5/16/2009 - Rose Ball

It's rare in a fighting game to have a character that has a fireball move and and move that reflects fireballs. But when you do have a character like that, you can play a mirror match and have a mini-game reminiscent of Pong where you reflect a fireball back and forth until one player gets hit. In Street Fighter, Rose has both a fireball and a reflect move, so this game is naturally called "Rose Ball":

5/2/2009 - SF4 Simultaneous Supers/Ultras

Probably what makes fighting games somewhat difficult to develop for balance must be move priority. You have dozens of different fighters and dozens of regular and special moves each fighter, and a one-one-one fighting structure where all those conflicting matchups come into play. And I'm not just talking about a certain character fighting another character. I'm including the possibilities involved when certain fighting moves are matched up against others. That's where move priority takes into account. In

Street Fighter, for example, Guile's flash kick beats Ryu's hurricane kick, but the hurricane kick goes through Guile's sonic boom. And that's just an example of two characters' special moves against each other. There are also the normal moves to consider. Some moves have higher priority than others, and many moves will just trade damage with each other. Then there are the super or ultra moves found in the latest Street Fighter games. The programmers must have debates and all-out fights when it comes to determining move priority!

As for the mirror matches, you'd think that all the moves would just cancel each other. For the most part, they do and that's why most mirror matches are a snore to watch. On the other hand, seeing what happens when the supers and ultra moves play out simultaneously during mirror matches is pretty awesome:

3/15/2009 - Some people are not meant to do game reviews.

The title says it all:



It's rare to see a review of a review, but in this case, it's definitely needed. For those who don't know the Street Fighter franchise, the mistakes the reviewer makes probably seem trivial. But for those like myself who are Street Fighter fanatics, the review is atrocious. I don't have complete hate for the first Street Fighter movie, but I agree that it should NEVER be referenced in a Street Fighter game review... unless it's a bad Street Fighter game.

2/5/2009 - EVO moment 2k7

Marvel vs. Capcom 2 may not be the most balanced fighting game out there, but it may be the most fun fighting game, with only the Super Smash Bros. series being a possible exception. I mean, I'm a Marvel fan and a Capcom fan, so this game was tailor-made for someone like me. Imagine playing with characters like the Hulk, Spider-Man, and Wolverine against Ryu, Chun-Li, and Guile... all with that Capcom polish. To top it all off, you create tag-teams of three with 56 characters to choose from!

With so many characters and so many possibilities of team match-ups, I found it hard to believe that Marvel vs. Capcom 2 could be used in competition, especially for the formal Evolution tournament. Well, I'm glad they included it because it gave us one of the best comebacks put on tape that wasn't performed by Daigo. In fact, it's none other than Justin Wong, who you may know from the Evo Moment #37 video as being the victim of the greatest clutch performance by Daigo. Justin could have been known solely for that video if it wasn't for this one:



Being down 2 characters in a 3 on 3 match must seem like a hopeless situation... but as the video says, NEVER GIVE UP.

2/3/2009 - Youtube Street Fighter

YouTube has grown so much after it was taken over by Google. Not just in terms of viewers, members, and storage capacity, but in technology as well. YouTube can handle widescreen video now, HD video, and embeddable annotations. The last feature allows you to embed comments within the video as speech bubbles and even hyperlinks pointing you to a website or even another video. The most creative use of that feature would have to be the interactive Street Fighter game. Yes, you can play Street Fighter within a YouTube video:



It's like a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book, but with Street Fighter action figures in a stop motion video. Seriously, this must have taken ages to create. You can see that each successive video in the series is just a branch in the tree hierarchy with all the possible moves planned out. I'm not sure if embedding this will allow you to play the game, so here is the direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPQ1XrllZmA

12/7/2008 - Street Fighter remix (piano)

So after playing Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix for almost two weeks, I can give my take on it. I had hyped it up so much in my mind that you'd think there might be some disappointment when it finally came out. That is not the case with this game, however. I bought the Playstation 3 specifically for this game and I can honestly say it was worth it. Regular readers of this blog know of my love for the Street Fighter franchise, and that has it pretty much dominated my gaming life since it first came out in 1991. Sure, I've had mini-obsessions with other games over the years, but I have always come back to the Capcom fighters.

