Whereas Street Fighter: The Movie: The Console Game is probably technically better than Street Fighter: The Movie: The Arcade Game - it is not only less fun than Street Fighter: The Movie: The Arcade Game, but very soulless too.

(this review will use the American naming conventions. Therefore, the boxer is Balrog, the claw-wielder is Vega, the dictator is M. Bison, and the red-haired guy is called Akuma instead of Gouki)

In 1994, Universal Pictures would release the now-infamous "Street Fighter" movie to...little success. For whatever reason, Capcom would see fit to release not one, but two different games based off of the movie. Most people would likely be familiar with the arcade version of the game. Developed not by Capcom, but by Incredible Technologies (most well known for their Golden Tee series of games), the arcade version of Street Fighter: The Movie, while certainly not good by any means, and definitely not a Street Fighter game in feeling, was a very unique game with its own identity. Established characters like Zangief, Guile and Sagat got wacky new moves, the ability to juggle and combo was off the rails and the game itself was a very interesting diversion from many other Street Fighter games. While it certainly wasn't fondly looked at at the time, nowadays people tend to look at it a little more better. Which is more than could be said for the console version.

Compared to the arcade version, the console version of Street Fighter: The Movie (yes, they were both named the same) shares little similarities - arguably its main similarity was that both fighting games used digitized sprites of the actors, ala Mortal Kombat or NBA Jam. Developed by Capcom in 1995, Street Fight: The Movie would release on both the Playstation, and the Sega Saturn. It's technically a better game than the arcade version, but that's largely because this game is mostly just Super Street Fighter II Turbo.


Gameplay


Like all Street Fighter Games, Street Fighter: The Movie, released on the Playstation and the Sega Saturn is a 6-button fighting game, with each button corresponding to both a strength of attack (light, medium and heavy) and a type of attack (a punch, or a kick). Like most Street Fighter II versions, Street Fighter: The Movie is a relatively simple fighter, with the most complex mechanic being the super meter. All characters have unblockable throws in this game to punish overly defensive play, though like SF2, it's not uniform on which buttons characters can throw with, and rather annoyingly, throw inputs occasionally unnecessarily overlap with other moves.

Street Fighter: The Movie, is heavily influenced by Super Street Fighter II Turbo, the latest (and currently most played) version of SF2 at the time, thus all characters that appear in this game share their moveset with their appearances in ST (such as, for example, E Honda's Hundred Hand Slap being unsteerable like in ST, or Sagat's Tiger Uppercut being a multi-hit attack, again, like in ST). In addition to this, the two mechanics that debuted in ST, super combos (a super powerful move that dealt huge damage, but required the super meter to be filled up) and throw softening (a way to not only take less damage from being thrown, but also land on your feet, ready to attack again) also appear in SF:TM's console edition.

Because this game was designed to be played with a Playstation controller, which has 4 buttons on the front of the controller and 4 buttons on the top of the controller), a couple of attacks which used to require hitting all 3 punches or kicks to activate, like Vega's backflips or Zangief's Spinning Lariats, now only require two buttons to be pressed instead of three (though, rather annoyingly, Balrog's Turn Around Punch still requires 3 buttons to be held down and released). This game only lets you map 6 buttons - on a Playstation controller, this means that two buttons will always go unused. There's no macros with 3P or 3K to let people execute the aforementioned moves above, which would be perfect for an 8 button controller (and in fact, would be used in nearly every other fighting game that came out on the Playstation later).

Arguably the only new addition this game has was the existence of EX Moves. Taken from Darkstalkers, another Capcom fighting game that released the previous year, EX Moves were more powerful versions of a character's regular special moves, performed by doing the motion and pressing either 2 punches or 2 kicks (for example, Guile's EX Sonic Boom saw him shoot out 2 Sonic Booms instead of 1). EX moves cost half the super gauge, indicated when the super bar turned from orange to blue, however, if the super meter was full, EX moves could be performed for free. This meant that often times, unless your character had poor EX moves, it was much better usually to perform a bunch of no-cost EX moves and retain them than to perform a super and lose them all.
I suppose if you had to invent EX moves you'd have to invent the trend of them usually being better than actual super moves.


Roster


There's very little to say in terms of the roster, as most of them were digitized facelifts of their appearances in ST. Most of the original 12 chars that appeared in SF2 returns (with the sole exception of Dhalsim), alongside Cammy and Dee Jay from Super Street Fighter 2. Akuma returns as a hidden character/final boss, while Sawada is the only new character in the game.

