There have definitely been worse movie tie-ins over the years.
To say that SFTM follows the plot of the movie would be an overstatement, since the movie pretty much lacked one (oh snap!). The backgrounds from the movie are there, the characters are all present, but its business as usual in the Street Fighter universe as the same tournament layout applies. You can choose between 14 characters right off the bat, with four more hidden and waiting to be found. You can unlock these characters in very MKish ways such as going to certain characters on the select screen in a certain order, or entering specific level kodes, er, codes. Har har. Your goal is to fight through all 14 characters (including one fight against your twin) and beat the game against Bison, that is, if you're not playing as Bison.
While the basic gameplay is based off of Super Street Fighter II Turbo, it seems limited and void of any depth that the Street Fighter franchise is known for. Part of me blames the digitized graphics. Is it me or all digitized games feel stiff and shallow in a way? Name me one digitized game (aside from MKII) that doesn't feel stiff, and sir or madam; I'll tip my hat to you and then proceed to eat my own head from the inside out.
Another aspect that keeps the game from being nearly as enjoyable is the AI which teeters between cheap and dumb. Nearly all of your opponents will go down easily if you jump kick then sweep over and over again. Others will go down if you sit in one spot and constantly sweep, they'll just keep walking into it. Once in a while, your opponent will have a transformation of Hulk Hogan proportions where they'll hulk up and start throwing out twelve hit combos one after another followed by a super move to put you away. They also like to walk up to you while you're down and perform moves as soon as you get up only for you to fall back down and have them repeat the process.
While the gameplay seems a little lacking in some areas, SFTM was the first game in the series to allow juggling as well as the fact that it pioneered the Alpha counter that the Alpha games were known for (known here as interrupt moves). It also added a couple of new elements to the gameplay such as desperation moves, which randomly give you increased power on fireballs, etc. and regeneration moves which allow you to gain some energy back. While the latter two have yet to be seen in a Street Fighter game again, the first two have become series staples.
Nearly all of the moves from the previous Street Fighter games are in tact, though a couple are missing or have been replaced. Cammy performs a whip choke move which would look pretty vicious if there were more feeling in the game's acting. Most of the moves on the game's digitized characters end up looking cheesy, overly unnatural, and covered with cheesy bright pixel effects.
Digitized graphics were definitely a sign of the times in 1995, since everyone was doing it, whether it was Johnny Cage, Claymation, or Batman. SFTM was one of the more impressive digitized games, which I'd even go as far to say that it looked better than Mortal Kombat 3. The characters were large and looked real (when they weren't performing the over-the-top moves) and had more frames of animation than their MK counterparts, which made the animations very fluid. Most of the backgrounds looked great; some even featured some neat effects like quasi-reflective floors and full motion video from the movie playing on giant TV screens. Other backgrounds looked thrown together and horrible. Other stages look like the characters are super imposed on postcards that you'd find on the "free" table at some highway souvenir ship.
Visually, the game seemed like an homage from Capcom to the Mortal Kombat series more than it felt like its own game. There's one stage with two of the game's characters chained up and struggling (sound like anything familiar, MKII fans?), but the icing on the cake is the spiked platform in between the two prisoners with an impaled soldier. Then again, it can't be THAT similar, can it?
Well I'll be, that level sums up about 50% of MKII's content all together, as far as similarity, that's up to you. In other stages you'll have characters lurking in the background, similar to the living forest and pit levels in MKII, or neat little secrets like shooting the birds on the postcard stage. In addition to these neat little secrets, you'll also be able to unlock a plethora of little secrets like hidden life bars, turning the screen upside down and backwards, “wacky” controls, etc. While SFTM doesn't have “Kombat Kodes”, it's all very MKish in execution.
The game's sound doesn't fare any better, as all of the music sounds similar to another all-too-familiar game I've previously mentioned, as it all has an Asian influenced militant theme going on. Voice acting is done well, but doesn't quite live up to the memorable voices heard in the series. Ken and Ryu don't sound alike as Ken will yell everything in English like “dragon!” and “hurricane!” which is for better or worse depending on your opinion. The random grunts from the characters all sound good, though they also sound like they came from that other game as well.
While Street Fighter: The Movie borrowed from other games in the genre and adopted a graphical style that was “en vogue” at the time, it's not a bad attempt at a movie game. I just don't really feel right in calling it a cash-in game more than I like calling it a knockoff. It joins the ranks of Zelda II, Ikari Warriors III, and Double Dragon V as a black sheep that people either love or hate. Versions were released for the Saturn as well as the Playstation, though they may be hard to find nowadays. If you've never heard of it, give it a try, you just might like it.