Ars Technica has a new article taking a look back at Street Fighter 2 and the technical aspects that went into the game that made it so successful.Graphics, in 12 luscious bits and super-crisp 384 x 224 resolution
It's hard to appreciate how good Street Fighter II's graphics were at the time, but the perspective effects of the floor and depth layering were really advanced for the time. Where most side-scrolling games at the time were a dead set of two or three layers of sprites, Street Fighter II's scenes were alive with animation and the pixel-level single-point perspective scrolling of the floor blew my mind when I first saw it:
What really made SFII's graphics exceptional were the artists' masterful handling of a limited color palette and that almost comically low resolution. If you've ever done graphics for Web, you know how difficult it can be to fit pleasing gradations into a limited GIF palette. Well, imagine doing that for an entire game level while factoring variable characters with their own colors. Then, with those limitations in mind, you have to make it attractive. It boggles the mind that the level artists chose a complex palette of complementary colors:
Nice write up! SFII will always have a special place in my heart as the game that started it all for my love of fighting games.
@ #5: A real fan of Street Fighter can appreciate SFII, SFIII, SFIV and everything in between (except tthe diarrhea known as the EX series). I like all of them in their own ways, even though I'm more of a Marvel/vs. player I still appreciate the fundamentals you learn in SFII. The technical stuff in SFIII, and... uhh... the umm... other stuff you get from SFIV.
Street Fighter II was an awesome games whether being in the arcades or in a console. It's sill fun to pick up and play.