Champion Edition is where Ken and Ryu weren't clones anymore, since you could select the same character. Ryu got the slow knockbacking tatsu, while Ken got a longer range fierce DP (it also had knockback with all buttons) and the quick multihitting tatsu.
Pretty sure the only changes in Champion Edition was playable bosses and mirror matches, but Ryu and Ken were still otherwise identical and functionally redundant. It wasn't until Turbo the characters were actually rebalanced, including Ryu and Ken being given minor differences for the first time.
@@EmeralBookwise Champion Edition actually has quite a few changes. Besides all the art getting tweaked and new backgrounds, there were a lot of little gameplay/balance changes. For example, Ken and Ryu got different DPs and tatsus, Honda got moving handslap and headbutt now knocks down, Chun got a flipping neck breaker and larger air throw range and easier to execute lightning legs, Guile got 2 hit flash kick, Blanka got some of his normals reworked (s.hp and s.rh), Sim air yoga spear and yoga mummy became command normals that could be executed at any height, and Zangief got moving lariat and bigger bounceback after spd. There were also other hitbox adjustments and other little tweaks. They're not BIG changes, more like a lot of little changes to fix some balance issues.. but then they also made dictator super busted lol
@@borawserboxer: Hmm... maybe. Although I'm very much feeling like I must have slipped into a parallel universe by accident at some point, because all of those change you mention are things I remember being first introduced in Turbo... LOL ...or maybe the only version of Champion I ever played was either an incomplete early revision or just a hacked bootleg of World Warrior.
@@borawserboxer Not to mention, they removed the infamous Guile glitches like the Freeze and Handcuffs. So yeah, it was a pretty significant 'balance patch' before Hyper Fighting.
One of the arcades by my Grandma's place had Street Fighter II: Rainbow Edition. That variation was insanity the first time playing it. Ryu being able to throw several Hadouken's at a time, Ken's Tatsumaki Senpukyaku going full screen, character's being able to jump off screen, pressing start to switch characters during a fight, and more.
I used to work in an arcade with a rainbow edition cabinet. Seeing the faces of people who had never tried that version and who thought it was good old CE was always a pleasant surprise.
@@DiSCERiTY Different regions getting different names for things was such hel elemayo I remember in that video, James mentioned a Jackie Chan movie series with the names swapped between the sequel and original like WHY lol
@@carloszagal1934 At the very least, I'd love it if he either voiced a character involving some review like John Romero did or if showed up for a bit like with Matt McMuscles to give AVGN the next game or advice. As for review, maybe he covers the Alpha series to see whether or not, it's good if not better than Street Fighter 2.
And to think that Tsujimoto''s original idea was to move on from SF II after the Snes port of The World Warrior, but James Goddard kept pushing for an upgrade. And thanks to his contacts he got away with it. I wonder what would have been of all of it if Tsujimoto had said "No".
Down, R, Up, L, Y, B. Even after all these years, I still remember the code for the SNES version of Street Fighter 2 that unlocked the Championship Edition colors for the characters and the ability to play as the same character in Vs Mode.
@@bockerwright4132 We didn't get X and A added to the Champion Edition code here in the US. I know it was strictly for Japan (and possibly some other places), but I also remember it being Down, R, Up, L, Y, B
probably the most important "version" of SF2 is "Rainbow Edition", that version teach to Capcom a lot of things that even they don't know they could do with SF2
Street Fighter II Champion Edition also gave you mirror matches and bosses. They realized super quick that mirror matches were very important; they even permitted a special code in the SNES version of Street Fighter II to permit mirror matches, something impossible in the original arcade edition (for reference: Down R Button, Up, L Button, Y, B at Capcom logo).
Yes Champion Edition was basically what World Warrior should have been, and it was more balanced and didn't have stupid damage on some moves and throws.
You could choose clones already in Champion Edition. We used to call them here "fake" and "true". There were some other changes, too, like Ken and Ryu becoming distinct. Somebody in my country invented that the dash meant "half", so everybody called Champion Edition Street Fighter Two and a Half around here. 😀
Man "Special Champion Edition" on the Genesis was the very first SF game (and fighting game in general) that i ever owned as a kid. I played the heck out of that game. That's the game i cut my teeth on as a kid and really learned how to play SF with. It wasn't as good as the arcade version obviously but was still a great port in my opinion. Also the box art is still some of my favorite official SF art ever, love that cover.
Agreed. I remember playing SF2 in the arcade and was very impressed with the visuals but didn’t know how to do anything. Rented SPE from Blockbuster opened the manual and nearly fell over looking at the move list thinking, “well there’s no way in hell I could do that.” 4 days later my thumbs were blistered and bloodied. Later that year my grandmother gifted that game to for my birthday, and I saved up enough money to buy a six button controller. We didn’t have money so getting that expensive cartridge was unbelievable. Later on She and I would take a city bus and taxi cab ride to the nearest Toys R Us to pick up Super when it came out. Sorry for the wordy response just lost in memory there. 😅
@@michiganjack1337 Love this man, lol. Yea Toys R Us is where i got my Champion Edition from, i still remember the excitement i felt taking that ticket up to the register, lol. On the car ride home all i did was just read the game manual and back of the box in anticipation of playing it. Simpler times man, simpler times.
I saw this one in an arcade, a dude was perfecting every stage by filling the entire screen with sonic booms with Guile and I just thought the guy knew some super secret moves lol
I once played an arcade SF2 Turbo which was batshit crazy. Zangief's spinning clothesline spawned two Yoga Flame's at his feet, one each side. Literally unplayable
Super Street Fighter 2: The New Challengers was my first SF game. Granted it was the Genesis version where that version mostly sounded bad compared to other home ports, I genuinely love this game. It is one of my all time favorite SFs, had one of the best fighting game intros and had the Tournament and Group modes.
This confused me so much as a kid... I had both SNES and Genesis versions of 2, but had friends that had other versions of 2, but then saw different versions in the arcade of 2... then saw 2 Turbo sitting next to a different version of 2 in Blockbuster. *mind explodes*
When I was a kid only one of my friends was wealthy enough to have a Super Nintendo and Street Fighter 2 in 1991. There was so many of us in the neighborhood who wanted to play she kicked us out of the house and the TV and SNES was set up on milk crates in the garage. Winner stayed loser left. I remember winning three in the row thinking I was the absolute shit until I got stomped but man it felt great. Those were the days and kids today will never know how great the early 1990s was as a young teenager.
I still remember the day I got SFII Turbo for SNES. My grandma gave me the money to buy the game and I rode my bicycle to my local area supermarket which had a video game booth/shop. I immediately noticed the huge difference between this game and loved it so much because not only was I able to use the boss characters but the game played differently and a whole lot faster. That was a great summer to be a Street Fighter fan.
I've got fond memories of Champion Edition in the arcades in 1994. A sit down cabinet, scarred by overflowing built in ashtrays, stiff baseball bat style sticks, and learning Guile's standing flashing kick all for just 10p a credit. Good times.
A thing that's worth keeping in mind is that these Street Fighter versions were essentially balance patches/expansion packs in a way. Each "big" version added a fundamental difference (the bosses being playable, the faster speed, the new challengers, etc) on top of smaller balance changes. Of course, this also demonstrates the issue with this approach: Since each release was a different game, they had to be released as such which is a problem, especially when it comes to home ports. It's kind of interesting to consider the ramifications of Street Fighter's re-releases: most other arcade fighters afterwards limit themselves to one big re-release or two and these days the practice died out since DLC effectively made it a non-issue.
I remember when Capcom tried to add new characters by DLC to a game I can't quite remember (Street Fighter 4?) and the new Killer Instinct devs tried a pay per character scheme, buying all characters would be the price of a full game so if you played only 1-2 characters the game was cheap to get into, and the FGC went apeshit over it because they're used to being ripped off with a full priced game for 3 new characters. Nowadays, a pass that grants you all new DLC characters is the norm.
