Super Street Fighter II is a masterful Genesis game, true to the original coin-op in nearly every respect. It is also one of the more intelligent conversions to date.
Too often in the rush to convert a game developers fail to acknowledge the relative capabilities of source and subject machines. This results in some elements, such as animation and intro sequences, being overdone while other more important aspects are often neglected. Thankfully very few of these tendencies emerge in the final cart.
The game makes good use of the MD's limited colour palette by restricting colour choices on the backgrounds to basic browns, blues, and greens, with extraneous details cleverly masked or shaded. The characters themselves are well detailed and, with only the more esoteric frames removed from their animation sequences, parade quickly in true arcade style around the screen.
The speed of the game has not been impaired in the port to the console, the added grunt of the MDs 8 Mhz 68000 processor handling even the most intensive graphic transitions with ease.
The new characters including the lusty Cammy, beefy T. Hawk, Bruce Lee lookalike Fei Long and mighty Dee Jay are all in evidence, making this cart even better value that its predecessor. The added competition multiplayer modes will also increase the game's longevity.
The only criticism that can be levelled at an otherwise outstanding cart is the digitized speech which crackles and pops like an old 78 record. The incredibly low sample rate was probably used to conserve memory for the much more important graphic elements of the game and the added animation frames of the new characters. This is perhaps an area where less would have been more, as poor sound detracts, whereas no speech would probably have not been missed.
This cart is an excellent example of how a good beater should look and play. For fight fans who prefer the drawn character style as opposed to the digitised animation of games like Mortal Kombat, this is a game worth having.
So pick up Super Streetfight II at your local video store, call up a few friends and settle in for a weekend of electronic fisticuffs and let the fighting commence!
This review is Copyright (C) 1994 by Nathan Cochran for Game Bytes Magazine. All rights reserved.