Street Fighter II' Champion Edition Review
Merhaba ve ToriJ's Video Oyunu yorum hoş geldiniz. Thanks for joining me for the first edition of Fightbruary, and we're starting off with a fan favorite, Street Fighter II' Champion Edition. This was one of six games I used to play everyday on the Sega Genesis and I can't wait to begin reviewing it after all this time. A lot of people like myself started off with Street Fighter II because the first one was available for arcade, but only came out to systems like the Amiga and Commodore 64 instead of Nintendo or the Sega Master System, so a lot of people missed it and this game was their introduction to the franchise.
The game opens up with two guys in a fight surrounded by people. After the guy on the right punches out the man on the left we trail up the nearby building and see the Street Fighter II' logo as a billboard before being taken to the title screen. First minor annoyance I've discovered is when after you set up options you go back to the opening scene, but you can skip it so it's not a big deal. We have two modes to start with, Champion mode and Hyper. The only real difference between them are characters' alternate costumes and increasing the speed of the fights adding a new layer of difficulty. From there both modes has your option of single player, two player, or group battle. Since I unfortunately don't have anyone to play with this will mainly be a review of the single player mode. Woe is me.
Street Fighter II Champion Edition has a total of twelve different characters to choose from, adding the four bosses you faced at the end of the previous version to the character roster. You can even battle yourself in single player this time around. I always enjoyed how you move from country to country on an airplane before each fight.
The game itself is pretty straight forward; one on one with two rounds, and a third round if there's a tie. On the off chance you get a double KO on the third round you go to one final round to settle things. I wonder what happens if you have a double KO then? Do you just keep having final rounds until somebody wins?
At the end of each fight you rack up points depending on how well you did. Some stages has people moving in the background adding a bit more life to the game as well as objects that either you or your opponent can crash into.
Every character has their own set of moves and play style that provides their own advantages and disadvantages. Chun-Li is fairly quick while being powerful. You're able to jump around with her and throw someone midair. E. Honda and Blanka are the strongest fighters in the whole game. I was inflicting more damage with them than I could even keep track of. I'd perform one or two moves and the match would be over before I could get any kind of momentum going.
Sagat is powerful but his legs may as well have a target painted on them. The first time I played the game I picked him by mistake and had so many people go after his knees it was ridiculous. But at the same time it's smart programming because when you are faced with a man who is bigger than you where do you go? You go for the legs to try to take the feet out from under him. I just couldn't duck and block quick enough to defend against it.
There are a couple of neat little tricks you can do while fighting. The first one being when you reach the end of the screen you can bounce off of it like a wall and come back at your opponent (only works for Chun-Li and Vega). What you're jumping off of I don't know, but I don't care if it helps me get the win. Another thing you can do is when you're knocked through the air you can press back on the D-Pad and regain control of your fighter before hitting the floor. Occasionally, you can be beaten so badly your fighter will literally be seeing stars giving your opponent the chance to get an extra hit in. That's one of those things that is awesome when it's not you, but man does it suck ass when you're on the receiving end.
Each character likes to rub in the fact that they've won by taunting a bruised opponent when the match is over. This would be better if they didn't just repeat the same couple of lines over and over again. After the fifteenth time of seeing the same statement by the same character I was just tired of it, and unfortunately there isn't any way to skip these parts.
Every three fight you get a bonus stage like the one seen above. Long story short, you basically have to destroy whatever obstacle is standing in your way before time runs out. I was only able to complete the second bonus stage with the bricks using Chun-Li. The hardest one is probably the falling barrels just because you're dealing with moving targets this time around. Unless you're using Blanka. Everything is easier with Blanka.
In the end you face the man himself, M. Bison. Out of the four bosses you face, I have to say Sagat and Bison are the hardest. Some times Balrog would give me a hard time, but not a lot. Vega was easier than I remembered him being. A shame since he used to be my favorite character when I was little. When all is said and done you can put in your initials and look at the score. Not too long and not too short. If you happen to lose don't fret it, the continues will take you back where you left off like a good game should. None of this “start back at the beginning” crap we dealt with before. Continues also take you back to the character select screen so you can choose a different fighter if you want.
In closing, Street Fighter II is a fun game with plenty to do to keep you occupied. Play by yourself, invite a friend over to play it, whatever you want to do. If you like fighting games I highly recommend it, there are over a dozen different versions of Street Fighter II alone and I don't think you can go wrong with any of them. I will see you all next week when I review the very first Mortal Kombat on February 11. I'm ToriJ, and thank you very much for reading.
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