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Fighting Street: Worth it or not?
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Fighting Street, now on Virtual Console, will have you pining for Street Fighter II.
For 800 Wii Points, you can become a proud owner of Fighting Street, a port of the original Street Fighter first released for the TurboGrafx-16 console and recently added to the Wii Virtual Console. Before we go any further, yes, there was an actual Street Fighter I. It was an arcade game with ridiculously oversized pressure-sensitive buttons for punch and kick. (It was also ridiculously breakable.) Now, you may be thinking: "800 Wii Points? Pssh. That's nothing! I've paid more for sandwiches!" Nevertheless, it wouldn't hurt to weight the pros and cons of the game...
Pros
Seeing "old school" variations of your favorite characters: Fans of the Street Fighter II series will immediately recognize characters they probably thought were add-ons, but in reality, predated the likes of Blanka and Zangief. Aside from Ryu and Ken, the only playable characters (which are pretty much one character when you think about it), you also come across Birdie, Gen, Adon and Sagat, the final boss of the game. The American boxer, Mike, meanwhile, is a pretty obvious precursor to Balrog, or M. Bison for those of you reading abroad.
Different bonus stages: You know how the story goes in Street Fighter II. You break some bricks, you break a car and maybe some barrels too. In Fighting Street, you break a stack of bricks by timing a press of the button correctly and breaking pieces of wood with properly timed jumps and kicks. So, basically, you're given slightly different inanimate objects to break! Huzzah!
Other familiar elements: Yes, the old moves are all there. Dragon Punch. Whirlwind Kick. HA-DO-KEN! And yes, the little plane flying to the different countries is there too. Boy, that jet can haul!
Cons
Limitedness of playable characters: As alluded to before, you can only play with Ryu or Ken. So while you can wail on Birdie and his freakish stature, you can't hope to control him. This two-character provinciality makes two-player combat exceedingly dull as well.
Special Moves are hard to pull off: Street Fighter/Fighting Street may have originated the Special Move format that made its sequel so popular, but it didn't get it perfect on the first attempt. This title is plagued by the inconsistency of landing more complex maneuvers successfully. Your round-winning Fireball could just as well end up as a kick to your face. Ouch.
Bad AI: CPU opponents trend towards the tentative-to-act, and have a high propensity to throw themselves into your Special Moves. The Sagat you know from SFII is much different from and substantially less crappy than his Fighting Street counterpart. The only problem is, again, those moves are hard to execute. In fact, pretty much everything is hard to execute on a consistent basis, so the game becomes infinitely harder when you're relegated to weak punches and kicks and your opponent is not.
Three hits and you're dead: Perhaps the worst con of all. If you do land a Special Move, it is stoopid damaging. We're talking 40 to 45% of the opponent's health bar. Some people might feel this damage system raises the stakes and makes the game feel more realistic. But come on, the dude's shooting fire out of his hands! Reality should have no bearing on the situation at that point!
The Final Verdict
Fighting Street is cute as a novelty item, but in terms of gameplay, it can't hold a candle to its successor. You're better off just watching a YouTube gameplay video of the original and oohing and aahing that way, unless you plan on showing off your Virtual Console copy to everyone you know and getting your money's worth from their reactions. Stick to SFII, readers. Otherwise, it'd be like going to a quill and ink from ballpoint pens. Sure, it might be fun for a short while, but soon enough, you'll want the newer model. Trust me.
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