Too Much Hyper, Not Enough Fighting

Jason Booth takes a look at the recently released Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting, on Xbox Live. A highly anticipated title, Mr. Booth lays out why Capcom has fallen short of the high expectations gamers had for the title. From the article: "Now, where the game really falls down is online. It's bad enough playing SF2 on the 360 controller, but with lag it's nearly impossible. The funny thing is, the lag really isn't that bad from a technical standpoint. Most matches feel as if I'm getting a reasonable ping time and response. But SF2 turbo is a fast game, and at that speed, you just can't play, and can't compensate enough for the lag. If you press an attack button while leaving the ground on a jump, it'll probably go off as its landing."

SFIIHF Is Good

[robbway]

I played SFIIHF on the xbox360 last night. I was on the east coast vs. someone on the west coast. No noticeable lag. However, an earlier bout of unknown distance had a couple of choppy animations. It was a light night after 1am EDT, though. It's probably busier around 9pm EDT.

The arcade game is perfect. It plays at the same speed as Hyper Fighting. The controls were very responsive when I used the analog stick. You can set the buttons anyway you like. I think negative reviews on the controller are based on personal preference. You may find some characters easier with the D-Pad, and some easier to control with the analog.

Live Arcade has been receiving way too much non-constructive negative feedback. It really seems like a bashing! Just remember, this is an 80s game!

Re:Let me sum up the review...

[Mprx]

Highest level SF play requires frame accurate timing. 17ms per frame, and humans are easily capable of timing short intervals to this accuracy, (do not confuse timing accuracy with reaction time (which is always at least 100ms), eg. DDR marvelous timing is also single frame, and many people can consistently hit that accuracy). Pings of 17ms over the internet are very rare. What's worse, the lag is inconsistent, so it's impossible to compensate for it accurately.

Re:Turbo == Hyper Fighting

[milkman_matt]

The title screen of the copy of Street Fighter II Turbo for Super NES that I rented said "Hyper Fighting" where the original said "The World Warrior". Wikipedia backs me up. Perhaps you're thinking of the fact that the word Turbo was left out of the arcade game's title in some markets.

That's because SFII:Turbo -was- Hyper Fighting:

KLOV Link [klov.com]

SFII (the original, where only one person could use one character) was "The World Warrior"
then came Champion Edition where 2 people could use the same person, then came SFII Turbo: Hyper Fighting which was I guess just a slightly enhanced, sped up version of SFII CE, after that were all of the pirate versions, rainbow edition and such, then the alphas and SFIII, but yeah, this is just a port of the (IMO) most well rounded version of the game.

I actually bought the PCB off of ebay then went to an arcade game auction, turns out someone was selling the exact cabinet/game that I already had, so I've got my own SFII Hyper Fighting cabinet @home, for less than the cost of any of my consoles. IMO the only way to play SFII is on an arcade cabinet, console controlers just don't do the fighting games (SFII, MK, Etc) justice (except maybe Tekken, that one's pretty good for use with a console controller)

Re:Let me sum up the review...

[cgenman]

I've sparred with Booth in Turbo recently. His reflexes are still pretty darned sharp... he never stopped playing. I'd consider myself a top 1% player, but Booth is probably still one of the top 100 in the country.

We've nitpicked versions of Street Fighter 2 Turbo (or Hyper Fighting, or Turbo Hyper Fighting, or whatever you want to call it) in the past... comparing Turbo Duo / SNES / Genesis revs with the arcade, pads vs sticks, etc. This minutiae tuning is exactly the sort of thing he lives for in the game, and really does determine the difference between a clean control and a sloppy loss when playing with good players.

That having been said, he's basically right. The controller lag is noticeable even on single player... I'd estimate it at a full 10th of a second above the base arcade configuration. The Xbox D-pad is far too diagonal prone for this type of play. The shoulder buttons are even worse than the SNES shoulder buttons. I haven't had a chance to play online yet, but lag on any online game usually precludes tight fighting interfaces, especially as you speed up gameplay.

It's still a good game. And XBL arcade rocks. And he's picking it apart over things a new Street Fighter player might never even notice. But he's basically right.