Angry Video Game Nerd Wiki
Register
Advertisement
MV5BYmQ2NWVkZmUtMThmYi00Mzk3LThiN2QtYWU2MjY2NGRiYTc2XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTQzMjU1NjE@
Street_Fighter_2010_-_Angry_Video_Game_Nerd_-_Episode_85

Street Fighter 2010 - Angry Video Game Nerd - Episode 85

(Fade-in from black with The Nerd drinking Rolling Rock, then looking at the viewer)

The Nerd: Wanna play some games? Wanna play some shitty games? Well hang on just a second. I gotta go get my mail.

(The Nerd walks outside to find that he seems to be in an alien world, with strange objects all around him. He looks around in confusion.)

The Nerd: What the hell's all this shit?! There's metallic sea sponges everywhere! There's titanium rocket jock straps! Headless parrots with bottle caps! Floating eyeballs entrapped in glass lids! How is this all happening? (suddenly comprehends the situation) OH! Why, of course! It's the year 2010! Holy shit!

(He's back inside his house)

The Nerd: This was all foreseen in the game Street Fighter 2010. Yeah. I should've known. It's crazy. Remember how futuristic the year 2000 seemed? My whole childhood, it seemed like every movie, every video game, it was always 2000. It sounded so high-tech and so far away. But now fuck that. It's the 10-year anniversary of the year 2000. (The hoverboard scene from Back to the Future Part II is shown, along with the opening of "Power of Love") In five years, we're gonna have flying cars and hoverboards and self-lacing shoes... it BETTER happen. Otherwise they should've made it the year 3000. Even if they made it 2100, we'd all be dead. It wouldn't make a difference anyway. Better to be a mystery than to be wrong.

The Nerd: Anyway, the oldest Street Fighter game that most people have played was Street Fighter II. But this one on the NES came before, and it just so happens to take place in 2010. Who would've thought that Street Fighter's past lied in the future? Which is now the present. (He gets confused for a moment) Let's take a look at this, I can only imagine. We're gonna be Tiger Uppercutting through space and time. We're gonna be throwin' Sonic Booms on the moon. Hadoukens up Uranus. Fuck Street Fighter IV, this is Street Fighter 2010!

(Game starts)

The Nerd: Target vs. Ken. Okay, I know who Ken is, but Target? I'll accept that it's some weird devil with a scorpion stinger that doesn't exist in any other Street Fighter game, but are they really calling it Target? Maybe it's "Tar-jay". So, welcome to Street Fighter in space. There may not be streets in space, but there are fights. The gameplay is unlike anything I can describe. It definitely doesn't feel like Street Fighter. It comes a little closer to Mega Man because of its laser ball projectiles, and Ninja Gaiden because of climbin' on walls. But even those games don't help describing it. No matter what you do, you always end up flipping around and grabbing on to everything in sight. It's as if the controls themselves are too futuristic and advanced for anyone to comprehend.

The Nerd: When attacking, your enemies have to be right next to you or above you, because you can only shoot straight ahead or straight up. There is a way to shoot down, but it involves doing some kind of aerial somersault, and you can only pop off one shot at a time if you're in midair. Oh, and by the way, to shoot diagonally up, you press Down and B. I'm not kidding. (He takes off his glasses) You press DOWN... to shoot DIAGONALLY UP.

The Nerd: What the hell is this poop-plastered shit-smothered piece of fuck? And what does it have to do with Street Fighter?! Well, Ken's in it. That's about it. It has Ken, or more or less a guy in a spacesuit named Ken. I guess it would help if I read the backstory. Oh, let's see. Uh, Ken, the frontier, partner Troy, lab, puddle of jelly, and a Street Fighter Circuit, cyboplasm, overdose, violent mutants...

The Nerd: Alright, so, what I get out of this, is... Ken won the Street Fighting Circuit, then he became a scientist, and invented some kind of thing called Cyboplasm. I guess it's like ectoplasm, just with a little more cybo. And then his partner, some guy named Troy, was killed, and then the cyboplasm is stolen and then, everybody is turned into mutants, and basically, yeah, that's about it. I wouldn't be surprised Ken is the only Street Fighter character in this game. No Guile, no Chun Li, no M. Bison. Instead, we get "Target," the scorpion devil-alien from the year 2010.

The Nerd: I guess we can make the best of it and just pretend it's Street Fighter!

(he plays the game with Guile's Theme playing in the background. Ken is calling out his "HADOUKEN!" attacks. "YOU WIN!" is announced, and then the music slows down to a complete stop.)

The Nerd: It doesn't work. Even when I put the sound effects in, it's not Street Fighter. It worked better when they brought Punch-Out!! to outer space. And you wanna know what the most confusing part of the whole story is? In the original Japanese version, the character's name was Kevin Striker. It was the US version which changed the name to Ken, and added that one tiny little reference to the Street Fighting Circuit in an attempt to tie in with the game in which it's fucking named after! So you're telling me, the Japanese version had LESS to do with Street Fighter? As in NOTHING?!

