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Review: Strip Fighter II [PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16] |
Strip Fighter II has been lampooned in a dozen other satirical reviews, and with good reason – it’s a crappy fighting game with naked ladies in it. But it’s also the only fighting game ever released exclusively for the defunct PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 system, which is why I think it warrants some serious, insightful criticism. My goal is to offer an in-depth analysis of Strip Fighter II’s character design, gameplay, and its small role in fighting game history.
Strip Fighter II follows six foxy ladies as they try to best each other in an anything-goes international catfight. Since there are only six of them, I think they deserve individual attention:
Bella is the Ryu of the Strip Fighter universe. That is to say, the cursor defaults to her on the character select screen. She wears a feather headdress and fights outside of a dusty dude ranch, so she must be Native American-flavored (thus making her the T. Hawk of Strip Fighter as well). Her signature move is a jumping fart attack. And I’m not talking about a little toot, either; this is a knockdown blast of sonic force that leaves her flailing in mid-air. She can also teleport, but this doesn’t really jive with her flatulent Indian theme.
Martha is the kind of butch she-thug that you might expect Mike Haggar and company to beat up en masse in a Final Fight game. She struggles valiantly for the title of Least Sexy Strip Fighter, but she’s got some serious competition.
Like the mythical beast that shares her name, Medusa fights by whipping people with her hair and throwing her bikini.
Nina is a ballerina who fights by twirling. She is also the sole member of Strip Fighter II’s top tier, since one of her special moves dizzies her opponent even if the victim is already dizzy. I understand that Nina has been banned from tournament play.
Yuki is a non-descript martial arts vixen, except her clothes vanish when she dragon punches.
Last but not least, my new favorite fighting game character’Amanda. Her select screen portrait would suggest that she’s an exotic ebony beauty, but her in-game sprite looks like a fat white clown. She’s the uncontested queen of strip fighting because she actually fights with her boobs. The sight of Amanda spinning around and slapping someone in the face with her distended mammaries is the best worst thing this game has to offer.
The smut peddlers at Games Express have successfully crafted something that is recognizably inspired by Capcom’s fully clothed franchise. Strip Fighter II is even optimized for the PC Engine’s hard-to-find six-button controller, despite the fact that every character’s light/medium/hard attacks are nearly identical (they all use the same animation, but the hard attacks are a tiny bit slower). Each character has three special moves, but the commands are rather counter-intuitive since some of them only work with a specific attack strength, while others use completely unorthodox inputs.
The overall feel of the game is very loose, alternating between spazzy-fast and floaty-slow without warning. The hit detection is too generous; characters are constantly knocking each other around without touching, resulting in some weird pseudo-combos, like landing two jump kicks without touching the ground. An even bigger problem is that characters seem to be vulnerable even when they’re getting up or reeling from an attack, which allows for all kinds of atrocities like killing your opponent with a series of unblockable foot sweeps, or being juggled to death by the same move over and over. The CPU is smart enough to take advantage of these quirks, which I guess makes it a ‘feature’ rather than a glitch.
There is no final boss and no character endings, so the replay value is based solely on one’s willingness to play Strip Fighter II instead of something better. Admittedly, I haven’t finished it on Difficulty 8 without losing a round, so I can’t say with absolute certainty that there isn’t some secret slumber party bonus stage waiting for a true Strip Fighter maniac to find it, but it seems unlikely. I dare you to prove me wrong.
As for the stripping: I hoped against all hope that each victory would reward me with a colorful full-screen anime image of my vanquished foe disrobing as part of some bizarre humiliation ritual. Instead, my eyes were befouled by a digitized photograph of some flesh-and-blood plain Jane blinking at me like a haunted mannequin. There are a whopping six strippers with one Polaroid apiece, which means that if you finish the game just once you’ve seen every flesh-colored pixel it has to offer. Tip: If you play on a lower difficulty setting, the game ‘punishes’ you by skipping the stripping interludes.
The actual gameplay graphics are slightly less retina-scorching. The characters are colorful and competently drawn, if poorly animated. The backgrounds aren’t animated at all, although some overachiever at Games Express took the trouble to copy the parallax-scrolling floor effect from Street Fighter II, which is sort of impressive if you focus on the ground while you’re playing. The music is strangely melancholy, suggesting that maybe the world of strip fighting isn’t as glamorous as it seems. I’ve caught myself humming Martha’s theme song at work, but that probably has less to do with the quality of the music and more to do with the embarrassing amount of time I spent researching this review.
I don’t know of any fighting games for the PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 except for this, Street Fighter, and Street Fighter II, which makes Strip Fighter II the second-best fighter around if you happen to be some kind of frothing TurboGrafx fanboy. In any case, I give credit to any ‘adult’ video game that aspires to a more substantial gameplay experience than mahjong, poker, or an interactive slideshow. Strip Fighter II isn’t a very sexy fighter, but it’s a relatively deep sex game.
