Street Fighter Punches Back on the ZX Spectrum

Thirty-five years after Street Fighter II revolutionized arcade brawlers, a lone hacker named zxpresh has managed to ram the whole roster of characters into the ZX Spectrum 128K. Sweet Fightin’ +2 is a one-on-one battle game featuring all twelve famous characters, from Ryu hurling fireballs to M. Bison unleashing crazy crushers. It’s also free.

You can download it for free from itch.io either as a.tap file, which loads instantaneously in an emulator, or a.tzx.zip if you want to experience cassette loading like it’s 1986. However, be prepared for some tough fights when you really need to have your timing on point with the original hardware.

The good news is that zxpresh programmed each special move from the ground up. So, whether you play as Ryu or Ken, you get the basic dragon punch with a quarter circle forward and a punch button. Chun-Li gets to perform her lightning kick by repeatedly pressing the fire button, whereas Zangief just gets to grasp and launch with a spinning slam. Throws can be done up close, blocks provide protection for threats, and air juggles add depth to the game. The backdrops scroll in both ways, the sprites are large, and the three-color palette makes the Spectrum screen stand out. If you have a friend to play with, you may activate two player mode at any moment, thus turning your solitary runs into full-fledged marathons.

Controls feel fairly natural when using a Sinclair or Kempston joystick. Simply walk left and right, hop up, crouch down, and then hit the fire button to punch or kick. Tapping fire causes light attacks; pulling the joystick to the right results in a medium assault; pulling to the left results in a strong strike. To execute a sweep, press down on the joystick and fire, and to toss an up in the air, press up on the joystick while in the air. If you play with a keyboard, QAZ handles player 1’s movement, and the fire button can be accessed using the M or space keys. You receive the best of three rounds to keep things suspenseful, and if you do a replay, the final two rounds are skipped and do not need to be loaded.

Loading times can be a genuine test of patience, as the characters and stages require split-second pauses to load, however you can turn off the music and set the stages to home or same to shorten the wait (which is excellent because the wait is still rather long). If you have a DivMMC cart or use an emulator like Spectaculator, then the.Tap files load immediately, without pause. If you have a faster Spectrum, you can get it to run at arcade speeds. Although the old original Spectrum lags a little and some players have reported it crashing in the final round or so, they are nevertheless impressed with the work put in.

Keep in mind that when US Gold launched their official Street Fighter II port for the Spectrum in 1992, it was nearly unplayable due to choppy frame rates and many missed inputs, but Sweet Fightin’ +2 dramatically changes that, with smooth gliding movements and solid attacks.
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