Few corrections (and additions): CE started mirror matches, not Turbo. The home versions of Super had speed settings. The Genesis having more. CPU on Genesis could do combos in higher difficulties that weren’t possible by players. Outside of that, I wouldn’t say CE is irrelevant wholesale. A lot of countries didn’t get SF2s after CE… and people to this day still play the hell out of it. I think it really cleaned up Vanilla by opening up the cast and mirror matches. It’s really a more realized or complete version of vanilla, so I can’t agree with saying Vanilla > Super when CE’s just a better version of Vanilla. One small detail I like about CE is that it added more frames of animation when getting hit in certain circumstances. It’s not terribly hard to notice.
The computer-controlled versions of characters were *completely different programming objects* than the player-controlled versions of them, and for the longest time, always were. This is why some AI-controlled combos would never work for players, no matter how tight your timing was; and while the player-controlled versions got tuned for balance purposes, these adjustments would rarely result in retuned computer-controlled characters. One infamous example is SFEX a+'s CPU-Hokuto being able to jump-forward HK (this pops the player up for CPU, but not for players) and juggle them with crouching HK (which juggles for CPU, but also not for players).
"One small detail I like about CE is that it added more frames of animation when getting hit in certain circumstances. " - yes, cos the Genesis/Megadrive was on a 20Mbit cart IIRC, whereas the Super NES was on a 16Mbit card.
Bison in Champion edition was the easiest to beat the game with. Psycho Crusher with Strong and spamming the hell out of strong while holding forward or back. If they blocked, you stop right behind them and you throw them. Perfect the entire game on a couple occasions when the cpu wasn't cheap.
Nostalgia hit hard. Great analysis, Max. I'd like to see your comments on the huge amount of hacks these games got. In Brazil we loved the so called "Street Fighter de Rodoviária" ("Bus Station Street Fighter"), usually found in bus stations and many suspicious botecos. It was super dope to shoot infinite hadoukens with Balrog or blow flames from Gief's lariat!
That intro was so powerful in the arcade. Had a kickass music playing and you'd be walking into the arcade and it was like Ryu was across the room getting ready to just blast you with a fireball.
2:28 "Champion Edition" is about 15% faster than "World Warrior". "World Warrior" feels like the characters are moving underwater immediately after playing "Champion Edition".
I think by the time Street Fighter II': Special Champion Edition came out on the Genesis most everyone had the six button controls. Thankfully controls were pretty cheap, especially compared to now. The six button control was so ubiquitous that it’s actually kind of weird the Sega Genesis Mini even came out with a three button control.
I played the hell out of Turbo on my SNES as a kid. Still remember fighting Vega with the 10 turbo stars cheat, it was like trying to catched a coked up grasshopper.
Champion edition is the most iconic for me. It was the version I played the most in arcades. And it was everywhere. I even play it today for nostalgia.
Champion edition is the third highest grossing arcade machine only behind Space Invaders and Pac-Man. It was the version most people played by quite a way.
I feel HF only was popular in the US. Here in Mexico (and I think for most of Latin America too) it was Champion Edition all over and we still play to this day. Just go to Fightcade and you'll see a lot more players for this version over the HF one.
I like Champion Edition more personally. Turbo/Hyper Fighting kinda feels like a bootleg. And it was made as the answer to a bootleg, which would check out.
It's funny to hear Max talk about SF2 because my experience was very different. When I played it as a kid, I wasn't playing in arcades. I was just playing at home on my SNES, pretty much just with my brother. So when Max starts complaining about how slow SF2 and Super SF2 are, to me that's just the game's normal speed. We played Turbo, but we didn't play with the speed boosted. We always just played at the default speed.
That was coincidentally how I got into playing Street Fighter II, except I used to play it for SNES whenever I'd visit my cousins at my granny's house back in the day. Crazy enough, I got a late start playing the arcade versions frequently because of a couple of bad experiences: Playing SF2 Rainbow at a local laundromat for the first time, and having a nightmare about Vega after playing The World Warrior elsewhere
I played championship edition (the one that added the bosses) for the first time at a barcade recently and I found out for the first time how much was missing from the boss characters move set wise. Sagat for example didn’t have punch moves in the air (all 3 punches just did the same thing as their equivalent kicks) he also may have not had tiger knee but the joysticks were old and tiger knee is already a finicky input so I’m not sure It was a super interesting experience
@15:17 In a way Super Street Fighter 2 on SNES is Super Turbo as it is Super and does have turbo which isnt as obvious (press left or right on the game start screen). I know it doesnt have akuma tho.
Nope. No Super Turbo. However, the CPU DID play like in Super Turbo i.e. stupidly hard, but it didn't have the same moves e.g. M Bison/Dictator's Devil's Reverse is still the same basic one that was in Super in the arcades.
My first SF2 game was the original one at the arcades (also SF1 but it was unplayable lol). Man, what an awesome time. Too bad the new generation will never experience what it was like to play challengers live in person.
Turbo wasn't initially planned to release. There was a hacked version of the game called rainbow edition that did a number of goofy things, including optimizing the game to decrease load times and increase gameplay speed. When it started outselling what Capcom had, they made turbo as a response.
Long story short, the hardware was cheap. I can remember that Capcom was charging thousands for a CE machine, so in stepped Hung Hsi (the maker of the Rainbow boards). Businesses were snatching up these cabinets because Hung Hsi was selling the bootleg hardware for a few Franklins, which was cutting into Capcom's profits. And like you said, we got Turbo because of those bootlegs
@@hoodmistressreloaded Not only that, but Hyper Fighting was delivered as an upgrade kit. If you were one of those who bought the knock off you were out of luck and had to go and pay $$$$s/££££s for the original kit in order to get it.
The running joke at the time was that Capcom couldn't count to 3 with these different versions. SNES' Hyper Fighting version was my jam. Back when it was described as "Arcade Perfect" Damn, I'm old...
I’m a Japanese person who actually played Street Fighter II. Watching this video brings back memories of the intense times we had with this game. Street Fighter II was great, but there was also the series called X, which was on the 3DO-an expensive system different from Nintendo's Super Famicom, so not everyone could afford it. This game allowed for super special moves, which reignited the excitement in Japanese arcades. Back then, many students started going to game centers after school just for Street Fighter II, highlighting how revolutionary this game truly was.😅 Anyways thank you for your vids.
I started with SF2 World Warrior straight from the arcades, then they came out with Champion Edition. My cousins then got SF2 on SNES and I would always get excited to just go to there house every few months to play the game free. Afterwards I finally got my own copy of SF 2 Special Champion Edition for Genesis, the sound sucked but the 6 button controls were awesome. I practiced and trained on the Genesis so much I got the level 8 Master Endings for both Ken and Ryu.
SUPER STREET FIGHTER II: THE NEW CHALLENGERS for the Super Nintendo is my all-time favorite SF game in the series and in SFII iterations. Second runner/fighter up is Super Street Fighter IV for the Nintendo 3DS/PS3/360. As long as CAPCOM makes games completed on disc, I will continue to buy them.
i personally love the music in the SF2 games before the “update” of Super SF2. i just liked the lower bit sound more. same for the announcer as well, liked the OG announcer more than the updated one.
@@blueyosh43 another example i have is with Super Mario All Stars on the SNES. i love the NES music/sounds way more in 8bit over the “technically superior” version of 16 bit.
One thing I do like about the Super Street Fighter 2 announcer is the echo reverb in his voice clips,plus in 2 player mode he announces the name of the winner. Although I wonder why it doesn't echo in the sound test and some ports that are supposed to be as arcade perfect as possible.
This may sound kinda strange coming from a fellow Street Fighter fan, but I didn't actually care much for the faster speeds of "Street Fighter II': Hyper Fighting" and "Super Street Fighter II Turbo" because I think the default speeds of the games you're able to talk about are perfectly fine for casual players like myself, especially if they don't make the games easier to beat if you just want to complete it from beginning to end.
Ah yes, the infamous rainbow/spectrum of all the sf 2 editions. This game (back then) was something else man, no matter how much you think you knew about / are familiar with in this, you could find your random new weird edition arcade at any given place (say at a swimming pool) that goes like “oh you think you know, don’t you..we’ll hop in and find out”.
Actually you can play "mirror" matches from Champion Edition Max...in fact the alternate colors were introduced in CE. HF introduced a third color . That was a bit of an unexpected mistake from you :)
Capcom was definitely milking it, but I feel like new generation people have no idea just how massive SF2 was as like a cultural phenomena.. it was EVERYWHERE. Go to any local arcade or pizzeria, talk to your friends at school SF2 had some presence. Fighting games will probably never be this big, MK and Tekken will sell a lot of copies, so will SF6 but in terms of literally casuals everywhere and just how much presence it had, it will never be as big as SF2.