When I first saw the artwork that was going to go into this game, I was amazed already. I have always appreciated the art style that went into the Street Fighter series and I knew that the HD visuals would be in good hands with the manga artists at UDON. You can tell that they care about the characters, and there is no single character in the game that looks out of place. I was quite pleased that they beefed up characters like Sagat, Dhalsim, and M. Bison to look more like their anime counterparts. What I really appreciate, though, is that everything looks consistent now. Back when Super Street Fighter II Turbo was introduced, the sprites of the characters looked pretty much as they did in the first Street Fighter II. And yet, when some of the new moves were introduced, they were more stylized in the anime form and it looked jarringly out of place (see Honda's Ochio Throw, for example). Now that all of the sprites have been redrawn in the anime style, those moves no longer look like add-ons.

Much has been made about the "rebalancing" of the characters in the game. I've always thought that what made Street Fighter uniquely better than most other fighter games is that the characters were so different from one another (besides Ken and Ryu, of course). Take the Mortal Kombat games, for example. They pretty much all have the same moveset except for the special moves and the combos. By and large, though, the number of special moves are the same for the characters, and their combos are just different button combinations from each other. My point is that Mortal Kombat is "pre-balanced" in a way that offers little incentive to pick certain characters because they might have an advantage over others.

In Street Fighter, however, the characters are not just different in movesets alone. Some move faster than others. Some jump higher than others. They have different throwing ranges. With all these differences, it's natural that some characters are going to be be mismatched against others. For example, I can usually fight fairly well as Guile versus someone at my skill level. However, if they choose Chun-Li, I have a much harder time because of her higher jumps. Guile has no effective way to trap Chun-Li as he does against most of the other fighters. That's why I had to learn to use other fighters like Blanka who are better to use against Chun-Li. But I can't solely use Blanka because he's weak against Bison. This kind of rock-paper-scissors element to Street Fighter is one of its strengths, in my opinion and I'm glad to see that the "rebalancing" of the game was a lot more subtle that I thought it would be. Sure, it might have changed the competitive scene forever, but since I'm not at the pro level where I can count frames and remember hitboxes, the rebalancing did not affect my gameplay too much, and certainly not for the worse.

What really excited me about HD remix was that for the first time, I would have the ability to play online against other Street Fighter fans. Sure, I've played in the arcades here in Tucson and back in Las Vegas when I was living there, but that has been the extent of my experience. Believe it or not, there are different Street Fighter "fighting styles" in different regions of the world. For example, a Los Angeles player first introduced me and to the Tucson arcades a way of playing as Guile offensively that was almost invincible (this was before they toned him down in the later games). This changed everything for me as I had long since been a Ryu player, thinking that Guile was only a defensive player.

What I found interesting was that not everybody in the rest of the country knew of this style of Guile playing, even years later when I was at this years Iron Man of Gaming in Dallas. They had a Street Fighter II Turbo console there and I was having quite an easy time as Guile because nobody expected that kind of gameplay. With the ability to play online now, there is no more "regional" style of playing, since you're playing against the whole world. I have been watching many YouTube videos of high ranking players, trying to see how others outside of the Southwest USA are playing, and boy, were my eyes widened. I'm constantly amazed to see the gameplay of folks like Daigo and the other EVO competitors. I know that I would lose to players like that, but at least I wouldn't have to travel to California to do so. With Street Fighter online, it's fun to beat newbies, but it's equally fun losing to pros.

I can't say that the online experience is perfect, however. There are lag issues, especially with those who have slow broadband connections. And there are definitely bugs which lead to disconnects and issues with the HUD. All these issues, I hope, will be fixed by a patch. That's something I'm really looking forward to, because when it works, it works beautifully. It actually amazes me, since Street Fighter has always been about precise timing and complicated controller motions for the special moves and the combos. It bodes well for the upcoming Street Fighter 4 in February.

And finally, we come to the music of the game. When I first heard that they were going to remix the music, I was apprehensive. The Street Fighter soundtrack is probably my second favorite video game soundtrack after Mega Man 2 and it something I could listen to daily without getting tired of it. Remixes are rarely better than the original and I hoped that it would not sound too radically different. I was quite pleased to learn that the remixed soundtrack would be an option for the game and that you could go back to the original arranged soundtrack. In fact, the game has tremendous value in that the non-balanced game remains and you can even turn on those old non-HD sprites if you want! While I prefer the original soundtrack, the remixes are too bad at all, and I'll turn it on if I'm in the mood for it.

