flash-hammer's Full Review: Super Street Fighter 2: Turbo Revival for Game Boy...
It’s a wonder I even picked this game up, given my experience with previous hand-held Streetfighter games. Streetfighter 2 for the original Game Boy was horrible, and Alpha for the Game Boy colour wasn’t exactly something I would like to remember either, but given my love of the series, I guess there was never any doubt of me picking this game up at one point or another.
The game is a port of the final version of Streetfighter 2, which only appeared on the 3DO console outside of the arcades, and features not only the 4 new Challengers from Super SF2, but the hidden boss character Akuma, as well as his powered up form of Shin Akuma.
Other changes from SSF2 include the Super moves, which are now commonplace in fighting games, in which you have a small bar which fills up as you perform moves, and when it is full you can unleash a stronger than all the others special move upon your opponent.
The character select screen, portraits, winning portraits and endings have all been changed. While I like the new portraits, I liked the old select screen and winning pictures (when it had losing pictures for that matter) better. While the endings don’t have the animation of the old ones, and are just one picture with text, the pictures are all well drawn, so I can kind-of forgive them.
One thing that baffles and disappoints me is the fact that some of the background stages in the game have changed. Ken now fights in front of a mural painted wall in a street, and Guile’s stage resembles Charlie’s in Alpha 2. other fighters who suffered the same fate include Chun Li, Ryu and worst of all M.Bison. why Capcom felt the need to change these classic stages and replace them with what are frankly, inferior backgrounds taken from the Alpha games is beyond me.
For those unaware of what Streetfighter is, Streetfighter 2 is a 2D fighting game in which the idea is to hit your opponent with a variety of attacks until they have no energy left. You must do this in a best out of three situation, and for 12 fights to complete the game with that character.
Graphically, the game is excellent. The sprites all look great and are animated to a high degree of quality. I would say that this is probably the best Streetfighter 2 has ever looked.
Soundwise I am disappointed an overjoyed in equal amounts. The music is brilliant. The same classy SF2 tunes I know and love, and some of them even sound a bit better here (eg Fei Long). On the flipside, the voices have changed from the old SF2 games, which I find criminal. If people wanted to hear the Alpha Guile voice, they would buy Alpha 3 for the GBA, got that Capcom?
The controls are the thing that raises a lot of eyebrows. Streetfighter 2 is a 6 button game, the GBA only has 4 buttons, how will it work? While I would have thought they would have just given the game a 4 button, King of Fighters style, control system, they have decided to use the two face buttons as Weak and Medium Punch(B) and their kicking counterparts (A), with the L and R buttons controlling fierce punch and kick respectively. So how does that work then? If you tap B, your character will perform their weak punch, hold it down and they do their medium. While this renders some combo’s redundant, it works well enough for me, who doesn’t go to the length of learning every combo anyway.
These all respond to a high degree of satisfaction, and the only complaint I offer is the same one from the Snes pad. Performing special moves with the L button as the attack is horrible. On an afterthought, this isnt really a complaint about the game, but the system itself, the D-Pad is too small and hurts your fingers after too much fireball motions.
But where the game really earns its stars is its gameplay. The game is Super Streetfighter 2 Turbo. None of these horrible hand-held ports of great games we have become accustomed to receiving over the years. This is perfect SF2, on a handheld. I have already reviewed several versions of Streetfighter 2 on this site, and the gameplay is at the same high standard as in all of those games. The game is the definition of fighting games, probably the greatest fighting game ever, one of the best games ever. And here it is. Portable.
The only major fault I can come up with, is that fighting games are designed with multi-player play in mind, and while a link up option is offered, I have never been in a situation where two people have handheld’s with the same game in a situation where linking them up would be possible. If I am with my friends travelling, chances are I wont be playing my Game Boy.
However, the game includes enough modes to keep it as a great single player, with a variety of survival mini-games on offer.
While the game has faults, I am willing to forgive every single one of them and give this game full marks, because it lets me play Streetfighter 2, in its most complete form, anywhere.
It was only just these last few days when I was on holiday that I realised how great this game was. Delayed flight? I’ll play Streetfighter. It is just too great a thing not to love, the ability to play one of the best games ever, whenever, or wherever you want.
While the whole single player thing would be a killer to most fighting games, Streetfighter 2 is one of the only fighting games that can be consistently played on single player and the player never grows tired of it.
If you grew up with SF2, or just love 2D fighting games and own a GBA, I recommend this game. Streetfighter 2, almost exactly like it was in the arcades, that you can play anywhere. That is just too great an offer not to take up.
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