Evolution 2008, Part 1: Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix

I originally wasn't going to write about the same or similar stuff each entry, but with the Evolution tournament around the corner and many new fighting games coming out, I am just too excited to write about anything else besides fighting games. So bear with me for a little bit.

I have decided to delve deeper into the Evolution tournament by looking at each of the tournament games. I'll look at what makes them different from each other, the communities that support the game, and if I have a good idea I'll say who is a top contender for the title.

And so the first game I will talk about for today is Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo: HD Remix. I will refer to the game as HD Remix or Remix for short.

HD Remix is actually the 7th version of Street Fighter 2. The previous versions were Street Fighter 2: The World Warrior, Street Fighter 2: Championship Edition, Street Fighter 2: Hyper Fighting (known as Street Fighter 2 Turbo on the Super Nintendo), Super Street Fighter 2: The New Challengers, Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, and finally Hyper Street Fighter 2: The Anniversary Edition.

Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo (ST for short) was the last revision for a while. The game has many concepts that are found in all modern 2-d fighters, most notably the super meter used for super moves. Although the concept of the "Super Move" was around before ST, ST was the first to make super moves correspond to a meter. The meter was filled a little every time you used a special move, and when it was full you could execute an extremely damaging super move. ST was/is the best version of Street Fighter 2 , and is still played in tournaments till this day.

Hyper Street Fighter 2: The Anniversary Edition (AE for short) was released about 3 years ago. In this game, before you picked a character, you picked what version of the character you would use based on the previous games. For example, you could pick World Warrior Ryu (the original), Champion Edition Ryu, etc. If a character did not appear in a version of the game, they were unselectable. So if you picked World Warrior mode, you could not pick from the four boss characters (Balrog, Vega, Sagat, M. Bison) or from the New Challenger characters (Cammy, Fei Long, Dee Jay, T.Hawk) since the bosses could not be played in the original and the New Challengers did not even exist in the original.

Unfortunately AE was not well received because it was terribly imbalanced. Champion Edition M.Bison is just too good, and players scrapped the game.

And now under the guidance of game developer and former SF champion David Sirlin, comes HD Remix. It's called this because the old sprites have been drawn over into HD sprites. Also the game has 2 modes of play. Classic mode, which has the original game play and Remix mode, which removes the glitches in the classic version and balances out the characters more. This game is not released yet, but will be out in time for Evolution, and will be a downloadable game for Playstation 3 and X BOX 360. They will be using the Remix mode for the tournament.

Whoo, that was a lot of background on the game. Now I'll focus on the community of players.

The biggest difference between the ST community and the others, is the level of skill among the players. ST is the oldest SF game played competitively and it's because of this that while small, it's also the toughest. Almost everyone who plays ST has been playing it for years, some even since the days of the arcade. There is no such thing as an easy pool in ST, every opponent is tough. Weak opponents in an ST tourney are as rare as diamonds. To hang in ST you have to be really, really, good. Anything less, and you might at well let your opponent have his way with you.

That being said, it must be remembered that the classic game is not being used here. It's the Remix mode the tournament is using. And while the fundamentals of the game will still be there, many differences will be noticed. Therefore, I can't really predict who will win the tourney. I doubt any new names will be in the top placings, but it's still hard to tell. If I had to pick a player, it would be John Choi. Choi is one of the OGest of the OG's, so if he enters the tournament he would have a good shot. (I'm not exactly sure if he still plays, although he really hasn't gone missing either. I'm pretty sure he entered the last tournament).

Well, that will do for now. I'll leave you with a demo video of HD Remix. It's not exactly pro level playing, but you will get to see the new sprites in motion.

Enjoy!

-Judd