61| Super Street Fighter II Turbo
Released: February 23rd, 1994
Definitive Version: Arcade; Also on: PC, PS3, Xbox 360, PS2, Xbox, PS, Saturn, 3DO, GBA
How does one even begin to describe Street Fighter II's legacy on the industry. Not only did it extend the lifespan on traditional arcade by a couple of extra years and that it single handedly created the modern fighting game genre, but it also was the spearhead of the competitive video game scene. There is quite a legacy the Street Fighter franchise brings to gaming, and this years EVO record turnout of 4,000+ for its latest entry manages to reinforce that. Due to the game being so influential there have been countless of games inspired by it that have tried to improve its basic formula. How well can a entry that first came out twenty five years ago stand the test of time? Pretty damn well it turns out.
Even today Street Fighter II is being played by about 50 people online right now as I type. During peak hours that number doubles. Despite having dozens more quality modern options available to players, so many still choose the original entries that started it all. Why? Well as someone who occasionally joins them, I feel that I can explain. In short, Street Fighter II takes away all of the fluff found in many fighting games that came after it. Fighting games today are plagued with assists, parries, combobreakers, counters, clashes, bursts, rolls, and what have you. In addition to that there are many moves where the player can maneuver to one end of the screen to the other, as well as attacks that can cover a considerable amount distance very quickly. Street Fighter II takes these things away. In Super Turbo you simply have your normal attacks, combos, a throw, and a super move. That is it, there is nothing else. This leads to the game having significantly stronger mind games than your typical fighting game.
It's often referred to as a "footsie" game for a reason. The meat of the game isn't memorizing combos or executing complex moves, it is about reading your opponent as you try to position yourself to have the edge on the ground floor. Due to this every move has to be carefully timed, calculated, and in all honesty guessed to the greatest accuracy. This isn't to say that modern fighting games don't do these things, it's just that Super Turbo puts so much focus toward it. While there has been much gained from all of the extra features and abilities modern fighting games present, there is something lost that is more present in classic fighting games like Street Fighter II.
Other than that, there isn't much more to say. It's Street Fighter II. It has Ryu, Chun-Li, M.Bison, Sagat, E. Honda, Dhalism, Zangief, Blanka, Ken, Vega, Balrog, and Guile. What some people don't remember or know, is that Street Fighter II added more characters after these twelve. This is mostly due to the fact that Super Street Fighter II, the game that introduced four new characters, was the only entry released on the popular home consoles, and was done so relatively late in the systems lives. As a result the game didn't sell nearly as well as The World Warriors, Champion Edition, or Turbo did. Super Street Fighter II added Dee Jay, T. Hawk, Fei Long, and the beloved Cammy to the roster. Super Turbo added Akuma as a secret character. Being honest, I always felt that Dee Jay and Fei Long were both so generic that they just couldn't appeal to me. While Akuma just seemed a bit too "dark" for Street Fighter II character. Though I felt that T. Hawk and Cammy fit right in with the rest of the cast however.
One strange thing about Super Turbo in particularly is that it is difficult to select the original colors of each character. For example Ryu's "default" color scheme in Super Turbo is gray and yellow. You can select each character's original color however,but only after inputting a specific code tied to each character. I don't know the purpose of this, possibly it was one more way to "shake things up" as it was the fifth version of Street Fighter II. Or maybe it was a way to get more quarters from players as they likely tried multiple times to figure out the code to unlock their preferred character's classic color scheme. Though I would be lying if I didn't believe that some characters looked pretty damn good in their alternative colors.
Super Street Fighter II Turbo is simply the go to version of Street Fighter II. There have been some updates applied to the game series since. The first was Hyper Street Fighter II which came packed in Street Fighter Anniversary Collection. It was suppose to be the main coarse of the pack-in which allowed players to choose not only which character play as, but which version as well. For example one person could play as Ryu with all of his Super Turbo moves and abilities and go against someone who wants to play as M. Bison with his Champion Edition moves and abilities. It seemed to work great in theory, but at the end of the day people felt it made the game more complicated than it should have. It likely didn't help that in the long run it was overshadowed by a game put on the same disc at the last minute for the Western release. There was also Street Fighter II HD Remix which was hyped up a lot during release as it was 2D HD redrawing of Super Street Fighter II with some minor changes to gameplay. But some months after release people just went back to Super Turbo.
Maybe it's because it was the last Street Fighter II update for quite some time so it is what people are used to, or that it was the last "official" arcade release so people consider it the definitive version, or maybe that it is quite simply the best version of the game. Whatever it is Super Turbo is the most played version of Street Fighter II out of the many available. Twenty five years after the first game's release Street Fighter II is still regularly played by old bloods and new ones alike. It is a game with a lot of pull and appeal and could possibly still have a good amount of life left in it still.