I still have my copy of Champion Edition on Mega Drive/Genesis, played it heaps back in the day and rented Super. Still remember playing it after dinner on a Friday night!
The high price of SF2 games on SNES was because of the cost of the chips. A 32 megabit game like Chrono Trigger was $70 because of the cost of EPROMs and flash memory. Secret Of Mana also cost a lot for this reason, Tales Of Phantasia and Star Ocean could go as high as $150, etc. The bill of materials had an impact on the price of SNES games. Neo Geo games cost hundreds of dollars for the same reason. The move to CD ROMs on the PS1 helped to flatten out the cost of games because storage capacity suddenly became fixed. Capcom was definitely milking Street Fighter 2 for sure though. :)
Champion edition is my favorite version. I still consider it to be the most perfect one on one fighting game of all time. Turbo was just a rom chip upgrade for Champion PCBs. Not a whole new game. It's fun but, IMO, it breaks certain aspects of the 1 player game. I have both sets of rom chips but it Champion I usually choose to play. Now SF3... that's really the forgotten version. It came out when people were done with 2d graphics so hardly anyone remembers it existed.
As a kid, I was so confused by all these versions of the game. It made trying to buy a Street Fighter game a hassle. Especially if you had to count on your parents to get the right version.
max forgot about a very important version of street fighter 2: street fighter de rodoviária (bus station street fighter). it was very popular in brazil
Yeah...this was a throwback. I remember an arcade that had like every version next to each other at the time.i stuck with Champ because i could move with Honda's slap and corner ppl. 😂
I remember the multiple times we rented "Street Fighter 2" from the video store but I was never 100% sure which one I was actually getting. Sometimes you can play as the bosses, sometimes you couldn't (or maybe needed a special code), sometimes it had Cammy and Fei Long and sometimes it didn't.
I like your videos, but there's a part of this one that drives me up the wall because it's something I've seen multiple RUclipsrs do: discredit Genesis versions of Street Fighter 2 because not everyone had a six button pad. Firstly, that's not the fault of the game, and secondly, people wanting a good experience back in the day typically bought one. They weren't particularly expensive (about 1/4 of the price of the UK game in the UK, IIRC), even to kid me, and it provides a far better SFII experience than the stock SNES pad. And while I'm feeling ranty, yes, the Genesis Special Champion Edition sounded crunchy. However, the SNES version sounded muffled, with out of tune music and truncated samples. Personally, I'll always take crunch over a simulation of an ear infection.
I remember playing SF2: The World Warrior on my cousin's Wii as a kid which was my first exposure to SF. Then, I got SSF2: The New Challengers on my Wii. I think I figured out how to do the Hadoken on my own and Shoryuken by mashing the buttons. Hearing now that it was hated by everyone at the time is actually fascinating.
Seeing that attract screen in the pool hall with my dad is exactly why I first played the game. Super was my intro to the series and I will always have a soft spot for it (I like the default color being correct, if nothing else).
Back when I had a Wii, I got Champion(ship?) Edition on it. The strangest thing about it was the control scheme; for a Wii Remote by itself, only punches _or_ kicks were availabile and I had to press a seperate button to toggle between them. It didn't accept a Nunchuck and I had no other controllers so I had to settle with that. Good times..
That was the same setup as the Mega Drive/Genesis if you didn't have the 6 button controller You had to press the 'Mode' button, which on a SNES would be the select button Funny how they reused that old compromise
I remember putting dozens of hours into SF2 on the SNES, probably more with Hyper Fighting, and I barely played Super. It was the first time I felt like I had wasted my money on a game.
I have the Street Fighter 2 Champion Edition Turbo/Hyper fighting arcade machine. The one shown at 1:48. A little history of that machine. It starts out as SF2 Champion Edition. Then later on, capcom offered "upgrade chips" to upgrade the game to more current versions. This machine has two upgrades. The HYPER upgrade, which added same character vs, and extra color variations for the characters, then the TURBO upgrade, which upgraded the games speed. At least that's what it states with the paper work and manual that came with my arcade machine, it also came with two extra manuals, one for each upgrade chip. They are just sheets of paper really that state "Thank you for upgrading your SF2 machine to the turbo/hyper blah blah.. With instructions on how to install the new chip, and what it does too the game. And each chip upgrade came with a new marquee plate to put up top to show which upgrades the machine has. I have an extra marquee plate that just says SF2:CE. There should be marquee plates for each individual upgrade chip out there also, but the arcade that originally owned my machine ordered both upgrade chips at the same time, so they got the double marquee plate that shows both upgrade chips installed (Turbo & Hyper).. But it still had the original SF2:CE plate, from before it was upgraded. I keep that in my gaming closet.
I'm really surprised you went in so hard on the Genesis Special Champion Edition. It was because of that game, Eternal Champions and Mortal Kombat that I made sure to pick up two 6-Button controllers as soon as possible in 1993 that I still have and use til this day 30 years later with USB adapter. Unless you were lucky enough to have the Hori Fight Commander or a 3rd party 6 face button layout playing Street Fighter on SNES was a hot mess. Everybody complained about wiffed moves because of relying on the spongy L and R secondary buttons of the SNES. I owned Turbo on SNES and SCE on Genesis and 99% of the time my friends preferred the Genesis over SNES for that reason. This button problem carried over into the PS1, PS2 and Dreamcast era but luckily Marvel VS Capcom 2 had reduced buttons which helped a lot with that game.🤔
When I was a kid, I had a Genesis and only knew two versions of Street Fighter II -- the one that had Cammy in it, and the one that didn't. I had to explain the difference to my mom at the rental store.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with SSFII. It’s easy to knock it in hindsight, but before SSFIIT came out it was amazing. DJ didn’t need “up kicks”. Cr HP, St HK, St HP, and to a lesser extent St MP. Fei had Cl St HP, St HK, and his flaming dragon kick to anti air.
6:00 Well compared to the SNES the Genesis port is actually the superior one because its actually arcade accurate and keeps cps1 mechanics (CPS1 Chains) the SNES port lacks that. however both console ports of SF2 on SNES and Genesis use the Japanese more balanced revision referred to as "Dash" for the CE modes which nerfs dictator a bit and gives Boxer his TAP with numbers foe example.
Achtually.... 😂 No but seriously, Max is right. The audio in the Genesis version is janky af. Indeed the Genesis version and the original arcade machine both had similar sound chips. So the music could be downgraded and directly transfered relatively easily from one to the other, thus making the Genesis music the most accurate to the arcade out of all these early versions (though most accurate is not always neccesarily better of course). It all comes to the NOSTALGIA factor which version you like. But objectively, the SNES version of SF2 was a better port overall.
@@TatankaTaylor The music was good, but the voices were horrible. The worst audio belongs to the Super Street Fighter 2 port by far, same bad voices as SCE but also an absolutely abymsal soundtrack, a true massacre of the original tunes.
4:40 is also wrong. Champion Edition is NOT the one on the Genesis. Champion Edition started getting ported on the Genesis by a subcontractor of Capcom, then was scrapped because Capcom was not happy with the quality (so it was never released but betas surfaced later). Then Capcom decided to handle the Genesis port themselves, and just like Turbo on the SNES, it's a two-in-one compilation of Champion Edition and Hyper Fighting. They just decided to call it SPECIAL Champion Edition.
I played so much SF2 Turbo as a kid that when M. Bison showed up in Wreck-It Ralph and said "You're not going Turbo are you", I legit thought it was a reference to that game (and was hyped). And then I kept watching and halfway through the movie I realized it was just a coincidence 😆
Man, I think you're being a bit overly critical of the MD/Genesis version. Apart from some crunchy voice samples, it was every bit ss good as SF2 Turbo on the SNES. It had something like 10 different speed settings, the ability to play in either the Champion or Turbo alternate colours. The AI behaves just like the arcade game and the music is arguably better than the SNES (less reverb-y) and it plays amazingly with the 6 button controller. It's definitely not 'rough'.
