Review of Radica StreetFighter II Plug & Play TV Game

[Grasshopper]

As promised, here's my review of the Radica StreetFighter II plug & play game.

Physical Appearance

In my experience the Radica P&P games are generally better made than their Jakks counterparts and their StreetFighter game appears to be no exception. Everything just seems to fit together better.

The casing does however look a little dull compared with the funky Radica designs. The main unit that houses the batteries is a small black box designed to look like a miniature Sega Megadrive. To this are attached two wired gamepads so you can play two player games straight out of the box. This compares favourably with the Jakks Mortal Kombat game which requires you to purchase a second controller for the two player option to be available. The unit also comes with a Scart adapter and a socket to enable a mains adapter to be used instead of batteries.

The gamepads each have six buttons in a standard StreetFighter layout. They are a little on the small side and the buttons feel cheap, but despite that they're still perfectly usable.

Software

Disappointingly the unit comes with only two games built in - Ghouls'n'Ghosts and StreetFighter II Championship Edition. Both games are apparently identical to the Megadrive versions which is not surprising as the unit's hardware is Megadrive based. However, I can't actually verify this as I've never owned a Megadrive.

Both games have the following features:

• Several difficulty levels.
• The option to continue when you've lost all your lives.
• The ability to enter your initials when you get a high score. Unfortunately, these are lost when you switch the power off.

Ghouls'n'Ghosts

I bought the unit mainly for playing this game.

The first thing I noticed was that the Radica version of Ghouls'n'Ghosts is nowhere near as close to its arcade counterpart as the Jakks version of  Ghosts'n'Goblins. However, this is perhaps an unfair comparison as the original arcade version of Ghouls'n'Ghosts had far better graphics than the arcade version of Ghosts'n'Goblins.

I would say the Radica version of Ghouls'n'Ghosts has about the same level of graphical sophistication as the arcade version of Ghosts'n'Goblins. The palette is smaller and there is less going on in the background. However, none of this really affects the gameplay. The game still feels very similar to the arcade version and all of the monsters appear to behave in exactly the same way.

The sound is also noticeably inferior to the arcade version but still adequate.

If you choose to play an alternating two player game, you have the option of each player having their own gamepad, or of both players sharing a single gamepad.

StreetFighter II

The graphics for this game are only slightly inferior to the arcade version. However the sound was very disappointing indeed. The music is OK but the speech and other sampled sound effects are awful, so bad in fact that they detract from the gaming experience. I assume this is because sampled sounds take up a lot of memory and processing power. However, if the designers were constrained by the hardware they had available, then I think perhaps they would have been better off abandoning the samples altogether.

The gameplay seemed similar to the MAME version. However, I haven't played StreetFighter very much so that's not really an informed opinion.

All the standard SF characters are available and AFAIK their special moves match the arcade version (copy of manual in PDF format attached). As with the arcade version, you have the option of playing against the computer or another player.

Hacking Potential

Out of curiosity I dismantled one of the gamepads to see how easy it would be to hack. I had half hoped that there would be no electronics in the gamepad itself and that the cable would consist of 13 separate wires i.e. one for each of the pad's twelve buttons and one for a common ground.

Well there is good news and bad news.

The bad news is that the cable only has 10 wires and the gamepad does have its own electronic circuit. So it is not possible to simply cut the cable and connect the separate wires directly to the joystick and buttons.

However, the good news is that on the circuit board itself the switches do share a common ground, and they each have a convenient soldering point (see picture).

[Jawadali]

Thanks once again for the review.

Many people were probably interested in the hacking potential, so thanks for making a note on that.

I'm not sure if the US version includes an AC adapter so that it can be used without batteries, but it's good to know that the UK version does.

[Grasshopper]

Just to clarify, the game is not actually supplied with its own mains adapter. But it does have a socket on the side of the main unit to enable a 6V mains adapter (which would have to be purchased separately) to be connected.

[leapinlew]

This was a good review. Thanks for doing it Grasshopper. I was very curious about these for SFII use and you answered all my questions.