Street Fighter II

STORY / GAMEPLAY
As in every fighting game out there, in Street Fighter 2 you have to fight your opponents in a one-on-one close-quarter martial arts combat. The objective in each round is to deplete the opponent's vitality before the time runs out. You either win or lose, depending on the way you play this game and how good you are in controlling the character (and his or her powers) you choose. In case both fighters simultaneously knock each other out, then you have a "double KO" and in case the time runs out with both fighters having equal vitality left, then you call it a "draw". When a "draw" occurs, you'll have to fight some additional rounds until one of the two fighters is down for good. Street Fighter II gives you the option (as opposed to its predecessor) to select a fighter among multiple characters from different countries and different distinct fighting styles and special moves. The game is credited for initiating the fighting games' "craze" that "hit| the video games market during the 90s! Unfortunately US gold were not among the best dev teams in producing arcade style games on the Amiga and this tame effort continued that trend. The gameplay is somewhat sluggish while the controls are not responsive enough given how limited they are. Also, constant loading times and disc swapping prevent gameplay to run properly. I believe that such a game can be easily handled by the Amiga hardware and could be way better. But that's not the case here. Overall, SF2 is not too bad but neither a "hot" conversion for the 16bit home computers with the exception of the PC conversion which plays and feels a bit better.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The graphics are fine on the OCS/ECS Amiga systems, running in 32 colors on screen though; they could have been a lot better. Just like the Amiga conversions of the Mortal Kombat series, the game leaves a lot to be desired. The Amiga custom chips could easily handle better graphics (remember the Body Blows series!) easily and flawlessly. But still, in Street Fighter 2 most of the original (coin-op) details are found in each fighting stage, although a few animated candies at the backgrounds are missing. The sprites are nicely drawn and all taken from the original arcade, with superb animation but a frame-rate that lags often, another awkward problem for an Amiga game (I should not refer to the Atari ST conversion, in which the things are way worse)! The sound features digitized SFX and several in-game tunes taken from the original. Fortunately the game's sound is superb in quality thanks to the Amiga sound hardware.