Nothing Some Good Bionics Can't Fix: Let's Play Street Fighter 2010!

This game's got a bad reputation... and a mostly undeserved one. Sure it has absolutely nothing to do with the conventional Street Fighter series, but it was released before the wildly popular Street Fighter II and well after the crummy first game that nobody enjoyed. I don't think the false advertisement in this case should be considered a strike against it. Personally, I bought it because the pictures on the back of the box led me to believe that it was a cool, fun, and original action game, and that's more or less what I got when I popped it into my NES. Was it tough? Damn skippy it was tough, but after Bionic Commando (which was merciless in the last couple of rounds) you couldn't hold THAT against it either.

I liked the science-fiction sheen of the game, the imaginative visuals, and Ken's barrage of plasma-powered punches and kicks... get him charged up to his max and he could send his fists halfway across the screen! Some of the things I didn't like are the reused level designs and the fact that, yes, the game did feel a little too unfair at times. Also, the storyline is kind of cheesy, but it's such a small part of the action that it hardly matters. So yeah, when you weigh the good against the bad the game ultimately comes out on top. Not as good as Bionic Commando or the Mega Man games, sure, but at least on par with Codename: Viper and a good sight better than the cheaply made Strider.

That contemptible "Street Fighter" moniker is responsible for a large part of the game's poor reputation.

Surely one can imagine the joy of anticipation as a child (and his friend) eagerly places the cartridge in the NES in hopes of an intense 1-on-1 fighting game. The screenshots on the back of the box are confusing, and don't give the impression of the arcade style fighting game expected, but what the hey, those faux facsimiles of the real game have never accurately depicted the true contents.

The game is popped in, and away those kids go. Press Start at the title screen, skip that intro business, and all of a sudden, everything you so eagerly anticipated slowly drains away, as bitter (and undeserved, I believe) disappointment sits in.

I can picture this scenario happening to more than a few people, and we'll get to that glorious unboxing.

Couldn't have put it better myself. The game does have a bad rep, illustrated by sentiments such as this. It really does (or should) have nothing to do with the main Street Fighter series, so let's get that out of the way.

Personally, I love this game. The graphics are quite detailed, the music is very much overlooked and very much awesome, the controls (despite the consensus of many) are fairly tight once they are properly understood, and (almost) each and every stage is its own unique boss battle. To me, this was an underrated classic.

Maybe "classic" is going too far, but it was definitely underrated.

And yes, it is balls hard. That unfairness is exemplified to insanity in the final level.

I'll grant that it's better than its reputation would suggest, but it's a long way from being as good as Viper. It's too inconsistent and sloppily designed. Big ups for innovation and tech savvy, but it's lacking a certain element of playability that sets it a step below A- and B-tier games.

I remember playing this. My brother rented it, not realizing it had nothing to do with our beloved brawler. I think I got to the second screen and gave up. I was six, so... yeah.

The soundtrack to this game rooooocks

Wait, whoa - "left Troy as a pile of jelly on the floor"? Isn't that a little R-rated for an NES Game intro? I know, it's only text, and yeah, exploding Hitler head, but for the attract mode, that's kind of icky and explicit.

Back in 1987, Capcom released the first game of the fairly obscure Street Fighter series to the arcade. Reception was good, but nothing compared to the success of its sequel and its legion of variates. However, before Street Fighter 2's release in 1991, Capcom released another game bearing the Street Fighter moniker in 1990, called “2010 Street Fighter” in Japan, which localized to “Street Fighter 2010” in English.

SF 2010 was originally conceived as a game with a futuristic setting simply called “2010”. Hoping to capitalize on the success of Street Fighter the First, however, Capcom retooled it to be part of the Street Fighter series. This didn't change the original Japanese plot, and resulted in little more than a suffix to the original name. For the Westerners, however, the localization gave us a whole new tie-in to the SF series. The main character's name was changed from Kevin Striker (or “Straker” for the Katakana Nazis) to Ken to match the SF character of the same name, and the game's plot changed to accommodate more of a tie-in.

I was surprised to learn that SF 2010 was not retooled after SF2's success, but instead before it. Funny how little regard they seemingly had for the integrity of their fledgling series. I mean, when you think about it, we go from martial arts tournament game to...futuristic cyborg man blasting away at aliens as he traverses a planetary system. That's....quite the transition.

I would consider that as damning a statement as "It's no Snake's Revenge"
But on the other hand I have tremendous nostalgia for the plotlines in these games. Partly because they're total gibberish (both in letter and intent) but also because of the context. In a time when Ninja Gaiden had more non-interactive story sequences than any RPG, the idea of sticking a "plot" into a console game still seemed pretty novel. The story of NES Strider somehow helped me ignore the wobbliness of the game itself and the renter's remorse that the game should have induced.
This doesn't change the fact that Codename:Viper is Rolling Thunder with no hot chick and a catastrophic amount of flicker and the same plot as Strider with "drugs" swapped in for "evil mind control machine" in every conversation and a main character with no pants.
If Street Fighter:2010 is not nearly as good as that... then we can infer that it must have the best plot of any game ever made.

