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Review: Street Fighter 2: The World Warrior [PC] |
Jesus Christ for every fighting game fan, the holy spirit and the lord himself. Founder of our hobby. Inventor of female game characters. The first game to be called cheap. The essence of the world.
In SF2, you selected your world warrior out of 8, went around the world, knocked everybody you met senseless, used specials to do so, which involved sometimes quite hard button sequences and had to fight 4 bosses at the end: Balrog, the brainless boxing muscle machine, Vega, a insane guy who likes women and yet isn’t a HerV staffer, Sagat, the one eyed boss from SF1, now completely with a huge scar and some anger, and Mr. Authority himself, M. Bison. The names were different in Japan, Balrog was named M Bison there (got it? Mike Bison – Mike Tyson! Bwahahaha!), Vega was Balrog (a monster in LOTR), Bison was Vega and Sagat was, uh, Sagat. Lucky boy. That’s quite standard, nowadays. Then, everything was new. Hadoken was actually something new, something cool. Same for every special. For it’s time. It was PERFECT.
And now, pure blasphemy in the PC version, but first off, a little bit of MY SF2 history. :D
I first played SF2 in an arcade. I was, hm, well, lets say young, at the time, 9 or so. It was SSF2T, and I picked Bison as, as a Nintendo-fanboy and reader of their Magazine, I believed he was just the best. I got raped. I think it was Honda, but I just tried to forget this terrible accident.
That was then.
When I was 11, and that was 1997, I rented SF2 for the Gameboy, in trade for, I think it was Mega Man. I took it on the holidays, and had some fun. Having the manual, I learned some moves and stuff, but I soon was fed up, since I never saw an ending, as I always played on level 1 or 2, and hated to have no story. I should’ve known better. Then, in 1998, I finally met the real stuff. My cousin had rent SF2 for the SNES, and he just told me to pick Guile and crouch all day. We both didn’t know that this was turtling.
As he did so, I actually managed to beat him, although he did so. Well, he isn’t too bright, but still, we both realized that there was more. Both of us just tried to surprise each other, kick his balls, and so on. It was perfect, the best months of my young life.
I bought SFA2 for the PC a few weeks after that. Next love. And then, I saw IT again… SF2. For the PC. 7$. Brilliant. I ordered it, along with a Voodoo2 graphics card and Normality, which was actually 5 cents, but worth every, uhm, cent.
As for SF2, well, not really…
It was a sunny morning, I had holidays, the day was great. And the mailman rang the doorbell. I paid, tore up the whole packet, and inserted the disc into my… CD drive. Only 4 megabyte?
I didn’t care, although SFA2 had over 400. Now, onto the game. Yes, now I’d listen to the wonderful intro music twenty times in a row. Shit, PC speaker. I quickly fixed that, but still, the music just wasn’t there. And what the hell was up with this intro? Two guys I never saw before knocking each other in the face. 3 letter word beginning with G.
Well, it’s about the GAMEPLAY, right? So I decided to figure out how to get good sound later (I’m still searching) and just config my controls. Yes, Joystick… no button setting? Ah, punch, kick… that’s it?
Maybe BEGINNING from the buttons I set? I didn’t care, it’s a Capcom game, how would they fuck up the controls? Later, I got it: That isn’t Capcom… It’s US GOLD, nowadays called Eidos…
I hate these suckers.
At the arcade mode, at level 1 of course, and using Guile, something just felt wrong.
My specials didn’t come out, Dhalsim was incredibly tough, and I jumped twice as high as at the SNES… and I actually only had one punch and one kick… I had to use directions for better control. Here is how it “worked” – more or less:
1: ONE BUTTON:
Up + Back + Button : Hard Punch (FIERCE)
Back + Button : Medium Punch (STRONG)
Down + Back + Button : Light Punch (JAB)
Up + Forward + Button : Hard Kick (ROUNDHOUSE)
Forward + Button : Medium Kick (Forward)
Down + Forward + Button : Light Kick (SHORT)
2: TWO BUTTONS:
Up + Punch : Hard Punch (FIERCE)
Back + Punch : Medium Punch (STRONG)
Down + Punch : Light Punch (JAB)
Up + Kick : Hard Kick (ROUNDHOUSE)
Forward + Kick : Medium Kick (Forward)
Down + Kick : Light Kick (SHORT)
…
LOVELY, isn’t it? Liar.
So, as for Guile, you could ONLY charge on the ground – and not while blocking something.
So, if the enemy just punched in the air, you most likely couldn’t charge, as you also got into block stance, even if he didn’t hit you. Unsure about that, though, I think it had to hit you, or maybe it even worked while blocking something.
Still, you couldn’t charge while in the air or attacking, or even while crouching: You had to move backward for 2 seconds (I believe it was more) and THEN you could do something. How… unpredictable. The flash kick was worse: Zero priority and not even the ability to block while charging… you had to hold DOWN, not down back.
Speaking of priority… They got fucked. Everything was quite the same, a Shoryuken wouldn’t beat a jump in all the time, but sometimes. Throws were WAY too good, taking about one third of the lifebar away. And I’m NOT talking about a SPD, just normal throws.
Furthermore, every frame was displayed for the same amount of time, meaning, the better anything was animated, the slower it was. Guile’s top kick was very fast on the SNES or in the arcade, about 0.5 secs, but here, it was 3 secs. Yay.
Everybody had the same speed, too, so Dhalsim was quite the king of the hill, since the sprites were Arcade sized, but the screen was smaller, so he could hit you EVERYWHERE.
And he was just as fast as everybody. A friend of mine who NEVER played SF picked him and beat the CPU sliding all day on level 4. That’s just… wrong.
Any character with charge moves was just shitty, expect Honda and maybe Chun, since their lightning moves should take TONS of life, and sometimes couldn’t even be blocked.
Yes, it’s buggy, especially for Sonic Booms… Charge one, hit F+P, nothing happens. Walk back, hit Punch, oh, there it is. o_O
Some moves were altered, fireballs looked crappy, the balance got fucked, Bison lost the knee press (as it had the same input as the psycho crusher… the CPU seemed to have the same problems) Giefs Lariat was now mash P, as there was only one punch button, and you jumped twice as high as on the SNES, making jump ins VERY risky… 90% of the time you’d switch sides.
And you only got 5 tracks of music. Yes, 5.
4 megabytes, shitty animation, 5 tracks of badly remixed music and some of the original voiced (not with every soundcard, though)… The SNES version had 2 Megabytes… And everything, except arcade-sized sprites.
Now, that for the memories. Seems I have nothing left to write about.
Oh, wait, yes, the speed was also crappy and disgusting, and I managed to do some cool thing 5 minutes ago: I performed a backfist, Chun-Li fell backwards, stunned, and I grabbed her while she was flying. Cool, yet only another bug. But using Ken, I often managed to combo into throws, too. Neat.
If you want to see a bug… perform a Shoryuken (Ryu or Ken, doesn’t matter) and hold down.
Mash punch as you do so. You should stop before you reach the ground.
And, Dhalsim can be beaten, of course, but I still don’t think he’s fair. But, it’s fun to see SF2 just like YOU’VE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE! (and let some mp3s play in the bg since the normal music is shit.)
For info on SF2 itself, characters and such stuff, take a look at the other review.
Uhm, yeah.
Thanks for reading.
