Street Fighter II Turbo was like an early version of DLC, except you had to buy the game all over again! We were happy to do it, because that's how much better the new version of Street Fighter II was. This was a souped-up, deluxe version of the game that made the PVP fighting genre. The hype for Street Fighter II Turbo was real. I got so excited when I saw it at my local Fred Meyer (a Pacific Northwest superstore) that I bought it instead of Final Fantasy II, which I'd been saving for. I quickly regretted this hasty decision and sold it to my friend, with whom I then played it more than I ever would have at home! Honestly, who ever plays Street Fighter II single-player!? When the original Street Fighter II hit the SNES, the game had been in arcades for almost a year and a half, where it was an unrivalled powerhouse until Mortal Kombat arrived in late 1992. The Champion Edition (released in early 1992) added the four bosses as playable characters. This feature was absent from t...

Bubble Bobble is one of my favorite NES games, which I enjoy playing today as much as ever. It almost perfectly reproduces the 1986 arcade game. The game was and is very popular, and has been ported to practically every video-game system ever made. Bubble Bobble is a single-screen arcade game with 100 levels. It emphasizes two players, though it's also fun solo. The premise is that you control little dragons (named Bub and Bob) that shoot bubbles that can envelop enemies. Popping a bubble with an enemy in it destroys that enemy. If you take too long, however, the bubble eventually pops and releases the enemy. Each screen has a unique layout of platforms and walls. The enemies are cute, like little clockwork guys (Bubble Buster) and ghosts (Stoner). Most are easily beaten, but a few have projectiles. The hardest enemies are Invaders, who shoot downward like in Space Invaders, and Willie Whistle, who throws a bottle that boomerangs. If you don't finish a stage within a certain ti...

Thirty years ago Street Fighter II made the transition from arcade to living room on the Super NES. Although quickly eclipsed by its two successors, for one year it was the hotness. It would be hard to overstate how popular Street Fighter II was in the early 90's. Its predecessor was downright bad, but Street Fighter II invented the PVP fighting genre as we know it. Its roster of eight characters was a huge step-up from Street Fighter's two (Ken and Ryu, who returned for the sequel). The next iteration of the arcade game, Street Fighter II: Champion Edition, which hit arcades just as the SNES port arrived, let you play as the bosses as well, increasing the roster to twelve. A false rumor said a secret code would let you play them at home. While that wasn't true, there was a code (↓, R, ↑, L, Y, B) to let both players choose the same character for a mirror match. A prime strength of the game is how interesting each character is: the American airman Guile (think Top Gun); the...

Athena on the NES is a port of the 1986 platforming arcade game of the same name, produced by SNK, a company that later became famous for its cartridge-based arcade system, the Neo Geo. In Athena you play as the titular Goddess of Wisdom (according to the manual), who has been transported into a "Fantasy World" filled with "strange and fearsome creatures." She begins the game unarmed, in her underwear (the arcade intro shows her dress being blown off!), and must resort to kicking enemies for self-defense. Fortunately, pig-men called Momos drop clubs and hammers she can wield. The strength of Athena's current weapon is shown at the top of the screen next to the letter S. With the club and the hammer, Athena can smash blocks found throughout the game, some of which conceal armor, helmets, and shields. These pieces of armor come in three tiers (bronze, silver, and gold) and are imperative to survival. The helmet also lets Athena break blocks with her head, which is...

Solomon's Key is an NES port of the arcade game of the same name made by Tecmo in 1986. It's an action-puzzler (similar to The Adventures of Lolo ), in which you navigate the wizard Dana through a series of single-screen labyrinths. Also, it's very hard. In Solomon's Key, not only do you need to use your wits to devise a plan for acquiring the key and then getting to the door, you also need fast reflexes to dodge various creatures. These are your typical Gargoyles, Dragons, Goblins, Demons, and so forth. In some cases, you can trap the enemies with blocks, but since most can destroy blocks, Dana must move quickly. You need to learn their patterns. For instance, Sparks (as in several NES games) travel along an edge without changing direction. In general, all other monsters move in a direction until they encounter a block, which they break, then go back the way they came. Dana can use his trusty magic wand (press A) to create a block in front of him, or, if one is already...

