Fighting Street
System: TG16
Release Date: December 1989
Developer: Alfa System
Publisher: NEC
Genre: Fighting
Fighting Street on TurboGrafx-16 CD is the first non-wrestling fighting game since Karate Champ. It’s a port of the original Street Fighter and puts you in the shoes of Ryu (or Ken), as you battle your way through ten enemies in five countries. You can choose which country to start in and then fight everyone in a set order.
The controls are very simple and unwieldy. Button I punches and Button II kicks. The longer you hold the button, the stronger the attack will be. This works poorly, because the computer doesn’t have the same restriction. You can pull off Ryu’s signature fireball, dragon punch, and hurricane kick, but good luck doing it when you want! They would occur randomly for me as I attacked in and out of crouching.
Enemies have more attacks than you and they can break your guard quite easily. After you lose, you are taunted in some horribly garbled voice clips. You also get one if you win! The strong sweep kick was probably my saving grace when I finally started to beat the enemies. I tried to beat as many of my opponents as possible by punching them in the junk, I felt that they deserved it.
I played for a little more than an hour and found my way to the final boss Sagat. He takes little damage and kills you in four hits. I tried for a little bit of time, but decided my life has more meaning than trying to beat a broken fighting game.
Graphics: 2.0
The graphics look decent, but animations are choppy.
Sound: 2.5
The music is of pretty good quality, but the sounds aren’t great and the voices are god awful!
Gameplay: 1.0
For a first attempt at modern fighting games… it sucks. It plays so poorly, you’ll rarely be able to pull off what you want to.
Difficulty: 1.5
The AI is ultra cheap, enemies are over-powered, controlling your character is like fighting against a river of molasses.
Fun Factor: 0.5
You will have very little fun playing this game. I wish there was some benefits to it, but there aren’t.
Overall Grade: 1.5
Fighting Street earns a C-. This grade is reliant on the fact that it has CD quality music. Nothing else lives up to what you would expect out of the format. Pass on this one, we’ll get to the real thing in mid-1992… about 600 games away…