Miscellany II: Beta Genesis Port and FM Towns Marty
This page deals with home conversions, comics and arcade-hardware details.
A beta Genesis build
About nine minutes of footage of a beta Special Champion Edition for the Genesis/Mega Drive has surfaced online. It was reportedly shown at a press conference around 1993 announcing the port. The bosses carry their international names, but Blanka is misspelled “Branka”. The biggest difference from the shipped game is the life bars, which sit inside a black letterbox in the beta rather than over the background.
Letterboxed life bars were also used in the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 versions of World Warrior, the non-AGA Amiga version of Super, and on both the Game Boy and Master System releases of Street Fighter II, the latter distributed only in Brazil by TecToy.
Super Game Boy borders
Playing the Game Boy version of Street Fighter II through the Super Game Boy accessory on a Super Nintendo gives you static 16-bit stage borders around the 8-bit action. There are nine, one per playable fighter. Dhalsim, E. Honda and Vega are not in the Game Boy game, nor are the Super newcomers or Akuma, because of cartridge space. Most players regard the port as an oddity, but it is highly collectable.
Geki in Udon’s comics
Geki, the second Japanese opponent in the original Street Fighter, appears in Udon’s comics as a clan of identical, clawed ninja. Ibuki Legends reveals that Enjo, founder of Ibuki’s village, escaped the Geki shinobi with an abandoned baby they planned to train as the perfect assassin. That baby is Ibuki. Enjo defeats the Alpha Geki and the clan breaks up. In Udon’s Street Fighter II: Turbo, Vega orders the Geki to attack E. Honda and Zangief for a place in the tournament final, which echoes a popular fan idea that Geki taught Vega his claw technique.
Lee, the first Chinese opponent
Lee, the first Chinese opponent in Street Fighter, appears briefly in Udon’s Chun-Li Legends, where he calls the film star Fei Long a fake and loses to him. Nakahira’s Sakura Ganbaru! treats him more kindly: he has the advantage over Sakura until she unleashes a dragon punch. In Yang’s Super IV: Arcade Edition ending, Chun-Li says she must pay her respects to Master Lee, which has led to guesses that Lee, uncle to Yun and Yang, has died. His portrait also shows up in SNK Vs. Capcom: Card Fighters Clash (1999) and Card Fighters 2: Expand Edition (2001).
The long Wedding March
In every arcade Street Fighter II the sound-test version of the Wedding March from Ken’s ending is at least three times longer than the one in the game. This extended version was carried into the CPS-2 sequels, despite all the music being rerecorded for Super, and even has a proper coda nobody normally hears. Felix Mendelssohn wrote the piece in 1842, and it became popular after Victoria, the Princess Royal, chose it for her 1858 marriage to Prince Frederick William of Prussia.
The FM Towns Marty
Fujitsu released the FM Towns Marty in 1993, only in Japan. A niche product, it was the first 32-bit console anywhere, with a CD-ROM and a 3.5-inch floppy drive, designed as the first home computer dedicated to games. Its library includes an excellent port of Super Street Fighter II, whose colour edit mode, letting players fully customise a character’s palettes, is unique among all versions of Street Fighter.
CPS-3 in Akuma’s ending
Akuma’s Third Strike ending contains a subtle nod to the arcade board behind every Street Fighter III game. The letters CPS-3 can be seen on the bow of the ship that monitors the submersible Deep Sea 3000, and a “CPS III” label appears on a spectator’s T-shirt in the Parry the Ball bonus game. CP System III hosted just six games from 1996 to 1999. Its predecessor, CPS-2, served more than forty, starting with Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers in 1993. The original CP System debuted in July 1988 with Forgotten Worlds and is best remembered for the first three versions of Street Fighter II (1991-1992) and Final Fight (1989). An improved CPS-1, the CP System Dash, arrived in 1992 for only five games, including Saturday Night Slam Masters and its 1993 sequel Muscle Bomber Duo.
