#28: Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting (1993, SNES)

You won't see me review many traditional fighting games because, simply put, I don't like them very much (and thus own very few of them). While I certainly respect the sort of dedication exhibited by fighting game fans - the dedication needed to master combos and special moves (I liked to use this programmable controller I had, which had all the special moves mapped to buttons for me) and the investment in joysticks and all of that, these things hold very little sway with me. I prefer (greatly) the sorts of titles I can just jump in and play - and acquit myself pretty well without exerting much of an effort into improving my 'skills'.

Now, I am a pretty quick learner. When given a new game, I can get up to speed quicker than most - meaning in the early rounds of a new competitive type game, I'll probably be ahead early. My lack of patience for intricacies or for improving my skills, however, usually means I stagnate at that level and find myself pretty quickly surpassed. Now, with some genres with which I am deeply familiar (first person shooters, platformers) I am actually able to develop some skill - the skills which tend to be common amongst differing titles in these genres. In other titles where there may not be a lot of depth or advanced skills to learn (Bomberman, Mario Kart) my difficulty in advancing to a more elite level is also not an issue.

I'm saying all this to basically set up the fact that it is difficult for me to properly review something like Street Fighter II Turbo because it just isn't a genre I play or enjoy much. In other words, I'm disclosing that I'm pretty biased against it. Objectively I can recognize that it does a lot of things right - precise control, strong presentation. I can also recognize that it is a pretty dramatic improvement over the first edition of Street Fighter II on the SNES - more options, and the addition of the 4 'boss' characters for use by the player. It's a game that I can recognize the craftsmanship involved, and one that I've certainly had fun with (especially matched with equally unskilled opponents) - which given that I just don't care for this kind of game is about as hearty an endorsement as you're likely to get from me.



I want to make a special note of the soundtrack, specifically as it pertains to the game music remix community. You'd be hard pressed to find a 16-bit era soundtrack that was more... in the background then that of Street Fighter II (or fighting games in general) - it just isn't something one really hears while playing - there is too much going on on screen. Yet it has berthed some of the better remixes out there - witness the excellent Blood on the Asphalt album. Meanwhile, the Final Fantasy series has excellent music, yet hasn't lent itself nearly as well. Part of this is surely that Final Fantasy's music - light on beat and heavy on melody - doesn't lend itself to the styles of music commonly seen in the remix community. But a big part of it for Street Fighter II would be, if I hazarded a guess, that in part because it is so low-key in terms of what you hear while playing, and so lacking in terms of strong stand-out melody, that it provides the remixes an excellent jumping off point. The same thing is seen in comparing Sonic music remixes and Mario music remixes - Sonic's low key melodies, combined with the Genesis hardware's problems with producing sounds that sound like something other than the Genesis hardware provides the perfect jumping off point for remixers (witness the also excellent Hedgehog Heaven or Project Chaos).

Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting
Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Capcom
Released: August 1993
Obtained: Christmas 1993

8.0/10

#34: Super Play Action Football (1992, SNES)

Interesting to think that whereas today it is considered appropriate to have separate football games for the professional and college games, at the SNES launch one was deemed sufficient. I'd dwell more on this if I had ever really touched the pro or college modes in Super Play Action Football, but I didn't. Why? Because in the High School Mode, I could name my own team and pick the colors of their uniforms, that's why.

When it comes to sports games, I'm pretty much completely a create-a-team junkie. Despite the fact that I follow professional sports extensively, I never feel compelled to control real players when playing sports games. There is just something about the fact that they are real players that turns me off - there is no room for me to invent characteristics, like playing style or role on the team, around someone that actually exists and for whom those traits are already in place. This has pretty much always been the case with me. On NBA Showdown, one of the first sports games I played extensively, I played most of a season using a Charlotte Hornets team after first swapping many of their starters with starters on other teams, then by promoting some of their bench players to the starting lineup (specifically Kenny Gattison). The result was that I was left with a squad with so little resemblance to anything real that I could then effectively call it my own. Thus Kenny Gattison averaged 38 ppg and Scott Skiles led the league in assists.

Now, while Super Play Action football may have sparked my love affair with creating my own team, unfortunately the game itself is somewhat... lacking. For starters, you have a very zoomed in perspective - fine unless you want to say, pass the football. This isn't a problem on easy mode (high school mode), but good luck spotting the open receiver in collegiate or pro modes. Yes, you have a nice little mini-map showing your targeted receiver and indicating if there are any other little dots near him - but to expect the player to be following this map while also looking for the rush is a bit much. Also, it is so zoomed in you can't even look at your receivers coming off the line to see if they've been picked up by a defender (unlike in say, Tecmo Bowl). The result is that, unless you want to see yourself get picked off a lot you'll be doing a lot of short passes, or a lot of keeping yourself exposed in the pocket. The harder difficulties also resulted in a pretty dramatic increase in the complexity of the playbooks - again, a good idea for a game that allows you to exploit these complex routes and schemes, not as good an idea in something that throws barriers in front of you on the most rudimentary gameplay levels.



Now, this isn't to say it wasn't fun to run up the score in easy mode - it was. But compared to say, the Tecmo Bowl series (of which I was unacquainted with at the time), these sorts of qualifiers aren't necessary.

Super Play Action Football
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo R&D 1
Released: August 1992
Obtained: Sometime in 1994

5.0/10