Gotta understand that when CE was released in arcades it was a huge difference compared to WW. The game ran smoother, they changed Ryu and Ken's jump arch. Gave Ryu a faster fireball and hurricane kick that knocks down, has invincibility properties on startup and recovery. Both Ken and Ryu's jab DP's knock down. Ken has a huge arching DP with way more range than Ryu's and hits twice. Ken's jump in fierce punch is stronger and makes it easier to jump in on Guile. Both hurricane kicks go over Dhalsims yoga fire. They made it much harder to redizzy. They gave everyone reversal frames to make escaping tick throws easier. They took away Guile's long jab, gave him a lunging knee to gain distance while charging. Gave Chun Li a funky overhead kick that is annoying as hell, gave Honda the ability to advance while using hundred hand slaps. Gave blanka a slow roll that stops before reaching the opponent. Adjusted the damage dealt when hitting blanka out of the ball. They gave Zangief the ability to advance when using lariat, added a bounce to his SPD to put distance between him and his opponents after landing it. So the original 8 all got buffed and had tweaks done. Granted it was not a perfect game but it really separated the men from the boys in terms of competition. Hyper Fighting fine tuned the balance changes even further and added speed as well. But CE was prime time SF heyday. Oh and by the way CE was included on SNES. First you got a quasi-CE mode in the first world warrior release of SF2 for SNES. The code let you select the alternate CE colors and let you play same character vs same character, but they were still just play SF2 WW versions of themselves. No new moves or upgrades. Then when SF2 Turbo HF came out for SNES, you could select NORMAL mode and that was SF2 CE.
I've always called it Championship Edition. Also have no idea where I got it from. But I sure as hell remember where I was when I first saw it. I could have sworn this was where we got mirror matches and the bosses as playable. Do we not include rainbow / dragon edition version of hacked SFII?
Capcom basically made a live-service game out of Street Fighter II back in the 90's, hence all the weird names. They were constantly trying out new things, balancing, bug fixing, adding new features etc. similar to what live service games do today. But the distribution was different, so they just ended up with a lot of titles for a single game. :)
If you were there in the arcades at the time this makes a little more sense. There was nothing in arcades that prepared them for the hype of Street Fighter II, and Capcom wanted to take advantage of that by releasing these "refreshes." The arcade releases in America were SF2 the world warrior, Champion Edition, SF2 Turbo, Super Street Fighter 2, Super SF2 Turbo. Champion edition added more than just the bosses - there were balance adjustments and a few move changes for characters and of course new colors. Champion also let both players pick the same character. Turbo was a response to the fact that normal people could react to almost anything in SF and the game became more like chess than a fighting game.
Street Fighter II Turbo on SNES was my introduction to fighting games and Mortal Kombat came soon after that. I have very, very fond memories of Turbo on SNES. It is still my go to of SFII classics bc I didn't play Super Turbo until I was an adult lol
I remember buying Mortal Kombat for SNES because it was way cheaper than Street Fighter 2 Turbo than a few weeks later someone traded me Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo for my Mortal Kombat, WIN!!
I don't know about Special Champion Edition being worse than Turbo. Maybe 6-button controllers were hard to come by in the US, but quickly became the standard for Mega Drive here in Europe. They were easily available. And the game played SO MUCH BETTER with a six button joypad than with the clunky control system it had on SNES, with the shoulder buttons, it's not even funny.
A couple of things to mention as some already have. Champion edition brought the following additions to SF2; 1) Mirror match - Both players can choose the same fighter. 2) Playable Boss characters. 3) Rebalancing, with additional moves given to certain characters. Bazooka knee for Guile and the flippin neck breaker for Chun Li. 4) The start of Ryu and Ken deviating from each other in terms of their special moves. E.g. Ryu’s tatsu was a one hit knock down move with invulnerability frames at the beginning versus Ken’s multi hit tatsu which didn’t cause a hard knock down. Ken’s DP now partially went across the screen in medium and fierce variations whereas Ryus still went straight up vertically. Super killed my enthusiasm for SF2 to the point that I didn’t really look at Super Turbo and then another brilliant Capcom fighter appeared which really showed off the new CPS2 board featuring classic horror monsters. After the majesty of SF2 Turbo, going to the slow gameplay of Super was a considerable regression, especially as we were expecting SF3 to be announced in 1994. Disappointing was an understatement. Little did we know that it would be another three years before we’d see that come to fruition.
SF2CE had a lot of hackroms, that is why was released SF2HF 6 months later, also SS2F was "incomplete" and rushed to release CPS2 and then SSF2X. Also American release of SF2CE was like a World Warrior Remixed version and Japanese had the nerfs of ken,Bison,Zangief and Vega.
I aggree with everything you said, except about Special Champion Edition. Yes, it sounds rough, but it plays superb. And i don't know there, but in my country there was a promotion where you could send them your 3 button controller to get a free new 6 button one, that is, to this day, the best way to play Street Fighter. I don't remember a single person in my youth that didn't had the 6 button controllers at the launch of the game. But it's also true that i'm from Europe and here Sega was much more popular and made a lot of promotions like that.
champion edition was a massive upgrade. you got mirror matches, the 4 bosses, and there were massive changes for a lot of the characters, a lot of characters got their signature moves in champion edition.
It's really interesting to me that Capcom essentially invented what would eventually become DLC characters and feature updates, they just had to rerelease the ENTIRE GAME every time they added something since there was no other way to deliver the updates to customers.
Champion Edition is where Ken and Ryu weren't clones anymore, since you could select the same character. Ryu got the slow knockbacking tatsu, while Ken got a longer range fierce DP (it also had knockback with all buttons) and the quick multihitting tatsu.
Pretty sure the only changes in Champion Edition was playable bosses and mirror matches, but Ryu and Ken were still otherwise identical and functionally redundant. It wasn't until Turbo the characters were actually rebalanced, including Ryu and Ken being given minor differences for the first time.
Still I will always love World Warrior Arcade edition that first one was something special man
@@EmeralBookwise Champion Edition actually has quite a few changes. Besides all the art getting tweaked and new backgrounds, there were a lot of little gameplay/balance changes. For example, Ken and Ryu got different DPs and tatsus, Honda got moving handslap and headbutt now knocks down, Chun got a flipping neck breaker and larger air throw range and easier to execute lightning legs, Guile got 2 hit flash kick, Blanka got some of his normals reworked (s.hp and s.rh), Sim air yoga spear and yoga mummy became command normals that could be executed at any height, and Zangief got moving lariat and bigger bounceback after spd. There were also other hitbox adjustments and other little tweaks.
They're not BIG changes, more like a lot of little changes to fix some balance issues.. but then they also made dictator super busted lol
@@borawserboxer: Hmm... maybe.
Although I'm very much feeling like I must have slipped into a parallel universe by accident at some point, because all of those change you mention are things I remember being first introduced in Turbo... LOL
...or maybe the only version of Champion I ever played was either an incomplete early revision or just a hacked bootleg of World Warrior.
@@borawserboxer Not to mention, they removed the infamous Guile glitches like the Freeze and Handcuffs. So yeah, it was a pretty significant 'balance patch' before Hyper Fighting.
One of the arcades by my Grandma's place had Street Fighter II: Rainbow Edition. That variation was insanity the first time playing it. Ryu being able to throw several Hadouken's at a time, Ken's Tatsumaki Senpukyaku going full screen, character's being able to jump off screen, pressing start to switch characters during a fight, and more.
I really hope he reviews rainbow edition someday. So bad ass!
I used to work in an arcade with a rainbow edition cabinet. Seeing the faces of people who had never tried that version and who thought it was good old CE was always a pleasant surprise.
RE was nuts, but it's the reason you can Air-Tatsu to this day
@@biiigdave3176
He did play Rainbow for the Ken Legacy, if I recall.
The only bootleg I ever saw in an actual arcade. Was mental and rubbish to play if nothing for the novelty
The beginning felt like a Chronologically Confused episode, just with Max
I remember thinking SF Zero and Alpha were separate things due to that Chronologically Confused about sequels episode.
@@DiSCERiTY Different regions getting different names for things was such hel elemayo
I remember in that video, James mentioned a Jackie Chan movie series with the names swapped between the sequel and original like WHY lol
Man imagine a crossover with AVGN?!
