Does anyone REALLY like Street Fighter II on the PC Engine?

[Samurai Ghost]

I think the PCE version is cool, have a soft spot for the Genesis version as that's what I grew up playing, and like the looks of the SNES version but hate the controller. But for me the whole argument is moot when I can just slap in arcade-perfect ports of any classic SF game on the Saturn and play them with the awesome Japanese Virtual Sticks which are pretty much exactly what they have at any arcade around here.

[nodtveidt]

I remember hearing about how the SNES port was "arcade perfect" (got all 10s in EGM)... so I was like "ok let's test this". Bullshit it is. There's too much horizontal sprawl to be "arcade perfect"... and it becomes completely obvious on Vega's (Balrog's) stage. I do like the PCE conversion and it's one of the only hucards I currently own. When my Duo feels like playing hucards properly, it's the most fun hucard to run.

[spenoza]

The PCE version is my personal fave, but I can't play it right now because I don't have a 6-button pad. I dislike the 2-button pad scheme.

[Necromancer]

I was wondering, evryone seems to diss the PCE port of Street Fighter 2 as "good for the system, but not as good as the SNES". Why do people like the SNES version more?

Sounds like you're hanging around too many SNERDs; like nat said, the three versions aren't really all that different and each brings something to the table.

For those that haven't seen it before, check out Black Tiger's in depth comparison. 

[RegalSin]

It is just the TURBO, that is it. Once you have TURBO speed, everything else looks like a joke. Like in real life, a faster fighter is great, but a more beefer fighter can be better. Variables like that. Think about back then when people saw fighters that took up the entire screen. At first they look tuff but once you realize you can plow threw them. Then comes the quick fighters as well. TURBO just brought that speed to a popular game, while it had speed just brought it up to date.

[fragmare]

Yea, Black Tiger pretty much covered it all in this comparison (linked to above).  I will defer to that comparison.  I will say, however, that there are a few stages in the PCE version that kind of bug me.  I never liked the way the Ryu stage looked on the PCE.  It seems like some detail was lost in the floor and the sky.  The Guile, Blanka, and M.Bison/Vega stages could also have been better.  Adding the hyper fighting mode to the PCE version would also have been nice, since the the only thing required for it would be some extra code to speed up the fighting (the Chun Li fireball could just have used the Dhalsim fireball and been recolored blue, which is essentially what it is anyway).  That being said, I do love the PCE SF2'CE just as much as CE on any other console.  More in some ways, not as much in others.

[Joe Redifer]

When I hear "arcade perfect" I expect arcade perfect.  Now I never played SF2 in the arcade, I only watched others play it as I wasn't a big fighting game fan at the time.  But no 16-bit home version is even in the same league as "arcade perfect".  The graphics were all pretty much redesigned for the SNES version, mainly to fit inside the lower resolution.  And then they used those redesigns in every subsequent versions, Genesis, PCE, etc.  So thanks to the SNES, I think the Genesis and PCE versions are worse than they could have been.  The SNES lowered the bar.

[Arkhan]

It is just the TURBO, that is it. Once you have TURBO speed, everything else looks like a joke. Like in real life, a faster fighter is great, but a more beefer fighter can be better. Variables like that. Think about back then when people saw fighters that took up the entire screen. At first they look tuff but once you realize you can plow threw them. Then comes the quick fighters as well. TURBO just brought that speed to a popular game, while it had speed just brought it up to date.

It wasn't released for the Turbo!

BWhahahahahha.

[vestcoat]

When I hear "arcade perfect" I expect arcade perfect.  Now I never played SF2 in the arcade, I only watched others play it as I wasn't a big fighting game fan at the time.  But no 16-bit home version is even in the same league as "arcade perfect".  The graphics were all pretty much redesigned for the SNES version, mainly to fit inside the lower resolution.  And then they used those redesigns in every subsequent versions, Genesis, PCE, etc.  So thanks to the SNES, I think the Genesis and PCE versions are worse than they could have been.  The SNES lowered the bar.

Reviewers threw "arcade perfect!" around a lot back then because it was the first time home consoles were even getting in the ballpark.  The pants-shitting excitement and subsequent jaw-dropping disappointment of putting TMNT "The Arcade Game" in my NES a couple years earlier was still fresh in my mind when I braced myself for SFII on the SNES, so I was pretty happy.  It's a compromised port, but it succeeded in bringing the arcade experience into the living room.

I just love seeing how the PCE, with its 1987 technology, can rival the SNES.

[SignOfZeta]

The PCE ver was the only port of SFII' until the 32--bit era. Therefore, if you don't want to play anything but this exact version, and you never bought a Playstation, Saturn, or supergun, then the PCE ver is best.

To most SFII fans though the PCE ver became useless as soon as SFII' Turbo was released on SFC a month or so later (for $30 less on a sytem that already had a six button controller). These days the main purpose of SFII' on PCE is to give hardcore PCE fanboys something to jerk off to and from what I've read over the years here it does a marvelous job of that.

[RegalSin]

Lets get one thing straight. Fighting Steet was on the PCE, as well. It was not an add-on or some kind of combo game. The actually game itself was on the PCE.

Without TURBO then the PCE game is supreme. It is almost arcade perfect, and was portable in full color. Compared to the Gameboy game.

You can't count the Saturn or Playstation versions to the PCE, because those systems was made years, after the PCE and has 3D graphics chips built into them, that makes the processing power of the PCE looks laughable. That is like skipping three generations.

The strenghts are

1. Age
2. Arcade comparison
3. Unmodified
4. Originalism

The first two makes sense but I will admit playing TURBO is what made
fighting games a complete game changer. That game changer was not
done by Capcom. If the PCE was as popular as the Famicom in Japan it would have also seen other versions of the same game.

[Bonknuts]

To most SFII fans though the PCE ver became useless as soon as SFII' Turbo was released on SFC a month or so later (for $30 less on a sytem that already had a six button controller). These days the main purpose of SFII' on PCE is to give hardcore PCE fanboys something to jerk off to and from what I've read over the years here it does a marvelous job of that.

 I would think it's more simply that it's a good game on a system they like. Same Genesis stuff, same as SNES stuff. Ports have their charms, you know? You come off as having some sort of resentment for people actually liking the port/game. You hate'n?

[Black Tiger]

The PCE ver was the only port of SFII' until the 32--bit era. Therefore, if you don't want to play anything but this exact version, and you never bought a Playstation, Saturn, or supergun, then the PCE ver is best.

SFII' was included in the Genesis and SNES versions. You could consider those versions 2-game SFII collections.

[Joe Redifer]

Lets get one thing straight. Fighting Steet was on the PCE, as well. It was not an add-on or some kind of combo game. The actually game itself was on the PCE.

The game itself was not an add-on (obviously) but you needed an add-on to play it since it was an early CD-ROM game.

[Vecanti]

I was wondering, evryone seems to diss the PCE port of Street Fighter 2 as "good for the system, but not as good as the SNES". Why do people like the SNES version more?

Which version for the SNES?  The original SFII on SNES looks bad and doesn't play near as well.  It might have some extra parallax, but the player animation is really lacking, the resolution looks much lower to me when I've had them side by side.

They improved things with Turbo, but the original sold more copies so I think more people played that crap version on the SNES than the Turbo.  Besides SFII being on a HuCard makes the PCE version way cooler.