Reminder: Street Fighter II Free For A Limited Time In Capcom Arcade Stadium

My immediate thought was "I better get this while its free"

Then realized I have Ultra Street Fighter 2 as well as the 30th Anniversary collection, so I think I'm all set.

Played it for about 3 minutes and realized I'd rather reinstall MK11.

You own it forever if you get it? Nice!

I got it for free

@Snatcher yeah you do.

They did the same for ghosts and goblins

@Desrever Someone stole my copy of Ultra Street Fighter so this is perfect lol

Wow, this is an amazing deal! One of the best games ever for literally free with no catch? Awesome!

However, heads up for Street Fighter fans: The 30th Anniversary Collection (featuring all main arcade versions of SF2 up to SSF2T, and all versions of SF3, as well as Alpha 1,2 and 3, and the original SF1, along with a load of genuinely cool bonus content) is currently in the big eshop sale for just £9.99!

I already bought SSF2T in the first Arcade Stadium, and was looking forward to picking up Alpha 2 for Stadium 2, but at £10 the 30th Anniversary Collection is insanely good value. I bought it the second I saw it on sale and its absolutely superb, I can't fault the presentation, display options, control mapping, dipswitch settings, everything is as I'd want it.

Still got my SNES copy and my Switch copy so nah I think I'm good though a free full version of Ultra SFIV would be nice.

I don't think I have a modern way to play Street Fighter 2. Once I'm done with my gaming session tonight, I'll head to the eShop to get it.

yes! the is the best streetfighter.

❗️Due to the war in 🇺🇦 , will Zangief🇷🇺 be excluded?

I’m on it! WORD LIMIT!!!

I claimed it on steam, didn't realize it was free on switch, this is epic!

Edit: speaking of, for those with steam, ARK Survival Evolved is free to own until the 19th, so grab that up.

thanks for the heads up!

I think I had my fill of SF2 before I was out of college but you can’t go wrong for that price!

Incidentally, the entire 1st Arcade Stadium bundle is half off right now ($19.99) in the NA eShop, the lowest I’ve seen it, in case there’s anyone out there like me who’s held off till now.

@anoyonmus Oh my god I just remember I forgot to get that game, God dang it!

@Snatcher

Too bad.

@BlueGBAMicro This game is from many generations before the war took place so nope they won't take him out of the game and besides it's impossible to take out a character from a game that had been long completed anyways.

@Desrever : Same here (physical in both cases), but free is free.

@Serpenterror : Certainly not impossible as modifications are made to rereleases of older games all the time (unfortunately). But it’s ridiculous to remove a character based on their nationality (irrespective of the period), because by that very logic, why doesn’t anybody suggest that Chun-Li be excluded because of the actions of the Chinese government? Or the US government by extension? Why is Russia (and its citizens) being tarred in this way for the actions of its government?

I wish the SNES versions were available on Switch. The music has a special nostalgia for me.

Although objectively the best Street Fighter 2 OST in my eyes was the PC version of Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo... Just listen to Balrog's theme! So funky. https://youtu.be/pe4M_dA8JoQ

I still dip into Ultra SFII every few weeks. Most fans of this game probably have the anniversary collection, but this is a nice way for anyone who's never played it to give it a go.

It’s nice as a free curio and still good fun if you have another human around to play against.
The joycons don’t make pulling off dragon punches easy though.
Loved it in the arcades as the character sprites looked epic.

@BlueGBAMicro Zangief was from USSR, could be from 🇷🇺 or 🇺🇦, right?

@Clyde_Radcliffe I prefer the Snes ports too as the AI cheats a lot in the arcade version.

@Max_the_German It was Russia due to the Gorbachev reference.

I've procured more iterations of Street Fighter than I've had hot dinners, so another free one can't hurt.

@BlueGBAMicro Gorbachev was the leader of the Soviet Union, not of Russia. Yeltsin as President of Russia was a major opponent of him.

@Clyde_Radcliffe If lucky Capcom could include them on NSO but i doubt it as they already had their own way of delivering retro classics via collection and the Arcade Stadia.

@Desrever get it. Looks, plays and sounds a lot better than on the 30th Anniversary collection, and it's the original. I also have Ultra Street Fighter II, but the original is always great to play again

Got it as soon as it was announced it was for free, nothing beats classic SFII. And this arcade port, is so much better than the one we got on the 30th Anniversary collection. Definitely a must have for all SF fans.

You can never have too many copies of street fighter! Lol

How is Blanka fighting both Chun-Li and Ryu at the same time?

Or was Chun-Li beating up Ryu and then Blanka just shows up, like "hey babe, how's it goin'?"

