STREET FIGHTER THE MOVIE

REVIEW:  Throughout the history of video games, many great video game franchises have been periodically downgraded in the form of horrible Hollywood movies. In the case of Street Fighter, look no further than Street Fighter: The Movie starring Jean Claude Van Damme as Guile and Raul Julia as Bison, a movie that bombed at the box office in late 1994.

This movie... though timelessly funny and somehow still manages to be watchable... wasbad. It's so bad, in fact, that you'd be overpaying if you bought it for $3.99 from the crappy DVD bin at Wal-Mart.  I could think of better ways to spend that money. Seriously though, if you're going to actually buy this atrocity, you might as well just go all out and pick up the Blu-ray version!  

Oooooh Nooooooooouuu.

Occasionally, bad movies (and bad movies based on video games) are then sloppily transformed into even worse games. See where this is going yet? Street Fighter: The Movie (The Game) is possibly the all time best example of this trend that should be stopped, but probably never will. This game... *twitch twitch* ... this game was bad. It's so bad, you wouldn't even want to "insert 2 coins" to play it at an arcade in the 90's, because you'd be overpaying. Ouch!(For your information, I purposely neglected putting the Street Fighter: The Movie game onTFG for many years... yes, it is indeed that bad. Most games this bad I don't bother putting on the site, but to complete the full library of Street Fighter games ever released, I suppose it deserves its dark corner of the website.  I can't believe I actually decided to finally write a full review on this sorry excuse for a game, but the the fans demanded it.  So I'll try to make this review as quick and as painless as possible to keep anyone from killing themselves and/or suddenly combusting (like the hideous life bars in this game).

Street Fighter: The Movie was actually developed by American company Incredible Technologies, who were responsible for creating atrocities known as Time Killers andBloodstorm. Sorry, but if you think those games were any good, you're demented and need to go see a doctor. Clearly borrowing the model that Mortal Kombat was successful with, Incredible Technologies used digitized actors in SF: The Movie, which consisted of (mostly) the same cast that appeared in the movie. In a nutshell, the animation and overall visuals of the game are laughable and awkward at their very best moments. The music & sound quality is also terrible, featuring plenty of odd, incoherent grunting during character special moves. I'm also pretty sure "Ken" said "faggot" during Shoryuken... great job guys! 

Take that Mortal Kombat... yeah..... *sound of crickets*

Most characters in the game have some entirely new moves (which only appeared in this game), along with a few old ones (which look absolutely horrible, of course). The gameplay is equally as bad as the graphics, featuring a horribly stiff and sloppy control scheme. Gameplay systems include "counter" throws, which are based on Saturday Night Slam Masters, "interrupt moves", which are performed after blocking an opponent's attack, and "comeback moves", which are special moves that can only be used when the player's life gauge is on the "danger" level. It might sound halfway decent on paper, but it's really a sloppy mess of a game.
 

Can you please choke me with a... rope (?) too?

For the console release, Capcom developed the PlayStation & Sega Saturn home versions internally, and the game was published by Acclaim. Capcom must've realized how sickeningly bad the arcade game turned out, because they actually decided to reprogram the entire game engine!  They basically copy & pasted the horrible graphics over to theSuper Street Fighter II Turbo engine, and added EX Specials to the gameplay (later introduced in SFIII: 2nd Impact). They also changed the game's appearance in a few ways, remixing the stages & music. They also plugged in Japanese voiceovers which made the characters sound like they should.

Differences in the character roster for the home versions, include: Blanka & Dee Jay as playable characters, the absence of Blade and the palette-swap Bison troopers, and Akuma is now a hidden character. Yes, the home versions were... dare I say... an "improvement" over the original arcade version, but the upgrade doesn't change the fact that this game (atrocity) never should've happened.

ashakoor