Xbox Live Arcade could have been the place where old games went to die; looks like it's where old games go to be reborn instead. One of the first of a very large summer crop of coin-op classics on tap for Microsoft's downloadable game service is Street Fighter II' Hyper Fighting, the game that defined 2D fighters.
When we played an early version of the game on Xbox 360, we found just what we expected to find: a spot-on recreation of the arcade original, right down to the ugly palette-swapped outfits (big Russian Zangief simply looks wrong in teal instead of his trademark red - and it was funny to see that the replaced color also made the inside of his mouth a light blue). Chun-Li still has the fastest feet we've ever seen, Dhalsim's stage in India still has the most annoying elephant sound effects and big boss M. Bison is still as cheap as ever with his head-stomping, lightning-infused attacks. The wicked speed that Street Fighter fans remember is very much intact; bring your best dragon punches and fireballs or you'll be coldcocked in short order.
If you grew up playing this game on the Super NES, the controls will feel comfortable; the left and right bumper buttons handle the heavy punch and kick attacks while the analog triggers offer a shortcut to all three punches and all three kicks. If that doesn't feel right to you, you can reconfigure and save two different controller setups. Let it be known that while the controller performed okay, we want a good arcade-style joystick for Xbox 360 immediately.
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