Release date: 1993
Selectable Characters: Blanka, Chun-Li, Dhalsim, E. Honda, Guile, Ken, Ryu, Zangief, Balrog, M.Bison, Sagat, Vega, Cammy, Dee Jay, Fei Long, T.Hawk
Super Street Fighter II – The New Challengers was released in 1993 It is the fourth arcade version of Street Fighter II produced, following the original Street Fighter II, Street Fighter II: Champion Edition and Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting. In addition to refining and balancing the existing character roster from the previous installments, Super Street Fighter II also introduced four new characters. It was also the first game to be developed on Capcom‘s CP System II hardware, which permitted more sophisticated graphics and audio over the original CP System hardware, used by the previous versions of Street Fighter II.
Four new characters were also introduced to the game in addition to the returning roster, expanding the number of playable characters to sixteen. The new characters include T.Hawk, an indigenous warrior from Mexico whose ancestral homeland was taken from him by Shadaloo; Cammy, a 19-year-old female special forces agent from England with a mysterious past tied to M. Bison; Fei Long, a Hong Kong movie star who wishes to test his martial arts against real opponents; and Dee Jay, a kick boxing musician from Jamaicaseeking inspiration for his next song.
New animation frames were drawn for all the characters for their basic and special moves, as well as new victory poses. For example, all four boss characters now have new animation frames for basic attacks (Vega and Sagat did not have jumping punches in the previous games), while Chun-Li now has a new animation for her Kikoken projectile technique. The music and sound effects were also remade and new voice samples were recorded for some of the characters (Ken, Guile, and the announcer were given new voices).
In addition to the standard single and two-player game modes, Super Street Fighter II also feature an exclusive eight-player single-elimination tournament mode dubbed Tournament Battle. This mode is only available when four Super Street Fighter II arcade game cabinets are connected together and all of them configured to “Tournament” mode. The Tournament Mode consists of three sets of four simultaneous matches: the initial eliminations, the semifinals and the finals. After the first set is over, the players are re-arranged accordingly based on their position: the winning players sent to either of the first two cabinets, whereas losing players sent to one of the other two. In the finals, the players competing for first place are sent to the first cabinet, the third-place players to the second cabinet, and so on.