Media Rag

What do you get when you cross a bootleg copy of Street Fighter 2 (SF2)on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and the 2d fighting engine known as Mugen? A really bad looking street fighter game that plays like a brand new fighting game. Their have been a couple of releases so far, the version currently available (1.0) contains the below characters each with the moves you know as well as some you don't. (check out Chun Li's new move set for a couple of surprises). You have your special moves, super moves, ex moves, huge double figure juggle combos it's all here.

My Quick 19 Cents

The characters are well represented with the entire SF2 cast here as well as a handful of extras who go a long way to keeping things interesting,though I have to admit Terry does feel a bit out of place I hope the developers of this game do not continue this trend of adding non street fighter characters.

The graphic style is pretty consistent with the blue shadows on the super moves really being the only thing that stand out as they do not fit the mishmashed 8Bit style everything else is presented in.

The sound is handled well with the 8 bit music sounding as you would expect with most themes being instantly recognisable to fighting game fans. The sound effects are the same as you would hear in the more recent games so expect all the hard hitting punches and kicks as well as all of the sonic booms and tiger uppercuts you are used to.

The game play really depends on how you play, it is very easy to exploit the current system with infinites and huge looping combos available to most characters. So if you are playing for real with friends it can be a frustrating experience, however if you are playing for fun it can be very enjoyable. The amount of health given to each character is huge so it is possible to run down the clock quite easily if you are playing the keep away game. Playing against the computer is fun to get the basics down and the AI does put a little bit of a fight but expect to get bored of this very quickly.

Future versions promise the four new challengers that were introduced in Super SF2 as well as some of the characters introduced in SF Alpha 2 NES another bootleg with a similar art style. I'd like them to continue this trend of adding extra characters beyond these with Cody from final fight being my first choice as he would be a great addition to join Haggar and Guy.

Overall I definitely recommend this game to any street fighter fan as it is both fun and unlike 99% of Mugen games, consistent with its play style. Just don't go into it looking for a tournament level fighter with perfect balancing as you won't find it here.

For more information and to download the latest version of SSF2NES please go to their site.