@@carloszagal1934 At the very least, I'd love it if he either voiced a character involving some review like John Romero did or if showed up for a bit like with Matt McMuscles to give AVGN the next game or advice.
As for review, maybe he covers the Alpha series to see whether or not, it's good if not better than Street Fighter 2.
Super also introduced different color palettes according to the button used to select the character. That was amazing to me as a kid.
And to think that Tsujimoto''s original idea was to move on from SF II after the Snes port of The World Warrior, but James Goddard kept pushing for an upgrade. And thanks to his contacts he got away with it.
I wonder what would have been of all of it if Tsujimoto had said "No".
Hey Max, greetings from Brazil! Your channel is one of the reasons I could learn to speak and hear in English so easily. Thanks!
Down, R, Up, L, Y, B. Even after all these years, I still remember the code for the SNES version of Street Fighter 2 that unlocked the Championship Edition colors for the characters and the ability to play as the same character in Vs Mode.
And to unlock 10-star speed in Turbo. Which the Genesis version already had available by default-its one advantage over the SNES version.
U play street fighter5?
I could've sworn you missed the X and A off the end of that cheat code.
@@bockerwright4132 We didn't get X and A added to the Champion Edition code here in the US. I know it was strictly for Japan (and possibly some other places), but I also remember it being Down, R, Up, L, Y, B
@@hoodmistressreloaded Ah right. I'm in the UK 👍🏻
probably the most important "version" of SF2 is "Rainbow Edition", that version teach to Capcom a lot of things that even they don't know they could do with SF2
A hundred percent buddy. Funny how that works out
Its kind of unplayable though.
Turbo was the first truly great fighting game.
Street Fighter II Champion Edition also gave you mirror matches and bosses. They realized super quick that mirror matches were very important; they even permitted a special code in the SNES version of Street Fighter II to permit mirror matches, something impossible in the original arcade edition (for reference: Down R Button, Up, L Button, Y, B at Capcom logo).
Yes Champion Edition was basically what World Warrior should have been, and it was more balanced and didn't have stupid damage on some moves and throws.
@@alexojideaguYeah, but still we get pretty broken characters so.
You could choose clones already in Champion Edition. We used to call them here "fake" and "true". There were some other changes, too, like Ken and Ryu becoming distinct.
Somebody in my country invented that the dash meant "half", so everybody called Champion Edition Street Fighter Two and a Half around here. 😀
Man "Special Champion Edition" on the Genesis was the very first SF game (and fighting game in general) that i ever owned as a kid. I played the heck out of that game. That's the game i cut my teeth on as a kid and really learned how to play SF with. It wasn't as good as the arcade version obviously but was still a great port in my opinion. Also the box art is still some of my favorite official SF art ever, love that cover.
I agree. That was my first fighting game also.
Agreed. I remember playing SF2 in the arcade and was very impressed with the visuals but didn’t know how to do anything. Rented SPE from Blockbuster opened the manual and nearly fell over looking at the move list thinking, “well there’s no way in hell I could do that.” 4 days later my thumbs were blistered and bloodied. Later that year my grandmother gifted that game to for my birthday, and I saved up enough money to buy a six button controller. We didn’t have money so getting that expensive cartridge was unbelievable. Later on She and I would take a city bus and taxi cab ride to the nearest Toys R Us to pick up Super when it came out.
Sorry for the wordy response just lost in memory there. 😅
@@michiganjack1337 Love this man, lol. Yea Toys R Us is where i got my Champion Edition from, i still remember the excitement i felt taking that ticket up to the register, lol. On the car ride home all i did was just read the game manual and back of the box in anticipation of playing it. Simpler times man, simpler times.
Same here!!
Still have the cart decade's later
Same here. It was my first game and still love it to this day. Still own my childhood cart
I played SF2: Rainbow edition, once, in a mall.
It was trippy AF.
Is that the one where balrog shoots hadoukens with his charge punches? I used to play that in a Mexican restaurant it was awesome
I saw this one in an arcade, a dude was perfecting every stage by filling the entire screen with sonic booms with Guile and I just thought the guy knew some super secret moves lol
Rainbow Edition was a ROM hack
I once played an arcade SF2 Turbo which was batshit crazy. Zangief's spinning clothesline spawned two Yoga Flame's at his feet, one each side. Literally unplayable
These videos have been an absolute delight for any SF fan. Amazing work.
Max has to pay the editor more, he's killing it good.
I think max does it him self he’s made trailers and everything before 😃
The editor is their own character. You love to see it.
@@senpai2113 He use to edit his own videos but he doesn't anymore
@@senpai2113 that was years ago dude, current max def uses an editor.
@@shutendoji189 now that you mention it I do remember him saying he doesn’t have time to edit cause at the time Jesica and him were having Ripley
Super Street Fighter 2: The New Challengers was my first SF game. Granted it was the Genesis version where that version mostly sounded bad compared to other home ports, I genuinely love this game. It is one of my all time favorite SFs, had one of the best fighting game intros and had the Tournament and Group modes.
Super's intro animation (Ryu throwing a hadoken during a thunderstorm) is burned into my brain.
I'm the exact same.
This confused me so much as a kid... I had both SNES and Genesis versions of 2, but had friends that had other versions of 2, but then saw different versions in the arcade of 2... then saw 2 Turbo sitting next to a different version of 2 in Blockbuster. *mind explodes*
The amount of fights Super Street Fighter II caused in my neighborhood was amazing.
A fighting game community that actually fights!
When I was a kid only one of my friends was wealthy enough to have a Super Nintendo and Street Fighter 2 in 1991. There was so many of us in the neighborhood who wanted to play she kicked us out of the house and the TV and SNES was set up on milk crates in the garage. Winner stayed loser left. I remember winning three in the row thinking I was the absolute shit until I got stomped but man it felt great. Those were the days and kids today will never know how great the early 1990s was as a young teenager.
Special Champion Edition having a turbo was vastly different which was so fun. Air tatsu was such a fun discovery made on that mode as a kid.
I still remember the day I got SFII Turbo for SNES. My grandma gave me the money to buy the game and I rode my bicycle to my local area supermarket which had a video game booth/shop. I immediately noticed the huge difference between this game and loved it so much because not only was I able to use the boss characters but the game played differently and a whole lot faster. That was a great summer to be a Street Fighter fan.
I've got fond memories of Champion Edition in the arcades in 1994. A sit down cabinet, scarred by overflowing built in ashtrays, stiff baseball bat style sticks, and learning Guile's standing flashing kick all for just 10p a credit. Good times.
A thing that's worth keeping in mind is that these Street Fighter versions were essentially balance patches/expansion packs in a way. Each "big" version added a fundamental difference (the bosses being playable, the faster speed, the new challengers, etc) on top of smaller balance changes.
Of course, this also demonstrates the issue with this approach: Since each release was a different game, they had to be released as such which is a problem, especially when it comes to home ports. It's kind of interesting to consider the ramifications of Street Fighter's re-releases: most other arcade fighters afterwards limit themselves to one big re-release or two and these days the practice died out since DLC effectively made it a non-issue.
I remember when Capcom tried to add new characters by DLC to a game I can't quite remember (Street Fighter 4?) and the new Killer Instinct devs tried a pay per character scheme, buying all characters would be the price of a full game so if you played only 1-2 characters the game was cheap to get into, and the FGC went apeshit over it because they're used to being ripped off with a full priced game for 3 new characters. Nowadays, a pass that grants you all new DLC characters is the norm.
Few corrections (and additions):
CE started mirror matches, not Turbo.
The home versions of Super had speed settings. The Genesis having more. CPU on Genesis could do combos in higher difficulties that weren’t possible by players.
Outside of that, I wouldn’t say CE is irrelevant wholesale. A lot of countries didn’t get SF2s after CE… and people to this day still play the hell out of it. I think it really cleaned up Vanilla by opening up the cast and mirror matches. It’s really a more realized or complete version of vanilla, so I can’t agree with saying Vanilla > Super when CE’s just a better version of Vanilla. One small detail I like about CE is that it added more frames of animation when getting hit in certain circumstances. It’s not terribly hard to notice.
