Super Street Fighter II

Super Street Fighter II
Developer(s)	Capcom
Publisher(s)	Capcom
Designer(s)	Noritaka Funamizu Haruo Murata
Composer(s)	Isao Abe Syun Nishigaki
Series	Street Fighter
Platform(s)	Arcade Computers: Amiga, FM-Towns PC DOS, Sharp X68000 Consoles: PlayStation, Sega Saturn, Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, SNES, Virtual Console
Release date(s)	JP September 10, 1993 June 25, 1994 (SNES) April 26, 2012 (Virtual Console)
Genre(s)	Fighting
Mode(s)	Up to 2 players simultaneously
Cabinet	Upright
Arcade system	CPS-2
Display	Raster (horizontal), 384×224 resolution, 4096 colors on screen, 16,777,216 color palette[1]

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.

Gameplay

Super Street Fighter II featured the following changes from Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting.

Graphics and audio

All of the stages, character portraits 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, while many of their standing and crouching attacks shared the same animation), while Chun-Li now has a new animation for her Kikoken projectile technique. The music and sound effects were also remade and a new announcer was introduced, who also recorded new voice samples for some of the characters (Ken, Guile and Sagat).

Other new features

Cammy vs. Fei-Long in Ryu's stage. A new scoring system was implemented that keeps track of the number of hits a player performs during a combo.

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.

Tournament Battle

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.

Characters

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.^[2] 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.^[2]

Despite the addition of four new characters, the number of matches against the computer in the single-player mode remained unchanged. The player fight eight randomly chosen opponents, followed by the four Grand Masters (Balrog, Vega, Sagat and M. Bison), much like in the previous Street Fighter II editions, leaving four characters which are never fought. Chun-Li and the four Grand Masters now have new ending sequences.

Home versions

Super NES

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. Unlike the Genesis version, the SNES port has the blood for the character's beat up portraits removed or replaced with sweat (most likely due to Nintendo's strict policy during the early 90's).

Sega Mega Drive/Genesis

The Sega Mega Drive/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, the PAL region on April 12, 2012 and in North America on April 26, 2012.

X68000

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.

FM Towns

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.

Other versions

Super Street Fighter II was ported by Eurocom to the IBM-PC and compatibles (MSDOS 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. However this version lacks the 8-player tournament that appeared in arcades and on the SNES and Genesis ports.

Reception

In the February 1994 issue of Gamest, Super Street Fighter II was nominated for Best Game of 1993, though it was eventually ranked at third. In the category of Best Fighting Games, Super won three more third place prizes in the categories of "Best Fighting Games," "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.^{[9] [10]}

GamePro gave a generally negative review of the Genesis version. They wrote that though it was a solid conversion of the arcade game, "Super was never the game it could have been in the arcades, and the same inbalances and flaws that hurt the coin-op still affect the home versions." They also said the new features were "pretty cosmetic or just downright boring and unimportant", and that the graphics, music, and voices of the Genesis version were all inferior to the SNES version,^[11] which they had given a more positive review for, while citing some of the same issues with the core game.^[12] Electronic Gaming Monthly gave the SNES version a 7 out of 10, with all four reviewers concurring that though it was the best version of Street Fighter II to date, the additions were limited given how many versions had already been released, and Capcom should have put out a Street Fighter III with new mechanics instead.^[4] They made similar comments on the Genesis version, and two of the reviewers additionally criticized that it is worse than the Super NES version due to the poor quality of the digitized voices.^[5]

References

Sources

• All About Capcom Head-to-Head Fighting Games 1987–2000. A.A. Game History Series (Vol. 1) (in Japanese). Dempa Publications. September 2000. ISBN 4-88554-676-1. 

External links

General resources

• Super Street Fighter II at the Killer List of Videogames
• Shoryuken.com (the online center of competitive Street Fighter)
• Super Street Fighter II guide at StrategyWiki
• Super Street Fighter II art at FightingStreet.com