Street Fighter: The Movie

The Good
Two new characters for 1994 gamers, Akuma and Sawada, are playable. Kylie and Cammy is nice (very nice), and all of the special and Super moves are here. The controls are the tightest a Capcom games could've been before Alpha 1 was released, and the film clips are nice for 1994, when video was a big deal for games on CD.

The Bad
The backgrounds are all washed-out, no Street Fighter character music is present (I mean, a remix in the style of the movie's score could've helped), choppy animation (this games is below 30 FPS, while the arcade machine runs at 60 FPS and plays better). The characters are also tiny, and the whole effort seems rushed, because this was a launch title for the PlayStation and Saturn in Japan. With the original American Saturn controllers I used to place myself circa 1994, the buttons start to hurt doing the usual SF moves, and the game is stupidily easy to win, on any difficulty setting. The access time is a lilttle long, too, especially given Capcom developed Final Fight CD and Super Street Fighter II Turbo on inferior hardware, yet those are near arcade perfection with little access time.

The Bottom Line
It's an Acclaim game. They make games based on movies. So they convinced Capcom to get stupid and make this game. It's a game based on a movie, based on a game, in the style of their competitor (Mortal Kombat). It's not worth the $0.49 at the used game store to buy, it sure wasn't the $59.99 I paid in 1995 for it at EB Games for my Saturn. Acclaim should've sent it back to Capcom and told them to make EXACTLY like the arcade version (like MK2, NBA Jam, NARC on NES, etc., etc., I mean Acclaim was known for their first rate arcade conversions), so there's no excuse for this game existing like this. It's an insult to both Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat fans.

The Good
I get it why some movie critics hate video game movies (sometimes). Whether they haven't played the games yet or they still making money at the box office. I thought the Street Fighter movie was awesome when they put an all-star cast like Jean-Claude Van Damme and Ming-Na. I also gave praise to the late Raul Julia, who did an excellent performance playing the evil M. Bison and sometimes it's just too hard on playing a bad villain in a movie role. It's career suicide. But the movie and the Street Fighter II Animated version is a must-see if you already own one. I got them on DVD.

The Bad
Street Fighter: The Movie is just another bad taste on putting a successful 1994 movie and transferred into a video game. Here's the reason why the game is terrible.

1. It's a Capcom-produced game (not Acclaim, nor Midway).
2. The characters look digitally alike as the ones from the original Mortal Kombat game.
3. The graphics, music, sounds, and Ryu's Hadouken will make you wanna throw the game into a landfill of broken discs.
   
   The Bottom Line
   Not only is Street Fighter: The Movie the worst video game movie, but the video game version based on the movie should've been played during the failure of Atari's Jaguar console (for around $5 bucks). The Street Fighter franchise is still going strong after all these years, but they made the first and only big mistake they had to plan. I wonder if Capcom could be celebrating 30 years of the good, the bad, and the mediocre of the 80's and 90's altogether.