This game is a bit of a tough one to score. There isn't a ton of content for its price, but it is still the best versions of Street Fighter II. I should also note that my experience with this game might be a bit skewed in some ways as I bought the Japanese version mistakenly believing there would be an English language option, so now I am stuck viewing this game in either Japanese or simplified chinese. As I can not read either of these two languages, navigating menus has so far been a bit of a challenge for me.

What most significantly improves the game are definitely the new controls. Whatever Capcom did to this game's input reader is incredible. Unlike other versions of Street Fighter II, I almost never drop inputs, it's like the game somehow always knows exactly what i want to do. Pulling off combos also feels significantly better and easier. I really couldn't tell you what exactly has changed here as I know very little about the technical aspect of fighting games, but I’m always able to perform my inputs as well as pull off cool combos I have never been able to do before when playing this game. It all feels great.

This game's presentation is also top notch. The menus all look great, and you can even scroll through a big slideshow full of nothing but amazing art of the whole Street Fighter series. New screens have been added for the transitions between menus and gameplay, and every stage plus the character select screen has a completely redrawn background. Each character also has a redrawn higher resolution sprite. I actually didn't love these new sprites at first, but over time they’ve really grown on me. If you really can not stand the new graphics however, you do have the option to revert them back to be the same as the original game. Most of the music has been newly remixed, and just like in the original Street Fighter 2, and it all sounds amazing.

The lack of truly new content is really what hurts Ultra Street Fighter II the most. Arcade, versus, and training modes are all offered within the game, however they are essentially lifted directly out of the original Street Fighter II aside from some updated cutscenes for each of the character endings after beating their arcade mode. While there are two new characters, they are both just slightly tweaked, reskinned versions of Ken and Ryu, who obviously were both already found within the original game. The only new content that actually plays like Street Fighter is a 2v1 mode where you and another player or CPU can fight against a significantly buffed CPU opponent. It’s a cool mode, but not cool enough to justify the 40$ price tag on this game. There is however one more additional mode: way of the hado. It is unfortunately terrible and still does not make the game worth 40$. You play as Ryu in an open 3D arena and through motion controls you use shoryukens, hadokens, and senpukyakus to take down waves of enemies. There are two main problems with this mode. Number one is that the motion controls do not work whatsoever. In fact they are probably the least accurate motion controls I have ever used in any video game ever. No matter what godforsaken way you move your arms, Ryu does hadoken and only hadoken. Problem number two is that even if the motion controls did work, most of the time the enemies just stand still and stare at you, making this gamemode extremely boring.

If Ultra Street Fighter II was just a 10$ eshop game or something it would be perfect. Unfortunately as it is I can’t recommend dropping 40$ on it, but I must admit that it is still very enjoyable, and is most certainly the definitive version of Street Fighter II

As the proud owner of a VW bug myself, this is essentially the perfect game for me. It fulfills my ultimate fantasy; what if my car could fly 200 feet into the air and had an explosive rocket launcher? Really though this game is super fun. You can pick from a few magnificent colours for your bug and play by yourself or against friends in a few different styles of races, or take them on in this game's best mode; beetle battle. Imagine the mariokart battle modes but on crack and you have a beetle battle. All of the items (yes, this game has mariokart style items.) are super fun and perfect for causing large amounts of chaos. Your car can shoot rockets, achieve super speed, and plant land mines among a few other things. Also this game has some surprisingly decent music, which adds a lot to its charm. I’m not kidding when I say Beetle Adventure Racing is one of the most fun promotional/licensed games ever made.