Street Fighter II The World Warrior review by Braulio Ortiz
1991 was the beginning of the arcade fighter boom that Capcom started with Street Fighter II: The World Warrior. The first game didn't gather a fan base; however, Capcom pushed the series in a new direction due to the success of Final Fight and the rest became history as Street Fighter is very much alive now with countless sequels and spin offs. If not for Street Fighter II we may have never had tournaments like Evolution Championship Series which gathers the best of the best around the world to fight it out in many fighting game franchises, with Street Fighter at the helm of the competition.
Street Fighter II's story is absurd as it gets which isn't necessarily a bad thing as hardly anyone pays attention to the story in this genre. In short, M. Bison runs an evil organization called Shadoloo so he can rule the world. Then we have Ryu who is trying to stop Bison from doing so as he believes it's the right thing to do, same for Chun-Li who works for Interpol. It's an easy story to grasp for all eight characters as each one has a goal they wish to accomplish and they all mostly surround stopping Bison for one reason or another.
The meat of Street Fighter II occurs during game play where either one player can face off against a CPU opponent or during one on one match against another person. Both players have a health bar and the first to deplete the opponent's bar wins. SFII uses six attack buttons, three punch buttons and three kick buttons that vary in strength and speed from light, medium, and heavy attacks. Eight characters were included in the original release of SFII with many others added in newer iterations of the game that followed. These characters were created to give the game diversity for the different nations of the world; however, more thought was given to the diversity rather that to the actual balancing of the game. The game is completely unbalanced, yet that doesn't distract from the fun you will have with SFII. SFII began the staple in special attacks that correspond to each individual character which includes the ubiquitous fire ball motion that is used in nearly every fighting game to date. Another important aspect in fighting games began here, the combo. Combos are part of every fighting game and it all began here as a bug in the final release of the game. The creators didn't think about fixing the bug, instead they decided it would be a nice additional bonus to anybody who finds these bugs. Now Street Fighter games are built almost entirely on the ability of combining attacks into each other.
The game's score is memorable and great, especially Ken's theme song that plays on his stage. You might have heard of Guile's popular theme as well which that too originated in this game. SFII's graphics took advantage of the hardware it was released on at the time, even now these graphics looks great and can be enjoyed by all. The many locations that the stages take place all have detailed art that show significance on what part of the world these stages might take place, including Sagat's stage that is located in Thailand with a gigantic statue of the Buddha. No matter what stage you're on, you can clearly tell what part of the world it takes place in due to the great art that Capcom worked on for the stages.
Street Fighter II: The World Warrior isn't known for its fluid combat or even balanced characters, it is known as a nostalgic trip down memory lane that paved way to the genre to excel and become what it has become today. Without Street Fighter II we might have never seen the likes of Mortal Kombat, Tekken, or even Super Smash Bros as SFII made the fighting genre a main stream name in people's houses. I'm not saying you need to pick up this game right away, what I am saying is that SFII is a legendary game that should be respected for what it did at the right time and we should all enjoy the genre today as we have dozens of fighting game series to choose from; however, if you decide to purchase a copy of SFII know that it is an unbalanced mess with great fun replay value especially with friends.