The Game Boy was highly beneficial to third party developers. This is because it allowed their teams to release downgraded versions of their console titles to make a quick buck. Most of the time these ports were hardly worth the plastic that lined their cartridges. This is because many of the titles chosen to be ported were originally designed with 16-bit hardware in mind. The Game Boy simply could not keep up with the Super Nintendo. Rather than completely re-design their titles developers just downgraded everything to squeeze it all in. A lot of the time this resulted in unplayable messed. Street Fighter II is a particularly infamous example of this. From simple screenshots it looks amazing, but seeing it in motion is another story. Today we’re going to take a look at this blemish on the franchise’s past.
The story here is completely unchanged from the arcade and home console versions. Characters from around the world are pitted against each other in a one-on-one tournament. The big bad M. Bison awaiting at the end and he won’t go down without a fight. Unfortunately the ending sequences didn’t make the cut. It’s not a huge deal, but these did add some character to the game. Worse yet is the fact that several characters didn’t make the cut here. Dhalsim and E. Honda from the original crew apparently weren’t up to snuff. I imagine this has to do with the vast number of frames that their attacks use. What is neat however is that three of the boss characters from Turbo/Champion Edition were included. Sagat, Balrog, and M Bison are all selectable. Vega was left out probably because of how technical some of his climbing moves are.
I’m actually pretty happy with the roster. Though two of the missing faces are iconic to the franchise Capcom wasn’t taking crazy pills with their exclusion. They so seem to be the three least popular from the original batch, at least in my experience. The simple fact that some of the boss characters are playable is surprising. This game isn’t labeled as Turbo or Champion Edition. It isn’t even the World Warrior. This is just called Street Fighter II. Because of this I went in just expecting the original crew and it’s a pleasant surprise Capcom put at least some effort into this package. Unfortunately that’s one of the last good things I’m going to say about this game. It sounds good and all, but actually playing it is a whole other story.
Chances are you already know the Game Boy only has two face buttons. Street Fighter II was originally created with six in mind. A is kick, and B is punch here. Capcom tried to incorporate the medium/high versions of these strikes, but it doesn’t work particularly well. Basically to perform a more powerful punch or kick you hold in the attack button for a little longer. I’m not a bad Street Fighter II player, and I’ve experienced a similar mechanism in other fighters. For the life of me I could not get this mechanic to work most of the time. Eventually I had to give up and just settle for the weakest punches and kicks which was disappointing. You can play Street Fighter II with just two buttons, but it’s far from optimal, and Capcom’s solution wasn’t implemented nearly well enough.
That however is the least of this port’s problems. Capcom devoted nearly all of the system’s resources to the character models and backgrounds. Because of this the game runs at a terribly awkward framerate. Characters don’t move, rather, they sort of warp into different positions here. It reminded me of a more functional LCD game with lots of animations and significantly more detailed graphics. This is no exaggeration. Street Fighter II on the Game Boy runs at less than ten frames per second at all times. This makes the special moves extremely hard to do because it feels like the game struggles to register inputs. I don’t think it can read them well when switching frames. This is especially true for directional inputs. You can just forget about the old combo system because I can’t get it to work. Street Fighter II on Game Boy is too unpredictable with controls.
On the plus side this version of Street Fighter II contains a plethora of different gameplay modes. The first of these is Normal mode which is your basic story/arcade mode. You have different difficulty settings here but in my opinion it’s very unbalanced. The game is either a cakewalk or absurdly difficult. It’s unfair because the computer doesn’t have any trouble dealing with the abysmal frame rate. The CPU opponents can throw off fireballs and other special moves with ease, and even back to back. Rather than countering them your best bet is to hold up on the directional pad and pray that the game recognizes the input in time. I’m a pretty seasoned Street Fighter II player and I struggled on any setting higher than easy.
Next up we have a two player link up option in Versus. Good luck finding someone else who has an old working Game Boy AND a copy of this game. I haven’t, but I imagine it’s not worth the effort of even asking. The frame rate is probably even worse when competing with another player because of the data transfer rates of the link cable. You should just stick with any of the console versions if you want to go head to head with a friend. Last and certainly least is Survival mode wherein you face off against all of the characters in consecutive matches. This seems a little unnecessary because it’s basically the standard arcade mode with few differences. It’s extra fluff so that Capcom could add another bullet point to the back of the box. At least it’s something though.
As I mentioned earlier the game looks very impressive in still-shots. Capcom was able to re-create the characters with exceptionally large sprites and with lush detail. Street Fighter II is clearly a step up from any other fighter on the platform in terms of graphics. The character models are instantly recognizable as are all of the stages. It’s very obvious that Capcom used the exact sprites and simply scaled them down to fit the hardware. This is quite impressive really. The problem is you can’t just look at screenshots. You actually have to play it. The Game Boy absolutely chugs along to keep this game moving. This is one of the few titles wherein the framerate actually gave me a headache. Aside from the frame rate the game actually looks very impressive for a Game Boy title.
Capcom also included a few nice touches. The game supports the Super Game Boy. Unfortunately the color schemes used aren’t particularly impressive and are very basic. It feels like you’re playing a black and white game with a simple two or three color filter thrown over the screen. What I really like is the fact that the Super Game Boy backgrounds change to reflect the stage you’re fighting on. These images are brought over directly from the SNES version. It’s a neat feature. The soundtrack actually sounds pretty good. The tracks have been faithfully downgraded from the SNES, and each theme is instantly recognizable. The audio is really good here especially considering this is the Game Boy we’re talking about.
