A FIGHTING GAME SLIDESHOW
*** ZERO STARS ***
Also for: Amstrad CPC, Arcade, Atari ST, Commodore 64, DOS, TurboGrafx
CD, Wii, Windows, ZX Spectrum
I played the Amiga port of Street Fighter (adapted by Tiertex from the
original arcade) on my Amiga 500 Mini. This machine provided the
game with such a performance boost that it must've run at something like ten
times the intended speed. A fix for this predicament exists, but it takes a tiny bit of work to implement and I'm a lazy guy. When I figured out that it's not necessary to fix it in order to beat the game I didn't bother.
You see, the Amiga port of the first game in this venerated fighting game series probably claims the title "Worst Game I've ever Beaten". It can be won by spamming the same attack moves over and over. I tried it with two different kicks for two consecutive
playthroughs, back-to-back, and it worked like a charm. The AI didn't know how
to respond.
In spite of the blonde freak on the title screen, you can only play as the
dark-haired Ryu, as he partakes in a world tour of street fights. You visit
five different countries - U.S.A., Japan, Britain, China and Thailand - and
face off against two different opponents in each location. Most of them are
boring and unique to this entry. Apart from Ryu, I was only familiar with
Sagat, who at least reappeared in Street Fighter II (the only one
I had played before).
I generally dislike fighting games. I always try to cheese my way through them, but it never works for long. On my first playthrough of this game, I tried repeating the
spinning ground kick, performed by holding the stick back and left, and then
spamming the fire button. Street Fighter on the Amiga turned out to be my kind of game.
No enemy, except the two that had ranged attacks -
the ninja and the final boss, Sagat - could respond. For the ranged fighters, I had to
switch to spamming flying kicks, which turned out well. As for the rest of the
opponent roster, I beat them with mostly perfect scores and plenty of time to
spare. Only one opponent won a round, but that was when the cable for my
USB-controller accidentally came loose.
On the second playthrough, I tried spamming flying kicks, and it worked
for all the opponents. It's not as failsafe, as the enemy can theoretically
get a hit in once in a while. But I nevertheless won every match. In
fact, I didn't lose a single round. It's the preferrable method if you want to
stick to a single move.
The funniest thing happened next. I transitioned into a third playthrough,
thinking: "Can I beat this game by spamming the fire button only, without even
touching the stick?" And I went on to beat the first opponent, standing firm
in place and punching straight ahead. The enemy kept hesitantly going into my punches. I decided to try it on the second
opponent, and got pretty close, but he was the shuriken-throwing ninja. He was
able to beat me from afar. Game over. I decided I'd had it with this game.
This must be the first game ever I've beaten in one sitting on my first
attempt. And not only once, but twice (the game loops over to the beginning
after beating the final opponent). My double playthrough must have taken
something like 20 minutes.
You might ask yourself why I would suck all possible enjoyment out of the game
by not playing it as intended. Isn't it cheating? Well, it was just a test I
devised when I saw the A500 Mini breakneck speed performance - and the game failed it. If the
programmers can't make a competent AI and implement a fluid animation scheme,
why should I bother?
As soon as I started moving and performing attack moves, I noticed
the sprites didn't exactly animate. When you, or the enemy, perform a kick,
the sprite just changes instantly into a kick, with no transitory frames in
between to simulate a kick being performed. This gives you no response time.
If you wanted to dodge a high kick, you'd have literally no time to react. For
a defensive player, that's highly unfair. So that could also be called
cheating - on the animator's behalf. I wouldn't even call the sprites animated, they just move through a series of stills. It's like watching the slideshow version of an action scene.
And you should see the framerate on original Amiga hardware. It's absolutely
horrendous. Just take a peek on the video at the bottom of this page. What's
more, Ryu's restricted to only a handful of moves, without any of the trademark
special moves remaining, like the Hadoken or the Shoryuken. So why would you even bother
playing it straightforward?
At least the bonus round between countries has hilariously bad visuals. I almost spit my coffee on the screen as this scene
appeared:
Add a boring presentation to all this, and you've got little left to
even call a game. The music isn't too bad, but it repeats the same song that
carries over from the title screen all the way to the end (and beyond). Any
and all sound effects are completely missing. The generic backdrops are decent, but deny you lots of the flavor of the country you're supposed to visit. And check out that stupid
standard kick - it's completely useless, with its malformed, short reach.
Whilst writing this review, an idea snuck up on me. How about I try to beat
the game using only the fire button, except against the two opponents with
ranged attacks? Well, I just tried it, and I can verify that it actually
works. For the ninja and Sagat you need to switch to jumping attacks. As for
the rest, if you could find a controller with a "turbo"-function, you could
beat them all by only holding the fire button. Or if you find one
with auto-fire, you could beat them by doing literally nothing.
A fighting game without gameplay, huh... What's next? A visual novel without a
story? A grocery store without groceries? I mean, even E.T. on the
Atari 2600 you at least had to play if you wanted to beat it. Now,
please, go ahead and enlighten me again
how Forspoken, Redfall and The Lord of the Rings: Gollum are the worst games of all time.
[All screenshots are taken from
www.mobygames.com]
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