Welcome to World Zero - Reviews for the hardcore gamer

Street Fighter II: The World Warrior

Arcade - Capcom - Fighter

1991. A dimly lit, smoky arcade in the middle of nowhere. The epicenter of gaming entertainment...

Even though I’ve enjoyed every run-through from Damnd to Belgar, I was bound to be dragged away from Guy, Cody, and Haggar eventually. Being told that I just have to see this game they set down on the ground level--where the casual stuff usually is; skee-ball, pinball, Playchoice 10's--I waited in line (I thought that shit was for theme parks?). In order to claim my place, I had to set my quarter on the cabinet. I already hated this game.

Finally it’s my turn and I’m staring at a character select screen with eight faces, a control layout with six freaking buttons, and a joystick intricately marked with an action in each direction…and I HAVE TO PUSH UP TO JUMP?!? You have to be kidding me. How did I get talked into standing in line fifteen minutes for this? Whatever, my quarter’s already in the machine and I got a dozen people behind me glaring over my shoulder because I’m lingering at the character select screen. I picked the closest thing to a Final Fighter as the roster allows, some guy named Ryu, and I’m up against some mutant with green skin. Fine, I’ll go with it...

The round starts and the first thing I notice is the whole freaking screen is parallax scrolling to a depth of field I’ve never even imagined was possible. Okay, this game is beautiful, I’ll give it that. But what about these overly complicated controls? While trying to figure out just how to utilize them correctly, the green mutant freak latches onto my face, he won’t get off, and before I know it, half my life bar is gone. Ryu back flips away from the freak and we square off again, but he’s up almost fifty percent more health than me. He comes at me from the air, nails me with a few punches, a kick, freaking electrocutes me, and now I have little birds spinning across my head. I can’t move, and the freak finishes me off. I didn’t even touch him and my game’s already over.

Head hung, I slowly begin my walk of shame passed the fourteen or fifteen people waiting in line when the guy that just kicked my ass grabs my jacket sleeve. “Hey!” he says, damn near scaring the shit out of me, “You got another round.” Puzzled, I walk back to my flight simulator button layout. Both our fighters are idle, he didn’t cheap out and start without me. I didn’t notice this before, but our fighters have an idle animation. I’ve never seen this before. Always, when you lay off the joystick, your character is static--sure Mega Man would blink if you left your thumb off the control pad--but here…here, my on-screen persona is breathing. “You ready?” My opponent asks. I nod, even though I’m really not even close. He’s playing it easy, letting me have a few hits here and there, because he can tell I’m frustrated as hell, but he ultimately finishes me off. He tells me ‘good game’, but I was too disrupted to reply. I don’t know if it was frustration or humiliation, but I was aggravated. So I walk back to the end of the line, which had grown a bit since my skirmish, and waited nearly twenty five minutes to place another quarter up against the game’s plexiglas which, by the way, had Capcom printed in the corner. Interesting.

Next in line, the guy in front of me was significantly shorter, so I could finally see someone else fighting without coughing up a quarter of my own. What I saw blew my mind. The guy on the right was using Ryu, and the guy on the left was using some decked out commando with a bad hair day; but the crazy thing was that the screen was lit up like it was Fist of the North Star or something. The characters were flying and flipping all over the screen, they were getting thrown into barrels, freaking balls of energy were shooting out of their hands…I have to do those moves to win, I thought. That’s the key.

Finally it’s my turn, and I’m trying everything. Two punches at the same time. No. Forward and punch. Nope. Kick and punch together. Nothing. I tried a few more combinations, but was KO’d before I could make any progress. I’m infuriated. My opponent’s character is standing in the middle of the screen with his arms in the air while his score is tallied up. To my right, my previous opponent walks up and places a quarter on the plexi. “Down, down-forward, forward, punch.” He says. Naturally I’m confused, but before I can mutter ‘What the hell was that…?’ he’s half-way to the back of the line and round two is up. Thinking that guy just gave me the crack head’s take on the Konami code, I brush it off and continue to get my ass brutally hammered into submission. I eye the continue screen, then the back of the twenty minute-plus line. The vacant Final Fight machine is looking better by the second…but I can’t leave. There’s something to this game. There’s a level of depth here I’ve never seen before. I’ve barely scratched the surface, but I knew this was big.

