With the success of Street Fighter 2 Capcom began working on a sequel, during this time the sf2 updates 'champion edition' and 'hyper fighting' were introduced because of many illegal copies of the sf2 board being circulated, anyone remember 'black belt edition'?. Super Street Fighter 2 was the closest we got to a proper sequel. Four new characters; Cammy; T.Hawk; Fei-Long and Dee Jay, were introduced to the cast. For those of you unfamilar with these characters, sit back, relax, lets review.

Cammy is a british secret agent who is part of the Delta Red team sent in to stop Vega [M.Bison]. However during the competition she begins to have flashbacks of her past, and how she is linked to Vega [M.Bison]. Cammy has a new fighting style, she plays nothing like the other street fighters, her cannon spike move is an excellent move to counter jumping enemies, her air throw also has an 80% success rate]

T.Hawk is out for revenge as Vega stripped his homeland of its beauty. T[hunder] Hawk plays like an alternative Zangief, so nothing special.

Fei-Long is the Bruce Lee clone, who fighting style is much faster than the others, but ultimately each punch inflicts less damage. Like Cammy he has moves which can 'go through' projectile attacks.

Lastly we have Dee Jay who was apparently designed by an American employee. He is another charge character like Guile but lacks his strength, Dee Jay is a good defensive character but is very weak if you try to use him offensively.

All the artwork was redrawn, characters had new moves and animations. However it was the on screen recognition of the combo which was the most welcoming feature, as now good players were acknowledge by their arcade followers.

However all these new features fell flat when the game was played. Unfortunately the speed of the game was slow, or to be more acurate, it was the speed of the original sf2. For the last few years people have been playing the sf2: hyper fighting, and due to 'supers' speed issue they stayed away from super street fighter 2. Home versions did not suffer as the 'speed stars' option was added.

This loss of speed convinced many to go back to the earlier sf2 games rather than play the new addition. Capcom then decided to upgrade the 'Super' version to 'Turbo' or 'X' depending on your location. This new version of the game introduced Gouki [Akuma] and 3 different speed settings.Super Street Fighter 2 X [turbo] was released with the tag line 'grand master challenge' this referred to the appearance of gouki [akuma], it could also refer to the difficulty of the game. Believe me when I say this game is rock hard. Super Street Fighter 2 X [SSF2X] is probably the best street fighter game ever made, I put it on equal terms with Street Fighter 3 third strike

The animation in SSF2X is passable, it has aged fairly well with fans on the genre. However graphics don't make the game, no doubt if you are reading this then you are interested in purchasing this jap import, so you will want to know all the extra features that are present in the game.

Well there are none so to speak, sure you get your 'vs' and 'training' modes but the only reason that this game was re-released was so japanese people could play the definitive street fighter game on-line.

There are a few disappointments to be found in SSF2X, the worst being Guile's voice - it is too high. Oh kay so his voice was high pitched in all the Super games, but it just isn't right. Gameplay wise this is the hardest Street Fighter game ever. You face the original cast complete with all of their old predictable fighting patterns, and if you perform well, you will meet Gouki and probably get beaten senseless.

The DC analogue stick can be used to control the characters which is again handy for some of the Super moves. Like in the SF3 series SSF2X relies more on tactics and combos, the Super meters charge slowly when compared to the alpha games, and are really only used at the end of the match just to add humiliation. The Super meters do not carry over from round to round, which means that you can not stock pile them.

As in all the SF2 games the CPU patterns are predictable, Ken still has his 3 dragon punch in succession move, and you can easily predict when E.Honda will do his Sumo torpedo move. This is annoying but is helpful as the difficulty of the game even on 4 star is a challenge. Though I love most things Street Fighter, there are some aspects to SSF2X which really annoys me. First off is the balance of the characters, certain characters like Ryu, Sagat and Guile are still too strong when played by the CPU. This normally results in you using keep away techniques and winning by defensive moves as any form of attack will be stopped immediately. Guile's voice is too high, he is not camp. Lastly the coloured boxes that appear around the 'vs' graphics look bad.

All in all this is an old version of the Street Fighter franchise, if you were a fan of SSF2 then get this import edition, if not stick to alpha 3 or third strike. It basically comes down to how much you loved the original SF games, SSF2X is still as playable as it ever was and the graphics are in the old ultra realistic design which I am a fan of.

The home conversions of the original SSF2 on megadrive/genesis/super nintendo were ohkay, but the Saturn/PSX conversions came much closer to emulating the original. The Saturn and PSX versions have very easy AI. The dreamcast only release of the super hard version complete with brand new hidden character stands as the ultimate version of SSF2. It is hard but the challenge is very welcome in these days of the Alpha and VS series.