Capcom has announced that in December, they’ll release Hyper Street Fighter II X for the PS2, to commemorate the 15th anniversary of Street Fighter. Normally, commemorative games can be pretty cool, but Street Fighter II is a dog that should’ve been put down a long time ago.
Why? How many f*cking times have they remade the same goddamn game?! Let’s see…Street Fighter II. Street Fighter II Championship Edition. Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting. Super Street Fighter II – The New Challengers. Super Street Fighter II Turbo Revival. Over and over. Same shit, different title.
That needs to stop. When Capcom pulls something like that, you take a stick, and you hit them! The Street Fighter Alpha was a step in the right direction…sort of. Street Fighter III was decent, but again, Capcom released a few different versions there, too. There’s no excuse for this. Capcom has plenty of other series they’ve continued numerically without minor upgrades. Mega Man, Resident Evil, Breath of Fire…you get the idea. They should be up to Street Fighter 14 by now.
And why recycle the same old shitty characters? Ryu and Ken I can understand, as they’re the main protagonists. But Zangief? Balrog? E. Honda, that big fat f*ck? Are these guys really necessary?
I won’t deny the influence SFII had in bringing fighting games to the mainstream, my personal distaste for the game nonwithstanding. But we get the message, already. Give us something else to satiate our thirst for a quality fighter. The irony is that Capcom has already done just that with another series! The original Mega Man series was starting to stagnate, so out came Mega Man X, then Mega Man Legends. Now we’ve got Mega Man Battle Network, which is arguably the smartest move they’ve made. They could have done the same for SFII, without all the constant remakes.
At least I’m not bringing up Street Fighter: The Movie…