The Nerd: I guess you can say this is where the series got sidetracked, before hitting big with Street Fighter II, which then went off on its own tangent. Man, Street Fighter's the only series to have a sequel which had its own series. Most people never played or even heard of Street Fighter I! I almost wonder why they even bothered to call it Street Fighter II on the home consoles. They could've just called it Street Fighter. Kinda like with Final Fantasy VI, they ignored the missing sequels and just called it III.

The Nerd: So, whatever happened to the original Street Fighter? I have laid eyes on the arcade cabinet 20-somethin' years ago, so I know it existed. Only in recent years I've discovered that it was ported onto the Commodore 64, and every home computer at the time, before landing on the Turbo-Grafx 16 CD. Ah yeah, I finally get to talk about this thing. When Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis were fightin' the 16-bit war, the Turbo-Grafx 16 was chillin' in the background. It's a unique specimen. Its games didn't come on cartriges, but instead these neat little cards, and CDs. The CD unit was sold separately, and it was the first CD game console, at least in North America. So the technology didn't quite catch on yet. In combination with that, most people owned either a Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis. Not only would you have had to own a Turbo-Grafx 16, you'd have to buy the CD attachment too. So it's no wonder no one played the first Street Fighter game. And to be even more elusive, they changed the fucking title to Fighting Street. That doesn't make any sense. But at least you get to play as classic characters such as Ryu, George Washington and Abe Lincoln.

The Nerd: The mystery is solved, we're finally playing the original Street Fighter. And guess what? It sucks ass.

The Nerd: I'm sure the arcade version was better, but this is lousy. And the only reason I say that is the control. The special moves only work whenever they feel like it. You can try to throw a Hadouken the entire fight and it'll never fuckin' work. Also, the voices sound like shit.

Fighter: What strength! But don't forget there are many guys like you all over the world.

The Nerd: (mimics chattering)

The Nerd: The only characters you get to play as are Ryu and Ken. They can only be selected by plugging the controller into the first port for Ryu, and the second for Ken. There's no character select screen. There's a couple training stages thrown in. It's primitive, but for one of the first fighting games, it wouldn't have been bad aside from the awful control. Come on, do the move, do the move! (groans) You son of a bitch! Come on, come on, do a Shoryuken! (Grunts) Come on, Shoryuken! More like Shoryu-can't. It's no wonder why nobody remembers this game! Of all the revisions and Turbo enhancements they've done to Street Fighter II, an already great game, it makes me wonder why they weren't doing the same to the original to make it better. "Street Fighter: The GOOD Edition". How 'bout that?

The Nerd: Believe it or not, the first game intended as a sequel was Final Fight. Originally it was called Street Fighter '89. However they treated it as an entirely different kind of game, with a beat-em-up style. So Final Fight became its own series, but Capcom would often make small crossovers to tie them together. In Final Fight II, you can see Chun Li in the background. And some Final Fight characters would appear in later Street Fighter games. The title Street Fighter '89 was changed after they exhibited the game at a trade show. The feedback they got led them to change it on the grounds that it had nothing to do with Street Fighter. (goes back to Street Fighter 2010) Oh, but not at all like THAT one!

The Nerd: Whoa... man, I got way off track. I still gotta finish this. ...You know what? I just noticed. The full title is Street Fighter 2010: The Final Fight. The irony is stunning and I'm nerding the fuck out of myself, but how do you make a game named off the two other games and not have anything to do with EITHER of them?! Maybe it means Final Fight as in "this is the future, this is the final Street Fighter fight". But Street Fighter? Maybe it's based off the Street Fighter movie series from the 1970s. It has just as little relation. Oh and speakin' of Street Fighter movies, remember Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game?

The Nerd: This is the Sega Saturn version. How do ya like that? Knockin' another console off the list. Anyway, this is one of the stupidest ideas I ever heard. They make a movie based on the game, and then a game based on the movie. Not to mention the movie was more or less based off Street Fighter II and not the first one. It kinda resembles Mortal Kombat with its digitized actors, but not as good. It's not a bad game either. It's like Street Fighter II, but the controls are a little more stiff. For curiosity's sake, it's fun to play, but it just makes you wish you were playing Street Fighter II instead.

The Nerd: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Alright, I got really sidetracked. I was tryin' to review Street Fighter 2010, and, y'know, I just talk about one thing, I end up talkin' about somethin' else. But that's what happens man. And, y'know what? If they didn't call it Street Fighter, maybe I wouldn't have had that problem. So, from this point on, let's just forget about the title, take the name Street Fighter, and just... (he makes a throwing motion with his hand, accompanied with a "hit" sound effect and a death sound from Street Fighter II) throw it away.

The Nerd: The objective for each stage is to find a portal. The portal never appears until you destroy the target enemy, and that's why all the enemies are called Target. Yeah, it is awkward, but that's what it means. So you destroy the target, the portal appears... somewhere, and you have to race and get to it within a very short time limit, and I mean VERY short. There's a time limit within the stage too. I'm runnin' around tryin' to kill this plant thing, but the motherfucker won't stay still. Come on. Come on, I'm runnin' out of time! (Ken gets killed by the enemy) Fuck!

