Kevin Saves the Universe

I haven’t really touched upon one of the biggest franchises in video game history on the site. Outside of a Mega Man crossover, and two terrible films from 1994 and then 2009, I’ve yet to review a Street Fighter game. That is because I’m really not that great at fighting games, and up against someone that really knows how to play, my button mashing and simple move spam wouldn’t get me very far. This despite the fact that the Street Fighter franchise has a ton of games in it. Depending on how you look at it, the series either has six main titles… or closer to a hundred due to all the revisions, reiterations, remakes, and rereleases, and that says nothing of all the spin-offs that have gotten similar treatment. The series is huge.

I aim to fix that now, though, by covering… well, a game that doesn’t really properly tie into the franchise at all. Street Fighter 2010: The Final Fight (released in Japan as, roughly, 2010 Street Fighter) is, officially, a futuristic sci-fi spin-off of the original Street Fighter. It’s not some game that was rebranded under the Street Fighter franchise once it moved to the U.S.; this was always planned as a spin-off, and released as such by Capcom in all regions. It’s also a very weird game.

While the original Street Fighter is a one-on-one fighting game (which basically solidified the genre until its sequel, Street Fighter II, came out and completely redefined it again), SF2010 (as I’m going to call it from now on because it’s full title is just too damn long) is an action platformer. It plays like a weird hybrid of Capcom’s classic platforming titles and its more one-on-one focused brawling game. Put another way, it almost feels like Capcom’s answer to Ninja Gaiden more than anything else. It’s just very strange, and not something you’d associate with the Street Fighter brand or any of its “normal” games. And yet here we are.

Set 25 years after Street Fighter (which technically would mean the events of this game happened over a decade ago as of the time of this writing, so hey, everyone enjoying their weird, sci-fi future?), the game focuses on Kevin (renamed Ken in the U.S. release to try and tie into the original Street Fighter), a gifted scientist working on the edges of what’s possible. When his lab partner, Troy, is seemingly killed, with their experiment, Cyboplasm (which bonds to a person and gives them increased powers) is stolen, Kevin dedicates himself to bringing the perpetrators to justice.

Seeing no other recourse, Kevin enhances his body with cybernetics. He chases off after Troy’s killers, going from planet to planet, defeating every fiend there that has been enhanced with Cyboplasm. But as he gets closer and closer to his goal, Kevin starts to feel weird. He suspects there’s something going on, something more than just a simple murder and theft. And by the time he reaches the end of his journey he just might find out that everything he thought was a lie, and that those he trusted most are really his greatest enemies…

In construction, SF2010 plays like a hybrid of various platforming styles. You take Kevin (or Ken, depending on your version of the game) into level after level, on planet after planet, with a simple goal each time: collect enough charge to open a portal and make the next jump along the trail towards Troy’s killers. That entails finding the right enemy, or enemies, in each area (usually presented at the start of the stage by a “versus” screen) and killing them, releasing their Cyboplasm energy, which can then be used to charge up the portal and make it ready.

Sometimes this comes in the form of a short platforming stage, where Kevin has to get from one end to the other to face off against a boss. Other times, Kevin is dumped directly into a small arena to take on the boss, one-on-one, like in a street fight. Some stages are auto-scrollers, pushing the character forward towards the eventual fiend. And sometimes the character will get dropped into a little battle arena with various enemies to kill to release that sweet, tasty Cyboplasm.

The game varies the win condition in each stage and, mixed with a variety of stage layouts, there is enough variance here to keep the game interesting, at least for a little while. You’re never sure, level to level, what the goal will be or what you will have to do to complete the stage, and that certainly keeps the gameplay fresh while players are left wondering. And this is all handled by Capcom who, in 1990 when this game was released, were masters of NES platformers, so everything feels tight and responsive.

Kevin has some basic but solid powers at his disposal. He comes equipped with an energy weapon that he throws out by punching (and sometimes kicking). He can control it from multiple angles, giving him a nice range of combat as enemies fly around him. Plus, there are power-ups that appear behind breakable blocks, and these will slowly fill his power meter, giving him increased charge, and better range, over time. Getting fully equipped, and then keeping that power (by not dying) is key to ensuring a strong, solid showing through the stages without too much difficulty.

Not that SF2010 is all that difficult. While the game is varied in its levels, and there are plenty of enemies flying around, I never found myself struggling with this title. It might be a Capcom NES game but it is, by no means, NES hard. I got pretty deep into the title before I ran into serious trouble, and I was still able to clear it out after a couple of attempts. I just had to be smart about my platforming, and keep my power-ups around, and SF2010 fell before me eventually.

With that said, I wouldn’t say the game was actually all that enjoyable. While it’s interesting at times, the basic framework does get repetitive eventually. You know what you’re doing in every stage, going around and killing enemies, and at a certain point it all feels kind of rote. It doesn’t help that you can charge up Kevin pretty early into the game and, aside from the occasional special bonuses, like an orb that hangs out behind Kevin that acts as a shield of sorts, or the ability to do extra damage during flips, Kevin’s arsenal doesn’t really grow substantially. Compared to a Mega ManIn 1987, Capcom released Mega Man on the NES, a game featuring a blue robot that fought other robots and took their powers (so that he could then fight other robots with those powers, and on, and on). The series went on to release over 50 games in 30 years and become one of the most famous gaming franchises in the world. game, where the Blue Bomber gets increasingly more powerful, and his attacks more varied, as the game goes on, Kevin feels decidedly limited throughout, without many new options to add into the mix.

In other words, Kevin’s adventure in SF2010 is decidedly limited, despite Capcom trying to inject a few different gameplay ideas in the title. While it is nice to see some varied levels and some changes to the basic win condition (“am I killing one enemy or multiple this time?”), the game never gets past a feeling of repetitive killing, doing the same thing over and over again just to hurry its own adventure along. Even the game feels like it’s boring us, and it knows it, so it tries to move us forward before we get bored. It doesn’t often succeed at that.

And, honestly, the connection to the larger Street Fighter brand is tenuous at best. As many others have observed, the game is so disconnected from the source material that if you removed the Street Fighter name from the box, no one would know that was the inspiration at all. Of course, if you removed that name from the box, it’s doubtful anyone would have paid attention to the game in the first place. It might have been corporate and mercenary, but Capcom did get people to at least pay attention to the game.

In the end, then, SF2010 is a weird title that doesn’t quite know what to do with itself. It comes from Capcom working at the height of the NES powers, and it certainly looks attractive and sounds good. This is a handsome game with Capcom’s standard level of graphic care and audial refinement. But where it counts, in the gameplay, the title falls short. I don’t hate SF2010, but I have to admit that given the choice to revisit this game or go find something else of the era to play, this game is going to sit on the shelf, collecting dust. It’s a bin filler, and not a solid gold entry like Capcom probably wanted.