Street Fighter II Turbo (hereafter referred to as Turbo) was released less than one year after Champion Edition in response to the rapid increase in illegal bootleg versions of Street Fighter II that began to appear in the wake of the games popularity. The bootlegs allowed weird behavior such as mid-air special moves, and even changing a players character in the middle of a match. While they were interesting to try, they generally broke the balance of the characters.
Capcom decided to release Turbo as an official upgrade that could not be matched by bootleggers, while maintaining the character balance. It incorporated a number of enhancements, the biggest being a significant increase in the speed of the game compared to previous versions, hence the addition of "Turbo" or "Hyper Fighting" to the title.
The cast, story, controls, and rules for Turbo are identicle to the original, so please see the SF2 guide for any questions regarding how to play. A list of the updates can be found below. The enhancements of Turbo build on those established in Champion Edition, so see the SF2CE article for the list of changes that were carried over to Turbo.
Please see the Street Fighter II Turbo move list for a list of all the special moves.
Updates and changes
- The game is significantly sped up compared to Champion Edition.
- New costume palettes have been applied to all player one versions of the characters.
- Player two's color schemes are identical to the original color schemes.
- The speed, damage, and priority of certain moves have been tweaked.
- The differences between Ken and Ryu in Champion Edition have been exaggerated, differentiating them further.
- Every regular (non-boss) character except Guile has been given one new ability. Guile was already considered too strong to warrant an additional move.
- Blanka: A vertical rolling attack.
- Chun Li: A fireball attack (presumably due to fan demand.)
- Dhalsim: A teleport move.
- E. Honda: A sumo butt-slam move.
- Ken & Ryu: The ability to perform the whirlwind kick in mid-air.
- Zangief: A quick spinning version of the lariat that offers low invulnerability. (Many players learned to counter the regular lariat by sweeping Zangief's feet.)