Previous Next

I remember the fuss over Street Fighter II back in the early 90s. It was a huge hit in the arcades. Nintendo virtually put all its hopes on the game to bring their Super Nintendo sales up to a respectable level after the beating that the Mega Drive's Sonic The Hedgehog gave them.

Computer conversions were announced and AA covered the game on many occasions, even having a front cover devoted to the game with a feature article.

So, Street Fighter II never made it to the Amstrad CPC, eh? Well, big fat hairy deal. What was all the fuss about anyway? For one thing, it's a coin-op conversion and they rarely convert well to the home computer market. Just look at the other computer versions and laugh yourself silly. They were never going to achieve a decent conversion of a complex six-button control system over to the one button home computer.

Much like Street Fighter II, Fres Fighter II Turbo features a host of characters squaring up against each other in scenario based one-on-one fights. Winner is the last one standing after the best of three bouts.

First thing that you will notice is that the game comes on four disks and the intro is huge - nothing like any CPC game I've seen before.

You're introduced, in action sequences, to the characters. There's Vanessa (the muscle street fighter girl), Justine (the religious nun type figure), Shamane (who looks like a native American woman), Bones (who is quite literally a pile of skeleton bones re-animated), Walker (a two legged green monster), and F.Sumo (as the name suggests: a sumo wrestling fellow).

The wealth of options, for a two-on-two beat-'em-up, is phenomenal. You can choose from two to seven round bouts, have the special effects on or off, select baby or hard level, choose one or two player, plus a mode to have up to sixteen players. Choose one player and you get more options - single battle, arcade, championship and survival. Then it's time to choose your fighter and their costume.

The main screen is displayed in a widescreen type format stretching across the entire screen, unlike most games where borders are on both sides. The graphics are superb and the attention to detail really shows on the boat scene as reflections ripple away in the water.

Because of the large fighting area the main sprites are small, but very well detailed all the same, as are the varied and detailed backdrops and scenery.

As the norm with beat-'em-ups, each character has their basic moves - kick, punch, jump and so on as well as their own special moves unique to that character. Gameplay is just right, it takes a while to learn and practice all the moves and combination attacks, but when you do the game starts to come alive.

As expected the game suffers from the limited one button controls, which can be fiddly at times. The graphics may move around rather slowly and the collision detection may be slightly off. If you can ignore these minor niggles then you will be rewarded with a quality game.

I've never been much of a one-on-one beat-'em-up fan, so I wasn't expecting much from this game. However, the graphics and presentation are top notch; the options and level detail are amazing, but the gameplay just didn't grab me at all.

It was always going to be a losing battle to try and develop a Street Fighter clone on the humble one-button computer.

Perhaps the SF2 developers realised this when programming the other computer versions and abandoned the CPC version.

Win round one.

Graphics 97%
P. Astonishing graphics!
P. Some of the backdrops are absolutely amazing.

Sound 64%
N. Average sound effects and music.

Grab Factor 71%
N. Takes time to learn the moves and which fighter suits your style.

Staying Power 82%
P. Huge game!
P. Plenty of challenge for the hardened beat-'em-up fan.

Overall 81%
Not quite a SF2 beater, but this was never going to happen on the humble 8-bit CPC. A huge amount of effort and time went into this product, and it shows. A very good effort.