverse.
Four new characters were also introduced to the game in addition to the returning roster, expanding the number of playable characters to sixteen. The new characters include T. Hawk, an indigenous warrior from Mexico whose ancestral homeland was taken from him by Shadaloo; Cammy, a 19-year-old female special forces agent from England with a mysterious past tied to M. Bison; Fei-Long, a Hong Kong movie star who wishes to test his martial arts against real opponents; and Dee Jay, a kickboxing musician from Jamaica seeking inspiration for his next song.[1]
The number of opponents fought in the single-player mode against the computer remained unchanged. As in the previous game, the player fought against eight initial opponents, followed by the Four Devas (Balrog, Vega, Sagat, and M. Bison). Because of this, not all the characters featured in the game would be fought by the player. The bonus rounds from previous versions were still featured in the game.
The Super NES version of Super Street Fighter II, released on June 25, 1994 in Japan, and during the same month in North America and Europe, was the third Street Fighter game released for the console, following the original Street Fighter II and Street Fighter II Turbo (a port of Hyper Fighting). It was released on a 32 Megabit cartridge and featured support for the XBAND online network. The SNES port featured several new game modes such as Group Battle and a Time Challenge, as well as the eight-player Tournament mode from the arcade version, in addition to the previous games' Arcade and Versus modes. Due to hardware limitations, certain music and sound effects were replaced with different renditions. Like in the SNES version of Turbo, the background music stops playing between rounds, and as a result the music restarts from the beginning at the start of each round. Moreover, the sped-up versions of the background music when a character is losing a match are not featured in this version. Unlike the Genesis version, the SNES port has the blood for the character's beat up portraits recolored to a greyish/white color (most likely due to Nintendo's strict policy during the early 90's).
The Sega Genesis version was released simultaneously with the SNES counterpart on all three regions. Although there are many differences between the SNES and Genesis ports, the two versions are almost identical in terms of content. Like its SNES counterpart, the Genesis port supported the XBAND network as well (although, only for its North American release). The Genesis version was released on a 40 Megabit cartridge, which allowed the inclusions of voice clips of the game's announcer stating the names of the countries before each match, although the audio quality is not of the same level as the original arcade game. In the Options menu, the player can choose to play the Super Battle mode on "Normal" or "Expert" modes. The latter increases the number of opponents from the arcade version's 12 to all 16 characters. This version has been re-released on the Wii Virtual Console in Japan on November 8, 2011 and is scheduled for a future release in North America and the PAL region.
The X68000 version was released exclusively in Japan on September 30, 1994. The graphics are reproduced faithfully from the arcade version, with only a few omissions made (the message when a new challenger interrupts a match in 1-Player mode has differently-colored fonts, and the aurora in Cammy's stage is of a different color as well). In terms of voices, all the spatial processing and echo processing specific to the CP System II hardware were removed. Like the X68000 version of Street Fighter II Dash, the game is compatible with multiple PCM drivers on a X683000 or higher models. A message from the game's sound team is hidden in one of the ADPCM sound files containing music. Like the previous X68000 port, it was sold with an adapter for the CPS Fighter joystick controller.
The FM Towns version was released exclusively in Japan on October 28, 1994. The player characters reproduced faithfully from the arcade version, but the backgrounds lack the original's parallax scrolling effect. The Q-Sound soundtrack of the arcade version is reproduced faithfully in this port, with an arranged version offered as an alternative as well (the same version later featured in the 3DO port of Super Turbo). A color edit that allows players to alter each character's color schemes was added as well. Like the X68000 version, it also included an adapter for the CPS Fighter joystick controller.
Super Street Fighter II was released for PC CD-ROM and Amiga in North America and Europe in 1995. Both ports were based on the SNES version.
The game is also included in the original Street Fighter Collection for the PlayStation and Sega Saturn, released in 1997.
In the February 1994 issue of Gamest, both Street Fighter II Dash Turbo (Hyper Fighting) and Super Street Fighter II, were nominated for Best Game of 1993, but neither won (the first place was given to Samurai Spirits). Super ranked third place, with Turbo at No. 6. In the category of Best Fighting Games, Super ranked third place again, while Turbo placed fifth. Super also won third place in the categories of Best Graphics and Best VGM. Cammy, who was introduced in Super, placed fifth place in the list of Best Characters of 1993, with Dee Jay and T. Hawk at 36 and 37.[2]
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