Street Fighter: What strength?
After beating the original Street Fighter arcade game as part of my Capcom Classics Collection Vol. 2 package, I’m fortunate to have played Street Fighter II first (and I’m sure a lot of people have). Say what you will about the toughness of the bosses in SFII, but they’re a cakewalk compared to many of the enemies that you have to fight in the original game. Besides Retsu and Geki, all of the opponents after them are grossly unbalanced, who can hit harder than you and move faster than you (why is Mike able to knock me down with just three punches?). Your special attacks can deal lots of damage to them, but the stiff controls make it hard to execute them with any degree of regularity. Even then, only the Hadoken seems to work at all. It’s not a good thing when copious abuse of save states is a requirement to get past even one round of any given battle. The original Street Fighter definitely shows its age here, and even back then, it wasn’t all that good. It’s best left as a reminder of how far the series has come since then. This one’s only worth 1 star out of 5. Skip it.
