Super Street Fighter II Turbo (Arcade) review "Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo was the finale in the SF2 series. It took all eight world warriors from the original yet now decrepit classic, and added in the four playable boss characters in the upgraded to perfection Championship edition. With a turbo feature added on they created Street Fighter 2 turbo, a slicker and speedier version of Championship edition that also allowed all characters to be played. They kept squeezing the orange until they created enough juice that produced the ultimate S..."

Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo was the finale in the SF2 series. It took all eight world warriors from the original yet now decrepit classic, and added in the four playable boss characters in the upgraded to perfection Championship edition. With a turbo feature added on they created Street Fighter 2 turbo, a slicker and speedier version of Championship edition that also allowed all characters to be played. They kept squeezing the orange until they created enough juice that produced the ultimate Street Fighter 2 game, SSF2T was the biggest and the best, giving us a new character, gameplay that was a lot smoother than before and a new feature that made fighters even more deadly then before.

SSFT2 allowed you to control all of the eight world warriors, the four leaders of Shadowlaw and also the four newer characters from Super Street Fighter 2. Cammy, the militant searching for M Bison in order to find out the truth behind her past. T. Hawk, the Indian giant who wants revenge on Bison and Shadowlaw for destroying his homeland, a blatant Bruce Lee rip off, Fei Long and last but not least the ever smiling, Dee Jay, who is an interesting mix of agility and brute strength. The four are back to play along with the rest but there is also one spot left. A new character has emerged, presenting an evil even stronger than M. Bison, this character has to be unlocked and also can be a different final boss instead of Bison but I’ll discuss him a little bit later.

This version of the game preserves the classic style of Street Fighter 2 but like all upgrades, adds some new features and moves into the game. As you probably sussed out from the title, SSF2T is a lot faster than its predecessor, making moves are lot sleeker to pull off and also enhancing the power of certain moves. For example, moves like the Dragon punch and the Tiger Uppercut are so smooth and quick to pull off that they make Ken and Sagat even better than what they were before. Characters who follow their control scheme like Ryu and Dhalsim are also improved due to the control enhancement.

Characters who rely on charging moves like Guile and Bison seem to have little change in their controls, they seem to remain the same excluding that fact that they may be a touch smoother than normal. The Flash kick and Devil reverse moves by Guile and Bison seem to be easier to execute and therefore more deadly on the opponent. Apart from smoothing over old moves, Capcom gave all of the characters a few new moves as well as a brand new finishing attack. You’ll find that all of the characters will have at least one new move, excluding the super finisher. Ryu has a new underhook punch and Ken has a few new powerful kicks. As you play your favourite character you’ll notice that they have been enhanced, not just by the speed but with a few new techniques to help you secure a victory.

When you play, you will notice a small gauge at the bottom corner of your screen. It starts off as a turquoise bar than begins to fill up with orange. Every time your character pulls of a special move, the bar will begin to rise. When the whole bar gets full it turns into the words “Super” and begins to change colours and allows you to use your special move. These moves do incredible damage and if you pull them off correctly you can get a load of points and take a whole chunk of health from the opponent. However, it is easier said than done because some “Super” moves are hard to pull off because of the long and complex combination you may have to input in order to use it. Ryu and Ken seem to have the easiest ones, Ryu creates a Hadoken that is bigger, faster and stronger than the regular one and Ken performs the Shoryureppa, a Shoryuken combination.

Zangief and T. Hawk have moves that grab and throw the opponent and if the enemy tries to block it they’ll get a nasty surprise. Supers like these cannot be blocked, Zangief will just grab the cowering foe and slams his head down into the floor. It improves his character immensely as the Russian behemoth can plough through opponents with greater ease than before. The gauge system is great, giving characters more destructive attacks and enhancing the play of everyone. This new feature was possibly the first step towards next-generation 2D fighters.

If you complete the game by winning every round and collecting numerous perfects then the chances are that you will go head to head with the new character, Akuma. He was the brother of Ken and Ryu’s master and is filled with an evil power. If you pull the sequence of events off then he will destroy Bison for you but, you’ll have to go one on one with him. He plays like Ken and Ryu , using his own versions of the hadoken and the shoryuken but he seems to be a lot stronger than Ryu or Ken. Akuma can be played if you input a certain code at the character selection screen but it can be tedious as hell to pull off. Akuma seems to be the main driving force in the game, when you play the game for the first time and fail to get him, you feel motivated to play it more. If you watch the end credits, you’ll seem him appear at the end where he will stand on his toes and grunt loudly. It makes you want to put more coins in the machine so you can fight Akuma and grunt back at him.

The presentation of SSF2T is almost identical to Super Street Fighter, except that all of the characters now have different colours that you can alternate with. Ken doesn’t have his red Gi anymore, which was disappointing but he has a green one instead. Each character seems to have more brighter colours unlike the other versions. The animation is still superb but is made even better when it comes to super combos as the folk at Capcom decided to create a shadow of the character has he goes forth to do his attack. A number of grey clones of the character seem to follow his or her movements during the combo. Backgrounds are superb once again, each has plenty of animation, mainly crowds of happy people cheering the fight on. The detail here is great and although the changes made are small you can see just by looking at it that there is an improvement.

I thought that Championship edition was the perfect Street Fighter game but this game just proves me wrong. Capcom took something that was pure gold and improved that into something even better. The controls have been shined to perfection making all of the moves simple to execute, each of the characters has updated and a super finisher move. A brand new character can be unlocked and the graphics and classic music are back in better presentation than before, making this version of Street Fighter 2 the cream of the crop. The arcade version may be long gone so the chances are that you may need to buy the Hyper Street Fighter 2 game on PS2 to get it. Whatever, you do though don’t miss out on one of the greatest 2-d fighters around.

Community review by goldenvortex (November 16, 2004) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.