The handheld fighting game scene has always been somewhat sparse compared to the home console market, mostly consisting of watered-down ports designed to cash in on the popularity of the game’s arcade parent. There was a glimmer of hope with the arrival of the Neo-Geo Pocket, but that died an ignoble death, despite providing several excellent fighters, including the stunning SNK vs. Capcom: Match of the Millennium.

However Nintendo have not only raised the bar for handheld gaming several lightyears with the Gameboy Advance, they’ve also managed to get Capcom to port that legendary super-fighter Super Streetfighter 2: Turbo onto it. A truly fantastic occurence, yes?

Well, not quite.

Yes, there is bad news, let’s get it out of the way first. I’ll hold your hand

I tried to have faith as the rumours spread - I tried to be a good little Capcom fan .. but yes, the control system is ass.

On the plus side - the D-Pad works surprisingly well - supers and specials come out with little problem (I did fifty Shoryuken motions in a row and whiffed four of them) … and hell, I can pull off Guile’s super flash kick far more regularly that I could on the standard PSX or Dreamcast controllers. The problem lies with the buttons. For a start - you’d better get used to thinking of SSF2XR as a five-button game; because I found there’s no way in hell to use the D-Pad and the L button together with any sort of frequency. I have to move my left index finger back so much to press it that my thumb comes off the pad — ugh.

The R button is not much better, but it is (sort of possible) to use it in the game.

Shoulder button horrors aside - the two face buttons function as the other four attacks; a tap for one attack, a firm and manly press for the other. Or that’s how it works IN THEORY. I swear I’ve pressed it hard and gotten a jab, and vice-versa. The button functions are redefinable - but no configuration elevates it above ‘highly dubious’. Oh, and you can forget trying to combo two different strength attacks using one button (say standing fierce into jab DP) … it’s just won’t work. At all.

So basically what you’ll end up doing is playing the game in a rather simplified manner. Instead of jumping in, doing a low attack and comboing into a super … you’ll do a RH kick > RH sweep. And throw a lot. And just do supers on their own (to hell with trying to combo into a super using these controls - I’ve only got about 60 years left to live you know) I think it’s fair to say that if you’re looking to recreate the heady high-level thrills and spills of the arcade/Saturn/DC Super Turbo: you’re fucked.

But.

BUT.

It’s not a total loss. You can still play it, and I found I adapted to the controls the more I played it, and after three days now using the R button is a lot easier and I feel more at home with the controls in general. It’s still far from perfect - but it’s not worth smashing your GBA up for, oh no.

And it’s still a Streetfigher game - one of the best in fact, in a fantastic conversion in the palm of your hand. And to me that is just such a magical, wonderful thing that dumbing down your gameplay slightly because of the controls suddenly seems almost unimportant. I’ve been playing in bed (oo-er), I’ve been playing it walking around the house … and it’s just so cool to be able to do that. I intend to take it with me wherever I go anywhere. Look … it’s SUPER STREETFIGHTER TURBO ON A HANDHELD. Maybe if you take your fighting games a lot more seriously than I do, then you’ll be offended by the sacrifices, but I’m not - and there’s still so much to love.

Oh god it’s beautiful. The GBA is a fabulous piece of hardware - but knowing that alone isn’t enough to prepare you. The screenshots and movies released aren’t really accurate - they look blurry and clumsy; and this is not the case with the actual game. It’s really sharp, really detailed … the similarities between it and it’s CPS2 arcade parent are striking to say the least.

There have been reductions … some levels have lost the lovely parallax scrolling (though the funky Mode-7 floors remain!) plus some incidental animations and tiny details are gone. All in all, it’s an outstanding job. The sprites fare just as well - looking like the full size ratio, and are pin-sharp. Again, there have been sacrifices - there is missing animation here and there (Guile’s RH sweep for one) - but so much of it is there, everyone has all their winposes, their move animations, it’s just lovely. When you consider the game is this tiny cartidge half the size of a matchbox - it’s incredible to think how much is on there. I’ve always felt SSF2T was a beautiful game and this is a worthy conversion.

There’s good and bad news in the audio department as well. The music, while recognisable and having every single theme song (including all the ending ones) - is excessively tinny, and doesn’t really sound much better than original Gameboy stuff. I assume this was done on purpose though, a sacrifice so that a vast amount of the sound effects (I’d say 97%) could go in, and it’s a choice I agree with. The round announcer, almost all the characters speech (DeeJay doesn’t shout “Max Out!” though), the effects, the background sounds … I’m running out of superlatives. It’s great though.

The famous curse of the too-dark GBA screen doesn’t really strike too hard, as long as you’ve got a decent light source. The only problem I found was rare occaisions which required super-fast reactions and ended up with me moving the GBA so quickly the screen ended up pointing away from the light source so I couldn’t see anything. Bear in mind, I am a retard, so this isn’t that much of a problem.

