Street Fighter 2 started its development a year after the first release with the departing of the main designer Nishiyama, who would go on to make SNK and King of Fighters. Originally, the roster would be a hard refresh with eight fighters (however, this could be cut and a prototype for Johnny Cage, a Mortal Kombat). After a failed commercial run due to the SNES port, they began to proceed to create a beat ‘em up, Unfortunately, this would be scrapped, and Street Fighter ’89 would be renamed Final Fight. The team and Yoshi Okimoto began to work on a true predecessor for the first. The first idea of the fighter to be put into the game was Ken (yes, not Ryu), which is kinda based on Capcom since we all know Ken is the better shoto. However, some believe it was a personal shot at Nishiyama, but they decided to continue with both characters instead. After two more years and three editions of the game, I want to see if this game still holds up ( it does) via combat and art style.
The combat of this game presents more styles, each being reflected in a duology or trilogy of characters. So, instead of coming up with some word vomit, here is a list of each style and its concurrent characters.
- Shoto: Ken, Ryu, Sagat, Akuma.
- Grappler: E.Honda, Zangief, Thunderhawk.
- Rushdown: Blanka, Balrog, Fei Long, Cammy.
- Charge: Chun Li, M.Bison, Vega.
- Zoner: Dee Jay, Guile, Dhalsim.
These archetypes and characters provide a foundation for the coming installments, but also the genre of fighting games as a whole. The movement itself is slower and doesn’t make a huge distinction from its predecessor, however, there is an improvement, but it is too small to place my finger on. This game also is the birth of combos, which are quite simple, and if you understand the game well and have some knowledge of the bugs, you can come up with some pretty complicated combos, just not Street Fighter 4-esque complicated. But it honestly ramps up the stakes and creativity of the game and is the birth of fighting games as a whole. A Former Reviewer known on the internet as Kung Fu Kid believes the slight difficulty incline really becomes dynamic and fun to experiment with.
“The easy mode is pretty easy, and the hard mode makes it near impossible to get past around the third or fourth round without some serious practice, and I am pretty much a master of fighting games.” They continue by postulating, “ overall, there are no major flaws, and nothing that causes frustration.”
The visuals themselves are in your 16-bit beauty, with the main linchpin within the visual improvements being the arcade themselves. Like the introduction of this text, ports were beginning to become a regular element within the market; however, due to the difference in running power, most developers had to make the arcade build of the game more diminished in quality due to requirements of the SNES. The art style itself is quite cool, with the same oil painting with really weird-looking character design, but I think some of it is due to wanting the cover art to connect to the in-game art style.
Overall, this game really was the true birth of the genre and of a way to connect the multiplayer aspects. Despite which version of this game you went with, all of them are great and establish a foundation for the future of gaming.