That brings me to today's video (finally). Like I said, I could listen to the Street Fighter soundtrack forever and I like to listen to some of the renditions of it on YouTube. There are remixes done on guitar, and some even done on the Mario Paint composer! I never thought there would be a great remix done on the paino, though, and that's what we have here:



I've always thought of the Street Fighter soundtrack as being so universal that anybody would appreciate it (they are World Warriors, after all). I am intensely curious to know whether or not the entire audience knew that this was from a video game... and if they didn't, what was their reaction when they learned that it was.

11/29/2008 - SSF2THDR ROUND 1 Trailer

Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix finally arrived on Tuesday and it was worth the wait! I'll give my review of the game in a later blog post, but I wanted to highlight the trailer Capcom released just prior to the game's release. As we all know, Capcom enlisted the artists at Udon to redraw the sprites and backgrounds of the game in the style of their popular anime-inspired comic book series. That art is on full display in this trailer, and as a fan of the anime movie, I can say that it is gorgeous. But we knew that would be the case with this HD version of SF2. Besides showing off the gameplay in a well-choreographed tournament style presentation, Capcom did something very special in this trailer that would prompt me to write this blog entry about it.

Yes, that would be the music in the trailer. The use of "You're the Best Around" by Joe Esposito is truly inspired. Before I knew of it's actual history from the Karate Kid movie, I heard it in a ScrewAttack Top 10 video that played it as a tribute to their fans who submitted their favorite video gaming music. Whoever made that video is probably a fan of cheesy 80's music and this song in particular is really cheesy, but really good! It wasn't until I found my King of Kong DVD that I learned that they had included the song in the classic gaming documentary as well. In fact, this is where ScrewAttack probably got the idea to feature the song, as it was included in the King of Kong soundtrack. So would this cheesy 80's song be some kind of anthem for classic videogames?

The answer would be cemented in this trailer for SSF2THDR. When I first heard it in the trailer, I said "No Way", and then I laughed with glee. I'm not sure if Capcom themselves knew of the links to videogaming this song has recently had, or if they just wanted to feature a retro song from a movie about martial arts, but everything just works in context. So much so that I had to download the MP3 to this song and am seriously considering renting the Karate Kid movie even though it looks so bad. I just have to say that Capcom "is the best arooouuuund!"

11/20/2008 - Spittin' Narcissism

Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix is finally coming out next week and I couldn't be more excited. No, seriously, I have been looking forward to this for over a year now and it was my primary reason for getting a Playstation 3. To celebrate, we have a music video staring Street Fighter's most conceited fighter, Vega (or Balrog in Japan). The sprite animation in this video is simply amazing, and the music isn't half bad either. This should herald a new genre of music: Street Fighter Rap!

9/21/2008 - Street Fighter 4 Classic Voiceover

If you wanted a good example of how important sound and music plays a part in video games, check out this video of the upcoming Street Fighter 4. It is played repeatedly but with different Street Fighter sound and music samples from the original Street Fighter to Capcom vs. SNK 2. The Street Fighter samples sound downright primitive, but the Street Fighter Alpha 2 dub is almost seamless. What's impressive about the dubbing of this video though is how well the sound effects match every action that goes on. Every "hadouken" is perfectly timed and well as all the other punches, kicks, and even whiffs. And you gotta love that Ryu theme...

8/19/2008 - Afrolegends vs. Daigo

After watching the spectacle of competition that is the Olympics, it occurred to me that they should show videogame competitions on TV. Maybe not on NBC or any of the broadcast networks, but definitely on G4TV at least. There's plenty of drama and excitement involved in gaming competitions... just watch the excellent King of Kong documentary and you'll see what I'm talking about. Heck, you could even go into the personal lives of the gamers like they do for the Olympians.

The gaming competition they should really highlight is the annual Evolution (EVO) competition based on fighting games. Most gamers have had their shot at fighting games like Street Fighter II and they know that the major lure of the games is using your favorite fighter and testing your skills against others, with your status as a gamer determined by how long you can stay on the machine fending off challenges from other players. You can imagine what it's like then to have the best fighting game players from across the world in one tournament competing for money and, of course, glory.

If there is a Michael Phelps of the Street Fighter world, that would have to be Daigo Umehara of Japan. I've already blogged about his amazing full parry comeback in Street Fighter III Third Strike. This display of his prowess is something else. In the game Super Street Fighter II Turbo, you win a match by winning two out of three round. In this match, Daigo (as Ryu) easily wins the first round against Afrolegends (as Balrog). In the second round, though, it looks like Afrolegends is dominating against Daigo, beating him until he's dizzy with little health left. Daigo could merely let Afrolegends win this round and beat him in the third. But that wouldn't be Daigo, now would it?



