Street Fighter 2 Turns 20

Street Fighter 2 turns 20 and the king of modern day fighters still lives on. It’s great to see a franchise like this still cranking out hits. With all of the iterations of just this version of Street Fighter that came out, it is amazing that we are only at SFIV if you think about it. So, let’s see how many iterations of SFII there really were!

1991 – Street Fighter 2 – The original bad boy had only 8 original players. Ryu, Ken, E. Honda, Chun-Li, Blanka, Zangief, Guile, and Dhalism. You fought all of these fighters plus four bosses named Balrog, Vega, Sagat, and M. Bison.

1992 – Street Fighter 2 – Champion Edition – This opened up the use of the four bosses as playable characters and sped the game up a tad bit.

1992 – Street Fighter 2 – Hyper Fighting – A few moves were added and the speed increased again. Things like doing the hurricane kick in the air, E. Honda’s fireball avoiding Rising Butt Crush maneuver, and having some regular moves hit more than once were added. This changed up the combos that most characters could do quite a bit in this version.

1993 – Super Street Fighter 2 – This was probably my favorite of all iterations because of all the amazing new fighters that were added. These characters were T. Honda, Fei Long, Cammy, and Dee Jay. I’m certain it is debatable which was the most powerful but I remember the old roster typically having the hardest time with Cammy most times. Her Thrust Kick, Cannon Drill, and spinning backfist were so fast and powerful enough to annoy even the Ryu/Ken masters out there. Of course, I was kind of partial to the Bruce Lee wannabe Fei Long.

1994 – Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo- This introduced the dreaded Super Combos as well as one of the most dreaded bosses in fighter history… Akuma! A secret code allowed for you to play as Akuma and his super combo was unseen but oh so satisfying to watch!

2003 – Hyper Street Fighter 2 – This allowed you to pick all of the previous characters and pit them up against the Normal, Championship, Turbo, Super, or Super T version of each character. This allowed for you to use whichever version of each character that you knew their combos and speed and such the most.

2008 – Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix – This crazed HD remake placed the old SSF2 game on XBLA and PSN for the next gen systems. With enhanced graphics, slightly rebalanced characters, and a few additional game modes and online play, this was the prelude to the release of SFIV which dropped in 2009 (on consoles).

Somewhere in there Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo (a Bejeweled type of puzzle game) was released as a parody game and recently, Pinball FX2 released a Street Fighter II pinball table as a part of their amazing roster of pinball tables.

So, which was your favorite version and which character was your staple?