---

With the Wii on the way, and its access to hundreds of popular and obscure games from Nintendo’s extensive archives, I think now would be a good time to start a feature reviewing some of the lost games of our youth; be they criminally over-looked gems or pieces of garbage so diabolically bad, I really shouldn’t be reminding you of them.

First up is a game I personally believe gets an unfair rep, Street Fighter 2010 for the NES. Now, I’ll be honest, it’s quite possibly the worst “Street Fighter” game ever made (perhaps second to Street Fighter the Movie the Game), but if you completely ignore the title, this is one of the better games to come out during the end of the original Nintendo’s lifespan.

Gameplay-wise, this is a platformer, though extensive levels filled with cannon-fodder bad guys is cut back in exchange for one boss battle after another, to give it the appearance of a fighting game. However, as you can probably guess, there is no two-player option.

But really, Street Fighter 2010 pretty much just cuts out all the crap and gives us what we play these games for directly, the boss battles. Some of the bosses are more fun than others. You’ve got a robot that swarms you with flying killer drones, a guy in a bad super hero costume that causes earthquakes, a big rock guy who can swing from the ceiling, an evil plant, and my personal favorite, an electric-wielding monster whom you fight in a level filled with active dynamos. The environments in which you fight the bosses varies. Some are merely empty rooms with a handful of platforms for you to dodge around on, while others are extensive vertical mazes with traps and power-ups hidden to make things extra interesting.

You play as Ken. No, not THAT Ken, this Ken is a cyborg from the distant future of 4 years from now. Ken has a wide variety of flashy moves, including hadouken-like fireballs which you enhance using power-ups you find through-out the levels. This game pushes the Nintendo’s graphics to their absolute limit, giving Ken’s moves a very theatrical visual flare. He back-flips, swings from platforms, rolls to avoid attacks, clings to walls and more. This gives the game a cinematic feel (or as cinematic as an NES game can get) as you pull off sweet-looking moves, like back-flipping to avoid an electric blast from a dynamo or jump out of a boss’ way and clinging a wall. The game is real old school eye candy.

There are the downsides, however. The intensity of the graphics occasionally leads to some irritating lagging which causes your character to move in slow-motion, often at the most inopportune times, which can throw you off. The plat-forming portions of the game, while there are only a few, really suck. They range from too easy to abnormally difficult, and they’re just boring. Ken’s fancy moves help to break the monotony, but I can’t bring myself to call them “fun”. Thankfully, they only make up less than half of the gameplay.

Street Fighter 2010 may be “the worst Street Fighter Game ever made”, but had they titled this baby ANYTHING else, it probably would have spawned its own never-ending franchise of sequels and spin-offs. It’s just that much fun. As it stands, there’s only one of these and it is most-definitely worth a download, or if you’re like me, smacking down the $3.50 for the actual cartridge.