Joe & Mac is a Super Nintendo port of the Data East arcade platformer Caveman Ninja. There's nothing "ninja" about the game, but the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles craze in the early 90's made the word ninja  very popular, so marketing people just slapped it on anything. Joe & Mac is the poster child of a "rental game," meaning a game you should rent rather than buy. The titular Joe and Mac aren't ninjas, but a couple wild and crazy cave-guys. They boast green and blue hair, respectively, yet unexpectedly for cavemen are clean-shaven. You can play solo or two-player. There are three difficulty settings. And let's not forget that you can choose between stereo and monaural sound! Joe and Mac have several moves at their disposal. Besides the usual jumping, they can do a higher rolling jump if you hold ↑ when you press X or Y. They can also somersault through enemies by double tapping → or ←. They can catch a ride atop pterodactyls and other enemie...

Earth Defense Force is an SNES port of the 1991 arcade game of the same name. The title screen places a small "Super" before the title, but the box and cartridge just call it Earth Defense Force, same as the arcade version. I've never played the original, but apparently it has less weapons, a two-player option (sadly lacking here), and some different levels. Earth Defense Force differs from your typical side-scrolling shooter in that you choose your weapon and speed without having to pick up items. The ship, the XA-1, has three different speeds you can toggle between by pressing X (though I always use the highest speed). Before each stage, you select one of eight weapons. You can choose whichever you think is the most fun or useful. Two of the weapons stand out as superior: Homing and the Search Laser. Homing homes in on the enemy (duh). Search Laser achieves the same effect because with it your satellite ships automatically turn toward the enemy. You see, the XA-1 carrie...

Ikari Warriors on the NES is a port of the 1986 arcade game by SNK. It's a run-and-gun vertical shooter based on the movie Rambo II. However, SNK never acquired the licensing rights, so they renamed it Fury—not a bad title, but then it was changed to Ikari Warriors in English translation. What made Ikari Warriors popular was its use of two rotary joysticks, which allowed the player to control both the direction in which the hero walks and, separately, the direction in which he shoots his machine gun. However, NES controllers have only a d-pad, so the game's best feature could not be transferred. Even worse, in a case of excessive fidelity, the characters still rotate as they move, even though you can no longer control this rotation independently from movement direction. As a result, turning around to face enemies coming from different directions is slow. The original game had agile characters who could strafe, but the NES versions can't even turn around effectively! They wa...

Thirty years ago Final Fight came out on the Super Nintendo. The game itself is older, being a port of a 1989 arcade hit. Although originally developed by Capcom as a sequel to Street Fighter, the name was changed since it's a "beat-'em-up," whereas Street Fighter was a fighting game (player v. player). I've never played the arcade version, but I played one of the sequels on the SNES. It couldn't have been the original, which is one-player only. This is by far the game's biggest flaw. Beat-'em-ups aren't very fun by yourself; the whole point is to team up with a friend to take down all the enemies or die trying. Lack of a two-player option on console games was a common problem back then: Double Dragon  was also one-player on NES. Final Fight's biggest draw, I suppose, is you can choose from two characters, a huge lumberjack-type named Haggar, or a slimmer guy named Cody. Each has a slightly different move set. The arcade game had a third charac...

BurgerTime is another classic arcade game that already looked dated when it hit the NES in 1987. I played BurgerTime on a PC a few times when I was a kid, and it seemed primitive even then. Still, it's fun in a challenging kind of way. In BurgerTime you control a tiny chef named Peter Pepper, who is constructing hamburgers that dwarf him, all the while avoiding anthropomorphic food adversaries. They have very creative names: Mr. Egg, Mr. Pickle, and Mr. Hot Dog—whose small size suggests he's actually a cocktail wiener. Peter doesn't cook the burgers; he only assembles them by causing the buns, patty, and lettuce to fall into place. The components are vertically aligned, but on different levels. When he walks across one, it falls down one platform, which also crushes any enemies below it. If an enemy is on  the falling item at the time, it falls an additional platform and destroys the enemy. This is such a great advantage that it forms the most critical element of strategy....