Street Fighter II Review

Anannya Sen’s Review

You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance

God, I remember those days of spending loads of money at the arcade (about ???3 which was tons of goes in those days) to play Streetfighter when it first came out. I remember that people didn't know how to pronounce Guile and so called him goolie. I remember my friend Joseph winning the first tournament in London with Dhalsim and I remember some stupid people actually going on about how they've seen Sheng Long and he's really hard to beat.

So I was looking forward to seeing how it translated to mobile as everyone knows that fighting games are actually pretty difficult to play on mobiles.

Well, from the off, I was impressed with the accuracy of the game as it looks exactly like it did in the original arcades. But then the game was from the 80s and games look a lot nicer now. Still, it was a nice trip down memory lane and the small screen size of the K600 with the widescreen effect (ie borders) at the top and bottom make the in game graphics look nice and crisp. The special moves look great and are exactly as you remember. The only drawback is that there is only one background (Ryu's) out of the rich tapestry of backgrounds that the original game had.

Sound isn't bad either, there are sound effects and background music and when I heard the sound for the first time (again Ryu's background music) I remembered the hours I used to spend playing this game and then I wanted the sound effects. Unfortunately you have to choose between sound effects or music so while I wanted to hear the hadokens (there's no tastumakisenpyukyakku though) I settled for the tune. Even the little tunes in between rounds are the same and it's classic.

Controls are what I believe to be the defining factors in fighting games and the controls here aren't that bad. Straight off the bat the developers have gone for only one kick and one punch button which are 3 and 6. Strangely though, the kick is a hard kick and the punch seems to be a medium punch. The special moves can also either be done via the pad or by pressing one button and they've set 9, # and zero as the three special ove buttons. You can have a go doing them yourself (fireball is down then forward, dragon is forward then down) but I really wouldn't recommend it. The jumps also seem to go diagonally as well as up which is a nice touch.

The game plays very well as it's so easy to pull off the special moves with just one button. The game has three difficulty levels and even on normal it can be pretty tough. I had to beat Zangief using the old style tactics of jumping and kicking and still haven't got past Vega on normal. If you enjoy the original you will like this game as it's a very good recreation of the arcade classic. You can play as any of the standard eight characters and have the usual bosses to face off against. With no middle kick you can't pull off a standard three hit combo and it can be quite easy sometimes to make people dizzy. But they recover quick enough for you to have to be close to get off your two hit dragon.

Lastability is good as the game is so much fun to play however there is one big drawback. The rounds can take a while, especially if you come up against someone tough and if you keep continuing (which also means you lose the score you had earned up to that point) you can't save your progress. I had to play for over an hour just to get up to Vega on normal. This is a real problem as having that much time to play a mobile game in one go is hard to come by even with the job that I have. That being said, even when playing other games, I do get a feeling like I want to go back to this game and gave a quick go. But then that turns into a longer go and then I realise I have other games to play. I don't think I'll be able to clock this the way I used to do on the SNES version without losing a round and doing light dragons through everything!