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It seems as though Streetfighter has been around for ages. By strict definition, it has. But Streetfighter 2, the game to which we generically refer, is the title from which its immense popularity originated. That was around 1989. Since that period in time, we have seen sequels to the tune of "SF 2 Championship Edition", "SF 2 Hyper Fight", "Super SF 2", "Super SF 2 X", "SF Zero", "SF Zero 2", and "SF EX". And if you were lucky enough, you would have also come across "SF 2 Air" and a few other strange incarnations. "Streetfighter 3" is already out in the arcades, but it is hardly making the impact, if you’ll pardon the pun, that most of its predecessors made on the one-on-one fighting genre.
Streetfighter Collection, the latest offering from Capcom of Japan, is supposedly the culmination of the Streetfighter efforts pre-EX and SF 3. The package costs no more than the average price of a regular game (5800 yen), and in it is two discs. The first disc contains Super Streetfighter 2 - The New Challengers and Super Streetfighter 2 X - Grandmaster Challenge; while the second disc contains a copy of Streetfighter Zero 2 Dash.
Super Streetfighter 2 and 2 X are pretty much the same game, save that X allows you to build up your alpha bars for some alpha moves. All in all, I never like this game to begin with, even in the arcades. It just seemed so contrived that a sequel be brought out to further the interests of the franchise, and it was even more so for the fact that they actually made some new characters (Cammy, T. Hawk, Dee Jay and Fei Long) which were intolerably lacking in original ‘new’ moves. "New Challengers" indeed. It’s times like this when you can appreciate the monstrous variety that the King of Fighters series offers.
However, if you are indeed inclined towards Super Streetfighter 2, there are a number of things to note. Firstly, the game is really quite dated. Graphically, the game uses rendered sprites instead of hand-drawn characters as was the case in SF 2’s first appearance. The gameplay is also severely lacking in variety, being almost exclusively offence-based. The only defence available is the singular universal block whilst your feet are on the ground. Overall, it’s quite boring to play by today’s standards. One could say that this is analogous to watching the original episodes of Star Trek, but with all due respect to the Trekkers out there, you really have to be a die-hard fan to think that it’s great.
Secondly, the music is absolutely appalling. Personally, I have fairly high standards with music, and they are an integral part of the game to me. No matter how popular a game may be, it had better have good music or no music. Bad music just gets on my nerves. My first gripe is that the music is a simplified version of the arcade, and possibly even inferior to the SNES version. It is entirely composed of synthesized sounds, and extremely tinny in nature. My thought was that it should be at least CD quality, but alas, it may have been simplified to allow for faster access times. However, something happened later on to disprove that theory: when your energy bar is nearly depleted, the music simply stops for two seconds and then begins playing at a more frantic pace. While this was extremely distracting, I realised that it occurred because the system was accessing another track. That’s right: the music is encoded in redbook audio. Now, what really bothers me is the fact that Super SF 2 is a smaller game than SF Zero 2. There are less characters, less moves, and less animations, hence there should be more available space on the CD. If the music was encoded in redbook audio, then we should be able to enjoy music of a much higher standard, of course at the price of some load-times. My complaint here is that game players will be able to enjoy neither high quality music nor faster loading times on this game. They haven’t streamed their crappy music, and they haven’t encoded any high quality music in redbook. So in the end, the only bonus we get is that we are able to play crappy music on our CD players.
Overall, I think that consumers have been served a rotten egg with Super Streetfighter 2, and I am frankly offended that Capcom should insult the intelligence of gameplayers abroad with the two-bit effort of a conversion. The game is flawed as is for being extremely dated. It could have been more enjoyable with faster load times, or alternatively better music, but neither of those options were utilised for what I’d guess to be a major error in terms of programming optimisation. Perhaps die-hards will like this, but it’s not for me. Capcom have certainly erred.
Streetfighter Zero 2 Dash is a stark contrast to its accompanying disc. The game is a carbon copy of the original release of Streetfighter Zero 2 in terms of graphics, sounds, gameplay interface, replay value, and so on. There are, however, a number of subtle difference, none of which are negative. Firstly, the load times are ever-so-slightly faster. Secondly, there is a "Gouki Mode", which allows you to fight Gouki all the way through the game. In my mind, this was a fairly silly idea, but it’s really additional to a game that has been unchanged - ie. it’s a freebie - so I won’t complain too much about it. Finally, there are rumors that one can play as Cammy and other Super SF 2 characters in Zero 2. Personally, I have yet to see this, and it remains until such time a rumor. But it would be cool if it were true.
It is really a wonder why this ‘package’ was released to begin with. Perhaps it is to capitalise on all of the "anniversary" games that are cropping up, such as the Rockman and Castlevania franchises. With the term "Collection", I would have thought that, instead of creating entirely new games as has been done in the latter two examples, they would have tried to capture the essence, flavor or atmosphere of the entire SF experience. Super SF 2 supposedly does that. I personally disagree - the music completely destroyed any notion of a nostalgic SF atmosphere for me. And if it was meant to be a collection, where is my book of artwork? Where is my CD with the collected works of music? Well, the Super SF 2 disc has music, but I'm not even going to entertain the thought. The bottom line is, if you are looking for collected works, nostalgia and the like, you will not find it here. This is a bare-bones release of a crap game with the re-release of a really good game.
In conclusion, this is a ‘package’ that I would only recommend of you do not already have SF Zero 2; or, if you already have SF Zero 2, I would only recommend it if you are a crazed SF fan who must have every conceivable SF-related artifact, Super SF 2 in particular. But even then, I’d recommend that you try the SNES version first. The only thing that’s noticeably better about the PSX version of Super SF 2 over the SNES version is the fact that the "P" and "R" are in their correct proportion on the title screen. This package is best viewed as a "greatest hits’ deal, and not a new release of its own right.