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| karasu99 950th Post
  
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|  "Re(1):Street Fighter II & You" , posted Tue 12 Jun 01:05  
quote:
I tried starting this conversation elsewhere yesterday but the only result was boring assfats whining about how old they are... I think the topic suits MMC better.
Twenty years ago, give or take, shops worldwide received imported copies of Street Fighter II on Super Famicom. I am curious about how MMC experienced it. I assume most of the US crowd waited for the official US release but what about the others? Any memories to share?
I can certainly recall considering buying it, although I never saw it in stores-- I don't remember seeing import Super Fami games in any US retail stores ever, at least not while the system was still being sold. At the time, my sole source for imports was this place called Dragon Games, out of New York, who I had heard about through a newsgroup (probably some subgroup of rec. games.video, but I can't remember which), but who I had to call and give my credit card info to over the phone. Their prices were really high-- I think somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 not including shipping or the crazy cost of making a long distance call over a land line at the time, and in the days before online shopping (and web sites, for that matter), it was all just a ridiculous affair of calling, asking after a specific title, and paying whatever price they told you over the phone if you wanted the game. The only games I specifically remember buying were Ranma 1/2 Hard Battle and Super Battle, since it seemed really unlikely they would ever make it to the US.
I think my main reason for passing on import SFII was price and difficulty ordering when viewed against the certainty of its release in the US not long after its Japan release (I want to say it was just a few weeks' time). I think I pretty much decided to wait on any title that seemed likely to be released that I was interested in. SNES games were already expensive and the completely sketchy way of obtaining them put me off of buying them for the most part.
I didn't start buying imports with any seriousness until the middle of the Saturn's lifespan, when a lot of amazing games were being promoted in US magazines and somehow were not getting domestic releases. By that time I had more disposable income and internet import storefronts were more common, so I even got a few games like SOTN on their Japanese release rather than wait for their US version. But that's a whole other topic!
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| Grave 1461th Post
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| "Re(2):Street Fighter II & You" , posted Wed 13 Jun 06:18
Ha! My SNES SF2 story is a great memory. I feel like a lot of y'all are a bit older than me, cuz I certainly wasn't making any purchasing decisions of my own back then let alone importing games. Still, I had played the game in arcades and really liked it. In the general timeframe of its release, I had happened to fall very ill. Extremely high fever to the point where I was hallucinating and scaring the crap out of my parents. I don't remember a lot of it very clearly, but in the midst of it I apparently asked my dad if I could get SF2 when I felt better. Sure enough, when I was coming out of it he came home with it one day! All troubles and pain were immediately forgotten. That is, until I got to Dictator at home for the first time...
But when the imports did start coming...! I remember yanking the tabs out of my SNES with pliers. And using a crappy converter to play them elsewhere! Good times!
quote:
I was so young (and shy!) when I started importing games that my parents would have to call the companies for me. I'd do cartwheels in excitement while they did. I'm still pretty excitable when I get a new game.
Ha, me too! Was the most ridiculously shy child, especially when it came to trying to do anything on the phone. I remember coaching my mother on what to say when she called Die Hard/Game Cave, NCS or when we went to Cyberzone in IL. When I got Seiken Densetsu 3 I was pretty much the happiest a kid could be.
I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but I'm probably gonna feel the exact same way when I can get an English copy of PS3 Aquanaut's Holiday for a good price...
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| Loona 589th Post
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| "Re(1):Street Fighter II & You" , posted Tue 19 Jun 19:31
Back in the early SF2 days there wasn't enough of a video game market around here to justify imports, but I can't say my initial contacts with the game didn't have some impact, and they did sort of touch on the import issue in an odd way.
The first time I saw the game was as this arcade near a small restaurant where my dad sometimes took me for lunch at during my vacations, and earlier in that Summer I'd been with my relatives near the border with Spain, where it was possiblee to watch spanish TV, and I got my first taste of Dragon Ball. So after having my young mind blown by some biref exposure to some remarkable episodes (Goku's last fight with Picollo as a kid, that topped anything I'd seen to date), I saw this game where people where shooting blue energy balls using the same stance Goku used for his energy beam attack, and I was intigued and try to watch as much as I could while I wasa there.
