In the last few weeks I have been playing some serious amount of Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix.  The original Super Turbo is a game I considered to be my all-time favorite, but now it is Super Turbo Remix and I honestly don't really wanna go back and play the original anymore.  The balance changes really do bring the cast of fighters all really close to each other in power which creates all sorts of great matchups that didn't exist before.  Also, how about that netcode?  Easily the best playing online fighter so far!  I hope all fighters use this netcode until something better can be developed.  In the end, it is a superb fighter and easily the best SFII iteration.  If you claim yourself to be a Street Fighter fan and haven't bought this game, do so immediately.  If you are one of those "fans" that are passing on it because you think it is "too expensive" then you are certainly no fan.

Since Super Turbo Remix's release got me back into fighting game mode, I decided to also drudge out some older PS1 fighters and revisit them.  First was Street Fighter EX Plus Alpha.  This game was pretty good for its time, but now it plays a tad too slow and priority and speed on low roundhouse kicks is too high as well not to mention that well-placed, small combos do tons of damage.  On the bright side, the game is pretty lenient on move inputs which makes playing as grapplers like Zangief and Darun much easier than in most other games.

The other PS1 fighter I have been playing is Shiritsu Justice Gakuen: Legion of Heroes which is better known as Rival Schools.  This game is still a lot of fun and it would be great if Capcom would revive this series for a third iteration on current consoles.  The one big problem this game has is that it has a lot of "too much."  Damage done by most attacks is too high across the board (some double team moves can do up to 40% damage and are easy to spam and abuse!), you start with too much super meter at the beginning of a match (3 stocks out of 9!), and gaining super meter is too easy.  Despite these flaws, I still enjoy the game a good deal.

Speaking of good games, I should have Persona 4 this week and I found out that Amazon was selling Eternal Sonata for PS3 for $30 which is half the price it is normally going for!  So obviously that is on the way as well and much sooner than I anticipated which I am sure NeonNinja will love to hear!  :D

Next week I'll be sure to have my Game of the Year Awards post up and all at once!  That's right, one huge mega-post of all of the winners, so look forward to that!  Later.  ^_^

私立ジャスティス学園

I played the demo of SSFIIT HD Remix on a friend's 360, and I was amazed by how fluid the game played. Of course I would have liked to have played the game on my six-button Genesis controller, but it didn't take long to get used to the controls. =) Now I REALLY want the game. =P

Funny you mention the six-button Genesis controller because I found out my Sega Saturn PS2 controllers work with the game on my PS3 via a PS2 to USB adapter.  Whenever I want to use a pad that is what I like to use for fighters.

There is such a thing as Saturn PS2 controllers? Wow.

Yup!  Every detail is precisely the same as the Saturn's controllers except that they added a select button and there is a Playstation logo on it.

Huh, that is interesting. I'll have to do some research about it at some point.

Turbo is too fast, and the super-gauges don't need to be there. It's too expensive for me, being that I'm broke. For what it's worth, Alpha used to be my favorite Street Fighter until I ran into 3rd Strike.

"...the super-gauges don't need to be there."
Care to elaborate as to why you feel that way?  Sure, they don't need to be there for the game to be good, but the point is for an added layer of depth.  You could take almost any game and point to a specific mechanic and say the same thing.

"For what it's worth, Alpha used to be my favorite Street Fighter until I ran into 3rd Strike."
3rd Strike is definitely great, but I feel the lax parry system in that game, while good overall, takes a fundamental 2D fighting game staple, fireballs, and makes them practically useless outside of supers and some EX ones.  The game is almost a 3D fighter like Tekken/Virtua Fighter because of that situation.  I think this might be why the parry system used with one of the grooves in Capcom vs. SNK 2 was made to be much more strict with the timing of parries.