Hopefully you can bare slightly blurred vision to enjoy one crazy modder’s attempt at porting Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting to the Virtual Boy.
Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting is one of my all-time favorite fighting games. I loved that game on the SNES to bits! Nintendo’s ill-fated Virtual Boy on the other hand, well, that gave me eye-piercing headaches. Never in my wildest dreams would I expect either to cross paths like a 1980’s buddy-cop movie, but oh how the Internet likes to surprise.
Particularly, homebrewer and member of the Planet Virtual Boy forums Mr. Anon. Using a fighting game engine created by another homebrewer by the name of M.K., Mr. Anon took the Capcom turbo-fied fighter and ported it to the 3D-displaying console… because, uh, reasons.
Awesome, “who gives a flyin’ flip” reasons! Honestly, it’s a pretty remarkable coversion despite its odd pairing: the action to the game is as lightning crisp and smooth as it should be in motion, and even the emulation of the sound is accurately spot on. Crystal clear to boot!
There’s even some added benefits that the Virtual Boy’s 3D hardware gives to Hyper Fighting. You can actually see a level of depth in the 2D fighter; the elephants in Dhalsim’s stage actually look like they pop out and are within a “going on a escaping rampage” reach.
Suckingly, what’s added in 3D depth, sort of takes away from following the action at points – at least for me. That blinding red hue of the Virtual Boy’s display makes it hard sometimes to tell who’s attacking who. Whether Ryu is hurricane kicking Dhalsim, or a launched Yoga Fire is hurling towards the martial artist.
In fairness though, I doubt this crazy, brilliant experiment was ever intended with the enthusiastic crowds of Evo in mind though. It’s just a simple exercise in converting a celebrated fighting game to a bizarre, commercially disappointing console, which it does quite impressively.
You can even play it yourself if you have the right equipment, with a full release intended sometime real soon. Just be sure to follow Mr. Anon for more info on that end, and in a short time you too can be kung-fu fighting… IN 3D!!!
To bad we can’t get 3D running on the Internet – too many cats were lost in the process. Not that we need it when our features about Doctor Who-fashioned weddings and Star War’s “Hans Solo frozen in carbonite” fridges are pretty damn spiffy on their own.
