If I was going to play a SF game without meter, I would pick HF hands down ( I was never a person who liked Super Meters in the SFII series). However, SSF2’s biggest problem was definetly the speed change. I remember it back then, when it first came out, alot of people where hyped up for it, yes…MKII did in fact take alot of the fame at that time, we had 3 MK II cabinets, that shit was jammed packed when it first was available to play.
SSFII, we only had one single cabinet, which had alot of people as well, but nothing like what the MKII following had. I wasn’t the first to play it, however waiting for my turn, and hoping that they didn’t nerf Ryu to shit (which I’m glad they didn’t, he’s still solid in that game thank goodness), as soon as I saw the gameplay, many of us where like “WTF?!”
Why? The speed, simply because most of us have been playing HF for so long now, and have grown accustomed to it, then where sitting going back to CE speed, it just felt so awkward.
I remember picking Ryu, and I was trying to land cross ups…and completely whiffing, simply because it was so damn slow…yes, it was due to me being used to HF speed, so it took a few matches to get used to it. Alot of us got turned off by the fact that it went from fast gameplay to slow again.
If it had kept the HF speed, I believe SSFII would have gained a stronger following then it had. At least where I was at, the speed put alot of peeps on hold, not to mention, that most of us still preferred HF over it.
However, to me, the two biggest factors that I saw was, SSFII was a slower paced game from the faster paced and heavily loved HF, and also the release of MK II, which was another big factor that took alot of glamor away from SSF2.
I can’t believe Crayfish is the only one who realized that you could just simply play SSF2 via AE on speed 2 or 3 (albeit he also plays with the HF chars on that game as well). I always chuckle when a thread like this comes up and all these “closet” SSF2 fans suddenly surface (not you Sabre, you’ve always known the truth!). If some of you really thought SSF2 was that great, why is it I never saw anyone EVER endorse the idea of SSF2 on AE run tourney for Evo? Oh that’s right, SSF2 is only a good game when Jeff Schaeffer has to come out and say it is a good game (that was hilarious). In a lot of ways, SSF2 if played on AE is the best SF2 game. Most OGs on this site are divided between HF and ST. The ST heads don’t care too much for HF because of the dizzy system & damage whereas HF fans never really felt supers, techs, and juggles. Seems like finding a compromise between the 2 makes sense, right?