For a game many haven't heard about, it will amaze with its graphics, music, and challenge.
The night I bought this game was the last night I was on my NES ban due to some adolescent awkwardness that got me in trouble, so I couldn’t play it right away. I ended up waking up in the middle of the night to fire it up. The graphics were impressive and the sound and music were excellent. The things that kind of threw me for a loop were the short levels and the massive difficulty. Street Fighter 2010 wasn’t like any other game I was used to. Most of the levels were in spurts and some even only consisted of being limited to a non-scrolling level. It would take me awhile before I would get used to these relatively unorthodox level designs. The game also leaned on the difficult side. When you hit a spot on the game that was difficult, it was like hitting a brick wall. Controlling the character was part of the challenge. Fighting a boss with the control scheme made for some difficult times. This game also suffered from what I call the Gradius effect, which is, leveling up early in the game makes the later levels tolerable, but if you die and lose all your power then you are better off starting over then playing a later level at minimum power. Typically, frustrating difficulty coupled with unconventional game design would steer me away, but the cool graphics and moody, atmospheric music caused me to play the game until I finally beat it. This was one of the first games that I completed that I felt I accomplished something in the gaming world. At first I was just happy beating the game, until I saw an ad for the game that literally said it was hard to beat. Then after hearing other people say how hard it was, I knew I managed to beat a truly hard game.
For being a relatively unknown game, it shows that Capcom could make a mean game even if it wasn’t Mega Man. I still hold a place in my gaming heart for this game. I do wish that if I could walk around boasting of my accomplishment beating this game, that I would have a harem of gaming groupies. Unfortunately, that day will never come.