There are so many things amazing about this performance that you can pick something out each time you replay it. Daigo's control over Ryu is nothing short of a miracle. Just look a the way he can precisely distance himself for the hurricane kick crossups! And something else I just noticed recently is how he was doing the short hurricane kicks so he could build up his Super for the very end. And he was doing this in the middle of his comeback! I bow to you, Daigo...

7/22/2008 - Street Fighter IV anime clip

It's funny... I'm so anticipating the release of Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (let's call it Street Fighter II HD from now on), is Street Fighter IV itself. The thing is, even though IV will be so much more technically advanced than II, having 3D graphics and all, I'm still looking forward to SF2HD more because it's a game I'm so familiar with having played it for years. And now with the ability of playing others online to see if my old school skills are still up to snuff makes me want to develop my thumb callous all over again before the game's release.

I mean it's GREAT that SF4 will still have somewhat of a nostalgia feel in that the gameplay will still be in 2D and the inclusion of the original 12 World Warriors helps too. See, Capcom is definitely catering to us old school gamers with the Street Fighter and Mega Man franchises. I mean, the fact that they would make a Mega Man 9 with 8-bit graphics is basically a love letter to me... and I'm ready with the roses and champagne.

Even though I'm looking forward to SF2HD more, Capcom released something a few weeks ago that brought SF4 back to my attention. It's a little anime cutscene that will be included in the home versions of the game. It depicts a fight between Akuma and Ryu, and of course it is epic. It's not something totally different than the excellent Street Fighter II Movie (anime), but the inclusion of Ryu's stage music made me drool... literally:



You know what's sad, though? Given the recent news that there will be no Ryu or Ken in the next Street Fighter live-action movie, this little anime clip is guaranteed to be better than the upcoming movie. It's also light years ahead of the 1994 Van Damme embarrassment of a movie.

5/28/2008 - New Mega64 Video

Is there anything more pointless than the Street Fighter bonus rounds? They are simply stages where there is something that you can beat up for points. But who really pays attention to the points in a fighting game? For that matter, are there any games left that even have accumulating points as a main goal? It used to be that points were the main indicator of videogame skill as shown in the excellent documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. But now, everything is pretty much centered on beating up the other guy in fighting games or finishing a single-player adventure. Capcom got the hint and excluded the bonus rounds in later version of Street Fighter II (they did make a comeback in Street Fighter III). I guess there's some nostalgia and tradition in beating up a car as it was first introduced in Final Fight. The Mega64 folks had to prove their videogame worthiness by doing what? Yes, beating up a real car:

3/2/2008 - Street Fighter IV (NES pirate original)

Could it be? Could Capcom have created Street Fighter IV 15 years before it's set to hit the arcades this year? Of course not, but look at this "Street Fighter IV" game for the NES:



Of all, the pirated Street Fighter games I've seen, this one actually looks halfway decent. Yes, the music sucks and it's definitely a ripoff of SF2, but I think it's a bit of a step up from the other games. The character sprites are large, the speed and jumping distances look accurate, there's parallax scrolling (pretty much unheard of in a pirated game), and there's even a voice sample for the Shoryuken move! I think that if Capcom didn't want to make their own version of Street Fighter II for the NES, then they should have hired these guys to do it for them.

2/15/2008 - YupYupYup

Call me an old fogy, but I don't get rap music. How did it become so popular with the youth? It doesn't sound musical. I mean, there's a reason why they don't allow rap music on American Idol. It's only appeal I think is the harsh language and that it (tries to) keep a beat. But if rap music disappeared from the Earth tomorrow, I don't think people would cry over it. That said there are two rap songs I actually like. One of them is Sir-Mix-A-Lot's "Baby Got Back", mainly for its hilarious lyrics. The second, is from this video:



Who knew Balrog could rap? I really like the use of Chun-Li's battlecry from her lightning kicks as the "chorus". Come to think of it, the reason why I like these rap songs is because of the clever lyrics, and not because of their "music".

