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Showing posts from September, 2023

Final Fight 2: 30th anniversary

Final Fight 2, an SNES-exclusive sequel, was Capcom's attempt to rectify the mistakes of the SNES port of their hit arcade game, Final Fight . It includes the sorely missed third character, sixth stage, and simultaneous co-op. The plot of Final Fight 2 rehashes the original: the vicious Mad Gear gang have committed a kidnapping, and it's up to Mayor Mike Haggar and two associates to save the day. The plot is so uninspired that, when Haggar asks how the defeated gang has returned, someone replies, "That doesn't matter." Truly it doesn't matter because we don't play beat-'em-ups for the story. Like the original, Final Fight 2 is about little more than a couple friends button mashing their way through a motley and wretched crew of thugs and street toughs. The worst thing you can say about Final Fight 2 is that it's a total redo of the original, offering almost nothing new, except the elements that were regrettably stripped from the SNES port in the fi...

Street Fighter II Turbo: 30th anniversary

Street Fighter II Turbo was like an early version of DLC, except you had to buy the game all over again! We were happy to do it, because that's how much better the new version of Street Fighter II was. This was a souped-up, deluxe version of the game that made the PVP fighting genre. The hype for Street Fighter II Turbo was real. I got so excited when I saw it at my local Fred Meyer (a Pacific Northwest superstore) that I bought it instead of Final Fantasy II, which I'd been saving for. I quickly regretted this hasty decision and sold it to my friend, with whom I then played it more than I ever would have at home! Honestly, who ever plays Street Fighter II single-player!? When the original Street Fighter II hit the SNES, the game had been in arcades for almost a year and a half, where it was an unrivalled powerhouse until Mortal Kombat arrived in late 1992. The Champion Edition (released in early 1992) added the four bosses as playable characters. This feature was absent from t...

Super Mario All-Stars: 30th anniversary

Super Mario All-Stars is the first in a long line of Nintendo games remastered for a later console. There was incredible value in this package because you got all three NES Super Mario games, plus the Japanese-exclusive Super Mario Bros. 2 (under the moniker " The Lost Levels "). The value of the collection has somewhat diminished over time only because the originals are more iconic, despite their 8-bit auditory and graphical shortcomings. I've already reviewed the first three games , so I won't review them individually again. Suffice it to say they are among the best NES games. And Super Mario Bros. 3 is, as everyone knows, one of the greatest video games ever. The version included here is arguably the best way to play it. Super Mario All-Stars has four main appeals. Firstly, there's the convenience and value of bringing together four great older games on a newer system in one cartridge. We saw this same phenomenon with the well named Super Mario 3D All-Stars ...