The Nerd: The graphics look like some kind of weird cyber nightmare. I like it. It's kinda like a cross between Salvador Dali and H. R. Giger. Other times, you're in a psychedelic limbo with clown music shooting at frogs. The background looks like one of those magic eye pictures. Y'know, the ones you're supposed to stare at and go cross-eyed?

The Nerd: Each stage gets harder and pushes you to new levels of frustration. There's this stage where the screen keeps moving horizontally. If you don't make it through fast enough, you die. Sometimes you have to choose between taking the time to kill an enemy, or just rushing through because you're gonna die anyway if you don't move your ass. Then there's this stage where the screen actually moves back and forth.

The Nerd: The most difficult thing about this game is attacking. There's so many airborne enemies that you can't do anything about. I'm climbin' on a fuckin' waterfall of diarrhea. I can't shoot up or down, and because the enemies are comin' FROM up and down, that's really a fuckin' problem! (groans) I can't shoot you! Get away from me! I'm gettin' murdered! I'm gettin' buttfucked up the DICK!

The Nerd: Then there's the sand stage where you have to fight a boss, but there isn't any foundation to be able to fight! You're jumpin' around in the sand, tryin' to work your way to the bottom of the screen so you can shoot this guy, but every time you get low enough to shoot him, he shoots first and you gotta jump back up. You never get the chance. I wish all this fuckin' sand wasn't here! Then there's this stage where you have to shoot an eyeball on the ceiling, but there's no way to reach it unless you have full powerup. But you can't go back and get any powerups, so you're screwed. The only thing you can do here, is wait for these mucus walls to build up, stand on the very edge right here, and then you have to face the opposite direction, and this is the ONLY way you can hit this eyeball. But then good luck tryin' to avoid all the other shit comin' at ya! You can never pay attention to one thing at a time!

The Nerd: This game is all about distractions, and it forces you to multitask. No matter how used to it you think you get, each level throws something different your way. You have to keep developing new strategies. This game is incredibly annoying, but it's also very stimulating. If the controls were less limited, and some of its flaws were ironed over, I'd say it's an underrated NES classic. It gives you an adrenaline rush, and it pisses you off just enough that you don't want to give up. Whenever you beat a stage after hours of trying, there's nothing more satisfying and triumphant than to hear that glorious sound.

The Nerd: However, the final stage goes WAY too far. It's the most heartless and abominable end stage ever programmed. What you get here is an endurance round. You have to fight three bosses, and then go on to a final boss, who has two different forms. All on one single life. You die once, you go back. First, it's this fuckin' clam-shaped thing, then it's this fuckbrain, then these two disappearing mummified armadillo robots in a room that randomly spouts fire all about. On top of tryin' to stay alive, you have to do it all before the time runs out. Oh look, I beat him, and the time's still goin'! Come on, come on, I gotta get to the final boss! Yes! I made it! Two seconds to spare.

The Nerd: Then you get a cutscene. There's no way anyone's gonna bother to read this. Your heart is pounding so fast, and you're rippin' your hair out of your head wonderin' "what the fuck am I gonna have to fight now?" I'm at the final boss. What is it? What is it?! (The time runs out and Ken dies!) WHAT?! The fucking time limit?! You'd think that after the cutscene, the timer would start over, but NO! You fight the three bosses, then it's the cutscene, then you fight two forms of the final boss. So that's basically five bosses in total, all on the same life bar, and the same time limit.

The Nerd: You get unlimited continues, so there's no excuse to shut off the game; you just keep playing and playing and playing. Eventually, you start to get good at it. You can blow through all these bosses taking as little damage as possible, but then the time always runs out. So you do it real fast, but then you end up getting killed. Then, you start to go through a phase, where you get so frustrated that all the skill you've accumulated starts to weaken. So instead of getting better, you actually start to get worse, because you've been playing the same fuckin' thing over and over.

The Nerd: The final boss looks like a big, blistering ballsack that swallowed Grimace. His only weak spot is the face. The ideal strategy is to climb on the wall and keep shooting, but your beam doesn't reach. Not without full powerups. You can try jumping off and shooting, but that takes too long. You don't have time. When you're plowin' through the stage, you gotta stop and get all the powerups. But that wastes time too! But you gotta do it! You gotta somehow make it all happen! You can't beat one boss flawlessly but then fuck up a little on the next one. You gotta: 1) Beat all the bosses without getting hurt too much, 2) Get all the powerups, and 3) Do it fast as shit. All in one perfect run. But once you do it man, you're on the fuckin' top of the world. Yeah, boom, BOOM! (Mimics explosions)

(The Nerd finally beats the game)

The Nerd: And that my friends, is Street Fighter 2010. That's all I have to say. So happy new year, happy new decade... am I forgetting anything? ...Yeah. Forgot my fuckin' mail. (walks back to the mailbox as the screen says "THE END" and the credits roll.)

Advertisement