Street Fighter

UNDER-CONTROL






Probably only but a few would believe that the Street Fighter franchise had an actual first episode before its second, an implausible time-warp occurrence to start this phenomena of rampant arcade dominance off.

Though Capcom's 1987 effort possesses significant chance of being interpreted as a massively coarse fighting experience when examined today, - and sorry, we missed the chance of examining it yesterday, or, did we? - it actually defines trademark focal solutions that do solidify further in consecutive games. Little if any doubt is present though that future 2D Fighters are more subtle, more sophisticated and more sane than this prime originator is. I tend to think that sane is a proper word in this case indeed, as, though Street Fighter starts the fray off, rudimentary controls and limited playability make this classic both an essential retro output AND a mild pain in every sitorgan.

Enjoy and Read on!




Street Fighter gives you two characters to play as: Ryu, or Ken. Though, by default, only Ryu seems to be selectable. If you would like to play as Ken, then you need to challenge and defeat the Ryu Player. In case she/he exhibits no interest to insert coin again, then you can go on to demonstrate your Street Fighter skill set against the CPU. And a skill set, you WILL need, Young Padawan.

Street Fighter dictates a quite furious pace that forces players to develop universal defense- and attack strategies. This might include inserting keyboard/control pad into monitor for bonus fireworks and related smoke effect. Once these "specials" are properly sought out and mastered, then the game reveals its coarse charm to you. Distance from the enemy is everything in Street Fighter, the mere factor that determines which one of the furiously paced attacks will connect. It seems same 'nuff of a bet to back off from the CPU, which has a tendency to attack rampantly and constantly, so there is quite immense potential in countering.

As you will see, three, tops four attacks easily do weight a KO herein, especially if you score these hits by introducing one of the Specials the game is aware of and offers. We will see into those later. Considering the speed of the game which desperately tries to conceal the rudimentary animation, the pace of the rounds is furious. Also fast. Though rigorous distancing from the enemy is your best friend herein, that particular factor changes dramatically with all the intense jump-around the game usually exhibits. That is: either you or the enemy will jump. Ducking and relying on Specials are always better solutions then forwarding up to your opponent to deliver basic ground attacks, as speed is so senselessly swift that even Terence "Super Snooper" Hill would need TWO coins to kick the CPU's butt in pure standup. And, let me tell you that this circumstance suggest a difficulty level that requires skill levels well beyond Godlike proportions.

Worths a try though, nevertheless: check how long you can last against the CPU on the ground, if you do play a game of - khm, khm - concept and - khm, khm - strategy. As a result of the supercoarse animation and pairing speed, you won't have the chance to block upper and lower level attacks consciously. This is not what the creators anticipate from you, either. You can usually get away from those situations via attacking the lower section of your rival quite cheaply yet systematically, but, if you stand up with him - no precious creatures in this here game - then sooner or later he will bash your blob in, trust me. Let alone that there are characters in the game you do not want spend a moment against with your head kept in normal, standup-height position.



Street Fighter invites participants to jump around like crazy to soften the rival up by airborne attacks, and/or to duck and unleash low level attacks towards incoming or approaching opposition. Yet, organizing yourself to defense on the ground is a ritual to commit risk free suicide - HAH! - in this game.

Since animation is rather far from being extremely fluent, the game conceals this particular deficit with the well developed speed we already hinted at. Amazingly, Street Fighter's system is both ruthless and rudimentary enough to punish you with pretty much instant KO in case you made two mistakes in a row. Third mistake? Forget about it, as those who make a third mistake in this game, won't have much to worry about anymore. All in all, it is totally possible to be flattened out in the blink of an eye, which I think is OK and funny, yet, especially when you first play the game without prior experience of it, then the CPU can be very effective at cornering you into a rather dire situation where it spanks a Win on your butt with ease. Those are the moments you should start inventing your countering methods in, though.



As you may have guessed already via the image above, the game has bonus sequences and there is an impressive amount of enemies to batter up or to be battered by, too. If you are a Street Fighter II fan, then you will see very familiar faces apart from Ryu and Ken. If you are a HUGE Street Fighter II fan, then you surely do lie to me now as you should play SF2 this very moment.

What I find rather unfortunate about Street Fighter is the implementation of the Specials. These maneuvers are extremely circumstantial to invoke. They may seem to demonstrate a truly rhapsodic behavior, yet, in reality, it is more about the exact precision of the timing they do require. The timing of the proper directions and button push, that is. I could perform the three Street Fighter Specials of Ryu: the Dragon Punch, the Hurricane Kick, and this trademark projectile attack. I don't think he has more, though I am keen and ready to be pleasantly disappointed. In case I am wrong, please educate me and benefit other visitors, too.

Though Guides to Street Fighter seem to be as rare as pink elephants with quantum dissolving capabilities - that means: I could not find one - the Street Fighter II commands for Ryu do seem to work herein. DO SEEM, I sorrowfully cite. Remember that the required precision is truly unnecessary, so you will probably end up doing those Specials by your particular way. You know, the way it seems to work for you, for most of the time. Yet the SF2 Ryu moves are useful guides, no doubt. As for Street Fighter Ken: his capabilities and related Specials are an amazing treasury of ancient puzzles and enigmatic mysteries, eager to be thoroughly explored and subtly solved by the dear mamereview.blogspot.com visitor. Hey, ever saw a useful link before?



At the end of the day, one must admit and conclude that Street Fighter has a certain humorless, grouchy charm to it, though it is rather improbable that the game will digest your unconditioned devotion to it with keen appreciation. Which is a shame, because the game could have been - I truly do not worship "could have been"s - a rather stable, though vicious game if it would have exhibited a responsive, user friendly control method to invoke Specials, let alone the absence of a full, playable character roster. I sure do realize that the game comes from 1987, a time in which a full character roster was an implausible mental invention. Now, was it? No, it was not. As, in fact, Street Fighter delivers you a full character roster. Yet, it delivers you a character roster only to bash apart, and not as to play as its components.

With its exceptionally intense and semi-coarse flow, the game delivers massive early deficits, as balance was not yet a major consideration of a genre that just been born with this effort. Thus, as mentioned previously: sometimes it is but a blink of an eye, and someone flattens out. In a terrible world without mistakes, you would certainly say that Street Fighter manages to offer its deficits as charms, but this is not exactly the case this time around. It remains good fun to combat the CPU, but the incapacity to play as included characters is always a hurtful condition to die with. Let alone live with.



If you enjoyed this here article, check out my comic: Planetseed
If you are to circulate magnificently pleasant vibrations: Buy me Beer