Street Fighter II was one of the games that really stoked the fires of the 16-bit console war, with the SNES version selling millions and making Genesis / Mega Drive owners green with envy – until, of course, they got their own version of Capcom's famous one-on-one brawler.
Street Fighter II was duly ported to pretty much every platform of the period – including the Game Boy – but one machine that didn't get the game was the NES. Sure, there was an unlicensed Famicom port by Hummer Team in 1992, but it was so terrible most people have scrubbed it from their memory banks.
However, it seems that the NES is finally getting the Street Fighter II port it deserves, thanks to a group of passionate coders. As reported by Eventhubs, Street Fighter 2 Deluxe is a fan-made effort that is shaping up quite nicely indeed – as you can see from the footage below, it runs smoothly, despite the tiny sprites.
It is believed that the game will run on original NES hardware if you use a flash cart, but for the time being, we'll have to wait and see how this shapes up.
This article was originally published by nintendolife.com on Wed 6th October, 2021.
[source eventhubs.com]
Comments 46
It almost says to me that thoughtful programming and optimization allows pretty intensive games to run on not especially powerful systems. Seems like something Square should be made aware of.
Yeah, definitely looks better than I would imagine.
Oh nice! That looks great! Reminds me of the a Ninja Turtles fighting game that came out on the NES.
@Muddy_4_Ever Hahaha, nice
As a kid who grew up playing Yoko Soft's pirate Famicom port (that was also available as "Master Fighter II") and that lousy "Street Fighter 12p Special", I have to say this looks amazing
Imagine if this was real back in the 80s.
That's beautiful, all limitations considered
This looks amazingly fluid!
The 8-bit Game Boy was enough to run a competent 1v1 fighting game, so I often wonder why publishers didn't do the same on the NES.
I seem to remember it was ported to the ZX Spectrum at some point, so I guess a tolerable version on the NES would make sense.
Not that the Spectrum one was tolerable but modern standards. You had to load the two characters you wanted by fast-forwarding the tape to the right spot for each one, which was exactly as clumsy and frustrating as it sounds.
The gameboy version of Killer Instinct wasn't at all unplayable and surprising they got it to run so well IMO.
I already thought there was a NES street fighter game? I remember mighty final fight came out late.
Definitely looks and runs better than the GB version.
That's art to be honest.
Looks and sounds great
Yeah this would’ve been a hit back in the day. I’d really like to try it with the big nes joystick controller. I like the soundtrack.
@TYRANACLES the wonderful NES Advantage!
@sword_9mm Street Fighter 2010: The Final Fight was not exactly the game that people think of when they think Street Fighter.
Mind you, this looks a fair bit better than both the Tiertex (UK) developed C64 version of Street Fighter 1 and the US C64 version of Street Fighter 1.
Saw this on the Retro Gaming Magazine website a few days ago. Looks great! There are a number of surprisingly good stripped down ports of classic 90s fighting games, including pretty much all of Takara's Game Boy ports.
@CharlieGirl The modern fighting genre starts with SFII and that wasn't out until the SNES was already released in Japan. The NES has some in the older style e.g. Yie Ar Kung-fu. The NES/Famicom still had some life in it in '91, but it probably didn't make economic sense to release a game as full featured on the platform when the SNES would be both an easier conversion and on the rise as a platform.
There was also street fighter 2 on the master system. Looked great sound was good but played horrible
I've always liked street fighter, thats pretty cool.
At least it looks better than the Master System version
I would have been thrilled as a kid.
9 fighters! More fully featured than the first SNES version!
Street Fighter II and other fighting games were ported to the NES through some many bootleg conversions.
@sword_9mm I think video game historian Frank Cifaldi, when getting concept art and such I guess for the Street Fighter Collection, managed to get a screenshot of a canceled NES port of Street Fighter 1.
Better than Official (approved by Capcom) Sega Master System version, from Tec Toy Brazil.
Nice. The only official fighting games from the NES/Famicom I can remember are Yie Ar Kung Fu and Joy Mech Fight.
man imagine if this came out in like 1990, people would’ve lost their minds
It's so smooth! Man, if only devs back then knew what could be done now.
@dystome What would happen if the tape was off by a bit?
Looks like a colorized and improve port of the Game Boy version with the only difference being that Dhalsim replaced Zangief and Vega replaced Balrog instead. I figure they probably used the pressure sensitive attack feature of that port on here too as there are only two buttons on NES as well so you only get punch and kick. To heavy punch or heavy kick you must press either button very hard, to jab punch or light kick you just tap either litely, and to medium punch or medium kick you press either a bit longer.
Impressive what they managed to do here. I wonder what size the ROM is. In many cases, the cart size was the difference between something getting a release or being scrapped. back then, and memory prices would fluctuate.
@CharlieGirl that's a good point and good question. I really liked Mortal Kombat 2 on the GB. I actually think it is a case where the Game Boy's limitations helped it. The reduced screen resolution allowed the sprites to look large relative to the screen while having a small pixel resolution. The same sprites on NES would look much smaller at the same pixel resolution due to the higher overall resolution.
@HammerGalladeBro For me, the only three fighting games I play on NES were Karate Champ, TMNT: Tournament Fighters, and that one versus mode in Double Dragon.
@Krockman plenty of hindsight here though, and clearly a labour of love.
I think the SMS version is an absolute technical triumph, unfortunately that's not enough to stop it being pretty irritating to actually play through.
Between this and the Bloodborne PS1 demake, I have a lot of hype in me, right now!
And remember guys, Chun Li says:
NEVER SKIP LEG DAY
NINJA APPROVED
@masterLEON
It was better to err on the side of being slightly before the bit you wanted, as the machine would just ignore everything until it reached the next 'header' section. If you were just after the bit you wanted, you would just sit there doubtfully listening to modem-eque screeching noises for several minutes until you decided you had definitely missed it.
Same deal as trying to find the next game on a C90 full of pirated stuff given to you by your uncle / schoolfriends / whoever. Happy days.
I remember back in the 90s a magazine teased a NES port of SF 2. Same characters and stage like this in the photo. Think later it was a April Fools and wound up on SMS instead.
That still looks more 16 bit, or at least arcadeish then anything, but yes it certainly looks and sounds nice. Well done.
@Muddy_4_Ever Lol. Nice zing Muddy. đź‘Ť
@gaga64 You mean more fully featured than the the original arcade version. The ability to play as the four bosses was added with Champion Edition in the arcade.
@MadmanMike There was an answer to a reader letter in an old EGM issue about the pirate versions coming out of Hong Kong and/or Taiwan that was illustrated with an image. That's the (in)famous Hummer Team version mentioned in the article.
@foodmetaphors Especially since Street Fighter II wasn't released in arcades until 1991.
Nicely done, very well put together effort there. Really didn't imagine it could look like this on 8-bit hardware.
@Rambler
'93. Here's the review in the ever-splendid Your Sinclair magazine:
https://archive.org/details/your-sinclair-87/page/n11/mode/2up
TL;DR it got 62%
Looks better than the master system version. Hopefully also plays better than the master system version which was frankly, terrible.
@oknazevad that too. I realise the SNES wasn’t the original game. Perhaps I should have said “first SNES version” rather than original. I just thought it amusing to compare the NES against the initial SNES version.
I want it for my Street Fighter collection
@MadmanMike That was the unlicensed Famicom port mentioned in this article. That also caused quite the stir in the magazine days of EGM.
Show Comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...