Street Fighter II' Turbo Beta (Genesis) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
131A playthrough of a beta version of Street Fighter II' Turbo for the Sega Genesis. This version was likely by produced by Capcom sometime in 1993.
Played through as Zangief on the hardest difficulty setting (though I don't think the difficulty setting actually works in this one, so take that for what it's worth).
This beta version of Street Fighter 2 Turbo has quite a few neat differences from the officially released Genesis version of Street Fighter II' Champion Edition. Probably the most immediate and obvious difference is the sound: this beta features different mixes of the original tunes and makes heavy use of PCM samples for percussion, whereas the official Genesis game reserves the PCM playback for effects and voices. I actually much prefer the sound in this version. The drum tracks and the effects do occasionally clip and cancel each other out, but it isn't often noticeable and the drums sound awesome - even if they are way too loud and heavy. I like the cheesy quality that the overdone samples give the music. It's also got the sped-up "near death" music that is missing in the other home ports.
Many of the voice samples are missing, but that's probably because it's a beta (and thus, not a finished game), and its running off of a 16megabit ROM (which is significantly smaller than the official SF2'CE's 24megabit cart), which of course limits room for things like digitized audio.
The graphics look pretty good here too - like the audio, they certainly are different than the official Genesis version. The color palettes are different in many places, and the animation is different. The characters all have their full idle stance animations intact, as well as their separate forward and back walking animation cycles. It's amazing how much smoother it looks with those cycles left in.
The intro and the ending are missing, which is to be expected in a pre-release like this, but the gameplay elements are all in place and function exactly as they should - the game engine feels all but finished, with the timings, special moves, move priorities all being present and acting as you'd expect them to in a final product.
I really like this one - I actually prefer this beta over the official SF2'CE port. The sound quality is FAR better in this one (the official release one's PCM quality was embarrassingly poor), the graphics and animation are better, and my favorite difference: did anyone else notice how completely creepy Zangief's portrait is? Whatever they did when they scaled that graphic made his eye somehow terrifying. I feel like he's going to kill me with that look. That's why I picked him to play as :D
Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention. Even though it's called Turbo, it's not Turbo. It's missing all of the Turbo moves and features. It's a different version of SF2'CE.
_
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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