Street Fighter II – DaveGladow.com

Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 6)

Within the pantheon of video games every gamer should experience, quality is a must. It’s essentially your starting point: Is this game, for lack of a better term, “good?” That’s always first and foremost.

But closely behind that consideration is the importance of a game within the industry. Does it have historical significance in a way that other games of that era might not? If one were to put together a timeline of video game history, what games would require representation?

Street Fighter II was unlike anything that had come before it, and it revolutionized the gaming industry in a way that is exceedingly rare. Per Wikipedia, the game is responsible for selling over 200,000 arcade cabinets, 15 million software units, and $10 billion of revenue for Capcom. And I can corroborate those numbers on a personal level; Capcom inspired me to purchase a Super Nintendo, four different versions of the game, and pump countless quarters into arcade cabinets over the years.

But what made the game so popular? And why do many people think “Hyper Fighting” might be the best version of all?

Let’s go down those two rabbit holes together, shall we?

Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting
Genre: Fighting
Released: 1993
Platform: SNES
GameRankings Score: 82%

60 Video games I’d recommend to anyone

Let’s throw some love out there. These are my favorite video games of all time. Yes!

As is always the case with a list like this, mileage may vary. Tastes differ, and more importantly, unless you’re a fanatic collector or work in the industry in some fashion, it’s impossible to play everything. To wit, I have a giant honking blind spot in my list for basically anything released over the last 15 years or so. I thought of calling it “favorite retro games” or some such, but let’s just go with this.

But the point is this: it’s my list. These are 60 games I’ve loved experiencing, and I thought in the interest of saving my thoughts for posterity — in case anyone would find them of value — it would be good to have it all written down. Maybe my kids will look at this list someday and want to explore it or my wife will get better insight into my gaming life, or maybe it will drum up nostalgia for you regardless of your connection with me. Cool, mission accomplished!

The best Super NES games of all time

Ranking Super Nintendo games is basically an impossible task. Go through any “best-of” list around the interwebs and you’ll see an absolutely loaded selection of games, featuring some of the true all-time greats.

Looking through the selection of games for other video game systems, I have little doubt this was the greatest console of all time. There’s just so much depth.

So how do you sift through all of that?

After making my own list, I still don’t know.

I do know my inspiration came about in part because of the release of the Super NES Classic, a retro system release (featuring 20 games from the original lineup … and one new one) which I recently read has been outselling “new” consoles like the Switch and Playstation 4.

That it’s resonating in a major way is no surprise to me. I bought one myself!

Read on for a list of 30 reasons why Super Nintendo nostalgia is at an all-time high.

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