The computer-controlled versions of characters were *completely different programming objects* than the player-controlled versions of them, and for the longest time, always were. This is why some AI-controlled combos would never work for players, no matter how tight your timing was; and while the player-controlled versions got tuned for balance purposes, these adjustments would rarely result in retuned computer-controlled characters.
One infamous example is SFEX a+'s CPU-Hokuto being able to jump-forward HK (this pops the player up for CPU, but not for players) and juggle them with crouching HK (which juggles for CPU, but also not for players).
CE also had some slightly differences in stages compared to OG SF2, if I recall, like Ryu's stage now being set at night.
"One small detail I like about CE is that it added more frames of animation when getting hit in certain circumstances. " - yes, cos the Genesis/Megadrive was on a 20Mbit cart IIRC, whereas the Super NES was on a 16Mbit card.
Bison in Champion edition was the easiest to beat the game with. Psycho Crusher with Strong and spamming the hell out of strong while holding forward or back. If they blocked, you stop right behind them and you throw them. Perfect the entire game on a couple occasions when the cpu wasn't cheap.
Nostalgia hit hard. Great analysis, Max. I'd like to see your comments on the huge amount of hacks these games got. In Brazil we loved the so called "Street Fighter de Rodoviária" ("Bus Station Street Fighter"), usually found in bus stations and many suspicious botecos. It was super dope to shoot infinite hadoukens with Balrog or blow flames from Gief's lariat!
Rainbow Edition was the most infamous, as it led to SFII Turbo being made.
That intro was so powerful in the arcade. Had a kickass music playing and you'd be walking into the arcade and it was like Ryu was across the room getting ready to just blast you with a fireball.
2:28 "Champion Edition" is about 15% faster than "World Warrior". "World Warrior" feels like the characters are moving underwater immediately after playing "Champion Edition".
I think by the time Street Fighter II': Special Champion Edition came out on the Genesis most everyone had the six button controls. Thankfully controls were pretty cheap, especially compared to now. The six button control was so ubiquitous that it’s actually kind of weird the Sega Genesis Mini even came out with a three button control.
My friends and I played SNES Street fighter 2 all day everyday in 1992 and loved every minute of it.
I played the hell out of Turbo on my SNES as a kid. Still remember fighting Vega with the 10 turbo stars cheat, it was like trying to catched a coked up grasshopper.
Champion edition is the most iconic for me. It was the version I played the most in arcades. And it was everywhere. I even play it today for nostalgia.
Champion edition is the third highest grossing arcade machine only behind Space Invaders and Pac-Man. It was the version most people played by quite a way.
"Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition (Mega Drive)" was amazing. Still best music of any SF2 version in my complete nostalgia goggles opinion
I feel HF only was popular in the US. Here in Mexico (and I think for most of Latin America too) it was Champion Edition all over and we still play to this day. Just go to Fightcade and you'll see a lot more players for this version over the HF one.
I like Champion Edition more personally. Turbo/Hyper Fighting kinda feels like a bootleg. And it was made as the answer to a bootleg, which would check out.
I think you’re right. I like CE and New Challengers the most. I like the slower speed.
It's funny to hear Max talk about SF2 because my experience was very different.
When I played it as a kid, I wasn't playing in arcades. I was just playing at home on my SNES, pretty much just with my brother. So when Max starts complaining about how slow SF2 and Super SF2 are, to me that's just the game's normal speed. We played Turbo, but we didn't play with the speed boosted. We always just played at the default speed.
That was coincidentally how I got into playing Street Fighter II, except I used to play it for SNES whenever I'd visit my cousins at my granny's house back in the day. Crazy enough, I got a late start playing the arcade versions frequently because of a couple of bad experiences: Playing SF2 Rainbow at a local laundromat for the first time, and having a nightmare about Vega after playing The World Warrior elsewhere
"There's a bit more cohesion there."
2:50
You okay there, T. Hawk?
Drugs are whack
I played championship edition (the one that added the bosses) for the first time at a barcade recently and I found out for the first time how much was missing from the boss characters move set wise. Sagat for example didn’t have punch moves in the air (all 3 punches just did the same thing as their equivalent kicks) he also may have not had tiger knee but the joysticks were old and tiger knee is already a finicky input so I’m not sure
It was a super interesting experience
@15:17 In a way Super Street Fighter 2 on SNES is Super Turbo as it is Super and does have turbo which isnt as obvious (press left or right on the game start screen). I know it doesnt have akuma tho.
Nope. No Super Turbo. However, the CPU DID play like in Super Turbo i.e. stupidly hard, but it didn't have the same moves e.g. M Bison/Dictator's Devil's Reverse is still the same basic one that was in Super in the arcades.
My first SF2 game was the original one at the arcades (also SF1 but it was unplayable lol).
Man, what an awesome time. Too bad the new generation will never experience what it was like to play challengers live in person.
No, we have that now. It's much better when it's not "win or pay" too. We were NOT good sports back then!
Turbo wasn't initially planned to release. There was a hacked version of the game called rainbow edition that did a number of goofy things, including optimizing the game to decrease load times and increase gameplay speed. When it started outselling what Capcom had, they made turbo as a response.
Long story short, the hardware was cheap. I can remember that Capcom was charging thousands for a CE machine, so in stepped Hung Hsi (the maker of the Rainbow boards). Businesses were snatching up these cabinets because Hung Hsi was selling the bootleg hardware for a few Franklins, which was cutting into Capcom's profits. And like you said, we got Turbo because of those bootlegs
@@hoodmistressreloaded Not only that, but Hyper Fighting was delivered as an upgrade kit. If you were one of those who bought the knock off you were out of luck and had to go and pay $$$$s/££££s for the original kit in order to get it.
It's funny that you consider Hyper Fighting to have obsoleted Champion Edition because CE has a far bigger playerbase on fightcade
The running joke at the time was that Capcom couldn't count to 3 with these different versions.
SNES' Hyper Fighting version was my jam. Back when it was described as "Arcade Perfect"
Damn, I'm old...
The knowledge of the fighting connoisseur is un matched ❤
I’m a Japanese person who actually played Street Fighter II. Watching this video brings back memories of the intense times we had with this game. Street Fighter II was great, but there was also the series called X, which was on the 3DO-an expensive system different from Nintendo's Super Famicom, so not everyone could afford it. This game allowed for super special moves, which reignited the excitement in Japanese arcades. Back then, many students started going to game centers after school just for Street Fighter II, highlighting how revolutionary this game truly was.😅 Anyways thank you for your vids.
I started with SF2 World Warrior straight from the arcades, then they came out with Champion Edition. My cousins then got SF2 on SNES and I would always get excited to just go to there house every few months to play the game free. Afterwards I finally got my own copy of SF 2 Special Champion Edition for Genesis, the sound sucked but the 6 button controls were awesome. I practiced and trained on the Genesis so much I got the level 8 Master Endings for both Ken and Ryu.
SUPER STREET FIGHTER II: THE NEW CHALLENGERS for the Super Nintendo is my all-time favorite SF game in the series and in SFII iterations. Second runner/fighter up is Super Street Fighter IV for the Nintendo 3DS/PS3/360.
As long as CAPCOM makes games completed on disc, I will continue to buy them.
i personally love the music in the SF2 games before the “update” of Super SF2. i just liked the lower bit sound more. same for the announcer as well, liked the OG announcer more than the updated one.
ROUUNDD ONEEE
@@blueyosh43 another example i have is with Super Mario All Stars on the SNES. i love the NES music/sounds way more in 8bit over the “technically superior” version of 16 bit.
The drums in the CPS1 versions of SF2 hit waaaaay better than the CPS2 versions in my opinion.
@@Hypno_BPM Agree for both games. I also liked the ending cinematics in the OG SF2 SNES over the super version for my most played characters.
One thing I do like about the Super Street Fighter 2 announcer is the echo reverb in his voice clips,plus in 2 player mode he announces the name of the winner. Although I wonder why it doesn't echo in the sound test and some ports that are supposed to be as arcade perfect as possible.
This may sound kinda strange coming from a fellow Street Fighter fan, but I didn't actually care much for the faster speeds of "Street Fighter II': Hyper Fighting" and "Super Street Fighter II Turbo" because I think the default speeds of the games you're able to talk about are perfectly fine for casual players like myself, especially if they don't make the games easier to beat if you just want to complete it from beginning to end.
