Street Fighter II Turbo

• 1. Introduction

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  Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting reached arcades in 1992 not as a new machine but as an upgrade kit. Capcom built it for installation directly into Champion Edition circuit boards already in those arcades, less than a year after Champion Edition had appeared. The approach was unusual. So were the results. Which fighters had been redesigned, and how? What did the faster speed mean in practice? And how would a game released as an upgrade kit become one of the most acclaimed arcade titles ever recognized?

• 2. New Rules of Combat

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  Champion Edition had trained players in a specific set of timings, and Hyper Fighting broke that training on arrival. Special move inputs and combos now required more precise timing. The faster speed also let players close distance and react to openings more quickly than before. Guile and the four Grand Masters were the only fighters not given new special moves. Every other member of the roster received at least one technique that had not existed in any previous version of the game.

  Ryu and Ken gained the ability to execute the Hurricane Kick while airborne. E. Honda received the Super Body Slam, an anti-aerial attack. Blanka acquired a vertical rolling attack alongside his standard one. Chun-Li gained two additions at once: the Kikoken, a projectile technique, and the ability to perform the Spinning Bird Kick in mid-air. Zangief received the Turbo Clothesline alongside his existing Spinning Clothesline. Dhalsim gained the Yoga Teleport, which moved him instantly near an opponent from a certain distance.

  M. Bison was the one fighter to retain his original default palette when Hyper Fighting reassigned colors across the entire cast. Every other character received a new default color scheme, with their familiar originals becoming alternates. The alternates from Champion Edition were replaced in the process. Bison's alternate palette was still changed, even as his default remained the same. Hyper Fighting was also the last Street Fighter II arcade game to run on Capcom's original CP System hardware. The series' next entry, Super Street Fighter II, would require CP System II.

• 3. The Super Nintendo Port

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  The Super Famicom received this port on the 11th of July, 1993. North American players could buy the Super Nintendo Entertainment System version in August 1993, with the PAL region following in October. The port was built on the SNES version of the original Street Fighter II, though it ran on a larger 20-megabit cartridge. Despite its title, the game also included Champion Edition through a mode labeled "Normal."

  Four speed settings were available in Turbo mode by default. A cheat code extended that to six faster settings beyond the standard four. Other codes let players toggle special moves on or off during Versus mode, or disable them across the single-player campaign.

  The announcer's voice clips naming each country were restored in the port. So was the barrel-breaking bonus stage that had been absent from the earlier SNES release of Street Fighter II. Each character's ending graphics were revised to match the arcade version more closely. Sound effects featuring shouting after each round ended were added, drawn from Super Street Fighter II rather than from the arcade Hyper Fighting. One feature did not survive the conversion: the pitch variation in characters' voices based on the strength of a special move was removed. Nintendo re-released this version in September 2017 as part of the Super NES Classic Edition.

• 4. Beyond the Arcade

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  Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition brought Hyper Fighting's rules to the Sega Mega Drive and Genesis. That version was built primarily around Champion Edition, with Turbo rules available as a mode. Its content was nearly identical to the SNES version of Turbo.

  The Xbox 360 received a stand-alone version via Xbox Live Arcade in 2006, developed by Sensory Sweep Studios, with an online versus mode. Capcom Arcade brought the game to iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad, and Android, packaged alongside Street Fighter II and Champion Edition. An unofficial port for the Virtual Boy was also produced, under the name Hyper Fighting. The Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection brought the game back in 2018 across PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and Windows. In 2022, Hyper Fighting appeared as one of 18 titles built into the Evercade EXP.

• 5. An Enduring Reputation

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  In January 1993, Game Machine in Japan listed Street Fighter II Dash Turbo as the second most successful table arcade cabinet on the market. It outperformed titles including Capcom's own Warriors of Fate and Street Fighter II Dash. The game went on to become the highest-grossing arcade game in Japan for the entirety of 1993. The RePlay arcade charts in North America ranked it the top-grossing software conversion kit in March 1993. It held that position again in April and in June, and it was among the five top-grossing arcade games of Summer 1993.

  The Super Famicom version topped the Famitsu sales charts in Japan in July 1993. Worldwide, the SNES version sold 4.1 million copies in total, placing it ninth among the best-selling games for the console.

  In the February 1994 issue of Gamest, Street Fighter II Turbo was nominated for Best Game of 1993 alongside Super Street Fighter II. Both lost the award to Samurai Spirits; Turbo placed sixth overall and fifth in the Best Fighting Games category. Nintendo Power rated it the third best SNES game of 1993.

  In 1996, GamesMaster placed the game ninth on its list of the top 100 games of all time. In 1997, Electronic Gaming Monthly named it the best arcade game of all time. The SNES version placed fifth among all console games on the same list. In 2018, Complex ranked the SNES version sixth among the best Super Nintendo games of all time. The publication called it the best fighting game on the console. Electronic Gaming Monthly described Hyper Fighting as the last refinement of Street Fighter II before the Super and Alpha installments redirected the franchise.