Street Fighter (US version)
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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US version. Different programming team, different everything

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You are Ryu, a Street Fighter. Your goal is to travel to 5 countries (Japan, USA, England, China and Thailand) and beat 2 enemies at each of them. Many of these characters, such as Adon, Gen, and Birdie, are later seen in the Street Fighter Alpha series.

After each country you will have the chance to get additional points in a little bonus round, a feature seen later in most Street Fighter games. 

The final boss in the game is Sagat, who is the second to the last boss in Street Fighter 2. The goal is to become the greatest fighter in the world. As with most tournament fighting games once you have defeated the boss the game will reset and start from the beginning with a harder difficulty level. 

It is possible to start a two player game but there will be only one fight (between the two players) which will determine who will travel the globe to fight the computer controlled opponents.

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Description from the packaging:

So you think you're mean enough? Eight bad dudes say otherwise.
Do battle in the back alleys of the Big Apple. In the shadow of ancient Chinese temples. In not so jolly old England. And win the grudging respect of eight of the toughest, meanest street fighters on the planet.

Forget everything you know about playing by the rules. This is strictly survival of the fittest!
You'll need power, speed, and plenty of street smarts. Watch out for Geki and his Ninja weapons. Birdie's lethal head butt. And the flying scissors kick of Gen.
You've got a few tricks up your karate sleeve too- a martial arts arsenal that includes hurricane kicks and dragon punches. Don't hold back even for an instant.
Take on 8 of the world's toughest street fighters, one fight at a time.
No-holds barred, best two-out-of-three competition.
Fight in England, China, Japan, or the US.

Punch, kick, block, or duck punches, deliver karate chops and flying kicks- just like a real street fighter.
Defeat all 8 fighters and get set for the ultimate street battle- your final test.
No fancy hotels or five-star restaurants on your itinerary. The only sights you'll see are the baddest dudes on any street corner anywhere.
Dodge the lethal Ninja weapons of Geki.
Try a roundhouse kick against an English street tough fighter.
Fight in China against the incredible speed of Lee.

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Whatever one's feelings on the Street Fighter franchise might be, one would be hard pressed to find a worse version than what GO! delivered, and so, I'm pretty sure I'm surprising nobody when I tell you the US version by US Gold is... better than the UK version. 

The key word here being "better". Not necessarily "good". But effort still needs to be acknowledged, and US Gold's effort here is clearly the better one. 

For one, this version looks so much better than GO!'s attempt that it's not even funny. It's got backgrounds that doesn't look like paint being farted out of someone's asshole, and the characters are easily recognisable as themselves, even if they look like vertically squished versions of the same, as if they came straight from a crossover deal with Squish 'em. Playing through the game quickly (with cheats on), I also saw that fight animation were also quite well done, even if they lost the scrolling of the arcade version. The opponents' moves that I was never really sure if they did in the UK version were clearly performed here. Even the background all look pretty good. I was a bit sad to see that the Chinese wall being replaced with a relatively nondescript city street, but it's still a nice background altogether. 

The game even has pretty nice music now, and even individual scores for each character instead of the incessant drone that was the music for GO!'s version. On top of that, you even get impact sounds for when you or your opponent make a hit, which leaves nothing up to ambiguity. This does mean that the game's multiload loads between each character, but if that saves the game from ending up like the UK version, it's a sacrifice I'd make any day. 

All that sounds swell so far, but as I said in the beginning; the US version of Street Fighter falls short of being considered "good". And, sadly, that all has to do with the actual gameplay. For instance, one thing that becomes clear from the get-go is that the characters, instead of moving freely around the arena, move doing these small hops. Those just make any kind of timing hard, to say the least, especially when you go up against Geki and his projectile attacks. It also makes jumping attacks a pain, because instead of letting you do the attack in the middle of the jump, you have to decide whether you want to do a jumping attack or just a jump when you actually do it. I'm uncertain whether there are any downsides to just making the attack when you jump, but it would have been better if one could throw in the attack while in the air instead of having to make that distinction before even leaving the ground. 

I'm also uncertain how the game deals with the one-button setup fully, but joystick direction is what decides whether something will be a punch or a kick, which works reasonably well. Unfortunately, due to the "moving through hopping" thing, this means that most of your moves are better made from a stationary position, and since when did a fighting game ever benefit from that sort of thing? You can't even call it "strategic", because the controls, while certainly better than the UK version, still got that mildly sluggish feel to it. Also, more often than not, you will win against opponents if you use the move with the longest reach, which means you can defeat a lot of opponents by the well known Chuck Norris method of "roundhouse kick until down". You don't even have to move, except for the few cases where your opponent has a projectile attack, or, in Eagle's case, have a longer reach than you. These are the few moments where actual fighting strategy has to be employed, and the game simply isn't very good at that. Better pray to lady luck, my friend. (Or possibly pay -- luck ain't cheap.) 

Not entirely sure how I feel about the game losing all the other bells and whistles either. The brick-chopping parts are gone, as is the little post-fight spiels from each of the fighters. Instead, you're just unceremoniously dumped from fight to fight. Granted, either of those weren't much, but it's odd for a version that prides itself on looking good to not include all of this. Makes everything a bit more streamlined, I guess. On a more serious note, the US version also chose to dispense with the last opponent of Street Fighter, namely Sagat. That is an incredibly weird choice to make, and his presence is certainly missed. On the other hand, the game has the decency to... well, use the post-fight monologue as an ending instead, and won't force you to go through all of it again just because. The game might be "better" than its UK cousin, but that would still be a bit much.


http://www.lemon64.com/?mainurl=http%3A//www.lemon64.com/reviews/
