Street Fighter II: World Warrior is considered the father of all fighting games and while it was not the first game that allowed two players to fight against each other (Karate Champ, Yie Ar Kung-Fu, and Street Fighter I all had this ability), it redefined the genre and popularity exploded for the game which led to numerous other fighting games being released in the 90s.  The genre still continues to be popular to this day with new sequels of Street Fighter being released.

The game is primarily meant to be played with two players competing against one another however you can also play against a computer opponent though most people do not find the single player mode very rewarding. The original SF2 had eight playable characters: Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, E. Honda, Guile, Zangief, Dhalsim, and Blanka, along with four CPU “boss” characters: Balrog (known as M. Bison in the SSF2X/Japanese version but also referred to as Boxer by players now to avoid the name confusion), Vega (known as Balrog in Japan and referred to as Claw), Sagat, and M. Bison (known as Vega in Japan and referred to as Dictator). Four new characters were added in SSF2: Cammy, Dee Jay, Fei Long, and T-Hawk.

The overall game speed of Super Turbo was increased from SSF2 however the speed could be set so that the players could select the speed prior to each match. It also introduced new game mechanics such as super combos, air combos, overheads, tech-throws. The “old” version of each character could be selected, which was the SSF2 version though a couple of characters had very subtle differences. These old versions did not have the super combo and tech-throw mechanics. The game also introduced Akuma (Gouki in Japan) as a playable character through a secret code that was inputted on the character select screen. However Akuma was too strong of a character and has virtually been banned in every tournament and is also considered off-limits to play in non-tournament games.

There have been many home versions of Super Turbo released through the years: 3DO, PC, Amiga, PS1, Sega Saturn, Dreamcast, Game Boy Advance, PS2, and XBox. In addition, a remake of the game called Super Street Fighter II Turbo: HD Remix (HDR) was released in 2008 on PS3 and XBox 360. An acceptable port of Super Turbo has never been released so most tournaments these days will use arcade hardware, either using an arcade cabinet, a supergun using an arcade board, or most recently, UD-CPS2, which takes a modified Super Turbo board and equips it with USB capability to allow virtually any USB stick or joypad to be used with it. For more information on the UD-CPS, click here.

For online play, most players either play HDR on the PS3 or XBox 360 or they play on Fightcade, a gaming platform for online play that can be used on both PC, Macintosh, and Linux. Super Turbo as well as a multitude of other classic arcade games can be played there.  Visit the Fightcade website for more information or to try Fightcade.