Review: Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (XBLA)

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Review: Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (XBLA)

Fri, Dec 12, 2008

If you happened to catch our retrospective last week on the American arcade, you'll know that the original Street Fighter II was a vital part of my youth. I was there when it hit our shores in 1991, and it became an instant favorite for me -- so much so, that it single-handedly influenced my purchase of the SNES when the home version of Street Fighter II became available. Over the years, though, SF2 changed again and again, going through what seemed like a dozen versions, dabbling with extra words like Turbo, Hyper, Super, and beyond. I began to lose track of the franchise somewhere around Super Street Fighter II, and by the time spin-offs like Alpha and EX rolled around, I was completely lost -- and the "actual" sequels, Street Fighter III and the upcoming Street Fighter IV, are completely alien to me.

Now, just a couple of months shy of the American release of Street Fighter IV, Capcom has published Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, in an effort to cram as many extra words into deliver the most capable and versatile version of the breakthrough 1991 title to date. With new art from Street Fighter comic artists UDON, new soundtrack interpretations from OverClocked ReMix, and a thorough mechanical re-balancing by renowned SF2 expert David Sirlin and Backbone Entertainment, every inch of SSF2THDR has been retooled by the game's most dedicated enthusiasts. One would think this would make the new game a Street Fighter player's dream; it's hard to find more fan-service than in a game made by fans, for fans. One would be right, too: SSF2THDR has been designed to meet the needs of the unbelievably hardcore player. Thankfully, for the rest of us, it's also still a fun game.

It's not terribly surprising that Street Fighter II and all of its iterations have developed such a hardcore following; the game was a smash hit upon release, and its fans have had 17 years to hone their craft, and to learn the game inside and out. For a casual observer, watching an expert SF2 player is impressive and/or intimidating -- these are the kinds of players who can tell you exactly which moves can cancel out which other moves, how many frames it takes for a fallen player to become vulnerable again, and every other nuance, exploit, and master tactic in the book. It's for these players that SSF2THDR has been created, which even a cursory glance at the game options will reveal.

I have never played Street Fighter at anything approaching an expert or "tournament" level, but the depth of knowledge it would require, based on what SSF2THDR makes available, is staggering. The game allows you to tweak settings that a casual player wouldn't even realize existed; an amateur wouldn't have the slightest notion that these minuscule options might ever affect the gameplay. We're talking about things like setting "Ability to throw an opponent who was dizzied by a throw," or "Percentage chance that the first frame of Blanka's horizontal ball is unblockable," or whether or not a player "Can do Sagat’s super using a kick button during a 1 frame window." Seriously, that's a setting, and the fact that it could conceivably matter to high-level players makes me worry. If you are a high-level player, though, SSF2THDR clearly has your interests at heart -- they want to make sure you are playing the game that you want to play.

This is not to say that SSF2THDR is a game exclusively for the hardest of the hardcore. If you have even a casual fondness for the franchise's classic characters and unforgettable music, the game is practically worth the price of admission just to see the loving treatment that UDON and OCReMix have given the title's familiar faces.

The "HD" portion of the game's long acronym has been handled quite excellently, with hand-drawn character art, looking like panels ripped directly from the UDON comics, appearing in crisp 1080p. Everything from Cammy's bright blue eyes, to Ryu's signature headband, to Zangief's oddly zig-zagged chest hair has been exquisitely rendered in UDON's robust style. The backgrounds have been redrawn as well, re-imagining every stage in the updated high-resolution art, so that players will still be able to fight in front of USSR factory workers, excited boat passengers, and the colorful patrons of Las Vegas' famed casino, "Casino."

SSF2THDR is extremely nice to look at, though in motion, it's perhaps a little less so. Since the game is tailor-made for expert players, to whom timing and frames of animation are crucial, the animation rate has been kept consistent -- meaning that these beautiful, sharp characters are still moving about in 3-4 frame walk cycles and 2 frame "falling" animations, and the background audiences still flail about in jerky 2-3 frame "cheering" loops, looking completely incongruous with their new, carefully-drawn style. It's a little off-putting, but not so much that it detracts from the game. Think of the jerky animation as "nostalgic," and you'll be fine.

