Hands-on with Street Fighter II:HF for 360
by Dan Choi 
{ Feb 18th 2006 at 6:45AM }
While Western reporters got an earful of Capcom news at the Gamer's Day event
held in Las Vegas the other day, the gathering also served as the first opportunity to try out Street Fighter II
Hyper Fighting on the 360 as well.So what's there to report so far? Here's what GameSpot had to say: "From the look of things, Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting is shaping up to be just what fans want. The visuals look promising, the control is basically solid, and the breakdown of achievements for it are good, too. The only stumbling block we've noticed has been the game's performance, which we expect to be improved."
If Quarter Matches reproduce the live spectator vibe of old, then Street Fighter just might prove to be as potent on Live as it was back in the day, though in a different kind of Arcade (and, perhaps, a very different kind of age). Even if the download doesn't arrive in late February as rumored, there will surely be many hours whiled away by fighting fans in March once they get to spend some quality time with kindly Ken and Ryu online. Here's to the future, which appears to be a promising update of the past.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Greg2k @ Feb 18th 2006 7:31AM
I've been using the XBOX 360 controller for playing MAME games and I can say the DPAD on the controller sucks for fighting games. Both Street Fighter Alpha and SNK vs Capcom don't play that well with this DPAD. So, playing it on the XBOX 360 won't be half as enjoyable as it should be.
Mike @ Feb 18th 2006 7:52AM
I think Street Fighter 2 is going to open a lot of people's eyes. The numbers sold on SF2 will be amazing. I know SF2 is repackaged and sold every year for almost every system, but this one is on XBLA. Even though SF games have supported online play in the past, the support has been really lacking (there weren't enough people playing it online to make it entertaining). Now with the ease of XBLA, people can just simply click that download button and its theirs. I think the wide adoption of this version of the game will be what makes it a great game. I mean look at Halo 2. Without the wide-adoption rate and massive number of people playing it on Live, it would be just another nice FPS. This will be the first killer app for XBLA (unless you consider Gemoetry Wars to be a killer app). It might even be the top selling game of the year for the Xbox 360. Thats not a knock on the next gen games of the 360, it is a testament to the power of XBLA. Watch out for this game. And the good news is once this game thrives, it will only get better, since even more companies will want to bring their games to XBLA.
ziper @ Feb 18th 2006 8:07AM
Isn't that 4:3? It should be 16:9 as the PSP version!
Dan Choi @ Feb 18th 2006 8:15AM
Hey, ziper. Check out the screen index from GameSpot for more shots; the (non-Quarter Match?) ones there look a bit wider to me:
http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/streetfighteriihyperfighting/screenindex.html
Jelly @ Feb 18th 2006 9:34AM
I just did some measuring in photoshop.
The images in the link from dan are 962 x 690 (1)
The thumbnail is 225 x 184 (2)
the actual playing area of the thumbnail is 173 x 141 (aprox) (3)
This means
(1) equals 16:11.5 or 4:2.87
This is closer to 4:3 than 16:9
(2) equals 16:11.5 or 4:2.87
This is exactly the same
(3) equsl 16:13 or 4:3.26
This is almost exactly 4:3
Please note that these measurements are approx, and may well be very wrong if i have my sums wrong, but from these screenshots, it looks like 4:3...
I don't know, i don't care too much, but widescreen would be nice. As long as they keep the borders/whatever nice and maybe informative or something, then that's cool.
EDIT - Just found some more images on the gamestop site. They are 1024 x 576. This gives exactly 16:9.
just so you know, i am talking about the controller info shots, and some of the other "setup" shots. None of the action screens (that i can see) are 16:9.
I would be happy to be proved wrong :) i still hold hope for 16:9, or maybe an option to switch, regulated by the dashboard like many other games.
mike @ Feb 18th 2006 10:36AM
Im not gonna buy this game. I enjoyed Street fighter 2 in the past when I was a kid, but that game was seriously overplayed. Great game for the time, but I have no intention of playing it again. Even if it was free I would still not play it. Fighting games today just dont offer the same depth they used to when I was a kid. Maybe its the fact that I dont get together with a group of 10 people anymore to play a game. Sure it has online play, but thats no fun in 1v1 type games.
kilo113 @ Feb 18th 2006 12:26PM
haha :D
anyway, yeah the 360 dpad isn't as good as the old Spad's, but real SF fans play with arcade sticks anyway!
what sucks is that many fans that have the street fighter anniversary collection for xbox 1 already have arcade sticks! and those games were already online!
