Discover why Street Fighter II sprites were scaled down for the SEGA Genesis and SNES, and the cost of arcade cabinets.
Flash memory was expensive in the early 90s, forcing developers to cut animation frames and scale down sprites for the SEGA Genesis and SNES versions of Street Fighter II to fit within a 16 Megabit (2 Megabyte) cartridge. The subsequent Super Street Fighter II required the larger space of a 32 Megabit cartridge, making the inclusion of the lost frames still not a possibility for earlier ports.
If the difference in animation frames is significant to you, consider looking for arcade versions ported to the Xbox 360 or Playstation 3. A port of SFII: Hyper Fighting is available on XBOX Live and PSN. Acquiring an original arcade cabinet could cost nearly 1,000 USD, plus or minus.
- Original arcade cabinets are significantly more expensive than console versions or modern digital ports.
- The need for smaller cartridges directly impacted the visual fidelity of early console ports of Street Fighter II.
- Super Street Fighter II utilized a larger cartridge size, allowing for more content than the original console releases.
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