Follow me on Twitter @ https://twitter.com/Al82_Retro Get Great Retro Scene News @ http://www.vintageisthenewold.com Developed by Creative Materials and published by US Gold in 1992 The year was 1992 and Amiga owners were going into paroxysms of excitement because the unthinkable was happening. Street Fighter II, one best arcade fighters ever made, was soon to be released for the system. I should know - I was one of them. I remember that a non-playable demo was released on cover disks of various Amiga magazines, receiving top billing. This was simply a scripted sequence between two of the game's fighters that lasted barely a couple of minutes. I didn't care - all that mattered was the game looked like the arcade version and that, some time soon, I would be having the best time of my life playing it. I made it clear to my parents, in no uncertain terms, that I would disown them should I fail to receive a copy in my Christmas stocking that year. In hindsight, it's funny just how differently things turned out. Being the wonderful people that they are, my parents avoided the threat of being disowned by securing a copy of the game in time for the festive season; no mean feat in a time when decent high-street stockists of games existed, let alone internet shopping! I think part of the problem was either due to the fact the game wasn't finished, or that the distributors wouldn't commit to a firm deadline, so none of the shops could give an answer as to when stock would arrive. Anyway, the game did eventually arrive and I eagerly inserted the first of four floppy disks into my Amiga in anticipation. Things were still looking pretty good as the title screen (eventually) loaded and the familiar arcade title music started to play. The full roster of Street Fighter characters is available to select, each replete with faithfully recreated portrait cards and sound-bites from their signature special moves. It's not until you get past this point that things take a turn for the worse. I know that it's often said that the value of a game shouldn't be based on the quality of it's graphics, but the visuals are always the first thing on which our impressions are based. I admit that the sprites do look very much like their arcade counterparts and it's not until you actually see them start to move around that you realise that this isn't going to be a good experience. The way the characters drift around the screen, especially when jumping, gives the impression of fighting in a low gravity environment, or suspended in water. The fighter's animations lack any kind of fluidity and you get the sense that they're not entirely in control of their own limbs. This lack of control is only reasserted when you actually start moving the joystick around and realise that any effort spent trying to exert influence over where your fighter goes, or what moves to execute is entirely futile. This is due, in part, to the problem of trying to condense a control scheme requiring a heavy-duty control stick and six buttons into something that works on a £10 Quickshot Pro joystick with a single button. The ability to differentiate between weak, medium and strong attacks is completely absent and trying to execute special moves is near-impossible. When they do occur, it's mostly by sheer luck rather than any kind of skill. What's even more infuriating about the game is that you get a sense that essence of what makes Street Fighter II so great is present, but it's stifled by the mediocrity of the conversion process. I know that the people who created these games do occasionally stumble across my videos, so I don't wish to downplay the significance of trying to cram a powerful custom arcade board into the Amiga's comparatively meagre hardware, but conversions of other arcade games, like Mortal Kombat, prove that it can be done and the end result can be successful. The final nail in the coffin was hammered home when I discovered that one of the disks in my set failed to load, preventing me from playing any further. Despite trying several replacements, they all exhibited the same fault, so I can only conclude it was a problem with the code, or something during the duplication process. Thus concludes my review of the second most disappointing home conversion of an arcade game for a home system (the first being the C64 version of Double Dragon). I can honestly say, watching the computer play itself in the pre-scripted cover disk demo is considerably preferable to playing it oneself.