MS needs to seriously make an xbox -> 360 controller adapter..it only makes sense. who wants to buy expensive controllerssticks again??
and if SFanniversary was backwards supported, this wouldn't be much news at all! the arcade atmosphere in this is nice and all, and it would be great for other games in the series like 3s or Alpha3 to get the same xbla treatment, but man we need a controller adapter!!! dpad != arcade :(
SynikaL @ Feb 18th 2006 12:44PM
Mike, if you truly believe " Fighting games today just dont offer the same depth", then you obviously knew nothing about the fighting games "in your day" and most certaintly know nothing about the fighting games sitting on shelves today.
-Syn
Namrepus221 @ Feb 18th 2006 5:11PM
Why aren't they using Super Street Fighter 2?
Hyper Fighting wasn't all that good IMO. Just some palet swaps and a few new moves I didn't much care for.
Heck Super Street Fighter 2 X for Matching Service (Japanese Dreamcast) was one of the better games of the series and it was already optimized for online play. Couldn't Capcom port that one over instead. Atleast it added 5 characters to the roster AND the super combo's
The ZeroCorpse @ Feb 18th 2006 7:12PM
People who need to play with Balrog to win are wussies.
I won my city tournament back in the day with Dhalsim. I will rule XBLA with Dhalsim.
I have spoken!!!
dsub @ Feb 18th 2006 7:29PM
bring on the classic arcade games. Online SF2 will be so much fun, the Arcade is really bringing a whole different option for developers to revive come classic titles and revamp them. I love it. I still want Konami to release TMNT arcade though.
Bloo (formerly Glenn) @ Feb 18th 2006 10:58PM
"Why aren't they using Super Street Fighter 2?"
Because they wanted to use the most popular version (and this happens to be my favorite version so I'm pretty happy about that).
And just so everyone else knows, the game will be in 4:3 and if you select 16:9 it will just stretch it to an artifical 16:9. This was discussed in a different preview of the game from the same show.
Dan Choi @ Feb 18th 2006 11:00PM
Yes, you do appear to be right about those action thumbnails, Jelly... I guess that's what I get for not checking all the dimensions myself! At least it's good to know that the menu screens are available in widescreen. ;) If only they could have implemented true widescreen for HD... though I suppose a different screen width could affect the play mechanics adversely. Ah, well...
mocax @ Feb 18th 2006 11:01PM
Remember watching a l33t d00d playing through SF2 arcade with his left hand, using Ryu. Stick + lightpunch/lightkick. Damn he was good.... didn't see what he was doing with his right hand though...
"The only stumbling block we've noticed has been the game's performance, which we expect to be improved"
I thought with xbox360's power, SF2 should be powering through at 2000frames/sec?
gc @ Feb 20th 2006 12:32AM
In reference to #9, imo, Super SF II sucked. I hated the 4 new characters and new artwork, and it just didn't "feel" the SF II's that preceded it. Me personally, I can't wait for this to be released. They just need to bring MKII, MKIII, and Killer Instinct (if possible) and I might not buy another 360 title.
ry @ Feb 20th 2006 1:43PM
this game is HOW old? And the performance needs to be improved on an Xbox360? lol, this thing ran on a super nintendo for Christ's sake.
Couldn't they have gone just a LITTLE bit further and made this something like Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo? Street Fighter 2 Hyper Fighting was just Capcom's answer to all the modified arcade cabinets out there (and it was called Turbo, not Hyper Fighting, which sounds even more like the modified cabinets).
And there's something seriously wrong when a game more than a decade old running on a 400$+ system (and still suffers from performance issues, lol) is as anticipated and hyped up as much as this.
BZ @ Apr 25th 2006 1:38AM
I was disappointed when I saw the Quarter Match Mode screenshot. I was expecting it to be a 3D arcade cabinet with the game screen on the cabinet screen followed with other Capcom game cabinets running in the background. Like Namco Anniversay's shell.
The quarters don't even look like tokens either.
Ah well... at least they could add a downloadable background on the MarketPlace to fake it, lol :P