It's time we talk fighting games here on Punching Weight! Now, you'd think a show with the word "punching" in the title would cover fighting games a little more often, but this is a celebration of the weird, ambitious and unnecessary games across all genres, and since this is the first time we're talkin' fighting games, we gotta start with the biggest and longest-running one out there: Street Fighter! There are four Street Fighter games that appeared on various Nintendo Game Boy systems, and we're gonna take 'em all on! Welcome to Punching Weight - Street Fighter Game Boy ports! And a quick shout-out to the Dollar Shave Club, who helped make this video possible, stick around to the end of the video to learn how you can get their Daily Essentials Starter Set for five dollars by going to DollarShaveClub.com/SSFF. Okay, ring that bell! "FIGHT!" Our first game is coincidentally our oldest and weirdest for this episode: Straight from the makers of Mega Man Soccer, Sun L, it's Street Fighter II for the original Game Boy, and it is a weird, weird game! First off, it was released in 1995, which was kinda late to the party. Super NES and Genesis ports all over the place, plus Mortal Kombat had two games on the Game Boy already. Hell, this isn't even the first portable Street Fighter, if you count the Tiger Electronic games, which we do, 'cuz they're awesome!! Also, despite the title "Street Fighter II", and borrowing the box art from the original SNES port, this is actually a Frankenstein's monster of Champion Edition and Super, with little bits of Super Turbo sprinkled in. I mean, I'm sure people would have been fine with just a port of the original Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, so going the extra mile for the Game Boy port is actually pretty ambitious! But... you'd think they'd want their fans to know that?! This game has World Warrior all over the box: "... the courageous and elite World Warriors." "... brawl your way through the World Warrior ranks..." "World Warrior martial arts action", like... Why are you burying your lead like that, what are you doing?! By '95 though, impressive things were being done on the Game Boy, so it's a little shocking how compromised this port is. Most notable is the thinned roster: E. Honda, Dhalsim, Vega and their stages are MIA, leaving only nine fighters. It's also doubly disappointing to see character portrait art from Super, but not even just one of the new characters from Super. Character-specific endings are also replaced with a simple "congratulations" screen, as expected, the voicework is gone, but the soundtrack is pretty well represented and sounds great coming from the Game Boy sound chip. Naturally, gameplay is significantly downgraded as well, but the transition from the arcade's six buttons to the Game Boy's two is done reasonably well: You technically have four attacks at your disposal, and how long you hold the button determines if it's a fierce or weak punch or kick. I'm sure you've noticed those graphics: The spritework is really impressive! Characters are large and detailed, but the animations are jittery, and everything moves very slowly. When it comes to the actual gameplay, Street Fighter II on Game Boy just doesn't play well. Controls are unresponsive, fighters feel stiff thanks to missing frames, and hit detection feels questionable. Pulling off special moves is harder than it should be: Even throwing out normals like Ryu's forward roundhouse or just poking at the exact moment you want can be a challenge. Oh, and while this game does have mirror matches, there are no palette swaps, so good luck with that! I mean, even Game Boy Killer Instinct managed to have, like, a different shade of gray for the other character. On the other hand, there are features! We got Super Game Boy compatibility with some nice colored backgrounds, Survivor mode, Link Cable Versus mode, and my absolute favorite part: The ability to do two-player Versus through the Super Game Boy on the Super Nintendo. Think about that: What person had a SNES, two controllers, cared about Street Fighter, but instead of playing one of the FOUR arcade ports, the Game Boy port?! There's a word for that kind of person, and that word is "Hero". It takes a true Punching Weight hero to live a life like that, because this port is so absolutely unnecessary! Despite this, it maybe sold really well: It did get a Player's Choice re-release, which says "million seller" right there on the box, but it's not listed on Capcom's platinum titles list on their website, so I have my doubts. The facts are Street Fighter II really needed to step up to compete with the glut of great fighting games on the Game Boy, there are so many other's I'd recommend over this one: Killer Instinct, Mortal Kombat II, just about everything that Takara made... In fact, because there are so many fighting games on the system, it allows