The most noticeable change in the game is obviously on the graphics front. Every graphical aspect of the game has been redrawn by Udon, the studio that has become synonymous with Street Fighter artwork. I've been a fan of them for some time, and to see what they've accomplished with HD Remix is fantastic. Every character has been changed from their pixelated forms into hand-drawn, cel-shaded beauties. Every animation is fluid, with no noticeable hang-ups. The backgrounds have gotten full hand-drawn facelifts, too. On one hand, it's breathtaking to look at this gaming running on your 360 or PS3. On the other hand, the limitations of the original game are evidenced by the jerky movements of the background characters, which in this HD world are even that much more noticeable, like the guy on Zangief's stage who is always drinking from a bottle of vodka. I'm a bit saddened they didn't update some of these noticeable background elements with the rest of the game's animations, as you would think it would have been easy to do so.
Also updated is the game's soundtrack. HD Remix makes use of many of the artists on OverClocked Remix who contributed to the "Blood on the Asphalt" project a few years ago. The songs are not all directly pulled from the album, as some have been remixed once again by the original artists to fall more in line with the original game's soundtrack. They're still absolutely beautiful to listen to, though, and fit the updated style perfectly. The actual in-game sounds, however, are still the original ones from Super Street Fighter II Turbo. I've been trying to debate whether this is a good or bad thing, but I'm still on the fence. It does keep that old-school Street Fighter II feel in the game, but it also sounds really out of place amongst the updated music.
But what good would HD Remix be without multiplayer? Offline and online multiplayer co-exist here, and both are fantastic. Online game play modes include 8-player tournaments and "quarter mode." Quarter mode is pretty awesome as it recreates the old arcade style multiplayer modes where you called the next game by putting your quarters on the machine. Except this time, it's free. There are your usual other elements too, like voice chat and online leaderboards. Multiplayer runs smooth and jumping into a group game is pretty quick and effortless. There are some graphical glitches in this mode, as a few times, the life bars froze and I couldn't see how much I truly had left for several games. That was perhaps the single biggest annoyance I have had with this game, but it's something that is patchable.
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