20. Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (2008)

Super Street Fighter II Turbo had been 2D fighting’s competitive gold standard since 1994, so I was super intrigued to learn that tournament pro David Sirlin was delving into the 14-year-old game’s guts to not only try to address its balance shortcomings, but add new HD graphics by comic company Udon, too. I followed his blog updates religiously, marveling at the notion of a Super Turbo in which Cammy wasn’t trash, or—dare to dream—T. Hawk could be middle-tier.

The game came out…but only in America, and not in Japan. And while the community gave it a little play at a few EVOs, it just didn’t catch on.

HD Remix was indeed a very, very different game, with wild changes like E.Honda’s jab headbutt nullifying fireballs, Ryu getting a fake fireball, and Zangief’s throw commands being 180s instead of 360s. In fact, input execution got simplified across the board. That’s arguably a reasonable response to Super Turbo’s strictness (some of it arising from bugs), but HD Remix probably goes too far in the other direction, shaving off a key aspect of the venerable game.

And hindsight being 20/20, let’s be real: The new HD graphics were largely pretty ugly. Unfortunately, the only way to play with all the new balance changes was to use the HD sprites, because the game reverted to normal Super Turbo when using the old graphics. They really, really wanted everyone to see Cammy’s freaky new Q-Bee eyes.

Anyway, America didn’t love it and Japan never even got it, so everyone just went back to OG Super Turbo. Thus I learned that even if you build it, the FGC won’t always come. This leaves Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix a fascinating cultural artifact, but not much of a game to go back to with any regularity. — Alexandra Hall