A few months later, the Street Fighter craze hit the mainstream, and I was finally able to research this game in full, as opposed to overhearing hearsay at the arcade and wasting quarters on practicing theories. I grabbed every magazine with any Street Fighter II related text inside (which also happened to be any gaming magazine at the time). The correct methods to unleash those impressive moves were slowly leaked, and gamers everywhere were training. As time played out, the matches at the arcade soon escaladed to epic proportions. The ass kicking I received my first day was nothing compared to the ass-kickings that were dealt out on a daily basis to fresh, unsuspecting victims. Eventually, I was no longer on the receiving end. A quarter soon went from sixty seconds of game time to twenty minutes as long as I wasn’t bested, which, despite my own “skill”, was actually quite frequent.

The world’s obsession with this game continued to escalate, as did my own. Soon, Street Fighter II could be found in not only every arcade you came across, but every pizza joint, laundry mat, and hotel lobby across the country. Arcades quickly acquired multiple units just to keep up with the demand. And as the fan bases’ skill continued to improve, so did the quality of the matches, and ultimately the game’s own entertainment value. This was no longer a game; it was a phenomenon. Lines grew longer and the price of the game’s own admission soon doubled, then tripled, and eventually shot up to over a dollar in some places. But no matter the price, no matter the wait, it always seemed justified to step out of line in the pizza parlor or procrastinate at the laundry mat just to find some new competition, try out a new combo, or even to learn a new tactic even if it was via the victorious hand of a complete and total stranger.

With the inclusion of multiple Street Fighter machines (oftentimes upwards of five cabinets per location), the opportunity to finally play alone, against the CPU, became an option and sometimes even a preference. Here, the brilliant combat was broken up by incredibly fun yet short bonus stages that, to my surprise, were ripped right from Final Fight. Providing your skill proved sufficient, you eventually fought champion characters that were so infamous (and at first, mythical), that they weren’t even available to the player. Seeing a fighter make it to these bosses soon became an event in itself. New lines formed, but these weren’t to wait for a chance to play; these lines were formed of spectators watching these epic battles unfold, and perhaps even witnessing a player bring down the champions.

The Street Fighter phenomenon still lives and breathes to this day, showing no signs of dieing out. Fresh players are still uncovering new combos, new tactics, and new camaraderies. But most unbelievable of all, after all this time, my own skills are still improving. Street Fighter II is as enjoyable today as much as it was way back in 1991; so much in fact, that some form of the game can easily be found in a contemporary arcade, even if the arcades themselves are a dying breed. Street Fighter II changed the mentality of the medium’s own interface, it completely reshaped a genre and, quite simply, revolutionized gaming. Things have never been the same in the gaming world after 1991.

To critique something like Street Fighter II is easier said than done, as obviously indicated by the unorthodox nature of this very “review”. The approach to Street Fighter II’s evaluation can’t mirror the normal method and still be consistent. This is due to Street Fighter II being a game of such caliber that the negative aspects would not generally be considered actual negative aspects in a run-of-the-mill game. But rather, they are mere inconsistencies keeping said characteristic from being completely flawless from a critical standpoint, and a critical standpoint alone. Take what is listed below with a grain of salt, because sometimes a numerical scale simply can’t determine the magnitude of a phenomenon.

Rating	The rating scale in detail
9.9	++ Excessive animation, even idle characters animate. ++ Unprecedented parallax scrolling. - Stage backgrounds contain fewer frames of animation compared to the foreground sprites.
9.8	++ Unforgettable soundtrack full of classic tracks sporting that familiar Capcom style. The increased tempo as the fight nears its conclusion is a great touch. ++ Hard hitting sound effects, impressive use of constant digitized speech. - While most stage themes are absolutely timeless, a few are simply excellent.
10	++ Not only streamlined the one-on-one interface to perfection, but was so ground-breaking that it completely revolutionized the contemporary control scheme, and ultimately, gameplay in general.
9.5	++ By using Final Fight as a foundation, Capcom was able to recreate everything that was so atmospheric about its aesthetic predecessor’s own style – the rapid weak punches, the slow but hard-hitting strong attacks, the engulfed, flaming corpses, the environments that had character, even the trash cans that bust apart in completely stylish fashion – and implemented all these aspects into an even more dramatic, yet confined environment. + Little things such as the dramatic slow-motion fight conclusions and post-fight animations add to the already outstanding presentation. - Capcom has been known for better character designs, despite those implemented here being excellent.
10	++ While mastery of the game is, in essence, a never ending task, the gameplay itself is both infinitely deep and infinitely replayable. Will keep you playing out of sheer enjoyment for years, despite your skill level.
10	++ Virtually flawless.