Street Fighter was one of the first games I ever loved in an arcade. Not because of the graphics or the gameplay...there were a lot of games out there with that. What made Street Fighter a piece of history for me was that I spent three or four Friday nights shortly after the release of Street Fighter 2 Turbo at a Putt-Putt that a friend happened to be the night manager of. While he and a few others would run to the NEO GEO and N.A.R.C. machines after they had locked up, I was allowed the singular pleasure of opening the front panel to SFIIT and playing for free until dawn. After two nights of this, my Ryu and Fei-Long were unstoppable.

Laugh all you want.

Now I hold in my hands a rather faithful re-creation of this gaming bliss, in the form of Street Fighter II: Turbo Revival.

I’m not going to lie to you. The missing two buttons are a handicap that is hard to ignore, but only for the Street Fighter(SF) extremists. I can live with the limitations, though I find it a little more difficult to play both Fei-Long and Sagat. Personal preferences.

Once you get used to that though, there’s only one thing to be said: Sweet Lord In A Candy-Coated Shell. I still cannot believe I’m holding this game in my hand. Pretty much all of the tricks and timing you remember are present in this little piece of silicon joy, with the added pleasure of extra modes and variable speeds.

I’m not going to go into detail about all the various abilities and specials the characters are capable of. To be honest, after all this time and all the various iterations, I have a hard time telling some of them apart. I can say that most of the basic moves and the special meter seem to be culled directly from Super Street Fighter 2: Turbo with very few differences.

This is almost exactly the arcade version. Yes, there are some changes, like slightly altered stages for a few characters and some missing frames of animation. But these in no way affect the gameplay. For the most part, this looks identical to the arcade version.

Let’s not mince words here; this game was never an aural pleasure. The only thing even remotely enjoyable about the sound was the strange bubble-wrap sound of landing a big hit. The voices were atrocious, and quickly became annoying. The best part about having this on the Gameboy Advance is the easily accessible volume control. Take that sucker through the floor.

There are a few extra modes, like survival and Time attack, but the biggest feature of any Street Fighter game is the ability to beat the hell out of a friend. You can do this with Turbo Revival as well, you just need another cartridge and another Gameboy Advance. But once you have that, this is probably the best excuse for looking like a complete loser on the train with a cable between you and a buddy that I can think of. Anything less could never justify the humiliation.

There are plenty of hours of gameplay in this little beast, even if you’re all by yourself. Lots of features, hidden characters and a faithful translation all add up to one heck of a good time. However, if you want your D-pad to survive, you may want to think about the ‘motor skills challenged’ control scheme that simplifies most of the special moves into one or two-button combinations. No, it’s not ‘old-school’, but you did pay for your little piece of plastic gaming joy, and it doesn’t have a controller you can replace.

Highs:

• Nearly arcade-perfect
• You almost can’t believe you’re playing this on a portable.
• Lots of gameplay modes.
• Two-player capability.

Lows:

• Still just Street Fighter
• Can potentially destroy your D-pad attempting one too many Dragon Punches or Tiger Knees.
• How undeniably cool you look tethered to another Gameboy-toting freak through some high-tech umbilical cord delivering ‘animated violence’ rather than nutritional sustenance.
• Did I mention it’s still just Street Fighter? If my repetition of this fact annoys you, you should probably own this game.

Final Verdict:

This is an amazing handheld fighter. I would love to give it the honor of being ‘The Best’, but for all it’s graphical splendor, it still can’t oust the reigning champ; SNK vs. Capcom: Match of the Millennium for the Neo Geo Pocket. And I stand by that statement with resolve and a large rabid animal.

Overall Score: 8.8

Additional Images:

Image 1
Image 2
Image 3
Image 4
Image 5
Image 6