Arcade1Up Street Fighter II Review

It’s been a lifelong goal of mine to own a Street Fighter II arcade machine. Despite owning multiple copies of the game across almost every platform I own, there’s nothing quite like playing this classic in its original form. Placing a quarter at the top of the control panel before rubbing shoulders against your opponent in the heat of battle is the experience that millions the world over had with this classic.

Trying to buy and maintain a vintage Street Fighter II cabinet from the 90s is a nightmare in modern times, but Arcade1Up aims to bring the arcade experience home in a way that’s the closest we’ve ever come to owning the real thing. With its Street Fighter II cabinet, you can play head-to-head against your friends or the AI in three legendary titles in one machine. Is this my dream come true?

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To buy or not to buy a Street Fighter II arcade machine? Jason and Randy weigh in!

I bring Jason and Randy into my internal debate on whether I should buy an Arcade1Up Street Fighter II arcade cabinet. We then talk about their arcade lineup, which has some other surprisingly good machines in it!


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Debating the Merits of Buying an Arcade 1UP Street Fighter II Arcade Machine

There are no shortage of reasons for not owning an arcade machine. They’re expensive. They take up a lot of space. Unless you’re hacking it to run MAME and taking away the “purity” of the original game, their functions are pretty limited. They’re a pain to maintain. The list goes on.

But if I were to ever own an arcade machine…just one…it would be a Street Fighter II cabinet. One of the most symbolic machines in all of arcade culture, I have vivid memories of that game blowing my mind when I first saw it and spent too many quarters playing it over the years. Best of all, it’s still a great game worth playing today.

Arcade 1Up caught my eye when they announced a few months back that they were releasing new Street Fighter II machines. Having now stumbled across them at my local Walmart, my mind is in a tizzy trying to figure out if this is the time to finally make a lifelong dream of mine come true. In order to sort my feelings out, I’m going to write out both sides of the argument and see where I land at the end.

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