The music, too, is admirably handled, translating the game's extremely familiar chiptunes into high-quality instrumental tracks. The songs are a mix of the familiar and the new, of the violent and the sublime -- each track trying to drive home the hard-hitting nature of the game, while being evocative of the stage's setting. This doesn't always work perfectly -- Vega's stage, in particular, is rather disappointing, the originally fast-paced tune reduced to a mild-seeming piano-and-strings affair that doesn't quite produce a fighting mood. For the most part, though, the remixed music is a great update to the old favorites, and when I started up the game and heard the title music (Ken's stage) cranking out in guitar power chords, I couldn't help but grin.

Of course, for those of you looking for an untainted fit of nostalgia, you're not obligated to use the "remixed" versions of the game's assets: SSF2THDR allows you to play with the old chiptunes and pixellated sprites from Super Street Fighter II, or mix them up (new music/old art, etc). Of course, since you can't use the old backdrops, having the lower-resolution characters fighting in front of the sharp new environments just looks really weird. Still, the options are there, which continues to assert SSF2THDR's overall M.O. -- Capcom wants to make sure that you are playing the game that you want to play. Nearly everything about the game is customizable, and you can take or leave the new options -- up to and including the new "remixed" game mechanics.

It's here that, I have to admit, I may not be able to do SSF2THDR justice from a review standpoint: While I have no doubt that David Sirlin and company have done quite a lot of work on the character balance, move execution, and timing issues, I must confess that I am unable to tell the difference at all. I suppose that's a good thing, from the average player's standpoint: The game seems like it plays the same way it always did, the changes hidden well enough that gamers won't feel like their favorite old fighter has been ruined for them. To hear Sirlin tell it, when we interviewed him back in May, there's actually been a lot of work done under the hood, allowing matches to be decided by skill rather than unbalanced character match-ups. To the Street Fighter layman, though, the game feels as familiar and playable as ever, frame-counts and hitboxes be damned.

Speaking of playability, SSF2THDRis still extremely fun to play -- assuming you're up against other people. Whether locally or online, the title still carries the frantic, unpredictable pacing, and back-and-forth combat of its arcade predecessors. SF2 was the game to really get the formula right, and as I played my way through dozens of matches, I was still able to laugh and talk trash with my friends, witnessing slaughters, unlikely comebacks, explosive super-finishes, and a few instances of the always laugh-inducing Double KO. Having grown up playing SF2 on the SNES, I was initially disappointed by the Xbox 360's poor D-pad control, but I swiftly found the thumbstick to be an adequate substitute, allowing me to enjoy match after match of fireballs, kicks, throws, and the rest of the game's over-the-top repertoire of moves. Against an evenly matched opponent, SSF2THDR is still a great experience.

In the single-player arcade mode, however, it's a slightly different story, due to the AI's inconsistency and, often, its blatantly unfair difficulty. The AI opponent can be set on one of four different difficulty levels, but this doesn't seem to affect its actual behavior, instead allowing the AI's moves to deal more damage for even quicker losses. Even on the game's easiest settings, the AI is chock-full of "cheap" moves, able to execute special moves without charging, throw you out of your own moves, and exploit every single moment of invulnerability in the book. SF2 was always able to frustrate me on single-player, but the seemingly psychic AI in this latest version made me want to put the controller through a wall -- up until the game would arbitrarily decide that I'd had enough, and turn my opponent into a complete idiot. All of a sudden, after having just crushed me in under 15 seconds, the same opponent entirely forgot how to block, walking blithely into every move I made -- allowing me to just keep spamming fireballs until they fell down. Neither outcome was terribly satisfying.

Still, against another human player, I had no complaints about the gameplay, even online, where the latency never seemed to be a significant factor. My characters pulled off their moves quickly and effectively, moving just as I would expect them to during a local match. Capcom boasts that their game has "improved network code" to keep the game flowing smoothly online, and I must admit, it seems to have worked quite excellently. In addition, the online game can be customized just as heavily as its offline counterpart, allowing players to find quick matches with precisely the options they want -- classic or remixed, slow or turbo, number of rounds, etc. The graphics and sound, in fact, don't even have to remain consistent, since the new sprites haven't changed their hitboxes: I was able to play the game on my console, with "classic" music and sprites, while my friend watched the match on his end in the new high-definition format.

In the end, that's one of the strongest points of SSF2THDR, is the number of choices it gives you -- while simultaneously delivering an extremely simple, no-extras experience. While players can customize the hell out of their fights, that's all they'll be doing in terms of gameplay: fighting, again and again, beating the tar out of countless opponents in one of the purest expressions of the fighting genre since, well, Street Fighter II. There is no character creation here, no costume customization, no collectibles (achievements notwithstanding). There is only the next match.