Poke fests can be boring to people who want flashy bullshit.
I have only been on this site since jumping on the MVC3 hype train last year but have been playing fighting games since SF2T, and you might as well renamed this site SuperStreetFighter4.com last year, cuz any new game that came out was bashed instantly “BlazBlue CS2 will be getting updated” “OMG ANOTHER ANIMU AIR DASHER!!!” “Arcana Heart 3 will be coming to America” “LOL LOLI,ANIMU,PEDO GAME” “Super Street Fighter 4:Arcade Edition has hit arcades” “AH YEA GET HYPE”.
1991 - 1994 Good times =D
mhmm. gg and vf series held the crown for good games after those years but they were a dying breed
I’m somewhere in the middle, coming from 3D fighters and all. I don’t need flashy bullshit, but I’d like my pokes to mean something substantial.
The now “appraised by the community” SSF4 - already replaced by SSF4AE - has sold on both PS3 and XBox 360 less than the home, inferior version of SF2T/HF for the Sega Genesis alone. I can only pity the ones who have not lived the early days of fighting games, when SF2 created it all, revolutionized it all, and started the magic that will never die in the hearts of the ones who have experienced it. Those owe it to themselves to check the thread on my signature, and read every single post of jcasetnl and eggo. I only regret not having given ST the attention it deserved, and played more people in arcades. Those were the days because those were the games, it is as simple as that.
The worst years were when the market was being flooded with copies, not only by other softhouses, but by Capcom itself. They have saturated the market with such an amount of trash that the casuals could no longer tell the good games from the bad ones.
Is this really a fair comparison? I mean, today, SSF4’s(or most other fighting games’) value is that it’s a versus fighting game. Back then, there was more to SF2 than that. It was one of the peaks of action gaming and multiplayer gaming at the time, it gave visceral combat that most other things just couldn’t. Today, the sort of gamer looking for that has a lot more options than fighting games, and options that largely fill what they’re seeking better in terms of action/multiplayer, and in more specific ways based on who they are.
A new fighting game will never be able to recreate SF2’s popularity, because a new fighting game cannot be as awe-inspiring to that sort of gamer compared to other sorts of video games, or as revolutionary to their needs for action and multiplayer.
I really wish I could have explained what i’m trying to say better, but I hope it sort of gets across.
I do understand, but the popularity is just part of the reason. Also, one should bear in mind that 2Turbo was already the third iteration of SF2: by then, most people had already got a WW port. Also note that it was the least popular port for of the title: if you gather both consoles together, like it was done for SSF4, it would be much more than three times more copies. And SSF4 can be readily played over the internet, while 2Turbo had no online mode.
I see people saying “today is good cos (S)SF4 is popular.” Bullshit. The game was already complained at by many top players, so people come with this fake blanket that popularity and competition make up for it. But here I prove that it is way less popular than even the 3rd iteration of SF2 and certainly less played against other players. Just wonder: how many people are playing it against other players in my block, or maybe three blocks around my house? In the early days, people would be seen playing at the local arcades - yes, they existed - in basically any neighborhood with one, and most did have one, if not more.
An unfair comparison would be quality. SF4 just pales in comparison to SF2 when it comes to importance in positioning, timing, decision and reaction. In SF4, every character has a get-out-of-jail-free-card against projectiles. Even projectile characters themselves: EX projectiles. It used to take skill to get around them, while now any newbie can jump straight up and avoid anything that gets thrown at him. That’s just one example: there are still reversals, traps, control. What SF4 has is eye candy and a strong marketing support.
I’m not going to argue in favor of SF4’s gameplay quality against you because I don’t play or even really like SF4, so… 
However, can you really call EX projectiles “get out of jail free”? I mean, they cost meter for a reason.
Also, can’t anyone in SF2 just jump straight up to avoid projectile pressure at max range, as long as they time it decently, or am I missing something? It’s not like certain anime fighters where jumping against certain zoners mean you can still get hit by other projectiles.
The hitbox and speed if the fireball in sf2 makes it harder to time your jumps than it would in Sf4.
My favorite year for FG’s honestly was 96. It was the last big blockbuster year for fighters in the 90’s. It was like a Hollywood cast where you had top tier stars like X-Men vs Street Fighter, Alpha 2 Tekken 2 and KOF 96 but you had a great to decent group of supporting players in the background like Breakers Revenge, Kizuna Encounter, Warzard, Samurai Showdown 4 which improved on III, Real Bout Special, Soul Blade and SF EX.