As I have mentioned a few times on Retro Gaming Consoles already, Street Fighter II was one of my favourite games growing up. I played it regularly in the arcades with my friends and the number of hours I spent playing the game went through the roof once I got it for the Super NES.
As I’m sure you well know, the Super NES version of Street Fighter II was revered as an almost arcade perfect port of the game. Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition on the Sega MegaDrive (Genesis) and Street Fighter II Dash on the PC Engine were great ports too.
Unfortunately, not all ports did this great game justice. Many developers released the game on machines that just couldn’t cope with the graphics, sound or speed the game required to play the game.
Here is a list of 5 of the worst Street Fighter II ports you are ever likely to see.
5. Master System
Tec Toy released a version of SFII in Brazil for the Sega Master system in 1997. I was actually a bit hesitant of including the game in this list. The sound is poor but the graphics are actually impressive, certainly better than any Master System game I have seen.
Alas, I have no time for any Street Fighter II game which only has 2 buttons so this graphically impressive Master System port just made it into the top 5.
4. Game Boy
The GameBoy version of Street Fighter II was released in 1995. Due to a limited amount of cartridge space, Dhalsim, E. Honda and Vega were all left out of the game. Since there were only two buttons on the GameBoy users had to touch a button quickly to perform a light attack and quickly for a stronger one.
3. NES
A pirated version of Street Fighter II arrived on the Nintendo during the 90s. Strangely, the game was entitled Street Fighter III.
Like the official GameBoy version, only 9 of the original 12 characters were included in the game. The game had some interesting quirks. For example, Ken was simply Ryu with a red gi instead of a white one so therefore had black hair instead of blonde (even though the intro screen suggested otherwise).
2. Commodore 64
British game developers US Gold released a port of Street Fighter II way back in 1992. The game looks more like a modified IK+ than a Street Fighter game. Awful!
1. ZX Spectrum
Although the graphics are in green rather than in colour, I am going to stick my neck on the line and say that the Spectrum port of Street Fighter II had better graphics than the Commodore 64. Unfortunately, this US Gold game was as slow as a week in Jail, it looked like you were playing the game in slow motion!
The sound was terrible as well. I’m impressed that anyone would even attempt to put Street Fighter 2 on the Spectrum but the finished article reminds you how old the Spectrum is!
Hope you enjoyed this list of poor Street Fighter II ports. Know of any other poor Street Fighter II translations?