This is the second and last Street Fighter game on the Megadrive, and it is the best. It is a conversion of the arcade game Super Street Fighter 2, which was released one year previously. Super Street Fighter 2 was an update to Street Fighter 2 Turbo which main features was the fact that there were four brand new characters to play as.
Now you have to think how they did this. If people were saying that a normal version of Street Fighter 2 would be pushing the Megadrive to its limits, how on Earth would they fit a good conversion of Super Street Fighter 2 on a cartridge?
The answer? Make the cartridge size bigger. Super Street Fighter 2 is a 40 meg cart, which is the biggest ever released on the Megadrive, and it is nearly twice as big as Street Fighter '2 SCE. And when you start playing the game, you'll see where all of the memory went.
Every fighter from the arcade is present, including the eight classic world warriors (Ryu, E.Honda, Blanka, Guile, Ken, Chun Li, Zangief and Dhalsim) plus the four bosses (Balrog, Vega, Sagat and M.Bison) and the four new challengers (Fei Long, Dee Jay, Cammy and T.Hawk) Every move from the arcade is present, although animation is still missing (no-one has their backward movement animation, for example) However, new moves and animation for the old fighters (Ryu's new fireball move, for example) are in the game.
The game plays exactly how it did before, so it's best of two fights. In the super battle mode you will face random opponents until you get to the four bosses, after defeating M.Bison (the last boss) you will get your fighter's ending (if you the difficulty level is high enough of course) Along the way there are bonus games to play, which are also the same as before (car smash, wall smash and barrel smash)
The stages have all been re-drawn, most look better and more arcade like (Guile's has some more detail on it) The stages all suit for where they are suppose to be, and quite a lot of them have background animation, which makes it feel like you are in a real fight.
Super Street Fighter 2 arcade's music was all remixed tunes, that sounded worse than in Street Fighter 2 Turbo but were still quite good. The music has been converted well to the Megadrive, but to be honest I thought that Street Fighter 2: SCE's music sounded better. Apart from Ryu's music, which has to be the best conversion of that tune I have heard. I think all of the sound effects are present, including all of the voice samples. Because there are that many voice samples, Capcom have had to tone the quality of the voices down, and this is probably the worst part of the game.
Capcom have added a few other modes, other than the super battle mode. There is the VS. mode for two players, team battle mode, where you and a human opponent have to pick more than 1 fighter and then battle it out King of Fighters style, tournament mode, which can have up to eight players (you take it in turns, obviously) and another mode, challenge, where you can try at beating a task, such as beating a CPU opponent in a certain time.
Again, you will not be getting the most out of this game if you only have a 3 button pad. If you do it is the same way of doing things as before, with the start button used to change between punch and kick. This is a very poor way to play the game, so if you get this game make sure you invest in 2 six button pads first. Special moves are done as in the same way as before, and the control system still works in the same way, with three punch and kick buttons.
A major complaint with the arcade version of Super Street Fighter 2 was the fact that it was very slow compared to Street Fighter 2 Turbo. Capcom have listened to players, and for this version have included a hidden turbo mode! This makes the game better for Street Fighter 2 Turbo players.
There are not really any bad points about this game, apart from the cheating AI opponents (they cheat when doing special moves) This is almost certainly the best fighting game on the Megadrive so get this game if you are looking out for some top 2D beat 'em up action. Even if you have the previous version this is still worth getting. It is a very good conversion and shows how much the Megadrive could do if it was pushed to it's full potential.
