Ultra Street Fighter II: The Final Challengers
With the Street Fighter series celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, the successful franchise kicked off celebrations with the announcement of a brand new game. Ultra Street Fighter II: The Final Challengers (or USFII) takes the famous 1991 game (Street Fighter II: The World Warrior) and adds innovative game play to the series.
Today it seems that the SFII family of games keeps growing, so what makes the (currently) exclusive to the Switch addition different? As expected, traditional game play and mechanics are pretty much followed by the book. Certain characters have got new additions though, with new mechanics such as grapple breaks and re-tunes introduced. Alongside this, the balancing has been slightly tweaked to allow for easier game play.
Alike many of the classic games that have been making a return this year (such as Wonderboy and the Banjo Kazooie successor Yooka Laylee), the new addition to the SFII series will provide classic graphics and modern artwork. The classic graphics will play like the original, even downscaling the screen to 4:3 and including original voice actors. With the updated art edition being upscaled to 16:9 using the SFV voice actors.
There are 19 playable characters in the game, with Evil Ryu and Violent Ken as the new additions. Akuma is now unlocked as well, as he was a hidden character in the SFII game.
A colour edit mode is included in the game which will allow players to palette swap all 19 characters, saving up to 10 palette swaps per character. The player can later use these swaps in arcade mode, VS mode and online battles. The images and graphics provided for the palette swap come from the art book ‘Street Fighter 20: the Art of Street Fighter’, whose 1,400 art pieces can be viewed in the in-game gallery.
Alike the later games in the SF series, USFII allows local and online multiplayer. When playing online, each player earns points by winning fights. The local (or ‘Buddy Battle’) multiplayer allows players to team up in a 2 V 1 fight against the CPU controlled character.
Excitingly, a new first person POV game will be added in with USFII. In the new battle mode (dubbed ‘Way of the Hado’) the player controls Ryu as Shadaloo soldiers run at him, ready to attack. Using special moves such as Hadouken, Shoryuken and Tatsumaki Senpukyaku – the player defeats the enemies by moving the joy con controllers from the Switch. In these levels, M. Bison may appear as a boss character every now and then.
Have you bought USFII yet? How are you finding the new characters/attacks? Are you enjoying ‘Way of the Hado’ or you've been playing on our Fantastic Arcade machines? Let us know via our social media channels!