me to say these words: Primal Rage is better than Street Fighter II. On the Game Boy, at least. Our next Street Fighter port dropped a full five years later: Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors' Dreams for the Game Boy Color, coming to us from Punching Weight hall-of-famers Crawfish Interactive, who we'll talk about again in a bit. In contrast to our last title, you can trust the box: This is only a port of Alpha 1, even though Alphas 2 and 3 had already come out in arcades, and fun fact: It was also advertised with the tragically cancelled Resident Evil Game Boy Color port. [sigh] Rest in peace, my sweet prince. Anyway, because this is just a port of the first Alpha game, we get a complete roster this time, with all thirteen fighters, though Bison, Dan and Akuma are hidden away. It even has all six stages, though it's missing some of the day/night variants. Hey, shout-out to our two background animations: Cat and Dance Man! Damn, dancin' from sunrise to sunset! Shine on, you crazy Dance Man. Shine on. This version is pretty light on modes: We've got Story, Practice and character-specific endings, but no two-player Versus of any kind, which is so tragic! My life for Game Boy Color Street Fighter Alpha EVO matches! However, they make up for this in spades in the gameplay department: This port's got the same two-button four-attack scheme as Street Fighter II Game Boy, but it's so much more forgiving! It was a revelation playing this game and actually being able to pull off a light kick here or a fierce punch there. Alpha Game Boy Color is day-and-night to Street Fighter II Game Boy! Very responsive and smooth, with character models that emphasize fluid animation over graphic detail. Rose's animation is especially impressive! Characters are also smaller, giving way to more screen real estate for larger arenas. There's just more depth and strategy here than in our last game! A loss in Alpha Game Boy Color feels earned, as opposed to Street Fighter II Game Boy, where your ability is crippled by lackluster gameplay. Though it's not perfect: Alpha Game Boy Color offers three modes of speed, and I bring this up mainly to mention that I had a much easier time pulling off special moves on Turbo 2. On normal speed, I could not do Ryu's special fireball to save my life! I just couldn't... I don't know what's wrong with me! The only real hit I have against it - I mean, outside of the lack of two-player - is that at the end of a round, the background cuts to black and the music just abruptly stops. Winning a round with a special still has that awesome flashy kill screen, but then after that it's-- Boop! Darkness and silence! It's a small ding considering what Crawfish was able to provide in terms of gameplay in this portable package. We wish we could have gotten both Alpha and Resident Evil on the Game Boy Color, but hey, at least we got one of 'em. Street Fighter would return to the Game Boy, this time the Game Boy Advance, only one year later with Super Street Fighter II Turbo Revival. Developed in-house at Capcom, this port was oddly enough actually published by Ubisoft globally. Technically, it marks the first time Super Turbo made it onto a Nintendo console, which probably explains the WiiU Virtual Console release back in 2015, which... I know, there was Turbo and Super, but never Super Turbo on the SNES. Also, this is technically a special version of Super Turbo because of the "Revival" at the end, and... ... oh my god, you have no idea how much time we wasted double-checking the-- -- the million versions of Street Fighter II... ugh. Though I gotta admit, the subtitle "Revival" was apt: By 2001, there were three Alphas, three Street Fighter III's, and Marvel vs Capcom 2, which was technically the sixth game in that series. This really WAS a revival of the classic Street Fighter II... ... but at what cost?! Capcom really came to party with this version: We've got a complete roster with all 16 classic characters: The original eight, the four bosses, and the four new challengers introduced in Super, even including Akuma and a rare appearance of Shin Akuma, though the North American version glitches and locks up when you try to fight Shin Akuma. We got all the stages, all the music, there's all-new art on the character select screen, and tons of features: Arcade, Training, Versus, Time Attack, Survival mode, and an art gallery, most of it unlockable with VS points you earn in matches. And of course, there's two-player link cable; Like I said, Capcom came to party! So it's a solid package, but how does it play? Welp... pretty damn well! We're in GBA territory now, which means four buttons instead of two. Still not up to six, but Capcom mapped it out by putting L and R as fierce attacks and A and B as light attacks, and holding A and B as your medium attacks. However, this time you get total customization in your