Street Fighter Legends - Page 3
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Street Fighter II had been such a barnstorming success that everybody else had to cash in and have a piece of the pie. SNK was the most prolific, with games like Fatal Fury, Samurai Showdown, and Art of Fighting all arriving to give Street Fighters something else to play.
Midway, on the other hand, were working on an unusual fighting game they hoped would dethrone SFII from its perch. Using a combination of unique digitised graphics of real people, along with an unhealthy amount of blood and gore, Mortal Kombat was released to interesting reception.
In comparison to SFII, it had an unrealistic combo system, and some of the most uninteresting bunch of characters you ever saw. Not only that, but its overall storyline was too out there and too ridiculous to believe. Yet people played, and as it turns out Midway had incorporated an innovative feature in Mortal Kombat, the fatality. For some reason, thousands of people enjoyed the thrill of embarrassing a losing opponent by ripping their spines out, or chopping their heads clean off, or burning them to a cinder. It was indeed a lot of fun, if a little short-lived. People eventually realised that there was more to a fighting game than flashy graphics and cool finishing moves.
With SFII carts being jammed into SNES consoles the world over, back in the arcade realm people were growing tired of fighting the bosses with no way of actually controlling them.
Enter the Champion Edition. Capcom swiftly came up with a pseudo-sequel for SFII, including the ability to control each of the four boss characters Balrog, Vega, Sagat and of course M. Bison. Not only that, but Capcom had refined the original 8 characters to create more balanced fights. The AI of computer opponents had been updated, several special moves were added, and the graphics had been touched up slightly. As a model of consistency, all of the fighters even looked older, to reflect the time between the original SFII and the new Champion Edition.
Meanwhile, somebody stumbled upon a way to hack SFII and SFII:CE so that characters could perform moves impossible in official Capcom versions. Suddenly Ryu and Ken could literally throw hundreds of fireballs on the ground and in the air. Theyd suddenly been able to cyclone kick anywhere in the air. Guile had hundreds of sonic booms flying up and down all over the screen. The speed of the game had been tinkered with too, flying moves such as Blankas rolling attack or E. Hondas flying sumo spear just caused the character to fly from one end of the screen to the other in a matter of micro-seconds. Tsk Tsk.
In short, it was a disaster for Capcom. Players who were unfortunate enough to play on these hacked machines in various arcades were treated to heavily unbalanced play. It was oh so easy to beat opponents, and it became a case of who could throw the most fireballs or sonic booms first, rather than the wonderful strategic and tactical game that SFII was supposed to be. The thrill of beating M. Bison to complete the game was gone. There was no fun.
Capcom responded to this (and MK) by releasing the definitive Street Fighter. Turbo Street Fighter II: Champion Edition Hyper Fighting, or Street Fighter II: Turbo for short (SFII:T) was released to a very receptive audience. Seasoned street fighters were amazed at the fluidity and speed of the game, the balanced fights, and the new special moves (such as Chun Li finally receiving a fireball). Players in the know even discovered personalised endings for the four boss characters. Street Fighter II was still the fighting game to play.
Through all of this, SNES players had obviously exhausted SFII and were hankering for that cool new Street Fighter that theyd been playing in the arcades. They wanted that game for their Super Nintendos.