@Snatcher Still free. https://www.nintendo.com/store/products/capcom-arcade-stadiumstreet-fighter-ii-the-world-warrior-70050000025490-switch/

@Nico07 Nice! I thought it might as I downloaded it on the ps5 and it downloaded by itself, thank you!

I was looking to get Street Fighter for my son on his Switch. This was welcome news as now it’s not cost me a penny!

Downloaded this last night. Very happy that you can adjust the speed and configure the buttons!

@Clyde_Radcliffe the DOS PC-CDROM version of SSF2T was freaking incredible at the time! Was leagues ahead of the 16bit console versions and seemed "arcade perfect". I played it SO much that when I finally got to play it in an arcade I was initially slightly disappointed because the characters were slightly smaller (due to the higher resolution) and the timings/mechanics I'd practiced so much didn't completely transfer, as evidently it wasn't completely accurate. Still. VERY fond memories of that, and having owned and loved a SNES with SF2Turbo and played it to death, it felt like a massive generational leap.

@samuelvictor only trouble with the arcade versions are they are just too difficult and the CPU is brutally cheap

@DonkeyKongBigBoy Yes, especially on the default settings. But in both the Arcade Stadiums and 30th Collections you can adjust the dipswitch setting to make them much easier. However I will concede that even on the easiest settings the single player experience still seems harder than I used to find the SNES and PC-DOS games, and I'm never quite sure if thats because they are genuinely easier, or because they are the ones I grew up with and played for quite literally hundreds of hours.

I don't know enough to speak authorititavely on it, but I never felt any of the mainline SF games "input read" and then react before you have a chance to, in the way that MKII, 3 and certain other well known arcade fighters do. In MK3 its so bad that even when you've already excetued a move that should connect and the animation frame has played, the computer will ignore that and block or counter (often with a throw) the next frame. I always felt this, and multiple people have proved it in slow motion videos. MVG actually went through the original code to prove it does it on purpose. Now that is cheap. I've never felt or noticed Capcom's games doing that, though the difficulty can be brutal and expect almost superhuman reactions speeds. As a disclaimer: I really like the early MK games, regardless of if the cpu cheats

@samuelvictor I've found the alpha games on the sfcollection to have a much more reasonable difficultly and therefore enjoy playing them a bit more. I think the SNES versions are definitely easier as they aren't trying to take your money like the arcade ones were designed to do. They literally made it hard on purpose so you'd pump more money into the machines. The console versions didn't need to do that, they just needed to be balanced

@DonkeyKongBigBoy The "balanced rather than trying to take your money" was always my assumption too, however they were sold (especially in Japan) as being super arcade accurate and to train yourself for competing in arcade tournaments, so I've always wondered if that was in my head or the arcade cabinets I encountered back in the day just had owners purposefully set the dip switches to be super hard to make profits. If you haven't already, try lowering the settings to the easiest level, it makes a huge difference, even over the normal/default. A decade or so back I bought a CPS1 board and CPS2 system for my Jamma cab and the first thing I did was set them to be fair/fun for me to play single player.

I definitely agree that the Alpha games seem the most balanced and therefore, especially as a single player experience, are the most fun to go back to. Alpha 2 seems especially well balanced to me, its my favourite single player SF by quite some margin.

@samuelvictor I had street fighter alpha 2 on Dreamcast when it first released and I loved it. I hadn't played it in 20 years until I got the SF collection on Switch and out of all the games on that collection it's the one I play the most.
I have the CPS versions on my raspberry pi and they all seem just as hard to me

@samuelvictor *alpha 3 sorry

@DonkeyKongBigBoy Nice! The DC ports of Capcom fighters were essentially arcade perfect, even more so than the excellent Saturn ones.

If your are using the MAME core in RetroPie for the CPS games, you can press Tab to enter the menu that essentially changes the dipswitch settings virtually. On a real arcade board these are physical jumpers or switches that have to be changed, simialr to those on a PC motherboard or the back of an old IDE drive to set priority order, but modern emulators allow you to change them through software. These were there for arcade owners to make changes to either squeeze more money out of punters, or make older games more playable to increase their shelf life before needing to be replaced. You can often find things like cost per credit, multiple difficulty settings, how many lives per credit, even turn on "freeplay" modes. Sometimes theres even more oscure but interesting stuff such as regional variations, adjustments to gore and censorship, changes to the soundtrack etc.

Apologies if you already know this stuff, but I've found it makes a huge difference in making unfair feeling arcade games much more fun, so thats why I mention it.

@KingMike They're not fighting, M. Bison held a breakdancing contest after the tournament.

@Serpenterror Same, although I already bought USFII as well.

I tried it for a couple of minutes but it's way to hard to get back to.

The claiming and getting to the actual game is annoying like hell. The default viewport is garbage(I could not care enough to try to change it if it is possible) .After 1 round I deleted it completely.