Actually, Sawada also appeared in the arcade version of Street Fighter: The Movie, but in this game he retains almost none of his moveset from there. Instead of doing cool shit with his sword, Sawada mostly just plays as an odd cross between Fei Long (turning his wheelkick into a Fei Long-esque rekka) and Chun-Li (getting a slightly different version of her Lightning Legs where he just chops the opponent instead), and a Dhalsim-style teleport where he can teleport across the screen.

However, by far his most infamous move sees Sawada commit suicide (yes, really, though he takes no damage from it) to shoot up blood as an anti-air move against his opponent, which not only makes up for his lame-ass super (a move where he raises his hand and charges at the opponent), but also to this day still remains as one of the most bizarre moves ever to be seen in a Street Fighter game.


Modes


The four modes of play available are Movie Battle, Street Battle, Versus Battle and Trial Battle. Versus Battle is basically the standard 2-player fighting mode where you fight against your opponent. Street Battle works similar to an arcade mode in many fighting games; players pick a character and fight 12 opponents, with the last four always being, in order, Zangief, Dee Jay, Sagat and M. Bison (with hidden character Akuma replacing Bison as the true final boss if the player performs well enough at the highest difficulty setting). Trial Mode is a standard survival mode where you pick one character to fight against all of the roster.

The only mode worth talking about in-depth here is Movie Battle. A sort of proto-typical "story mode" (arguably the first ever for a Capcom Fighter), players would play as Col. Guile as he journeys to defeat Bison and free the hostages. After each fight, players would be given one of two places on where Guile would head next, journeying deeper and deeper into Shadaloo City (for example, after the first fight against Bison, where the player will likely get their asses kicked, they could either send Guile to a town to fight Balrog, or a harbor to fight Ken). While there was no inherent punishment for failing outside of having to redo the fight again (save for the final fights against Bison), players had a strict 50 minute time limit. Take too long to find Bison (either by losing too many fights, or by taking too long a path to find Bison and getting into too many fights) and it'd be game over.

Stills from the movie would be used in lieu of voice acting, with only a few clips from the movie being used as cutscenes. Almost certainly a novel idea at the time, but honestly there's very little replay value out of this once you beat the game. Plus, I suspect, Movie Battle's difficulty setting is set to be different than the difficulty setting you set in options, meaning that Level 1 scrubs will get destroyed by an input-reading CPU in this mode.

One side note I can't really fit anywhere else, as far as I'm aware there's no way to exit a mode through the pause menu. If someone (for whatever reason) wanted to play with you and you had 30 minutes left in Movie Battle, time to reset the console. If you wanted to play something else other than Versus Battle (like if, for example, you were practicing your character's moves and combos before attempting the other modes), you'd also have to reset the console. It's a very odd omission that, to me, makes me feel like the game was rushed in some way.


Atmosphere


I don't like bringing up atmosphere for games, but specifically for this game it felt very soulless. Whilst the gameplay was simply a slightly different version of ST, nothing else really stood out. The music for this game blends mindlessly in the background - competent enough to not be awful, but nothing that really stands out. The stages themselves, largely consisting of photographed locations with photographed sprites, looks very dull and plain, with some of the stage choices being questionable at best (who really wants to fight in a run down rat-infested dirty hospital set at night?). Even the sprites themselves are largely dull, with none of them managing to stand out in the way that the arcade version or Mortal Kombat ever did. I think the worst sin a fighting game could ever commit is make their game look dull, and SF:TM looks extremely dull - something impressive for a Street Fighter game, which always managed to feel vibrant and unique with each of their other games.


Final Review

This game is literally only remembered because of the Street Fighter name. If this game was titled something else like "Street Beaters" or whatever it would absolutely not get a Wikipedia page dedicated to it. Definitely the worst out of every Street Fighter ever (yes, this includes the launch version of Street Fighter V too).

There is zero reason to play this outside of a weird cursory view. Even around the time of release, you had much better home console games like Battle Arena Toshinden (which came out on the same day on the Playstation), Mortal Kombat 3 (if you were willing to wait a week on the Playstation) and Virtua Fighter 1 (which came out earlier on the Sega Saturn). Even nowadays you can play the game this is based off of, Super Street Fighter II Turbo, online with Fightcade (which also plays heaps better than this game). Avoid at all costs.