When Capcom first announced that they'd be remaking Super Street Fighter II Turbo and giving it a shiny new HD look, I all but wept tears of sweet happiness. For Street Fighter fans like myself, this is a veritable Holy Grail. An upgrade of what many regard as the best Street Fighter game out there? Count me in, I said, even as I waited months for its release.
Good things come to those who wait, and though it came out a little later than originally planned, I got my hands on Capcom's updated version of my favorite game in the series. So, how does this game compare to the original? It is, perhaps, somehow even better than the first game, thanks in no small part to the technological advances made in the past decade and a half. But underneath it all, it's what I always hoped Street Fighter would be: a fun fighting game for everyone.
If you've played Super Street Fighter II Turbo before, you'll be happy to know that most of the core game play is the same. Arcade mode is still the meat of the game, with nothing having changed from the original version of this game. You still have to mow your way through the World Warriors to get to M. Bison (or if you're good enough, Akuma) at the end of the game and defeat him to win it all. Most of the major game play changes are in other areas, building upon this stable core that fans of the series have loved for the past 15 years. It does get a bit boring, perhaps, due to a lack of modes, but Street Fighter has never been a series for having a ton of modes like Soulcalibur does.
HD Remix has received a few control tweaks, including the new HD Remix mode that simplifies some of the more complex combinations. This is something of a welcome sight, as Street Fighter has become notorious for its hard-to-pull-off combinations in comparison to other games in the genre. You can switch back to classic mode if you don't like the changes or are a grizzled veteran, but the new mode offers hope that gamers who have been scared off by how hard it is to master Street Fighter II might return in large numbers.
Unfortunately, the Xbox 360 version suffers from the same thing that has caused issues with so many other fighting games: the D-pad on the controller just doesn't work great with any fighting game. Sadly, it's the method I prefer to use over the looser left analog stick. If you have the money to invest in a Hori Stick or Fightpad, I'd suggest going that route, but the rest of us are stuck with an overall scheme that isn't as great as it can be because of the 360 controller. That's really nothing Capcom has control over, unless they came out with a new 360 controller on their own.
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