However, I was 12 at the time, and over here you're not supposed to play arcade games unless you're 17 or older, probably due to some confusion with gambling machines that never got properly sorted out, so I couldn't play, but the game was still pretty fascinating. I managed to get my hands on some video game magazines that covered the game to try and learn as much as I could, but there still wasn't much I could do, since I had a Megadrive, not a SNES, so it was still a long wait to get the game, so I was left to some theory-fighting of my own to try and see whom I'd use, settling for Dhalsim since his range seemed good, he had a projectile, and the effect when that hit someone looked awesome to me at the time.
I did get a shot at playing the arcade game in the mini-arcade of a movie theater in this huge mall where they apparently got away with turning a blind to that annoying age-17-to-play law, and although I didn't advance much, it was still nice.
It was, however, invariably an incomplete experience, as no arcade used more than 3 attack buttons for the game - you'd get one of the weakest attacks and the 2 strongest ones, no more, so a lot of attacks were out of reach and comboes weren't really an option. I wouldn't access a 6-button cabinet until many years later, for XvSF and SFEX2.
While SF2 wasn't available for the Megadrive, I got my kicks from other games in that - most memorably Fatal Fury, which some friends I way ended up playing in degenerate "slide wars": basically 2 of us would pick the a character with a slide kick attack (Joe, Duck or Geese), but usually picking the same one, crouch and just mash the kick button to see who'd land more slide attacks into victory. Geese was always the superior choice for this and it's a bit sad that no other version of him ever had such attack again for old times' sake.
The thing about my Megadrive, despite the general lack of an import scene around here, was that it was actually japanese, despite european ones being readily available in a lot of places. Some distributor managed to import those and sell them on a major surface, where my parents got me mine. The differences seemed minor back then - mine had a red area in the surface while it was usually white in the european standard, the logo in the box was a bit different, the cover art for games was different, and the manuals were far more vividly illustrated.
However, eventually the issue of compatibility started to rear its ugly head- while some games would get things like title screens and names changed, some wouldn't work at all.
Eventually, I got word that a nearby games shop was getting the game when it was finally announced for the megadrive, and I reserved a copy, counting on money I'd usually get for christmas, IIRC. My dad wasn't really fond of that and he gave me a stern lecture on debt or at least trying to buy stuff with money you don't have yet - it's been too long for the words to remain, but the spirit of that talk still remains. I understood his point of view but was still pretty sad about going through that, and found myself wondering if it was worth it for a game with Balrog in it - for some reason, when I have issues with the game I always remember its characters I like the least.
Still, when Christmas came, I guess my dad understood that the lesson sunk in, because I got the game as a present, and with it the downpayment I put in for my reservation, and I was terribly excited and couldn't wait to try the game.
However, it wouldn't work on my japanese Megadrive.
I felt like choking its damn importer that got it in a highly visible major surface with my bare hands.
I managed to play it at friends' places a few times since then, got the best controller ever, the 6-button for the Megadrive, and later down the line managed to get an Action Replay, and later still saw in a magazine a code for that that would solve the compatibility (along with a few other codes for things like invencibility, which would allow me to get full perfects to the end and see the "You have mastered Ken" message, and nice touches like always setting the opponent on fire).
Over the years the Action Replay seems to have degenerated a bit, since at some point the code stopped working, so I lost access to the game again, but it was still a good and fun run while it lasted.
"Beat the machine that works in your head!" - Guano Apes "Open Your Eyes"
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| sibarraz 442th Post
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| "Re(2):Street Fighter II & You" , posted Wed 20 Jun 04:05
It's quite interesting your story about not being able to play the game for lots of oddly reasons (arcade laws, compatibility issues, etc)
And lol, you were argubly the founding father of divekick with the slide kick game. One minor gripe though as far as I recall, Geese never had a slide kick, the third character with that move in special was lawrence blood
Anyway, about Street Fighter, I recall that as a kid I never understood fighting games, my brother bought mortal kombat but I never knew how to do powers unless I was mashing them, the same with SF 2 that a friend had in his house, even though looked cool
A little more big, I was in a resort which had an arcade, and there was SF II New Challengers, and with 14 years old I couldn't pull a hadoken unless I was mashing it (I didnt know the command) oddly enough I enjoyed MVC in simple mode, then I played from kaillera with a friend who doesn't play this game anymore and the rest is history
I wish to had enjoyed the genre as a kid, but well, things happen for something I guess
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"Re(1):Street Fighter II & You" , posted Tue 12 Jun 07:05
"Re(2):Street Fighter II & You" , posted Tue 19 Jun 14:00
what's going on!? Toh Shin Den is about to present to you a super hot virtual battle