From: echuang@cco.caltech.edu (Ernest Y. Chuang)
Subject: Re: Thoughts on SNES SFII
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1992 07:43:37 GMT

In article <BrtAIL.Kon@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> loverde@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (AstralWolf) writes:
>    This game is a DIRECT conversion of the Classic SF2 arcade version, if you
>go to the arcade and play it, you will see the two are practically identical.

Hmm...I'd have to disagree -- or maybe I'm just not interpreting "direct
conversion" the same way you are.  To name a few differences:

- As many people have posted, the 4 bosses are much faster, especially
  Bison's unending series of scissor-kicks and Sagat's mind-reading
  (or controller-reading) uppercuts.

- The characters are smaller in relation to the screen view.  This may
  or may not make much of a difference, depending on your strategy.
  But, for instance, one tactic I use when playing Ryu/Ken/Chun li 
  against SNES Vega is to wait for him to bounce off the far edge of
  the screen and jump at me, at which point I'll jump toward him so
  that he'll be below me and I can kick him.  This doesn't work in
  the arcade since the horizontal distance is much shorter; Vega will
  still be above me when we meet, and I will be the one who gets kicked.

- Chun Li can't seem to do more than one stomp kick at a time in the
  SNES version (at least very often).  In the arcade version, pretty
  much as long as part of your opponent was under your foot when you
  were about to land, you would do another stomp.  In the SNES, your
  foot will tend to pass through the opponent (even straight through
  the middle of his body) on a second stomp.

- Grossly unfair amount of damage caused by holds (bites, nugies, 
  bear hugs, etc...) between human and computer in the SNES.  
  The SNES computer's holds at level 3 or 4 do roughly the same damage
  and last about as long as the holds in the arcade.  At level 7, the
  bites, nugies, etc... occur at supersonic speeds and are very 
  difficult to break out of.  Nowadays, whenever I get caught in
  a hold, I use both hands to tap the left-right joystick pad as
  furiously as possible, and I'll still routinely get about 3/4 of
  my health (max) taken away -- which usually means death if I've
  received any damage previously.  On the other hand, even at difficulty
  level 3, when I catch the computer in a hold, I'm lucky if I get one
  hit in before the computer breaks loose.

And basically, there's just an overall difference in the behavior of
the computer controlled opponents.  Now I'm certainly no master of
the arcade SF2, so I can't speak for whether the combinations/tactics
that work in the arcade will work on the SNES, but I can definitely
say that being able to play well on the SNES, even at level 7, will
not provide you with the skill to play equally well in the arcade.
(I went back to the arcade after getting to the point where I could
finish SNES level 7 with a few continues using Ryu/Ken, Chun Li, and
Guile, but I just didn't have as much success.  And I wasn't having
much trouble switching back to the arcade controls, either.)

Now don't get me wrong -- I'm really happy with the SNES SF2; it
captures the feel of the arcade version, at least for me.  I just
don't think that it's a direct conversion of the arcade game.
(And I don't see why Capcom went to the trouble of making the 
changes that they did, unless these were the results of cutting
corners to allow the SNES to handle this game.)

- Ernest Chuang
Newsgroups: rec.games.video