1/15/2008 - Human Killing Machine Review

Our friend with the cool British accent, Ashens, is back with another cheap knockoff from the videogame world. The medal for the best reviews of bad games has to be the AVGN, but Ashens certainly deserves a prize for finding the rarest of rare, the weirdest of weird, and the crappiest of crap. In this instance, who knew there was a game made that was based on the original Street Fighter engine? Street Fighter was hardly a great game... it had stiff controls, average graphics, repetitive sounds, and uneven gameplay. It did spawn the revolutionary Street Fighter II, so I can't complain too much about it. I probably could complain about this game that Ashens found, however:



I could only imagine if THIS was the Street Fighter II Capcom would release years later. Capcom would most definitely have died as a company. I doubt there would even be a fighting game "genre", and I think the arcades would have died in the early nineties rather the late nineties.

1/6/2008 - SF2Nes V 0.92 gameplay video

It always surprises me at what lengths people will go to bask in their retro memories. I've mentioned the MUGEN system before when I featured the Optimus Prime vs. Megatron video. MUGEN is mostly used for integrating sprites from different fighting game franchises so that you can have dream matches like Ryu from Street Fighter vs. Scorpion from Mortal Kombat. Most of the time, MUGEN modders will use the latest versions of the characters so that they have the most animation frames to work with. However, that's not always the case as this video shows:



So what the modders tried to create here is a Street Fighter 2 experience on the NES! Using smaller sprites, only two attack buttons, and 8-bit graphics and music, this succeeds where the other bootleg versions of SF2 failed. Of course, the NES couldn't possibly reproduce the fireball effects or voices in this MUGEN mod, but a pure 8-bit experience probably wouldn't look and sound as dynamic.

1/1/2008 - Ryu vs M. Bison

Happy New Year, everybody... I am back! It's getting harder to find good videos, but I've managed to accumulate a good number of them over the break. Let's start out with the big gaming news of the last month, and that's the coming of the long awaited Street Fighter IV this year. The trailer came out a couple of months ago, and while it looked amazing, we were all wondering if it was a 2-D game or a 3-D game. That was answered just last week with the first video footage of the game which revealed a 2-D fighting engine with 3-D characters and backgrounds. That came as a relief to a lot of fans who believe that SF should remain true to its 2-D roots.

There is one BIG problem that I see with the video, however. The fighting engine might be 2-D (no side-stepping or 3-D movement), but the camera actively pans around the environment in a semi-3-D way. I can see this as a problem because Street Fighter has always been about judging horizontal distances between the fighters; knowing how far your character jumps, the reach of your various punches and kicks, how far away you have to be from Zangief's spinning piledriver grab. If the camera is not straight on the two characters in a purely 2-D way, there's an unneeded extra element of guesswork that has to take place to play the game. I can appreciate the need to show off the technology at work, but that should never distract from the gameplay.

2.5-D may be the "in" thing to do nowadays, but with Street Fighter they should have drawn a line. Either go pure 2-D like Street Fighter II and III, or pure 3-D like Street Fighter EX. Otherwise, you might as well have a game like this:

11/11/2007 - SF2 - Dancer vs. Baby

This video wins in the Most Creative Use of Street Fighter II Music category. Not to mention sound effects. Don't worry, folks... the baby gets up fine right after the end of the video.

11/6/2007 - Street Blaster V Turbo 20

We saw what happened when Double Dragon was ported over to the Atari 2600. Despite its, um, primitive nature, it still looked playable and somewhat faithful to its source material. Now what happens when you try to go from a 32-bit game to an 8-bit system? And not just any 32-bit game... it's Street Fighter II, baby. To my knowledge, the only official 8-bit port of Street Fighter II by Capcom is the one for the original Game Boy. The rest, including this little gem, are pirated games.



Let's try to review this, AVGN-style (without the swear-words, of course). First of all, what's with the name change? Street Blaster V Turbo 20? I know they were trying to avoid lawsuits by Capcom, but how did they come up with "Street Blaster"? Is there a construction worker character in the game that blasts streets or something? And is this the fifth Street Blaster game, or the 20th? Or it could be a cumulative title, making it the 20th version of Street Blaster V Turbo, which itself is the faster version of Street Blaster V, which is the fifth version of Street Blaster, making it the overall 26th version of Street Blaster (unless there were Championship Editions in between).

Now look at the character select screen:

I can recognize the first 10 fighters... they look like most of the Street Fighter gang. But what about the next 10? Is that Evil Ryu? Is Blanka in a hockey mask? These look like the Bizarro versions of the Street Fighter characters? Why was this even necessary? I mean, in the original Street Fighter II, you could only choose from eight World Warriors. It's like the makers of this piece of junk were trying to give you a bonus by allowing you to choose alternate versions of the characters.

