Street Fighter II’ Hyper Fighting

Though I once spent a bazillion tokens on Street Fighter II (and its successors), it’d been years since I’d played it. So loading up this Live Arcade version of 1992’s Street Fighter II’ Hyper Fighting brought back a flood of memories — and reminded me, definitively, why SFII is both the grandfather and the grandmaster of 2D fighting games.

You remember how it goes: 12 fighters from around the world do battle in a series of one-on-one matches, with the goal of beating all of their fellow competitors. Ryu, Ken, Blanka, Dhalsim, Chun Li — each has various punches and kicks, plus a few badass special moves: Ryu’s fireball; Zangief’s spinning lariot; Honda’s hundred-hand slap; and way more.

This version’s single-player game gives you several options. Arcade Mode is the straight-up coin-op experience, pitting you against the computer. Training Mode lets you practice your moves against a stationary AI enemy. And CPU Battle, unlocked when you beat Arcade Mode with any fighter, lets you pit any character against any computer-controlled character. With seven difficulty levels and AI opponents who mix their tactics, single-player Hyper offers hours of fun, even if it’s the smaller draw here.

The meat, after all, is in multiplayer — and that’s where this game really rules the dojo. Besides head-to-head bouts on the same console, you can hop on Live and enter a Quick Match against another player, or use Custom Match or Create Match to pick some parameters for joining/starting matches. Best of all, though, is Quarter Match, a clever new mode in which you enter a queue of players waiting to spar, and while you’re sitting in line, the in-progress fight appears in a window on your screen (simulating the way someone who’d lined their quarter on a coin-op could watch the two people playing). Whether you’re viewing a fight or participating in it, you can chat via headset, so the smack-talk possibilities are endless.

So many choices, so many thrills. And best of all, the game controls pretty well with a 360 gamepad (especially if you use both thumbstick and D-pad), even though we’d still love to see a true 360 arcade stick. Capcom’s done a sweet job of porting a coin-op legend, and Hyper Fighting is officially one of our favorite Live Arcade games.