Street Fighter II invaded the arcade scene in the early 90s and went on to become an unstoppable force on home consoles as well. It was released first on the Super Nintendo, but later went on to grace the Sega Genesis and even 3DO as well as most future systems. That’s all well and good, but where is the original game, and why is it seldom mentioned? For the first Street Fighter Capcom focused more on the arcade release, but it was in fact ported to a few consoles. The most notable of these is the Turbografx-CD version which was renamed Fighting Street. I’m a big fan of the advantages brought on by the CD medium, and I also couldn’t resist playing the first Street Fighter game after all this time. Unfortunately this is one of the worst fighting games ever released. Unfortunately that’s not hyperbole; this title is an unrecognizable mess.
Fighting Street has a pretty standard scenario. You play as Ryu (or Ken via the second player) and travel the world competing in a fighting tournament to prove who is the strongest. What’s surprising is the roster of characters. Those well versed in Street Fighter II as well as its various sequels will be shocked to see so many unfamiliar faces. There are ten different opponents in the single player mode and these include a ninja named Geki, a Chinese martial artist Lee, a baton wielding fighter named Eagle, and more. Recognize those names? Yeah, me neither. The only three characters in the entire game that continued on in the series are Ryu, Ken, and Sagat (the final boss). The rest are highly generic and ultimately forgettable. The only character I somewhat liked was Geki because his ninja star attack was unique compared to the other fighters in regard to their projectiles which made him slightly more entertaining. Unfortunately you’re not given the option to select a character to play as, and can only take control of Ryu. If a second player challenges you they assume the role of Ken who is functionally the same even in this title.
On paper the game has a lot of potential. It’s a simple one-on-one two dimensional fighting game that looks pretty decent by system standards at least in still screenshots. The fundamentals are largely the same as in Street Fighter II, but the engine this title runs on is insufferable. The framerate never runs at a smooth pace, the animations are poor with characters popping in at random places, and the collision detection is just awful. Something as simple as kicking while in the air slows down your descent which simply doesn’t make any sense. Punches and kicks never seem to hit right, and the reaction animations usually knock characters in weird directions. The whole thing is awkward, clunky, and can be downright confusing at times. While Ryu (and Ken) have their three signature special moves (the fireball, dragon kick, and dragon punch) it’s too easy to exploit jump kicks and win using these cheap tactics. The enemies have a variety of different special moves which makes it all the more disappointing that you cannot play as any of them.
The controls are also very sluggish. There’s a noticeable delay in your inputs because the hardware has some obvious issues keeping up with the action. This even more so than the aforementioned problems makes Fighting Street a real chore to play. The game runs worse than most similar NES titles, and that’s unacceptable for the more powerful hardware here. Because of how choppy everything is there’s virtually no combo system in place. You can try to land subsequent hits, but the slow animations paired with the odd collision detection and unpredictable jumping make this a true ordeal. One of the high points of this title are the mini-games. This is an aspect of the game that carried on to Street Fighter II, but they aren’t quite as interesting as even the car destroying sequence. At certain points in the story mode you must either break a stack of cinder blocks (by hitting the action button when a meter has filled) or smash through wooden boards held by NPCs. They’re cheesy, but I found them to be a nice change of pace.
The graphics however are pretty decent considering the year that this was originally released. I’ve seen screenshots of the original arcade version and this appears pretty close to it. Characters are a little pixelated, but they’re pretty detailed considering the system on which this was released. It’s still hard to get over the fact that Ryu is a redhead in this edition, but he’s still fairly recognizable. Everything is pleasantly colorful, and although the backgrounds are a bit generic they’re full of small details. You’ll battle in village streets, at the base of a temple, in front of Mount Rushmore, etc. Like I said they’re pretty generic, but there’s decent diversity in this regard. The character portraits before every match are quite cheesy, but they add a lot of personality. This isn’t a bad looking Turbografx game, but the choppy animations hold it back a great deal.
I always love CD audio in retro titles because back in the old days composers didn’t take themselves too seriously. The soundtrack here is extremely cheesy, and largely forgettable, but the music is extremely clean and high quality. It’s hard to fault it especially when each stage has its own theme though they do tend to sound very similar to one another. What I found annoying is the fact that each fighter yells whenever they attack. Simple punch and kick effects would have sufficed because this is a little over the top for my tastes even though they use real voice samples. This game even contains a few lines of real voice work. This happens on the victory screen, but every fighter (except Sagat) says the same thing, and even uses the same sound sample. It’s muffled and difficult to understand, but it’s at least worth a laugh or two. The audio is very high quality but overall tends to be a little annoying. The soundtrack is enjoyable for being so cheesy.
Fighting Street is a terrible game. I don’t know if the original arcade release suffered from such sluggish controls and animation, but this version most certainly does. It’s game breaking and makes Fighting Street extremely tedious to play even in short bursts. At the very least a two player mode was included, but come on, who wants to play a fighting game in this day and age where you can only select between two identical characters with nothing in place to redeem it? This is an early genre release and normally I would be a little lenient, but the problems are inexcusable.