controls, not to mention... they feel great! The hold method for the six-button setup is still not ideal, but it's never felt better! We're also dealing with better hardware, which means Game Boy Street Fighter finally has voice samples! However, I think the music is pretty lackluster in this port. But really, it's pretty damn close to a real arcade experience in your pocket! Hell of a game! This version does have a lot of little superficial errors and missing things though: Modified sprites and altered win quotes, too many things to name here, and besides, as far as we're concerned, this doesn't really take away a whole lot from the main fighting, and you know what, I'd argue it only adds to the experience, because of course this is not a perfect conversion, and if you want one, like... they're out there! Go play those! We think spotting where all the different sprites and animations and voicework were originally pulled from is kind of a bonus for superfans to chew through! So, overall, this is an impressive port with lots of replay value, and given that it was released shortly after the GBA launched, it was a good showcase for the power and capability of the system, but while it is a very impressive game, it is not our most impressive game for this episode. Which brings us to our last Game Boy Street Fighter game: Street Fighter Alpha 3, again for the Game Boy Advance. Now, before we get started, if people don't know, Street Fighter Alpha 3 was already a giant game with an enormous roster, pulling in just about every character that had appeared in a Street Fighter game up to that point. Alpha 3 also introduced the ISM system that affected each character's Supers and general moveset, effectively tripling the roster! But... get a load of this! The GBA version somehow managed to fit the entire cast of characters, more than doubling Turbo Revival's roster! Actually, because this is technically a port of Street Fighter Alpha 3 Upper -- that's what that snazzy arrow indicates -- this has eight more characters than the arcade original, and four more than the PlayStation 1 and Dreamcast ports. There are a total of 36 fighters in this tiny cartridge! Now, there are a lot of fine fighting games on the GBA, the bar is pretty high, but this is damn impressive! On top of that, we got Training mode, Survival, Dramatic Battle, Final Battle modes, and two-player link cable action! However, the World Tour mode is very sadly absent. That awesome RPG-style campaign remains exclusive to the home console versions. On the other hand, World Tour mode is how those versions hid away all their unlockable content. GBA Alpha 3 has a code you can input if you just wanna get into it. Out of all the games we've talked about in this episode, this one I think has the best controls: Instead of the holding method, medium attacks are now simultaneous button presses, which is a really good choice! They also include an easy combo option, and TEN modes of speed, the fastest of which is insane! It's got Alpha 3's amazing flashy UI, but is unfortunately missing the announcer. It's a shame, it's a really good announcer. So you'll just have to yell "TRIUMPH OR DIE!" and "GO FOR BROKE!" yourself. Though the roster is all here, we're missing some stages and a lot of voices, but it's hard to fault the game much for that. I mean geez, they had to cut corners somewhere! The dark wizards responsible are none other than Crawfish Interactive, who had an incredible rap sheet, like Driver for the Game Boy Color, and Ecks VS Sever, which may be the best first-person shooter on the GBA that isn't a PC port. However, according to a piece by Damien McFerran for Nintendo Life, Alpha 3 was unfortunately integral in the company's undoing. After earning the good graces of Capcom with their port of Alpha for the Game Boy Color, they took up the task of porting Alpha 3 for the then-upcoming Game Boy Advance. The release goal for this monumental task was Holiday 2001, shortly after the system launched. However, when Crawfish missed this date, Capcom cut their advance and revoked the studio's rights for royalties. Because the company was already struggling financially due to taking on too many projects, they shut their doors in November 2002, shortly after completing Alpha 3. Turbo Revival, on the other hand, was able to make the '01 Holiday date, so it's not like Capcom lost their shirt or anything. Still, Alpha 3 for the GBA is unquestionably a certified gaming miracle, and we raise our glasses to the Crawfish team! This wouldn't be the last time a Street Fighter game would find its way to a portable Nintendo system: Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition came to the 3DS in 2011, but that's a DS game, not a Game Boy game, so we've successfully written ourselves out of that one... ... and into the Dollar Shave Club. 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