If you’ve been following the news at this and other sites, you’ll know that the “revival” part of the title refers to how this is a “remixed” SSF2T. These changes are all cosmetic though, but they’re still notable. The presentation has been totally revamped, the menu screen is new, the select screen and VS. screens feature brand-new layout and artwork (the portraits are fantastic BTW) - as do the win portraits and ending images. It’s all really high-quality stuff, and it’ll make you wonder what the hell was wrong with them when they did the endings for X-Men vs. SF.

There are also a few new backgrounds - I’m not sure why these were changed, but changed they were. Guile’s is now a bridge with a huge Harrier fighter plane hovering in the background, Chun Li’s is her Alpha 2 stage with the swarms of cyclists, Zangief fights in what looks like a combination of his SSF2 stage and his A3 stage (big pipes!!) … Ken is on a street somewhere (lame), Ryu’s looks like his SF2:CE BG mated with his 3rd Strike one, Balrog (teh Boxar) can be found an a much-simplified version of his Las Vegas arena… and Bison’s just sucks incredibly - it looks like it’s in his office, there’s a computer and some statues and stuff. It’s pretty dark, and just really un-Bison-like. It looks like this is where he does his laundry… gah.

Personally I feel ALL the SSF2 backgrounds should have been retained; just redoing a few seems a strange choice, especially when all the new ones are inferior to their predecessors.

There are also a few other touches; the car and wooden barrel bonus stages are back in (but not the oil drum one ;_;) - though you can’t use your super on it. Boo. There’s also a choice in the options menu which allows you to have either the traditional “Super Turbo” super bar, or “Extra” - where it carries over between rounds.

Other little things I noticed:

* When a character is set on fire, it’s the SFA-style fire (character flashes orange with a few triangles of fire on them), rather than the awesome “burning body” sprite that the SF2 series had throughout its entirety. Boo.

* When you activate a super combo, a big X appears on screen.

* When you activate a super combo, you get the SFA-style “swishy” noise rather than the SSF2T “gargling” one

* When you do a super combo, all the onscreen displays vanish, which is ANNOYING

* If you get to fight Gouki at the end - he’s just there instead of Bison; there’s no “zoom on and ShunGokuSatsu” sequence

* ‘Super combo finish’ explosion looks like travelling through a tunnel of spaghetti instead of the classic white sunburst.

Because a straight port would have been frowned upon, Cappy have seen fit to add in several interesting features. Unlocked after about an hours’ play, these two new options I believe translate to “Time Attack” and “Survival” - however they’re a bit more interesting than they sound, and are reminiscent of some of the extras in Dreamcast Alpha 3.

Time Attack allows you to choose the car bonus stage, the barrels bonus stage, an alternate barrels stage (where there’s no device at the top so you can’t see where they’ll fall from), or 5, 10, 30, 50 and 100 opponents - and you have to complete them as fast as possible. The ‘alternate barrels’ one is really hard, as are the higher ‘opponents’ ones. Still, they’re all good fun - and a nice alternative when you’re not in the mood for the main game.

Survival is also interesting, again, a little like DC A3 with a choice of ‘missions’. You can fight “all” (sounds scary), fight the four bosses, fight Gouki, fight “normal” (all charas?) and … the one that particularly fascinated me … an option where you fight Ken, Ryu and Gouki. What’s interesting is that Ken and Ryu are … different. No new moves - but new AI patterns, plus cheapness galore (Ken doesn’t ever land from one DP and he does another.) It’s hard, but fun, and something a little different.

Playing these extra modes is not only a fun alternative; but serves a purpose as well. Like GBA Final Fight One, the game has a running “points” system, located on the main menu screen which increases as you win fights and complete the various other challenge modes. At 5000 points you get Gouki, and at 9999 (the maximum) you get Shin Gouki. This is fairly time consuming - winning one fight usually leaves me with about 15-20 points, and the challenges yield 200 or so - but seeing as I’m playing SSF2X I don’t mind at all.

They’ve even put in a training mode. Yes! How many version of ST have been released without one? (the answer is actually ‘two’, but shhhh)

But most importantly of all, it’s still SSF2T - controls aside, it plays just like it’s parent. All the combos work (though some can exist only in theory thanks to the button layout) and the dimensions of the screen and the sprite handling abilities of the GBA mean it moves, and PLAYS like a proper Streetfighter game. All the characters we’ve come to know and love are there, they look like they should, they sound like they should … (most) of those magical backgrounds look just like they always did, you can hum along to the familiar soungs and still cheer when you pull off that super combo at the last possible second. It’s even got a link capability (if you have a) friends and b) friends with GBAs, copies of the game and a link cable) - excellent.

And once you get used to the controls, and if you can accept you’re not going to be doing DeeJay’s ten-hit cross-up combo of doom any time soon, there’s nothing left but pure, unadulterated love.

If the GBA had six buttons, this would have got 10% higher easily, maybe more. Alas …. aw crap. It’s a real tragedy of the 21st century.

However it’s still a fantastic piece of software … perfect for livening up those dull weddings, funerals and court appearances. SNK, the ball’s in your court now. Let’s see what you’ve got.

• Publisher/Developer: Capcom
• Score: 82%