I'm reading that this version only contains six of the original eight fighters. Much like the portable versions of Mortal Kombat, someone had to get the axe. Who would they pick? Normally I'd guess Blanka and Dhalsim; The latter would probably be harder to program than the other characters due to his long reach, while the former never struck me as a particularly popular character. I've never heard anyone talk about how much they love Blanka, or seen anyone playing as Blanka. ...he's on the box, though, so it was probably E-Honda and Dhalsim that got dropped due to their unconventional proportions. Well, let's find out.
Sad news for the wrestling community this week, as the US Air Force mistakenly launched an airstrike on "The Ayatollah of Rock and Rolla" Chris Jericho. WHEN IS IT ALL ENOUGH?
Yet another in the pool of games I wanted as a kid (didn't get it) primarily because the SNES version wasn't available to me (too expensive, etc). When you couldn't play "the real deal", you had to make Game Boy versions of things work, and kids in the same category as me got really good at making it work.
Another way we made it work: Back then you couldn't google who was open, much less have online retailers to order from. You had to keep a list of the phone numbers of the 3-4 video game stores within drivable distance, and every time you wanted a game, you went down the list calling all those stores until you found one that actually had it in stock. Weirdly enough, it was pretty hard to find particular games back then, even if they were fairly new. Sometimes I just had to wait until someone actually had a game in stock, which could take weeks - this is what happened with Link's Awakening, most notably.
Nine selectable characters. It's surprising that most of the bosses are selectable even though they didn't give us all of the regular characters. So who got dropped? Dhalsim and... E. Honda, I was right. Looks like they also dropped Vega, which I would argue is the biggest loss. Seems like it would have made a lot more sense to leave Vega in and just have M. Bison not be playable, given that he's the final boss.
Going with Guile first to take on the Russian Bear. May the wings of liberty never lose a feather.
Visually, this actually looks pretty damn good. I did NOT expect this, especially after the disaster of Mortal Kombat on Game Boy. They did a very good job with the graphics, so this game would look great in screenshots and magazine ads. Unfortunately, while it punches above its weight on graphics, it loses a lot of steam the moment the fighting actually starts. More about that in a moment.
USA! USA!
Always thought Guile's portrait looked goofy. One of the reasons I've never considered him the main character of SFII and always liked Ryu (and Ken) more.
Next up. Guile infiltrates the jungle to take on Blanka. Seriously, does anyone actually main Blanka? Like is he anyone's favorite character? Never saw anyone playing as this guy when I was a kid. Pretty much everyone else was popular, though Dhalsim and Zangief were two others that I think people undersold.
SONIC BOOM!
Here's the secret to victory in Street Fighter II for Game Boy: Projectile attacks.
Generally, whoever can spam projectile attacks the quickest is going to pull off wins. They do a lot of damage (special moves in general do). I found the specials pretty easy to pull off in this game, which was nice and a little surprising.
The problems with the moment to moment gameplay mainly came down to the collision and the framerate. The framerate is too bad for it to be any sort of serious fighting game, and the collision / hit-detection makes it hard to land strikes with precision. If two characters attack at around the same time, it seems to be totally random which one of them actually counts, and sometimes they just cancel each other out and neither lands. Jump attacks are very floaty, hard to aim, and again it seems like luck whether they land or not.
Chun Li has her later throwing animation where she really puts oomph into it and thrusts her nethers into the air. She didn't have this animation until Super Street Fighter II (1994) which immediately dates this game as being well after the other versions (and explains why the game is as decent as it is... if it had come out in 1991 it would have probably been atrocious).
That said, 1995 seems kind of...late for a SFII portable version. The Game Boy was a bit old hat by this point, the SNES was 3 versions in, Arcades were well beyond that...people weren't SFII-starved like they would have been in, say, 1993.
The music in this version is actually shockingly good. Here's Guile's theme.
I switch characters and give Ryu a go. Guile never really gelled with me in the past and still doesn't now. His moves require charging in this version (holding a button for two seconds) and I really wasn't crazy about it. Sonic Booms weren't too bad to pull off, but I couldn't get a reliable Flash Kick going to save my life.
Ryu's Hadoken is much easier to pull off, ironically, given I used to have issues with this move. It's no problem in this version.
New character defeats old character and gets his Quickening.
Now for the BIG battle, Ryu vs Ken. Who is the true franchise player? It's like Bret vs Owen.
Right now I could be playing Ultra Street Fighter II instead... it's definitely on the list for later.
"LET'S SEE YOU DAAAAANCE SUCKA YOU GOT NOTHIN ON ME"
The Hurricane Kick is very easy to pull off and functions as a jump attack repellent. Just being able to do it reliably means everything when the Flash Kick was so difficult.
"I ALSO have the Dragon Punch, doofus!"
At the bosses already. Balrog has the same dash punch as Spark Mandrill from Mega Man X (though I've rarely actually seen Spark Mandrill do that move because he spends the entire fight frozen)
Always liked Balrog a lot. This game has a bunch of appealing characters; half the success of both SFII and Mortal Kombat probably came down to how appealing their rosters and world were. MK has that Big Trouble In Little China mystical world where all kinds of crazy things go on, while SFII is a more grounded fighting tournament world tour. Both of them were cultivated by the martial arts movie genre of the era.
We skip right over Vega. Is Vega chopped liver?
Sagat is the master of the Tiger Fireball, and has a very long reach. He was really fearsome in that one Van Damme movie.
Hell, he makes most of the cast look like kids in comparison.
In Street Fighter 1, this guy was the final boss. No one really talks about Street Fighter 1 anymore; it's forgotten to history, basically replaced entirely by the Alpha prequel series in terms of story continuity / chronology. There's a good reason for all of that... SF1 is pretty terrible. But that too is a story for later.
M. Bison moves very fast and definitely fights like an overpowered boss character, which makes it surprising that he's selectable.
Couldn't get a shot of his Psycho Crusher, but here's a shot of his energy punch.
There we go, another game in the can. Surprised I never played this before now, given that it was on my radar when it first came out.
No special endings or anything, but congratulations is spelled right so this definitely got that extra sheen of polish.
So in the grand scheme of things, how does this stack up for fighters on the Game boy? It's a small pool and, generally speaking, a pretty bad pool. I've said before that Mortal Kombat II and Killer Instinct are the two best fighters I've played on Game Boy. Well, this isn't as good as either of those, but it isn't bad either, and is certainly ahead of anything else I played on the system. It's still definitely one of the worse versions of Street Fighter II and not something I'd reach for under any circumstances besides "only thing available" and "playing it for a post". Unlike the other two mentioned games, which are worth playing on their own just to see how the system pulled them off.
Overall at this point, for Game Boy fighting games I'd say:
3. Street Fighter II
2. Mortal Kombat II
1. Killer Instinct
^ All of the above came out in late 94 or 95, so the Game Boy development cycle seems to have hit a bit of a stride by then.
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