The most obvious update to HD Remix is that it is now using modern art techniques and graphics. The crew at Udon Comics was hired to re-draw every character and stage in the game, and most of it looks absolutely fantastic. It all goes to show that you can still pack a lot of charm into 2D sprites, and aside from a few nitpicks I think it all looks great. Great graphics don’t make a game, but I sure as hell won’t complain when I get good visuals to go with a fun game. They also updated the music to go with this, with plenty of fine folks over at OCReMix.org providing remixed versions of the classic songs. A few of these tunes don’t sit well with me, but the vast majority sound great and maintain the old feel while bringing new flavor to it.

New graphics and music are fine, but they’re not reasons on their own to spend fifteen bucks. So what does HD Remix have to offer to justify its cost? A lot of careful balancing to make it more fun than previous versions. Sirlin worked together with several other master players to fix many of Super Turbo’s problems, ones discovered over ten years of play. The results are great, making fireballs less dominant and opening up new options for many characters. Interestingly, Akuma in particular was adjusted so that he is now a fair, tournament-legal character and can now be selected by pressing Up when you’re above E.Honda’s slot on the select screen.

The game engine itself saw some tweaks, but each character was also given very close, detailed attention and changed to make them more fair. Good characters are still good, but bad ones have been helped out significantly. Any character that had truly abusive patterns (such as Ken’s knee-bash re-grab or Balrog/boxer’s cross-up headbutt re-grab) either had that pattern taken away or had it weakened in some way. And virtually all characters have had their commands simplified; it’s now about when to do a move, instead of if you even can do some techniques. 360 command throws (Zangief’s and T.Hawk’s piledrivers), now have a SNK-style “half circle, toward” shortcut motion you can do, and other previously bizarre motions have been supplemented with much easier ones.