Posted on February 24, 2009 by DK

I remember one of my first jobs working at an arcade in the mall back in the early 90’s. In the summer during the afternoon that place was dead and I would spend my whole day playing games. Street Fighter II was the most popuar machine at that time and I got paid $5.25 an hour to play it. This game was a competitive fighting game like no other. It made complete strangers go head to head in battle right there in the mall. When there was a crowd in the Arcade they were all surrounding this machine with one guy playing for hours on one side and a line of challengers to the other just throwing their money away. Occasionally there would be that quiet little kid in the middle of the line waiting to play who know one would ever notice. Then when it was his turn he put his quarters in, picked Ryu and looked like he was a 6 ft tall super hero as he would perfect the old champion and make him walk to the back of the line in disgrace. I loved watching the drama unfold everyday with that machine. Also the longer we had the game the more skilled players would get. Crowds of people people would watch when expert players were playing so they could learn new fighting styles and techniques. The game was so deep, that ever fighter had their own strengths and weaknesses so there were unlimited strategies and every game seemed to be different depending on the fighter chosen and what type of player you were.

I was a huge Street fighter fan and I am always excited to see new games but wasn’t too thrilled with this. I stopped playing Street Fighter when it hit the Super Nintendo and thought they couldn’t get better that this. With the SNES they made the game with graphics identical to the Arcade and the controls were perfect. Playing the game with the Super Nintendo controller felt very fluid and was a great experience. Playing Street fighter or any of the arcade titles using the Xbox 360 controller is a pain. The thumb pad on that controller was not intended for playing games. I don’t know what it was for but they should just get rid of it. I guess the 360 has some kind of arcade controller you can buy for these games so that is an option. But the main issue I have for this game besides it being 20 years later and its still the same exact game that I would rather play on my SNES, is that every fighter looks like Barry Bonds. Is steroids the in look nowadays?

Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo for the Super Nintendo System

Anyways Street Fighter is an awesome game series. If you have never played it you should pick it up because it has to be one of the greatest games ever made. Any game that can last 20+ years and not change the gameplay at all is an amazing achievement in itself.