Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers

Despite the new characters...the backgrounds are a nice change of scenery. Jamaica and Mexico are especially good, and the music is better too.

The animation looks more Japanese, so it has more style than the earlier cartoonish looking stuff.


Slightly better than the Genesis version with the same flaws   July 24, 2002
 1 out of 2 found this review helpful

Street Fighter II was one of the greatest fighting series of all time and it still is. It was so great that it made the Mortal Kombat series look like a broke franchise (but wait until Midway is done with Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance !). No matter what new and interesting Street Fighter Capcom makes today, including the VS series, no other Street Fighter game would be better than the Street Fighter II series. While things needed to be changed during the year of 1994, Capcom has decided to make yet another addition to their popular SFII franchise. After the successful release of Street Fighter II Turbo for the Super Nintendo, Capcom has released Super Street Fighter II for the Arcade, Super Nintendo, and Sega Genesis. A lot of fans had agreed that this is a true Street Fighter hit, but a lot of people had noticed some in-game flaws while playing, but we'll get back to that later ! For now, here's the lowdown ! The graphics of the SNES version of Super Street Fighter II looks great and little better than the Genesis version. As always, the animations still retain its old glorified 1992-1993 goodness ! As for the sound, this is where the problem begins. Sure the songs sound perfectly remixed on each stage, but just listen to the voice acting on some of the characters. Some of them sound weird and they don't fit the character at all, but not all of them. Just Guile, Dee Jay, and Sagat (including that annoying announcer). I tried not to pay any attention to the sound, but it's too noticeable. As for the lineup of new and old Street Fighters, the best collection of fighters I've ever seen. You still get classic numbers from the SFII universe like Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Guile, Blanka, Dhalsim, Zangief, Balrog, Sagat, Vega, and M. Bison. Plus some new fighters like Fei Long, Cammy, Dee Jay, and T. Hawk (if you want to know who they are, read my Genesis review of SSFII). And as always, anything bearing the name Street Fighter II, has the best gameplay balance of any 2D fighting game. The controls are slick and easy to master once you've played the SFII series numerous times. No flaws, just pure gameplay perfection. And it's even better than the playability of the Genesis version, considering the fact that the SNES controller had a wide variety of buttons than the Genesis pad. If you've played the previous SFII games, that's the way how the game plays. This may seem like the last Street Fighter II, but actually it isn't. The last of the SFII series was Super Street Fighter II Turbo which released for US arcades, but never for home consoles for some reason. It released on the Dreamcast in Japan somewhere around 2001 as Super Street Fighter II X: Grandmaster Challenge and it also released for the Game Boy Advance as Super Street Fighter II: Turbo Revival. Not to mention, it was featured on the Street Fighter compilation for the PlayStation called "Street Fighter Collection". This was the first Street Fighter to use Super moves, but since it was 1994 or 1995, the super bar can only last for one level. It was better than the early Super Street Fighter II, but it could've been cool if it had released on home consoles on that day. Oh well ! Just as long as it released on specific systems ! Anyways, if you're looking for a Street Fighter game, this is the one to look for ! Even with its flaws, the game itself is fun and long lasting like the other Street Fighter games !


Super Street Fighter 2 The New Challengers   March 3, 2002
 1 out of 2 found this review helpful

This new Street Fighter is about the same as Street Fighter 2 but with a few differences. Like you can pick how fast the game is played, you can pick from many different characters such as Balrog, M. Bison, Vega, Cammy, Dee-Jay, Sagat,Feilong, an many others. It is alot cooler than the others.


Addictive for short periods of time...   December 3, 2001
 6 out of 7 found this review helpful

Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers, released for the SNES in 1994, is the sequel to SF II Turbo: Hyper Fighting. After the success of the previous SF2 games, Capcom wasn't about to release Street Fighter III yet. Instead it tweaked the cast of the previous games a bit, gave them a variety of new coloured outfits and introduced four new fighters: Cammy (a British intelligence officer), T. Hawk (a massive red Indian), Fei Long (a Bruce Lee look and act-alike, probably the answer to Mortal Kombat's Liu Kang...) and Dee Jay (a crazy jamaican full-contact fighter). Considering all this, the game has to be even better than SF2 Turbo, right? That's not quite the case though...

I understand that the arcade game changed the way it sounds from its predecessors by using new "Q sound" technology. Probably due to this, the sound effects and music quality in the SNES conversion is quite poor. I never realised that audio actually plays an important part in fighting games till I played this...especially since I played SF2 Turbo before. The energetic, deep voice of the announcer of Turbo is gone. It is replaced by a boring and clumsy-sounding voice. It is great that the characters sound different from each other this time around, but some character voices are pretty lame, especially the K.O. sounds made by M.Bison (Vega in Japan) and Guile. And don't even get me started on the "Sonic Boom" voice of Guile or the "Tiger Uppercut" voice of Sagat or the "Hadoken" voice of Ken. Very lame, indeed. The background music is okay, but lacks the quality of Turbo by a wide margin.

Then to the graphics. Again, must be the fact that the "Ryu Intro" took up too much memory. The visuals are dull and are almost Sega Genesis quality. However the new backgrounds are pretty decent to look at. Moving onto the gameplay. The ability to play in turbo speed is gone. It's back to three-star speed again. Playing it in anything less than that is a horrible experience. The original cast have their moves either improved or weakened or new moves gained. For example, Ken has gained a flaming dragon punch, whereas Ryu's hurricane kick is severely weakened. Guile has lost the ability to connect twice with his flash kick, as has Sagat with his close-up fierce kick. Among the new characters, Fei Long and Cammy are interesting, Dee Jay is awkward but powerful and T. Hawk is a clumsy, Zangief-ish wrestler with some style. To freshen things up there are various modes in the game, including super battle, versus battle, group battle, tournament and time challenge, plus new endings for some of the original cast.

Overall it seems Super SF2 is quite a solid game which will satisfy Street Fighter fans without a doubt, and is more enjoyable than many of the other SNES fighting games, but lacks the long-lasting appeal of its predecessors due to the average visual and audio quality.