Street Fighter II' Turbo: Hyper Fighting is a competitive fighting game released for the arcade by Capcom in 1992. It is the third game in the Street Fighter II sub-series of Street Fighter games following . Released less than a year after the previous installment, Hyper Fighting introduced a faster playing speed and new special moves for certain characters, as well as further refinement to the character balance. Hyper Fighting is the final arcade game in the Street Fighter II series to use the original CP System hardware. It was distributed as an upgrade kit designed to be installed into Champion Editionprinted circuit boards. The next game in the series, Super Street Fighter II, uses the CP System's successor, the CP System II.
Gameplay
Hyper Fighting features faster playing speed compared to Champion Edition. As a result, the inputs for special moves and combos requires more precise timing. The faster playing speed also allowed players to get into battle quicker, as well as to react quicker. All of the fighters, with the exception of Guile and the four Shadaloo Bosses, were each given at least one new special move. Each fighter also received a new default palette. The original palettes are now featured as alternate palettes for each character, replacing the ones that were in Champion Edition. The only character exempt to this change is M. Bison, who retains his original default palette, but still gets a different alternate palette.
A port was released for the Super Famicom on July 11, 1993 in Japan, and for the Super NES in August 1993 in North America and October 1993 in the PAL region. The port was developed using the SNES port of the original Street Fighter II as its base, but with a larger cartridge size of 20 Megabits. Despite being titled Turbo, this port also contains the Champion Edition version of the game in the form of a "Normal" mode. The game's playing speed is adjustable in Turbo mode by up to four settings by default, with a cheat code that allows up to six faster settings. Other cheat codes allow players to enable and disable special moves in Versus mode, as well as play through the single-player mode with all of the special moves disabled. The pitch change in the characters' voices when they perform a variation of their special moves based on the strength level of the attack was removed, but the voice clips of the announcer saying the names of each country were restored, along with the barrel-breaking bonus stage that was removed in the first SNES port. The graphics of each character's ending were changed to make them more accurate to the arcade version. Sound effects featuring people or animals shouting after a round ended were added as well, an aesthetic element that was not present in the arcade version of Hyper Fighting, but rather was added in Super Street Fighter II. Nintendo re-released Hyper Fightingin September 2017 as part of the company's Super NES Classic Edition.
Other releases
The Sega Genesis version, Street Fighter II': Special Champion Edition, while based primarily on Champion Edition, allows players to play the game with Hyper Fighting rules as well. The game's content is almost identical to the SNES version of Street Fighter II Turbo. Hyper Fighting is included in Street Fighter Collection 2 for the Sega Saturn and PlayStation. The PlayStation port was later included in Capcom Classics Collection Vol. 1 for PlayStation 2 and Xbox, as well as Capcom Classics Collection: Reloaded for the PlayStation Portable. A stand-alone re-release of Hyper Fighting was also released for the Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade which features an online versus mode. It was also released for the iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad, and Android, along with Street Fighter II and Champion Edition, as part of Capcom Arcade. In 2017, Nintendo re-released Street Fighter II' Turbo: Hyper Fighting as part of the company's Super NES Classic Edition.
Reception
In Japan, Game Machine listed Street Fighter II' Turbo: Hyper Fighting on their February 1, 1993 issue as being the second most-successful table arcade unit of the year, outperforming titles such as Warriors of Fate and . In the February 1994 issue of :ja:Gamest|Gamest, Hyper Fighting, along with Super Street Fighter II, was nominated for Best Game of 1993, but lost to Samurai Spirits. Hyper Fighting was ranked as sixth, while placing fifth in the category of Best Fighting Games. The game has sold 4.1 million copies on the SNES. In 1997 Electronic Gaming Monthly listed Street Fighter II' Turbo: Hyper Fighting as the best arcade game of all time and the Super NES conversion as the 5th best console game of all time, explaining that it was the last and best refinement of Street Fighter II before the basic formula of the series changed with the Super and Alpha installments.
