Play Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition Online

Summary

Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition (often just called Special Champion Edition) took the classic eight‑fighter roster and layered on the extra content Capcom had added for Turbo. The four Grand Masters—Balrog, Vega, Sagat and M. Bison—became selectable, and the game introduced mirror matches with alternate color palettes so you could pit a character against a clone of themselves. Capcom also refined the movesets, finally giving Ryu and Ken distinct feels, while new background music and redrawn portraits freshened each stage.

Sega pushed the title onto a 24‑megabit cartridge and even released a six‑button pad designed specifically for the game’s expanded controls. After a rocky prototype phase, the launch slipped from an intended July window to late September 1993 in North America, with near‑simultaneous releases in Japan and Europe. The delay let Capcom fold Turbo’s extra features into the Genesis version, prompting the name change from a straight Champion Edition port.

The cartridge sold about 1.665 million copies, topping charts in the US, UK and Japan despite missing Capcom’s sales targets. Critics raved—Famitsu gave it a perfect 10, Mega scored 92 % and MegaTech 95 %—and the game later resurfaced on the Wii Virtual Console, the Sega Genesis Mini and even as a 2005 Radica plug‑and‑play unit that bundled Ghouls ’n Ghosts.