Street Figher II: Champion Edition

Written by Galvatron.

Street Fighter II was one of the most successful games ever made. Nintendo managed to get a version of the game on their machines first, but it was then later announced that Mega Drive/Genesis owners wouldn't be left out as they'd be getting a conversion of Street Fighter II' Champion Edition, which was the newer version of the game and let them play as the bosses among other changes. However, this version was never released and instead, we got Special Champion Edition, which combined both Champion Edition and the even newer Hyper Fighting into one cartridge.
 

| Preview | Review | About the beta |

Preview

But that doesn't mean we can't see what the original version looked like. The UK magazine SEGA Power got the first look at the game and did a preview on it in their 43rd issue, with a load of screen shots. And I apologize for the crappiness of these screens but the pictures that SEGA Power used were quite large and not in very good quality, so naturally they look even worse when scanned.


The most noticeable difference about this earlier version is that it had a black border around the life bars. The whole HUD around the life bars is different to the final game, and then their is the small fact that Blanka has been misspelt "Branka". Also I think it's completely stupendous the way in the preview they try to pass this error off as Branka being Blanka's elder brother.


Another different is that Ryu and Ken's fireballs looked different, and were slightly smaller than in the final game, and were coloured differently with a much lighter blue used.


The character select grid looks slightly different to what was put into the final game (image on the right), with a different shade of blue used in the background and a different font. The world map was changed a bit too. The character portraits also seem to be based on those from the first version of Street Fighter II (so they all look slightly wimpy).
 

Here's a few more general screens.
 

One thing of note is about the position of a fighter's name beneath their energy bar. In the final, the name will always start where their energy bar starts if you are player one, and end where their energy bar ends if they are player two. In this version however, the names seems to be indented a bit if a fighter has a short name like Ryu, Ken or Vega, and Chun Li's name goes past her life bar.


The barrel busting bonus stage. The screen on the left was taken from SEGA Power 43, the one on the right was found in a Google search. The right screen seems to be from an even earlier version of the game, as the fighter's life bars and names are missing, and the number 20 can be seen even though barrels are dropping down so it should be lower than that. The screen on the left is also odd due to it also having the 20 problem just mentioned, as well as the fact that there are four win icons on the screen! (They're the little peace symbols you can see next to the fighter's energy bars, they shouldn't be there since this is a bonus game and not a proper fight).

(each preview page is about a meg each so look out)
Interesting note: The Capcom rep says in the preview that SFII will appear on the Mega CD. It never did.

Additionally, there was a promotional video for the game that features all of these changes, such as the black border and misspelt Blanka. View it here.

Review

Just one issue later, SEGA Power reviewed this version. What's slightly ridiculous is that they admit to reviewing a preview version of the game (is that even legal) and give it 94%. They also had much better quality screens this time around, although most of them are tiny and are missing the HUD making them rather useless.


This version SEGA Power reviewed had been worked on since we last saw it - note that Bison is now "M.Bison". Other than that though everything looks the same as before with the borders, different font etc.


Even though Bison's name was changed, Blanka's wasn't, so he's still known as "Branka". This screen also has another oddity since it says "Branka wins" despite that it's a bonus game, and not a proper fight, I don't think text like that appears in the final version.

Sadly the other screen shots are too small to be of any real interest, but here are all four pages of SEGA Power's review:

(same meg-sized deal here)

No idea if this is a review or a preview, but it shares the same characterisitics as the rest of the early images. Swiped from UK Resistance.

About the beta

I've no real idea about this, but you can download a beta version of SFII off ROM sites which looks a lot like the one SEGA Power reviewed, although there are quite a few changes. My guess is that this "beta" was leaked out and then pirates tried to pass it off as the real deal, much like what happened with the Sonic 2 beta. Anyway, lets take a look.


The title screen in the beta looks very similar to the one shown in SEGA Power's preview, although there are some differences. First off, the beta has "M.Bison", the final just has "Bison". There's also the matter of the 1P above his name in the beta. The player select text is also closer to the world map, and the character portrait boxes are different slightly.


The big difference with this beta is that it doesn't have the borders we saw in the above preview and review SEGA Power did. The stuff with the names under the energy bars I mentioned is still there though.


They did at least manage to spell Blank correctly this time around.

Some other notes:

*The music is completely different, and it also has the "danger" music whenever a match is getting near the end. This extra music never made it into the final release.

*This beta also refers to itself as "STII Turbo", but none of the moves from the turbo (such as Chun Li's fireball, for example) are present. Their new costume colours are, however (like Ryu's light blue gi).

*The only characters to have proper endings are the four bosses (Balrog, Vega, Sagat and M. Bison).