St: Why the difference between versions?

Classic Fighting Games Super Street Fighter II Turbo
1

Basing on the Mame roms, I’ve always have a doubt.

The japanese version of St has a default speed slower than the “World” version. And the japanese ia is, in my opinion, more simple, or less cheap, than the world version of St.

But why this difference?

Japan had - and has - the best scene in the whole world, the best players, and, most of all, the biggest arcade gamers audience. In order to keep the game playable (and rentable) by the majority of people, japanese St wasn’t too different from its progenitor Super Sf in terms of speed and ia. And the gamers could either choose to play, with a code, the ancient versions of their favourite characters if they didn’t like the moves modifications introduced in St.

As a consequence St was a success in Japan and it didn’t shock the players, as it made in the rest of the world: the same rest of a world that had smaller local scenes and players less skilled than the general level of the japanese audience.

I remember a lot of medium players - including myself - frustrated by the speed difference - usually set by default at Turbo 2 and not changeable - and the ia cheapness, especially having played a lot Super Sf.

Many gamers didn’t get use to the difficulty and speed of St and stopped playing. Casual gamers didn’t even try or they gave up after some matches lost in few seconds against the computer.

Then why Capcom took the decision of making a world version faster and more difficult than the japanese one?

They lost a great audience and therefore they renounced to huge potential profits: the starting point of the 2d beat’em up decline in my opinion.

Who took this economic suicidal decision? Capcom Jp or Usa? And why? Which were the aims?

At that time Capcom was the leading company in the 2d beat’em up market: they managed to ruin themselves with their own hands.

2

Hyper fighting was the start of the decline of the SF series in arcades.

Most casual players could not handle the ludicrous speed increase.

3

Why?

You probably should blame Capcom USA for the increased difficulty over here. For some reason, the execs here believed the higher difficulty was what americans wanted for the game. I think the horribly difficult CPU was the reason ST wasn’t as well received here. As for the world version, it probably was just based off the english american version because the text is easier to port.

Capcom learned their lesson though, just look at the difficulty of later SF games.

4

the SF2 series was made for human vs human play not human vs cpu. I highly doubt that the game was poorly received because the computer was too hard and everyone and their mama only played SF2 when they could play solo :wasted:

thats retarded. I grew up as most people did playing SF2 @ the arcade back in 90’s and there were rarely any times that people would play solo just to play solo. In fact, the only times I remember playing solo were on busy days that people would show up and I would just sit there warming up till people came by to start throwing down. The human vs human interaction was what made the game good.

imo, people were just tired of the same thing. They recycled the same game, to an extent, 5 times. I’m not an ST history expert but from my perspective, they didn’t add much. Characters, engine specifics, and redoing character designs.

5

fun fact - on most Capcom CPS2 games, the US versions will often default to a higher difficulty level than the Japanese version. It’s not just Super Turbo that’s like this, there’s quite a precedent that they set for always making the US version at a higher difficulty level than the Japanese version. What’s really crazy is that the generic “Asia” versions are even harder than the US, often defaulting to the highest difficulty possible. Try playing the Asia version of Vampire Savior in MAME on default settings, it’s pretty retarded…

Why did Capcom do stuff like this? Who knows, they’re wacky like that.

6

if the game was too easy, you could sit there for 25-50 cents and play for a good bit. By making insanely hard, the average-experienced player would lose more thus spending more money on the game per session.

7

As someone who actually has a machine on location making money, I have to disagree with this. You want everyone who throws in a quarter to feel that they’ve gotten their money’s worth. If they die after 25 seconds of play, hell no, they’ll feel ripped off and never put in another quarter, ever. But if they got a good damn game in, they’d be open playing more and you’d have a repeat customer.

Even better is if you can get them to feel vested in the game. That they’ve come so far that to not put in another quarter would feel like a waste to all of the effort they’ve put in so far. That’s the really awesome time, because it repeat business, both long term and immediately. That’s the same kind of compulsion that drive MMORPG games. Notice CPU characters are easier to beat when you continue, especially early in the game? That’s the reason; its by design. Ditto for different perks on continue, like the cheater guide on Puzzle Bobble, Heavy Machine Gun item on Metal Slug, etc. “I can’t stop now, the Mission 4 boss is almost dead”, despite the fact Mission 5 is pretty much the length of Mission 1-4 put together (Metal Slug 3. Gotta love it.)

With versus games, you want all of the above in the single player mode, and you want the impulse of competition to get your immediate repeat business in versus. I always make the VS. matches one round longer than the matches against the CPU; No matter what, if you’re following the guidelines above, then a 3 round vs. match is far quicker than a single player game. Use the impulses to get repeat plays on single player, and competition to get repeat versus money even faster.

ST fails, especially on the single player front. An AI that does nothing but frame perfect counters is bogus, frustrating to play, and a waste of everyone’s time. The player feels ripped off, and less likely to be repeat business; there’s less desire to ‘hold down the machine’ if you actually don’t want to play the machine. There’s no way to be vested in the game if you’re knocked out well before making any worthy progress (by match 2-3).

The ST AI is a clusterfuck. All other SF games before it had a much smoother progression that allowed for vesting. All I can say is that it wasn’t an economic decision to do it that way. If you can play for 30 minutes on a quarter (which I can on Metal Slug 3, easily), then you’re likely to be VERY open to the idea of putting money in.