Street Combat (SNES) has one of the greatest bonus stages in the history of video games. After defeating the first two opponents, you arrive at a new location and the words “Hit Happy” appear on screen. You are then given a full minute to beat the shit out of a helpless gnome (Happy) while he runs for his life:
Now think about how much the rest of the game must suck in order to cancel out all that awesomeness. Yeah, it’s that bad.
One look at the title ought to tell you everything you need to know. They just took the two most popular fighting games at the time, Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat, and smushed them together to come up with “Street Combat”. It’s not an encouraging sign when that’s the kind of effort being put into coming up with a snappy title.
Still, it would be unfair to think of this game as some kind of a rip-off. SC breaks a lot of the conventions of the fighting genre. For example, while the best known fighting games are fun, Street Combat isn’t. At all. Which is actually kind of refreshing in a way. See, by freeing themselves from the notion that their game somehow needs to be enjoyable, the people who made it then had the opportunity to try out all kinds of unique things, such as only give you one character to play as, and then have that guy be some mulleted dude in a robosuit. Good job, guys! That’s exactly the kind of protagonist we had all been clamoring for.
And yes, he’s the only character available in 2 player mode. Good times.
