Play Super Street Fighter 2 II Sega Genesis Online Emulator in Browser
Street Fighter II made such a huge impact in the arcade scene and video games in general. The first game in the series made a little bit of noise and had a cult following leading up to the release of the second game to the arcades. Who knew that history was being made as SF II gave birth to the fighting game genre and revolutionized video games at the same time. Everyone went crazy as soon as they played this game to death while mastering all of the characters’ moves, combos & strategies; players were sharing what they knew or found out between each other. No other arcade game had such a deep and devoted following and created tournament style gaming like Street Fighter II. Then, Capcom shocked everyone by announcing a port of Street Fighter II was coming to the SNES and it was released in 1992. This port was revolutionary for its time because while Capcom made changes to the game, the core essence remained and it was still as fun to play as it was in the arcades.
Street Fighter II is a fighting game where you face off against the computer in a series of matches that lead up to the game’s main villain, M. Bison. You choose from one of eight characters, face off against the other 7 characters, then you go up against 4 boss characters (including M. Bison.) Each character has his/her own storyline and ending so you find out their specific reasons for wanting to fight M. Bison. After every third match, you enter a bonus stage where you get to earn additional points before the timer runs out (there are 3 bonus stages in total.) The game features a 2 player vs. mode so you can take on another human player but you can only choose from the 8 characters and not the additional boss characters. Finally, there is an option screen where you can change the buttons on your controller, play audio tracks from the game and adjust the difficulty level of the game. As an added bonus, there’s a code you can use where both players can use the same character in a match.
The PROS: This was revolutionary because they took an arcade game that was 58 megabits in size and shrunk it down into a 16 mega-bit cartridge. While changes were made, it looked and sounded close to what the arcade game was. On top of that, the controls were perfect. The game used every button on the SNES controller so Capcom did not have to compromise the button scheme at all. The rules of the arcade game were the same as the SNES port so you weren’t missing out at all as far as how your character moves or what strategies to use against the computer or another human player. The same character code was such a sweet bonus as it was NOT featured in the Street Fighter II arcade game.
The CONS: Like I said before, this is not a perfect port. In order for the game to retain the same feel, Capcom had to make changes across the board for this game to fit and work properly. There are too many to list but it doesn’t hurt the overall experience too much as there were people who never got the chance to play it in the arcades. For them, buying this game for the SNES was a perfect way to find out what the hype was all about. What is surprising is that when you put the difficulty level to its highest point, it is 100 times harder than the arcade game so only the most skilled SF players were able to defeat M. Bison at the highest difficulty level.
It was a great time to have the SNES as Capcom would release a port of Street Fighter II: Champion Edition for the Sega Genesis more than a year after Street Fighter II was released for the SNES. Not only did fighting games become popular, but the gap between the quality of arcade games and their ports to home consoles became smaller and it was starting to become common to see popular arcade games ported to SNES, Genesis, etc. If by chance, you have never played any of the earlier Street Fighter II games, you can either pick up a used SNES copy, look for the numerous Street Fighter anthology collections that are out there or download this title for the Wii via their Virtual Console service for 800 points. I recommend you try it out if you haven’t done so yet.
