#ive been using only lowercase for like. a DECADE at this point

[retrowarriors]

Ultra Street Fighter II: The Final Challengers

At least this time you can actually take it to the streets

By: Chris Saturn

Developer: Capcom Publisher: Capcom Platform: Switch As a child, one of my least favorite aspects of my early school days was repetition. This is an ‘A.’ Write out an ‘A.’ Now write it out fourteen more times. Ugh. Surely we figured it out after the first one, right? Well, science shows they had a point. Repetition tends to make you better at things. It’s the ‘practice makes perfect’ concept in action. All of those wasted minutes practicing the perfect tail on the end of a lowercase ‘q’ made me an expert. Now I can write out whole words without having to stop and consult my glyph-chart. You probably see where I’m going here. Capcom’s made Street Fighter II a number of times now. Counting all of the revisions, enhanced editions, ports, rereleases, and collections, the number of Street Fighter titles is quickly approaching Graham’s Number. Naturally, they get better at it every time. I mean, so long as you buy the most recent release, you’d gain no benefit from the older releases, right? Well, no. There’s a reason I keep looking back to the late 90s when I want to play a 2D fighter. Sure, there’s been a renaissance of sorts in the last decade, with titles like Street Fighters IV and V, Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Skullgirls, etc. And, while I enjoy these games, there’s something missing. Today’s focus on tournament-level players has left behind a lot of the joy of classic fighters. There have always been people who took the games incredibly seriously, and could pull off combos that last longer than most of my actual matches. But, lined up at the arcades behind them were the rest of us. People who couldn’t clear the game on a single quarter, but still enjoyed trying to get a few rounds in.

Something tells me that Capcom sees this as an opportunity. How do you bring in those entry-level players again, and draw them into the franchise? Why, re-release the original, of course! Well, not quite original. As we’ve mentioned before, Street Fighter II has a bit of a history to it. Ultra Street Fighter II, Capcom’s most recent take on the game, is based incredibly heavily on Super Street Fighter II Turbo, the 1994 re-re-re-reiteration of the 1991 original version of Street Fighter II. Throughout the early 90s, each release of Street Fighter saw something new that made it worth playing. New moves, new modes, new characters. It was all about new. Then, as Street Fighter Alpha and Street Fighter III took over the new, Street Fighter II stagnated. Super Street Fighter II Turbo was allowed to live in stasis as the pinnacle of Street Fighter II-ness. Ports and enhanced remakes have come and gone in the years since, but Super Street Fighter II Turbo stands as the standard bearer of the sub-franchise. Now, 23 years later, we have another Street Fighter II with another derivative name. Obviously, this one will just build on the others, right? Unfortunately not. We have two new characters in Evil Ryu and Violent Ken, but they feel empty. Ryu, Ken, and Akuma already feel incredibly similar in the original SFII engine, mixing them together doesn’t exactly create originality, but at least there was an attempt. Where the game really slips is in keeping all of the qualities of its successors. Gone are Hyper Street Fighter II’s ability to select a fighting style, and the new stages of Super Street Fighter II Turbo Revival. Once again, we’re exclusively looking back to Super Street Fighter II Turbo for inspiration, ignoring any games released since. Correction: we’re not ignoring ALL of the games released since. Much of the art and sound of the new title come directly from 2008’s Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. For those who don’t remember the HD Remix, it was a downloadable-only release marketed at tournament players who needed a version of Street Fighter II that wasn’t on aging or dying hardware. In fact, Ultra Street Fighter II looks so similar to the HD Remix that many people accused it of simply being the $10 downloadable Xbox 360 game rereleased for $40 on the Switch. Capcom wouldn’t do that, right?

Remember, not long ago, when Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap was released on modern consoles? As a retro gamer, it was a love letter to my childhood. They kept the original game, the original graphics, the original sound, and gave it all a facelift that made it beautiful to look at and easy to play. I called it “retro done right.” I don’t want to say that Ultra Street Fighter II is the opposite of that. Unfortunately, I’m struggling for a nicer way to put it. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve bought Street Fighter II over the last 26 years. I’ve already hit my quota on Graham’s Number jokes for this decade, so let’s just say it’s a lot. Despite the mediocre packaging and dull presentation, there’s a reason I keep buying it: nearly 30 years later, Street Fighter II is still a great game. Judging Street Fighter II on its merits is like judging Shakespeare. It’s been done, we already know that score. Today, the question isn’t ‘is Street Fighter II a good game,’ it’s ‘is this version of Street Fighter II worth me replacing my previous version?’ Do you already own a copy of Street Fighter II? If so, I’m hard pressed to recommend Ultra. Do you own a console other than a Switch? Again, I’m finding it difficult to recommend Ultra. Wii and Wii U owners can get perfectly playable Virtual Console versions of the game for under $10, PS3 and Xbox 360 owners can get the previous HD Remix (which, at the time of this writing, is on sale for only $2.50). PS2 and Xbox owners can get the previous Anniversary Collection which included Hyper Street Fighter II. There are so many versions of Street Fighter II out there that are perfectly functional, and Ultra just doesn’t bring enough to the table to justify its existence. Bottom line: if Capcom had released this as a $10 downloadable game, like they did on Xbox 360 and PS3, I’d recommend it in a heartbeat. As it is, I can only really recommend this for the people who live in Switch commercials, and bring their Switch consoles to impromptu rooftop parties. For the rest of us, it just makes more sense to stick with the version of the game you inevitably already have.