Accurate graphics and sound and exceptional online play make Street Fighter II’ Hyper everything I had hoped!
The game is, basically, a pixel-perfect port of the arcade. That is to say, it is *not* a port of the SNES version(s). The SNES Turbo edition was very nearly the same thing, but did have some subtle differences, the most un-subtle of which, in my opinion, being the music. Having said that, if you’re most familiar with/fond of the SNES version, what you get here is not dramatically different.
The characters, backgrounds, and animations are identical to the original on which it’s based. And surprisingly, even after 15 years, they still look pretty good. The game also (thoughtfully) lets you stretch/move the screen in any way you like to fill your fancy HD widescreen, or to keep the edges from being cut off on your crappy tube display with rounded corners and mechanical, dial-based channel selector. It’s a nice touch, but keep in mind that the bigger your screen and the more you stretch it, the more pixilated the graphics become. That’s to be expected from 2-D bitmaps of course, but I think it’s worth pointing out.
The sounds seem spot-on, although they probably haven’t aged quite as gracefully as the graphics. But from my perspective, I wasn’t looking for enhancements; I was looking for an exact copy and in this regard, I feel this has been accomplished. The only question mark I have is: do the elephants (on Dhalsim’s stage) seem louder than they used to be? I can’t say for sure because I’m used to playing the arcade version in noisy pizza parlors and the like, but they do seem notably annoying in this version.
Control-wise, I find the D-Pad to be worthless, but the analog stick is surprisingly acceptable. When using it, I imagine that my thumb is gliding over the SNES D-Pad and I do all right. As Ryu, I can pull off fireballs 90% of the time and dragon punches about 70% of the time. I think my deficiency is mostly due to my lack of practice over the decade and only partly due to the controller. I’m sure those percentages will increase with time/practice. The button layout is the same as what I remember for SNES: light/medium punches/kicks are assigned to the buttons on the face of the controller and the hard puch/kick buttons are assigned to the triggers. All of this can be changed in the options screen, of course.
The game offers “Arcade Mode”, which is just what you’d expect; you select a character and fight every other character until you’ve beaten them all. You get unlimited continues and a player on controller #2 can press the start button at any time to challenge you. Many have complained that the single-player difficulty is way too high, even on the easiest setting, but I found it to be about what I remember. On the default difficulty, I beat the game in my first sitting with Ryu, having to continue around 5 or so times; seems about right to me. The AI is as realistic and/or cheap as it ever was, I found.
Of course, there’s also the big enhancement: the game lets you play over Xbox Live. Let me start out by saying I was very worried about online play with this game. After having played Frogger’s terrible, inexplicably lag-ridden online mode I feared that SFII would be even worse. I’m must say I’m very impressed. Almost all games have Very Little Lag (VLL). The VLL that exists does little to detract from the gameplay. And it’s worth mentioning that the VLL seems to be consistent: that is, you rarely (if at all) experience jarring changes of pace. If the game seems to be running at 95% actual speed, it continues running at 95% actual speed for the duration of the match. This allows you to calibrate your playing style and eventually, you get used to it and hardly notice anything at all.
When playing online, you get three options: ranked, unranked, and “quarter match”. While ranked and unranked are what you’d expect, quarter match is where the online play really shines. Up to four people join a room and while two are competing, the other two players watch. During a match, all four people can talk to each other. When someone wins a match, that person stays and the loser is replaced by one of the other two people that were watching. I found this mode to be quite fun and seems to brilliantly simulate the arcade experience (especially where the room is filled with friends)!
Overall, I’m very satisfied with this port and with its remarkably good online mode. For only 10 bucks, it’s a no-brainer for any street fighter fan.