I’m with you.
Ah yes, the infamous rainbow/spectrum of all the sf 2 editions. This game (back then) was something else man, no matter how much you think you knew about / are familiar with in this, you could find your random new weird edition arcade at any given place (say at a swimming pool) that goes like “oh you think you know, don’t you..we’ll hop in and find out”.
Playing as the bosses in SF2 champion edition is like the boss when you play as him and you get all of his tools
Actually you can play "mirror" matches from Champion Edition Max...in fact the alternate colors were introduced in CE. HF introduced a third color . That was a bit of an unexpected mistake from you :)
Capcom was definitely milking it, but I feel like new generation people have no idea just how massive SF2 was as like a cultural phenomena.. it was EVERYWHERE. Go to any local arcade or pizzeria, talk to your friends at school SF2 had some presence. Fighting games will probably never be this big, MK and Tekken will sell a lot of copies, so will SF6 but in terms of literally casuals everywhere and just how much presence it had, it will never be as big as SF2.
I still have my copy of Champion Edition on Mega Drive/Genesis, played it heaps back in the day and rented Super. Still remember playing it after dinner on a Friday night!
The high price of SF2 games on SNES was because of the cost of the chips. A 32 megabit game like Chrono Trigger was $70 because of the cost of EPROMs and flash memory. Secret Of Mana also cost a lot for this reason, Tales Of Phantasia and Star Ocean could go as high as $150, etc.
The bill of materials had an impact on the price of SNES games. Neo Geo games cost hundreds of dollars for the same reason. The move to CD ROMs on the PS1 helped to flatten out the cost of games because storage capacity suddenly became fixed.
Capcom was definitely milking Street Fighter 2 for sure though. :)
Champion edition is my favorite version. I still consider it to be the most perfect one on one fighting game of all time.
Turbo was just a rom chip upgrade for Champion PCBs. Not a whole new game. It's fun but, IMO, it breaks certain aspects of the 1 player game.
I have both sets of rom chips but it Champion I usually choose to play.
Now SF3... that's really the forgotten version. It came out when people were done with 2d graphics so hardly anyone remembers it existed.
CE is one of the best for sure. Still the most popular version of SF2 worldwide. It’s my favorite along with New Challengers.
As a kid, I was so confused by all these versions of the game. It made trying to buy a Street Fighter game a hassle. Especially if you had to count on your parents to get the right version.
That - Mario Turtle Shell/1Ups - portion was beautiful.
max forgot about a very important version of street fighter 2: street fighter de rodoviária (bus station street fighter). it was very popular in brazil
Yeah...this was a throwback. I remember an arcade that had like every version next to each other at the time.i stuck with Champ because i could move with Honda's slap and corner ppl. 😂
I remember the multiple times we rented "Street Fighter 2" from the video store but I was never 100% sure which one I was actually getting. Sometimes you can play as the bosses, sometimes you couldn't (or maybe needed a special code), sometimes it had Cammy and Fei Long and sometimes it didn't.
Super Street Fighter 2 for the SNES was my first SF game. Love that game!
I like your videos, but there's a part of this one that drives me up the wall because it's something I've seen multiple RUclipsrs do: discredit Genesis versions of Street Fighter 2 because not everyone had a six button pad. Firstly, that's not the fault of the game, and secondly, people wanting a good experience back in the day typically bought one. They weren't particularly expensive (about 1/4 of the price of the UK game in the UK, IIRC), even to kid me, and it provides a far better SFII experience than the stock SNES pad.
And while I'm feeling ranty, yes, the Genesis Special Champion Edition sounded crunchy. However, the SNES version sounded muffled, with out of tune music and truncated samples. Personally, I'll always take crunch over a simulation of an ear infection.
I love the cps1 sound over the II . It' probably just nostalgia but just hits me different
To me, both are equals though CPS3 sound is probably underrated.
I remember playing SF2: The World Warrior on my cousin's Wii as a kid which was my first exposure to SF. Then, I got SSF2: The New Challengers on my Wii. I think I figured out how to do the Hadoken on my own and Shoryuken by mashing the buttons. Hearing now that it was hated by everyone at the time is actually fascinating.
Let’s go Max!
BAR GOD
Ah a trip down memory lane! Sf2 Turbo was not only one of my first fighting games, it was one of the first video games I ever played.
7:50 Trying to beat Guile to the throw is like Kurenai trying to put Itachi in a genjutsu.
I 100% remembered my Genesis copy being called "Championship Edition"
Seeing that attract screen in the pool hall with my dad is exactly why I first played the game. Super was my intro to the series and I will always have a soft spot for it (I like the default color being correct, if nothing else).
Back when I had a Wii, I got Champion(ship?) Edition on it. The strangest thing about it was the control scheme; for a Wii Remote by itself, only punches _or_ kicks were availabile and I had to press a seperate button to toggle between them. It didn't accept a Nunchuck and I had no other controllers so I had to settle with that. Good times..
That was the same setup as the Mega Drive/Genesis if you didn't have the 6 button controller
You had to press the 'Mode' button, which on a SNES would be the select button
Funny how they reused that old compromise
I remember putting dozens of hours into SF2 on the SNES, probably more with Hyper Fighting, and I barely played Super. It was the first time I felt like I had wasted my money on a game.
Never forget that the Genesis version of Champion Edition had the CPS1 chains.
I have the Street Fighter 2 Champion Edition Turbo/Hyper fighting arcade machine. The one shown at 1:48. A little history of that machine. It starts out as SF2 Champion Edition. Then later on, capcom offered "upgrade chips" to upgrade the game to more current versions. This machine has two upgrades. The HYPER upgrade, which added same character vs, and extra color variations for the characters, then the TURBO upgrade, which upgraded the games speed. At least that's what it states with the paper work and manual that came with my arcade machine, it also came with two extra manuals, one for each upgrade chip. They are just sheets of paper really that state "Thank you for upgrading your SF2 machine to the turbo/hyper blah blah.. With instructions on how to install the new chip, and what it does too the game. And each chip upgrade came with a new marquee plate to put up top to show which upgrades the machine has. I have an extra marquee plate that just says SF2:CE. There should be marquee plates for each individual upgrade chip out there also, but the arcade that originally owned my machine ordered both upgrade chips at the same time, so they got the double marquee plate that shows both upgrade chips installed (Turbo & Hyper).. But it still had the original SF2:CE plate, from before it was upgraded. I
keep that in my gaming closet.
pretty sure Champion Edition was the first one to let you play mirror matches.
Correction: Champion Edition was the first version allowing Mirror Match.
I'm really surprised you went in so hard on the Genesis Special Champion Edition. It was because of that game, Eternal Champions and Mortal Kombat that I made sure to pick up two 6-Button controllers as soon as possible in 1993 that I still have and use til this day 30 years later with USB adapter. Unless you were lucky enough to have the Hori Fight Commander or a 3rd party 6 face button layout playing Street Fighter on SNES was a hot mess. Everybody complained about wiffed moves because of relying on the spongy L and R secondary buttons of the SNES. I owned Turbo on SNES and SCE on Genesis and 99% of the time my friends preferred the Genesis over SNES for that reason. This button problem carried over into the PS1, PS2 and Dreamcast era but luckily Marvel VS Capcom 2 had reduced buttons which helped a lot with that game.🤔
When I was a kid, I had a Genesis and only knew two versions of Street Fighter II -- the one that had Cammy in it, and the one that didn't. I had to explain the difference to my mom at the rental store.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with SSFII. It’s easy to knock it in hindsight, but before SSFIIT came out it was amazing. DJ didn’t need “up kicks”. Cr HP, St HK, St HP, and to a lesser extent St MP. Fei had Cl St HP, St HK, and his flaming dragon kick to anti air.
It’s still amazing. CE and New Challengers are the best versions in my opinion. Never liked the super fast turbo speeds.
I had Super II on the SNES and remember always selecting Turbo 3 speed before starting to play
More SF Legacy! Getting me hyped for SF6!
Blud did not know that the cabinet with sf2 champion edition, turbo, and hyper was a arcade 1up cabinet 😂😂😂
6:00 Well compared to the SNES the Genesis port is actually the superior one because its actually arcade accurate and keeps cps1 mechanics (CPS1 Chains) the SNES port lacks that. however both console ports of SF2 on SNES and Genesis use the Japanese more balanced revision referred to as "Dash" for the CE modes which nerfs dictator a bit and gives Boxer his TAP with numbers foe example.