We're floating in space, on the edge of time...

...in a universe that we can't define...

...billions of stars in the endless night...

...try and find purpose for our lives

Left him as a pile of jelly? Whoa, this is an NES game, right?

And Ken beat Ryu in the World Tournament? And has since become a frail old scientist? Heresy!




Well, that's good!


Oooh, that's bad!


Hey, that's good!


Crap, that's bad!


That's foreshadowing!



So, Ken and Troy invented....................meth?

Is there any interest in my revitalizing this LP? I've got a month to kill before I can move on to KQ2.

I haven't played this and I hear its an okay platformer, so...

What says TalkingTime?

sure!

Absolutely

Looking forward to it already.

Indeed! This game looks weird, and I wanna see what it's all about.

Noah Antwiler has done a review of this game, but I'm not going to rewatch it. Dune jokes were made, Dr. Insano got a son.

I e-mailed the OP (he's a friend of mine) and he says he wants to revive it himself if there is still interest. I guess forum rules put the LP in Falselogic's hands now so it's all up you you.

Seeing as he hasn't even been on TT since August, I had assumed he had abandoned the forum entirely. Did he happen to say when he planned on getting back to it?

I love that extraneous reference (to a game that itself was originally titled "Street Fighter '89").

Yeah, I think real life kind of got in the way of things. You know how it goes - get a new job, WHOOSH whoa has it been a year already. Anyway, I sent him another mail and expect a response within 24 hours.

If you would wait it would be appreciated but if you want to start then you have every right to.

I apologize for my elongated absence. Yeah, I did get a new job after 10 months of unemployment, and yeah, time flew by. I didn't realize how long it had been.

I would love to continue my LP, but only if you guys would permit me to continue it.

Sure go for it. If it gets abandoned again I'll just finish it up.

I think we need to decide this via a race. First person to update gets the LP! Just ignore me.

Yes, whoever wins gets a job for Christmas.

Damn I missed the screenshot but after that gibberish story We're treated to a vista of space and I glowing orb crashes into one of the planets. I think the glowing orb is Ken.



Here Ken is at the first level! Look's like he traded in his gi for some kind of super armor. Let me try to explain whats on the screen there. Planet 1 seems self-explanatory, as does Life and Time, P's are Ken's lives. Open is the bar that, once full, opens the portal out of the level. Sometimes this fills without collecting anything, sometimes it happens after collecting pulsing orbs from multiple enemies, or just one. In the case above I have to kill that flying scorpion guy to fill the Open bar. Finally, above the Time counter are those five empty circles. As you destroy objects and enemies in the level some of them drop C orbs that will fill half a circle every circle filled upgrades Ken's power.



So Ken has all these abilities like clinging to walls and back flips. I don't know how to do any of them. I mostly jump around and hit the Scorpion guy when I can. He seems to fly around randomly until you hit him and then he does a swooping dive bomb at Ken. He's actually easy to kill if you didn't have to worry about the little ships flying around. Those would also be easy to kill if Ken's punches were straight but they aren't they either go high or low and so it's hard to hit something right in front of you...



Seeing as this guy has a bionic arm I'm going to assume that it's Rad Spencer. This entire level is this bar/club and fighting Rad. He either swings at you hits you with his bionic arm or rises straight up and then falls straight down. This is a joke fight right? (I can't believe that out of the 100s of shots I got not one of them shows Ken throwing a punch or kick. I guess I'm going to have to record some video I think.)



Yes, that entire level consisted of Ken warping in running a little to the right and then jumping into another portal. I don't know why jumping into the portal is called "FADE IN"

This is the first level, still Planet 1 though, that actually is larger than a screen or so. The level also autoscrolls to the right and getting caught by the screen will kill you. Oh, look Ken is punching something! Good for you Ken, violence solves every problem...



Run Ken, Run! Some jumping might also be required.



Boss fight!



Wherein Ken fights Gutsman. Seriously Blocks fall from the ceiling he grabs one and chucks it at Ken. With Ken at full power though his punches cover half the screen. So Ken just stand beneath him punching up until he explodes.



In hyperspace Ken has to fight giant frogs to build up his open meter... I'm trying to understand why these levels are even in the game, were they going to do something with them later and then missed their deadline?

This boss runs around and shoots lightning at those towers which then shoot more lightning horizontally. Thing is he never bothers jumping down to where Ken is he just jumps on to the higher platform to the right then back. Ken just stands there punching up until he disappears in a puff of pixels.

CUT SCENE:



That was uninformative! I'm going on record now that the bad guy is Ken's best friend. It's always the best friend. Cut scene must mean we beat Planet 1, right? Correct!



Ken is "fading in" from the planet in the lower left corner to the one in the upper right, the "C" you see is him. He is "fading." All the cool kids are doing it.

Preview of next time:

I love, love LOVE the music for Planet 1, Area 3.

Hey! This LP is actually happening this time!

Yay!