Monday, December 30, 2024

Fighting My Way Around The World! - Playing Fighting Street for the TurboGrafx-CD for the First Time

The next game on my TurboGrafx journey is Fighting Street, a port of Capcom's original Street Fighter arcade game.



Street Fighter was the introduction of Ryu and Ken, and followed much the same format as its hit sequel: Street Fighter II. While you don't get to choose your fighter, you can choose your starting country, then you fight two fighters per country as you make your way around the world.

Street Fighter is much more difficult than Street Fighter II ever was, and while Ryu and Ken have their signature special moves (fireball, spinning kick and dragon punch) its WAY harder to pull them off. In fact, I've only ever been able to get the spinning kick to work.

You can watch some gameplay from the original Street Fighter arcade below, before we get into how the TurboGrafx-16 port of it compares:




Fighting Street was one of two games (the other being Monster World) initially released for the TurboGrafx-CD add-on in November 1989.




Fighting Street is a good port of Street Fighter, and the only port of Street Fighter released on a home console (although computer ports were widely released.)




You still can't select your fighter, but the TurboGrafx port does let you select from four different starting countries, while the arcade only allowed you to select from two (China or USA).





The character VS screen looks very good, with detailed sprites, and practically looks identical to the arcade version.




The stage graphics look very good as well, even if they aren't necessarily pixel perfect, and while the characters are large and well animated, they are not quite as good looking as the arcade.




One thing that is very much like the arcade, however, is just how difficult the game is, although the TurboGrafx version might be slightly-less brutal than the arcade version.




Enemies hit hard, like REALLY hard. If you get hit just a few times, you are likely going down. And your hits? Ha! You're likely to barely hurt them at all with a single kick or punch. It's all pretty brutal and MUCH tougher than the enemies in Street Fighter II, even on the highest difficulty.




While I was able to defeat the first enemy (eventually) in some of the destinations, generally the second enemy in the same location would mop the floor with me.




For example, in USA, Mike (Tyson?) is the second opponent, and holy hell he hits hard. Like 2 or 3 punches and you are done. In the meantime, you can try and jump-kick him all you want, and you might get him down quite a bit, but if he just connects a few times you are done for.



Also, while it's true you have your signature special moves (fireball, hurricane kick and dragon punch), I challenge you to actually be able to pull any of them off. It seems nearly impossible.




There are also sequences that are similar to the "test your might" challenges in Mortal Kombat, although Street Fighter predates Mortal Kombat by quite a bit, so if there was any "inspiration" it was MK that was inspired by Street Fighter. Although, instead of button mashing you have to time your button press on a bar that keeps filling up and emptying. The more full the bar is when you press the button, the more stuff you smash and the higher score you get.




Being a CD game, Fighting Street has a great soundtrack, and sounds better than the arcade version, however it still has the same "voices" in the arcade when you either win or lose. They sound really terrible, but are one of the more memorable parts of the arcade game.




I ended up seeing the various defeat screens quite a bit, but I did manage to beat a few opponents and see the victory screen, like the one above.




Street Fighter arcade wasn't particularly popular in the United States, and it isn't hard to see why. It's a really painful game to try and play.

If you want to see some of my gameplay from Fighting Street, you can check out the YouTube video below:





Thankfully it must have been good enough in other regions to inspire Capcom to create its sequel and kick-off the entire fighting game craze of the 90s.



Even though I don't think I'll play too much more of Fighting Street, it isn't because there is anything wrong with the port on the TurboGrafx-16. The port is really competent, and does a great job brining the arcade experience home. The arcade experience, in this case, is just pretty terrible.

Now that I've played Fighting Street it's time to move onto the other TurboGrafx-CD launch title...




Until next time...

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