His comments on the Genesis port show that he doesn't know it very well.
Achtually.... 😂
No but seriously, Max is right. The audio in the Genesis version is janky af.
Indeed the Genesis version and the original arcade machine both had similar sound chips. So the music could be downgraded and directly transfered relatively easily from one to the other, thus making the Genesis music the most accurate to the arcade out of all these early versions (though most accurate is not always neccesarily better of course).
It all comes to the NOSTALGIA factor which version you like.
But objectively, the SNES version of SF2 was a better port overall.
@@TatankaTaylor The music was good, but the voices were horrible. The worst audio belongs to the Super Street Fighter 2 port by far, same bad voices as SCE but also an absolutely abymsal soundtrack, a true massacre of the original tunes.
4:40 is also wrong. Champion Edition is NOT the one on the Genesis. Champion Edition started getting ported on the Genesis by a subcontractor of Capcom, then was scrapped because Capcom was not happy with the quality (so it was never released but betas surfaced later). Then Capcom decided to handle the Genesis port themselves, and just like Turbo on the SNES, it's a two-in-one compilation of Champion Edition and Hyper Fighting. They just decided to call it SPECIAL Champion Edition.
Champion edition brought in using the same character not Hyper fighting which was big at the time.
I played so much SF2 Turbo as a kid that when M. Bison showed up in Wreck-It Ralph and said "You're not going Turbo are you", I legit thought it was a reference to that game (and was hyped). And then I kept watching and halfway through the movie I realized it was just a coincidence 😆
I think it was on purpose to throw us off (the older players😅)
Like an Easter Egg, of sorts (see also "Sheng Long was here"). That was what I thought too when I saw Wreck-It Ralph 😅
Man, I think you're being a bit overly critical of the MD/Genesis version. Apart from some crunchy voice samples, it was every bit ss good as SF2 Turbo on the SNES. It had something like 10 different speed settings, the ability to play in either the Champion or Turbo alternate colours. The AI behaves just like the arcade game and the music is arguably better than the SNES (less reverb-y) and it plays amazingly with the 6 button controller. It's definitely not 'rough'.
Ryu fireball intro is so awesome!!!
Gotta understand that when CE was released in arcades it was a huge difference compared to WW. The game ran smoother, they changed Ryu and Ken's jump arch. Gave Ryu a faster fireball and hurricane kick that knocks down, has invincibility properties on startup and recovery. Both Ken and Ryu's jab DP's knock down. Ken has a huge arching DP with way more range than Ryu's and hits twice. Ken's jump in fierce punch is stronger and makes it easier to jump in on Guile. Both hurricane kicks go over Dhalsims yoga fire. They made it much harder to redizzy. They gave everyone reversal frames to make escaping tick throws easier. They took away Guile's long jab, gave him a lunging knee to gain distance while charging. Gave Chun Li a funky overhead kick that is annoying as hell, gave Honda the ability to advance while using hundred hand slaps. Gave blanka a slow roll that stops before reaching the opponent. Adjusted the damage dealt when hitting blanka out of the ball. They gave Zangief the ability to advance when using lariat, added a bounce to his SPD to put distance between him and his opponents after landing it. So the original 8 all got buffed and had tweaks done. Granted it was not a perfect game but it really separated the men from the boys in terms of competition. Hyper Fighting fine tuned the balance changes even further and added speed as well. But CE was prime time SF heyday. Oh and by the way CE was included on SNES. First you got a quasi-CE mode in the first world warrior release of SF2 for SNES. The code let you select the alternate CE colors and let you play same character vs same character, but they were still just play SF2 WW versions of themselves. No new moves or upgrades. Then when SF2 Turbo HF came out for SNES, you could select NORMAL mode and that was SF2 CE.
I've always called it Championship Edition. Also have no idea where I got it from. But I sure as hell remember where I was when I first saw it. I could have sworn this was where we got mirror matches and the bosses as playable.
Do we not include rainbow / dragon edition version of hacked SFII?
Capcom basically made a live-service game out of Street Fighter II back in the 90's, hence all the weird names. They were constantly trying out new things, balancing, bug fixing, adding new features etc. similar to what live service games do today. But the distribution was different, so they just ended up with a lot of titles for a single game. :)
If you were there in the arcades at the time this makes a little more sense. There was nothing in arcades that prepared them for the hype of Street Fighter II, and Capcom wanted to take advantage of that by releasing these "refreshes." The arcade releases in America were SF2 the world warrior, Champion Edition, SF2 Turbo, Super Street Fighter 2, Super SF2 Turbo. Champion edition added more than just the bosses - there were balance adjustments and a few move changes for characters and of course new colors. Champion also let both players pick the same character. Turbo was a response to the fact that normal people could react to almost anything in SF and the game became more like chess than a fighting game.
Street Fighter II Turbo on SNES was my introduction to fighting games and Mortal Kombat came soon after that. I have very, very fond memories of Turbo on SNES. It is still my go to of SFII classics bc I didn't play Super Turbo until I was an adult lol
The PC had a version of Super Turbo in 1995.
I remember buying Mortal Kombat for SNES because it was way cheaper than Street Fighter 2 Turbo than a few weeks later someone traded me Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo for my Mortal Kombat, WIN!!
I don't know about Special Champion Edition being worse than Turbo.
Maybe 6-button controllers were hard to come by in the US, but quickly became the standard for Mega Drive here in Europe. They were easily available. And the game played SO MUCH BETTER with a six button joypad than with the clunky control system it had on SNES, with the shoulder buttons, it's not even funny.
A couple of things to mention as some already have. Champion edition brought the following additions to SF2;
1) Mirror match - Both players can choose the same fighter.
2) Playable Boss characters.
3) Rebalancing, with additional moves given to certain characters. Bazooka knee for Guile and the flippin neck breaker for Chun Li.
4) The start of Ryu and Ken deviating from each other in terms of their special moves. E.g. Ryu’s tatsu was a one hit knock down move with invulnerability frames at the beginning versus Ken’s multi hit tatsu which didn’t cause a hard knock down. Ken’s DP now partially went across the screen in medium and fierce variations whereas Ryus still went straight up vertically.
Super killed my enthusiasm for SF2 to the point that I didn’t really look at Super Turbo and then another brilliant Capcom fighter appeared which really showed off the new CPS2 board featuring classic horror monsters. After the majesty of SF2 Turbo, going to the slow gameplay of Super was a considerable regression, especially as we were expecting SF3 to be announced in 1994. Disappointing was an understatement.
Little did we know that it would be another three years before we’d see that come to fruition.
SF2CE had a lot of hackroms, that is why was released SF2HF 6 months later, also SS2F was "incomplete" and rushed to release CPS2 and then SSF2X.
Also American release of SF2CE was like a World Warrior Remixed version and Japanese had the nerfs of ken,Bison,Zangief and Vega.
I aggree with everything you said, except about Special Champion Edition. Yes, it sounds rough, but it plays superb. And i don't know there, but in my country there was a promotion where you could send them your 3 button controller to get a free new 6 button one, that is, to this day, the best way to play Street Fighter. I don't remember a single person in my youth that didn't had the 6 button controllers at the launch of the game. But it's also true that i'm from Europe and here Sega was much more popular and made a lot of promotions like that.
SF2 turbo also had a cheat to boost up the turbo even more you had to do it in right before the main menu pops up . aaa the good old SNES days
champion edition was a massive upgrade. you got mirror matches, the 4 bosses, and there were massive changes for a lot of the characters, a lot of characters got their signature moves in champion edition.
I grew up playing Street Fighter 2 Turbo Revival for the Gameboy Advance 😀🎮
Bison Champion Edition: YOU STILL REFUSE TO ACCEPT MY GODHOOD?! KEEP YOUR GOD! IN FACT, NOW WOULD BE A GOOD TIME TO PRAY TO HIM!
It's really interesting to me that Capcom essentially invented what would eventually become DLC characters and feature updates, they just had to rerelease the ENTIRE GAME every time they added something since there was no other way to deliver the updates to customers.