A Classic Fighting Game
Looking back at Street Fighter's most famous incarnation, Street Fighter II, from today's perspective, while still fun to play, even if it's just to bring back memories of your child hood, it does suffer from it's fair share of flaws.
Some of the game's crowning achevements are it's graphics and game play. The game play is lightning fast, and very well ballanced, thanks in part ot it's excellent controls. Character wise, Street Fighter II has eight chooseable fighters: Gule, Zangief, Ryu, Ken, Blanka, E. Honda, Chun-Li and Dalsiem, in later updates the character roster was expanded to include such fan favorites as Cammy and M. Bison. Graphics wise, Street Fighter II is very impressive, the characters are rendered in a style similar to that of Japanese Anime.
However the graphics also prove to be one of the games weak spots. Unlike the MK series, the back grounds never change when you refight a match, after losing and the cartoon like character renderings can at times add a child like feel to the game. Street Fighter II also suffers from the "re-relesed syndrom" and it's this aspect that ultimatly underminds the game. In addition to the core verson of Street Fighter II there are so many updates to the same game that it's not even funny. The updates would have been good, had they done more then just new characters.
Dispite it's short comings, Street Fighter II is one of the all time classics of video games, and is well worth checking out, especally for die hard fighting game and Street Fighter fans.