I have all the Street Fighter games on the Amiga, and have compared them all to the arcade and console versions.
Street Fighter (OCS) looks very similar to the arcade version, except that all of the sprites and backgrounds have been totally redrawn from scratch. The game also plays badly compared to the arcade, and isn't very fun at all. There were two main arcade versions of this game. The original used pressure activated bash-buttons to guage the strength of your attacks, but these broke after people beat them up. The second used six buttons... three punch and three kick, with different strengths. The Amiga version only uses a one-button joystick and has no two-button support, therefor limiting the moves. Also, I couldn't get Ryu or Ken to do any of their special moves in the Amiga version. This game introduces a lot of characters that we later see in the SFII and SF Alpha series of games.
Street Fighter II : The World Warrior (OCS) wasn't a very good conversion. The sprites are actually the largest on any platform, they are twice as wide as the SNES and MegaDrive versions, and just as tall. Also, the screen resolution is higher than the console versions too. Unfortunately, when the graphics were reduced down to 32 colours, there was no dithering or touching up done on any of the sprites or backgrounds, so the whole game looks kinda bland. The game would have looked excellent if the graphics were touched up. There is no parallax scrolling in the backgrounds or on the floors. The sound effects were very porly sampled as well. The music was no worse than the console versions. The gameplay was not bad and had many control options, like using the keyboard or a two-button control pad, better than forcing everyone to use a single button joystick.
Super Street Fighter II : The New Challengers (ECS) has absolutely appalling graphics, the sprites are the smallest on any conversion anywhere, and the screen resolution is tiny. The animation on the sprites is okay though, keeping a lot more frames than other versions of the game on the Amiga, and the sound effects were better than the first SF2. The music isn't very good, but the tunes are the same as the arcade. The gameplay is great, luckily. When installed on the hard drive using WHDLoad, the game is quite playable. The short intro animation of Ryu looks very nice as well.
Super Street Fighter II : The New Challengers (AGA) uses the same engine as the ECS version, and the sprites and backgrounds are the same size, although rather than having the energy bars on top of the screen, they are laid over the top like they are in the arcade version. The colours are much better, and the animation slightly more fluid. The backgrounds however, like the ECS version, look like they've been captured with a very bad quality digitiser, and look shocking with the crisp (yet small) sprites over the top. Being able to use a CD32 control pad is great, and HD install is essential (but use the WHDLoad installer). There is no parallax scrolling other than the copper shading behind the main background in each level, and the only animation in the backgrounds is simple colour cycling in certain levels. Another thing, in all the WIP reviews and screenshots of the game before it was released, the graphics looked MUCH better than this finished version, with larger sprites and clearer backgrounds. I'm assuming they shrunk everything so they could just slap the more colourful graphics on top of the A500 version's code and call it an A1200 version. Apart from the bad graphics and average sound, the game plays great, and is definitely the most playable version of Street Fighter for the Amiga.
Super Street Fighter II Turbo (AGA/CD32) has the most beautiful graphics of any fighting game on the Amiga. The graphics are arcade perfect, the sprites and backgrounds are exactly the same size, and have all of the colours of the arcade. The floors in all the levels are perfectly parallaxed and look perfect. Unfortunately the rest of the backgrounds are flat, but very colourful, but this is hardly noticable. But with all this wonderful display, there's got to be a catch. The first is the fact that there are only a few sound effects in the whole game, mainly hitting sounds. I don't think any of the characters have any speach, although the announcer speaks the names and countries during the selection and verses screens. Also, unless you have an accellerator and extra RAM, the game will clunk along, and skip animation frames everywhere (although they are in the game, it just runs at a low framerate because of the slowdown and makes it appear as though there are animation frames missing from the sprites, but they are there, you just need an 030+ and more RAM to see them). There is an option to turn the detail down, and this makes the game run a bit faster, I found it played at an acceptable speed in Low Detail mode on my CD32. This simply removes the graphics from the front of the screen and puts simple energy bars under the screen an a few other memory/CPU saving techniques. Luckily, the lack of sound effects is made up for with the beautiful CD soundtrack, with all the glorious arcade music reproduced here in perfect quality CD remixes. However, since the A1200 version is on floppy, there is no music at all, not even MODs. This is a shame, but I suppose there just wasn't enough RAM for it (CD music isn't stored in the ChipMem like MODs and sound effects are). The game is controlled by the CD32 controller, with three punch and three kick buttons, plus the Pause button. They even included the arcade's intro animation, which is an extended version of the SSFII intro which has Ryu bouncing up and down, and now includes Chun Li and Cammy scrolling across the screen and Akuma flashing on the screen as Ryu powers up. The game is hard drive installable, but best played from CD. An A1200 with an accellerator, extra RAM, a couple of CD32 controllers and a nice big TV would be perfect for this game... as would an SX32 expanded CD32 (if you have an SX32, please sell it to me).
I might as well mention the only other Street Fighter related game here while I'm at it too...
Final Fight (OCS) is a side-scrolling beat'em'up from the makers of Street Fighter (Capcom). It came out in the arcades between SF and SFII. The arcade game only used two buttons, one of them being jump. The Amiga version uses a button combination of Up and Fire to jump, while pressing up without the Fire button just makes the character walk to the top of the screen. The Amiga version played very well for a one-button only game (shame there was no two-button support) and the graphics were quite nicely converted from the arcade, with large sprites and all the backgrounds, although it could have done with some better image dithering so the characters didnt look so flat. The Amiga version was the best home version of any system until the Mega CD version came out many years later. The game includes the characters Guy and Cody, both of who are introduced in the Street Fighter Alpha games. I would rate this game above the original Street Fighter and Street Fighter II conversions, as it is very close to the arcade.
Now, getting back on topic. There are WHDLoad Installers for all of these games. I have them all installed on my Amiga, and am in the process of getting them to boot and work on the CD32. I have got Street Fighter working fine on the CD32. Street Fighter II won't work without a keyboard, and crashes anyway before it can load anyway (I think this is a fault with the WHDLoad Installer). I have been trying, but can't get Super Street Fighter II AGA to work on the CD32, although it boots fine from Workbench (using the WHDLoad Installer) on an expanded A1200. If I cant get this working, I will try with the ECS version. Super Street Fighter II Turbo boots fine on the CD32, as it is a CD32 game, and the floppy version runs from the hard drive fine, although I tend not to play it as it has no music. You wouldn't want to try and run it from floppy... it's eleven disks! The installer that comes with SSFII AGA uses a boot disk to run, which sucks, and it crashes during the first fight with Ken every time (this is on an expanded A1200, and through WinUAE).
Get all the games, get all the WHDLoad Installers, and have some fun.
