Arcade

In Japan, Game Machine listed Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo on their August 1, 1996 issue as being the sixth most-successful arcade game of the month, outperforming titles such as Tekken 2.

The arcade game received positive reviews upon release. Reviewing the arcade version, a reviewer for Next Generation commented: "The gameplay is ferociously competitive, unfairly addicting, and as intuitive as riding a bike (once you've got the hang of it), and due to luck factor, the favor swings numerous times from winner to loser and back until the very last gem drops". Additionally praising the cutesy character art and the Capcom in-jokes incorporated into the backgrounds and soundtrack, he scored it four out of five stars.

Ports

The Saturn and PlayStation versions received generally positive reviews. Shawn Smith, Dan Hsu and Crispin Boyer of Electronic Gaming Monthly commended the game's kid-style characters, addictive gameplay, and elements of fighting game strategy. However, Dan Hsu and Sushi-X both criticized that it is too easy to drop a large number of unremovable blocks on an opponent's side, making the game too unbalanced, and Sushi-X deemed it overall average. Major Mike of the same magazine likewise said that the game is addictive fun, particularly in two-player mode.

Unlike Dan Hsu and Sushi-X, a Next Generation critic argued that the ease of dropping stacks of blocks which cannot be removed until they turn back to regular gems adds to the excitement and strategy of the gameplay. However, he criticized the dull-witted battle quips and said the Street Fighter characters are out-of-place, suggesting they had only been included for their marketing value.

In 2004, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo was inducted into GameSpots list of the greatest games of all time.

Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix

Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix is a downloadable game in the Puzzle Fighter franchise for PlayStation 3 (via PlayStation Network) and Xbox 360 (via Xbox Live Arcade). HD Remix was announced to include several graphical upgrades in the interface, character sprites, and levels.

Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo: HD Remix has updated high-definition graphics. Each of the four colours of the gems have been associated with an element and given a new animation. Backgrounds and characters have also been redrawn, while the character sprites have been upscaled via Pixel-art scaling algorithms.

Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix supports four players in multiplayer, spectator mode, online play and rankings. Also featured are the three gameplay modes included in the Dreamcast version: X-Mode, Y-Mode and Z-Mode, and an additional X' ("X dash") Mode which rebalances several characters' drop patterns for better competitive play.

On June 10, 2019, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix was released on Xbox One through backwards compatibility support of the original Xbox 360 version.

Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix is included in Capcom Digital Collection.

Changes from the original

  • Several characters were rebalanced by having their gem drop patterns altered.
  • Crash Gems now have elemental visual effects associated with them. Red gems are now Fire, Green gems are Wind, Blue gems are Water and Yellow gems are Lightning. This does not affect gameplay and is purely a visual alteration.
  • In the original Puzzle Fighter, the tempo of the music would gradually speed up the closer the player or their opponent was to losing the match. HD Remix does not feature this.
  • In addition to the standard difficulty selection (Easy, Normal, and Hard), home console ports of Puzzle Fighter let the player alter the default speed in which gems would fall (marked by a number of stars up to five). This setting was removed for HD Remix.
  • New game modes were added. X is the original Puzzle Fighter with original drop patterns, X' is the rebalanced version, Y is a connect-three based variant of the game, and Z is a completely different pre-generated rotating block style game.
  • A challenge mode called "Street Puzzle" was available in the original home console ports of Puzzle Fighter. In it, the player was tasked with defeating specific characters as a means to unlock bonus content. HD Remix removes "Street Puzzle" mode entirely, as well as most of the bonus content it would unlock. What little bonus content was not cut from HD Remix is available from the beginning of the game.
  • Dan's "Saikyo-Ryu Dojo" Tutorial has been removed, which was an "Attract" demo in the arcade version and a tutorial mode accessible from the main menu in previous home releases. In it, Dan would provide a comedic demonstration to show the player the basics of playing Puzzle Fighter. In HD Remix, it has been replaced with a four-page text-only tutorial under "How to Play" in Options.
  • The original Puzzle Fighter contained a number of different "Win Taunts" that a character would pick at random to say to the losing player after a match. HD Remix removes most of the "Win Taunts", leaving only one per character.
  • There are a number of palette errors in the sprites themselves. For example, during the Intermission featuring Akuma in his cave, all of the demons in the background have garbled colors.
  • The "diamond trick" glitch has been eliminated. Attacks using the diamond are always at 80% strength instead of 50% (used normally) or 100% (using a glitch).
  • Ken's stage is now a beach featuring chibi versions of other Street Fighter characters. In the original Puzzle Fighter, his stage was the city street setting from Street Fighter Alpha.
  • Ryu's stage is now his snowy stage from Street Fighter Alpha 2. In the original Puzzle Fighter, his stage was a night time version of his stage from Street Fighter Alpha.
  • There is now a gem editor mode which allows players to create their own custom drop patterns. The custom patterns are only allowed in specific gameplay modes.
  • An online multiplayer function was added.

Reception

Notes

References

  • Official Capcom website