What Is It?
It would be easy for me to just say that this is another Street Fighter II game and be done with it, but the Special Champion Edition requires a bit more context than your usual Virtual Console release. Back in the early 1990s Street Fighter II was THE game everybody wanted, so it shouldn't shock anybody that Nintendo pushed as hard as they could to make it an exclusive for the Super NES. Street Fighter II was a massive hit on the Super NES, at the time it was the equivalent of having Grand Theft Auto be an exclusive to your console. However, the game didn't stay exclusive for long. After several months of astronomical sales, Capcom announced that they would be releasing an updated version of the game on the Genesis, it would be called Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition and be bigger and better than the standard Super NES Street Fighter II game.
What does that mean? It means that it would allow you to play as the four boss characters (Balrog, Vega, Sagat and M. Bison) and offer all the new moves and endings found in the arcade game, Street Fighter II: Champion Edition. It also meant that Capcom would be making games for the Sega Genesis, something that felt like the Holy Grail at the time. Unfortunately Capcom decided to delay the game, and in the time before this Genesis game came out they opted to announce an even better game for the Super NES, Street Fighter II Turbo. Street Fighter II Turbo was based on the second arcade revision, and ultimately made Special Champion Edition less substantial. As you can imagine, this made every Sega fanboy's head explode. For once they thought they were going to have the best version of this popular arcade game, but in the end they had to (yet again) play second fiddle to the Super NES. Special Champion Edition was still worth buying at the time (it even prompted Sega to come out with a six-button Genesis control), but it was hard not to be a little bitter with the way Capcom handled the debacle. Fast forward 15 years and you'll find that nobody cares that Capcom effectively screwed Sega out of their moment in the sun, which is why I'm utterly perplexed as to why Capcom decided to release this game for the Virtual Console.
Does It Still Hold Up?
Although it was meant to sound grand and impressive, when I heard the name "Special" Champion Edition I worried that it might be a little, well, you know. Due to the Genesis's aging hardware, Special Champion Edition never looked as colorful and crisp as the Super NES port. Worse yet, the controls felt a little off and the sound was about as bad as it could get. Sure you could finally play as the bosses, but you could also do that in the infinitely better Street Fighter II Turbo for the Super NES (which is currently available on the Virtual Console). The fighting aspect of Special Champion Edition is still sound, but there are far better versions of this game currently available on the Virtual Console.
Is It Worth The Money?
For Genesis owners Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition was a must-buy, especially since it was the best fighting game on the market. But seeing as the Virtual Console plays host to both the Super NES and Genesis, and we already have both Street Fighter II Turbo and Super Street Fighter II uploaded, there's really no reason for you to waste your time with this game. This is a relic of another console war, the kind of thing that impressed people 15 years ago but isn't important now. These days you can own a near-arcade perfect version of Street Fighter II on just about any console, so why bother with this strange port? As far as I'm concerned this was one of the darkest moments in Capcom's life, so I simply don't understand why they would remind everybody of that time by releasing this crummy port. There are plenty of other Capcom games on the Genesis that you can release (how about you give us that Genesis Mega Man game that was never released in cartridge form?), there's no place on the Virtual Console for another crummy port of Street Fighter II. As much as I love this franchise, I simply cannot recommend this game when there are better versions available.
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