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Usually, gamers in Europe do not get the high-quality products North American people take for granted. But, on the bright side for them, games that are only released in Japan and pirated games, some of which can be very enjoyable, are more likely to be found in Europe. Such a game is Master Fighter II for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Calling this game a Famicom game would probably be a mistake, because everybody calls the NES "Nintendo" in Europe and the game probably cannot be found in Japan, anyway. It was made by a company in Hong Kong, that supposedly made more of these Street Fighter clones. Master Fighter II is their best-known clone, however, and it is in English. For a NES game, the graphics are very nice. The beginning shows a lot of people cheering a fight between a black and a white guy (Blanka and Ken?). The white guy punches the other and the screen scrolls up showing a skyscraper all the way to the top. Yes, it's kind of like the original Street Fighter II, but the animation for the punch is not really great. If you leave the game on, without pressing 'Start', there's no demo, the introduction repeats itself.

When you decide to start fighting, you're taken to a map of the world with four flags to choose from: U.S.A. --> Guile, China --> Chun Li, Japan --> Ryu, U.S.S.R. --> Zangief. You can see the picture of the character you choose, at the bottom. You see a vs. screen before every fight. And you also see the famous teasers at the end of the fights, along with pictures of the winner's face speaking and the loser's face distorted. For example, Ryu says, after he wins: "You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance". The flag of Thailand --> Bison only appears after you defeat the other 3 fighters. There is 2-player support, and you can switch fighters after you continue.

There are only 4 characters to pick from -- 5 overall -- and, therefore, only 5 backgrounds. The characters look pretty nice and big. The backgrounds lose a lot of details, though. For example, Guile's stage doesn't have any people cheering... and it's night. The Russian workers who watch the fight on Zangief's stage still move, however. And you can even knock Bison and yourself on the other platform in his stage -- usually you win the fight there. But I don't know what causes it and I think it's a glitch.

I haven't played the original arcade too much, so I didn't know all the moves at the time. I did discover that, if you press Down, Forward, Punch you do the Hadouken, or if you press Back, Forward, Punch, Guile throws his boomerang. But I couldn't discover how to do Zangief's Piledriver or Ryu's Shoryuken.

People on the net say that the control is bad and the A.I. is very merciless. Well, I have to say that the control is decent -- I had more problems doing the Hadouken in licensed Street Fighter games than in Master Fighter II. The CPU opponent is cheap, indeed, but you can be cheap, too. If you get the opponent cornered and down, you can hit him/her every time he/she gets up and you knock him/her down again. This doesn't work on Bison, however. The easiest character to win the game with is Chun Li. Press Kick constantly during the fight with Bison and you have a much bigger chance of winning 2 rounds than he does. For the others, you have to rely on luck and inspiration. Using Zangief is the hardest.

The endings all show the respective character from the back, walking through a forest at night, while a few lines of text, with a few spelling errors, explain what happens to the character after beating Bison. Sure, the animation is small and it looks more like the trees and the path are moving down, than the character walking, but it's still impressive for a NES game.

In conclusion, Master Fighter II can't compare with licensed Street Fighter games, but it's fun to play once you get the hang of it. I wasn't disappointed with it, and I think that the company that made it did a good job. If you decide to buy this game, don't be suspicious if the cartridge isn't blue. The copy I used to own was on a yellow cartridge (with 3 other games -- but that's another story).

- Swordlord