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Review: Street Fighter: Real Battle On Film |
As I left the shop which I bought Street Fighter: RBoF from, I walked down the road and there was a homeless man laying on the street. He asked me if I had any spare change; and, like any Londoner, I ignored him. But it got me thinking. What could he have done with the money I had spent on this game? I admit, it wasn’t much - that’s why I bought it - but still, he could have bought a decent meal with it or a bottle of methylated spirits to drown his sorrows.
Whatever he would have done with that cash, it would have been a hell of lot more entertaining that playing this game.
I’ll be honest, I only bought this so I could review it. I thought it would be one of those “so bad it’s funny” sort of things. But I was wrong. It isn’t funny. It’s just sad.
And it begins in the worst possible way, by showing a painfully long clip of the Jean-Claude Van-Damme movie. But I’m not here to diss the film, which, incedentally offends me both as a SF fan *and* a human being - I want to talk about the game.
The Saturn game is not a conversion of the arcade game which went by the title of “Streetfighter: The Movie.” If you’ve ever played or seen it - you may remember feaures like “ReGen” moves, the shadow moves and the large amounts of juggling going on. But not here, the home versions (there’s a PSX version as well) seem to be pretty much a digitised reconstruction of something between SSF2T and SFA. Herein lies my problem. As much as I want to give this 1% - the fact that it has a fairly solid, competent engine at it’s core means it’s not a complete write-off.
But it does have it’s faults. Oh boy does it have them. For a start it looks absolutely abysmal. It looks like a Genesis game. The sprites can’t be rendered in more than about 32 colours, and the terribly digitised characters do not look the slightest like they fit in with the backgrounds. The colours are washed out and plain. Despite the fact this is made up of filmed people performing real martial arts - the movement is a joke. Most walk animations are made up of about 3 frames. Punches and kicks are the same. Many win poses just feature a single-frame transition between two different stances! D’oh!
Going back to the film for a brief moment, the idiotic casting of people who looked and acted nothing like their SF counterparts was bad enough, but now we have to control them! The 3ft tall Honda, the pathetic Blanka, FURKING KYLIE MINOGUE AS CAMMY! Argh! Why would anyone with at least three firing synapses cast an Australian pop singer as an English brain-washed assassin? Or a Belgian midget as an American army colonel? It…makes…no…sense!
Sorry, I’m going off track again. But the actors were dreadful, and they’ve managed to bring this total lack of menace, coolness or dignity over to the game. The “Versus” screen features 2-second-long film clips of the people in their roles - and they all look stupid! And the in-game characters are not only badly animated, digitised and placed on the poor backgrounds - but they don’t even look good!
No effort has been made here, considering the 2D powerhouse the Saturn can be in the right hands, to create any semblance of a proper game. And it has the words “quick cash-in” written all over it in big letters.
Although I said earlier that it had a fairly solid fighting engine, it’s nothing special. The bad animation counts against it, and the hit detection boxes are often suspect. It takes most of it’s cue from SSF2T, with the overheads, landing from throws, and tiny super bar that empties at the start of each round. The character moves come from that game, but there are some samples stolen from SFA.
To tie in more with the film, SF:TM has not only the tradional “Street Battle” mode (pick a character, fight 12 others, win) but there’s also “Movie Battle” mode where you, as colonel William Guile (bwahaha!) have to fight your way up to and defeat the evil warlord M. Bison. These fights are linked by little messages from Cammy, who appears as a small video clip, and, in an incredibly (unintentionally) funny way, “talks” to you (her lips cycle repeatedly through the same 3 frames…making her look like a trout). You also have a choice of two characters to fight each time. Halfway through this mode, you also are lucky enough to witness a big long clip from the film — - which can’t be skipped. Oh joy.
I can’t say the music throws me into paroxyms of sexual ecstacy either. The worst bit is that droning dirge that accompanies all of the video clips. It’s really painful. The stage musics are crap as well, though I’m glad they spared us the horror of playing along to the movie soundtrack. Well almost. For the final horror awaits those who actually complete the Movie mode in under the 50 minute time limit. Oh yes….for how many fighting games do you know that reward you with a music video when you finish it? Oh, alright, so there’s that cool “Blue Mary Blues” at the end of Real Bout Special - but an actual *video*? Wow! Not only that but it’s a horrendous song, with cheesy lyrics and it’s features some of the movie cast standing about posing in a dark warehouse. Oh Jean-Claude, you’re so moody and manly…I feel almost…attracted to you. O_o
Oh god….
I’d also like to note that this is possibly the only Japanese SF game which uses the US character names (final boss is Bison, Balrog is the boxer etc.) How….interesting.
But the lamest thing of all, the thing which deserves a special mention all of its own - is “exclusive” character Sawada’s super combo. It’s hilarious! Upon activation, the sprite puts his arms in the air and slides forward. That’s it. He doesn’t actually walk or run or make any movement at all. He just slides into the other character, which somehow does five hits. It’s absolutely pathetic and really sums up the lack of effort and imagination put into this game. You people suck! Do you hear me?! I hate you!!!
