I spent a good deal of time the past week with the Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix Beta. I’m not typing that again, so I’ll call it SSFIITHDR Beta from now on. That’s just as hard to type. We’ll figure something out.

If you’re in your late 20’s to early 30’s, you grew up with Street Fighter II (and it’s various iterations) in the arcades. I spent countless hours and thousands of quarters perfecting my fighting regimen. And trust me when I say I was damn good back then. When Street Fighter II was announced for the Xbox Live Arcade, I got all antsy in the pantsy. Sadly, the game didn’t turn out to be the faithful recreation we had all hoped, mainly because of the controls with the difficult Xbox 360 D-pad. I was a bit skeptical at first when I heard Capcom would be turning the game into an HD Remix, mainly because of said controls. After spending a week with the game, I’m happy to report they did it right. The controls feel very solid using the left analog stick. Takes you back to rocking the joystick on the arcade machines of days past. You can customize the button layout to your liking, which is a huge plus since we’re not working with 6 face buttons (I miss you, Sega Genesis 6-button controller).

There’s not much content here with this Beta. It’s not like the Halo 3 or Call of Duty 4 multiplayer Betas, where everything was pretty much finished. This definitely has some bugs and Capcom is using this to make sure the game is polished properly before release. You’re given the option to fight as Ken or Ryu with only the Japan stage available. If these aren’t in your top stable of fighters, you’ll need to adapt. The Beta features online only play, both Ranked and Player matches. There are also Tournament matches available, but I didn’t have much luck getting into anything there. Most of my time was spent in Player matches where I found the most gamers ready to rumble. One thing I didn’t like was the game lobbies waiting for matches. It works like the Quarter matches from SF2 on XBLA, where you have two people fighting while up to four others wait it out. Under your name it says “Spectating”, but you’re just looking at the lobby screen. If I’m spectating, I want to see what’s going on with the current fight. Hopefully this is something that is available with the full version of the game.

The graphics are pretty damn good with nice HD textures for characters and the environment. I can’t wait to see all other stages and fighters in action, especially my favorite, Guile. I do find it puzzling, however, that Capcom calls 16:9 “Stretch Mode” for a game with “HD” in the title. Wouldn’t 16:9 be the normal mode for a HD game?

The Beta isn’t without it’s problems, and that’s to be expected. Many gamers have experienced rampant freezing, something I only encountered once causing me to shut the Xbox 360 down. I didn’t encounter any lag while in-game, which is nice. If you really want in, you can buy Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3 for the Xbox Live Arcade and go to town. But if you want a completely bug-free version with more than just Ken and Ryu, I’d wait until the full release.