Then, when Guile and Chun-Li are chosen, the VS screen shows Blanka and Dhalsim. What the heck happened? Did they not even test this game before releasing it? Then we get to the game. Okay, it looks decent enough. But why is Chun-Li just doing her Spinning Bird Kick? All Guile has to do is Sonic Booms and she's down for the count. Speaking of which, why does her body bounce three times when falling to the ground? Boy does that get annoying fast.

So after Guile wins, Blanka says "Ha Ha, Nice Fight, Go Next Fight!" It may not be as bad as "All Your Base Belong to Us", but it's close. Then you have a Guile vs. Zangief screen, where it's Blanka instead of Guile again, and Zangief is having some kind of complexion problem:

Now that's just disturbing.

After the Guile/Zangief fight, the next opponent is Ryu, but the VS. screen shows E. Honda. Whatever. The thing is, the music for Ryu's stage is E. Honda's music as well. Oh well, they're both from Japan. After Ryu is Chun-Li again? Oh wait, it's the Bizarro Chun-Li, and the name on the HUD says Maki. Oh boy is this game crap, or what?

I do have to say that after looking at this game, I think that Capcom could have made an NES port of Street Fighter II and it probably would have been decent. I mean, the NES was certainly capable of displaying the fighter sprites in a recognizable way, and it had enough horsepower to emulate the fighting gameplay engine to a degree. Surely, if they could churn out mediocre Mega Man sequels at the end of the NES's lifecycle, they could have made room for a guaranteed success of a SF2 translation. And they could have save the rest of the world from this awful piece of garbage.

9/18/2007 - Street Fighter II Music Comparison (3 Videos)

It's been 16 years, and I still haven't gotten tired of playing Street Fighter II. In fact, I just bought the Street Fighter Anniversary Collection and I'm playing Super Street Fighter II Turbo everyday. It's the only version I've never owned on a console and it's preparation for the upcoming HD Remix on the Playstation 3. Ahh, it reminds me of high school.

Before SF2, the arcades were filled with beat-em-ups. You had the Konami beat-em-ups (TMNT, X-Men, Simpsons) and the Capcom ones (Final Fight, Punisher, Captain Commando). Beat-em-ups were fun, and the Konami ones did justice to their licensed material, but they were pretty much quarter munchers. You controlled a character with a few lives and a health bar, and you had to wade through dozens (if not hundreds) of enemies with a few bosses in between. Regular enemies would get their cheap hits in and bosses would kill you routinely. Once your lives were up, you insert another quarter, continue, rinse, and repeat. They were definitely easy money-makers, but you could have two to four players hogging the machine until they finished the game.

Here is where you can see the brilliance of Street Fighter II. By making it a competitive game, you could have a LINE of players waiting to play against the reigning champion. In fact, you would routinely see a row of quarters on the arcade machine itself, representing your place in line. You could see how good a player was by how long they were staying on the game. If you were good, you'd get your quarter's worth by beating numerous opponents. If not, well, bet prepared to spend your allowance by practicing.

Since typical matches were at most two minutes, an arcade machine with a constant stream of players would rake in the cash at an even faster rate than the beat-em-ups, and would allow a greater audience of players to play the game (especially once people saw the lines and were curious about the hype). At a rate of 25 cents a minute, a typical machine can make $15 an hour... and you better believe an arcade operator at the time knew this figure.

It's hard to know if Capcom knew that SF2 would be the phenomenon that it was, but every aspect of the game was handled with such care that you could tell that they knew it would be special. The best example of this was the music in Street Fighter II. To this day it is still one of the best and most recognizable soundtracks for a video game ever. There's no greater evidence of this fact than the huge number of remixes of the various tracks. Even though each track loops after only a minute and a half (about the time it takes to finish a round, not coincidentally), the melodies will stick in your head long after you've finished playing the game. You know, if the music wasn't any good, you could not bear to play the games hundreds of times as a lot of players have (including myself).

I can't emphasize enough how good the translation was from the arcade to the 16-bit consoles. Because the fighting engine is so complex, if the timing of the moves were off even a little bit, it would not be the same game. Capcom really performed a miracle porting SF2 over to the SNES, Genesis, and the TurboGrafx-16. Not only did they perform amazingly gameplay-wise, the music from the arcade made it over remarkably well. Here is a video doing a comparison of the music for the three different systems. Maybe I'm a little biased, but I really prefer the SNES version.