Street Fighter - The Ultimate Battle

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General		Extras
Category	Action	Theatrical Trailer(s)	None (cover incorrect)
Rating		Other Trailer(s)	Yes, 1 - Dolby Digital City
Year Released	1994	Commentary Tracks	None
Running Time	97 minutes	Other Extras	None
RSDL/Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region	4	Director	Steven E. de Souza
Distributor	Columbia Tristar	Starring	Jean-Claude Van Damme Raul Julia Ming-Na Wen Damian Chapa Kylie Minogue Wes Studi
RRP	$34.95

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	No	MPEG	None
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Dolby Digital	5.1
16x9 Enhancement	Yes	Soundtrack Languages	English (Dolby Digital 2.0 ) French (Dolby Digital 2.0 )
Theatrical Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
Macrovision	Yes
Subtitles	English French Dutch Arabic

    Civil war has broken out in Shadaloo, and General Bison is behind it. Like all psychotic bad guys, he has hatched a plot to take over the world. Colonel Guile is in charge of the AN (Allied Nations) forces whose job it is to stop him. General Bison has taken some hostages, and will kill them if a 20 billion dollar ransom is not paid.

    Several other characters assist with either side. On the good guys side are Cammy (Kylie Minogue), Chun-Li (Ming-Na Wen), a reporter, and the rest of her entourage. On the bad guys side are General Sagat (Wes Studi) and Vega (Jay Tavare). Undecided are Ken (Damian Chapa) and Ryu (Byron Mann).

    Lots of entertaining fights are the order of the day, and I was becoming concerned that too many people were being killed. Fortunately, many characters in this movie need to be killed several times before they finally lay down and die. I was also becoming concerned that the movie was taking itself way too seriously, until the assault on Bison's headquarters begins. From here on in, Street Fighter becomes a mindlessly violent movie with fist fight after fist fight all beautifully choreographed and soundtracked, and all done gloriously tongue-in-cheek. There are even a number of great one-liners thrown in for good measure, especially from Dee Jay (Miguel A. Nunez, Jr).

    You will need to watch the credits all the way through with this movie. There is some amusing voice-over dialogue over the end credits, and a little tag after the credits have finished.

Video

    The transfer is presented at an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, 16x9 enhanced.

    The transfer was razor sharp most of the time. One or two scenes were a little out of focus, and a few scenes appeared to be edge-enhanced, giving them a harsh edge. Shadow detail was generally pretty good, and no low level noise was present.

    The colours were well rendered, and I had no specific complaints about the colour saturation.

    No MPEG artefacts were seen.

    A number of slightly irritating film-to-video artefacts were seen. There were a few small skips in the video sequence, as if frames had been dropped. The most noticeable of these was at 7:11, but there were approximately five more throughout the movie.

    I noted a significant number of film artefacts, perhaps more than I would expect given the age of this movie, however, none were particularly distracting or particularly bad.

Audio

    Dialogue was problematic at times, often being quite hard to hear during action sequences, but at other times was easily heard.

    The musical score was unremarkable.

     The surround channel was used aggressively for action and music. It was active almost all of the way through the movie, and provided a surprisingly good surround experience given that the mix is a matrix mix only, and sounded fuller in the mid-range than many 5.1 mixes I have listened to.

    The .1 channel was not specifically encoded, but the subwoofer received lots of work from explosions, gunshots, and every single blow in every fight got a good kick from the subwoofer. This added immensely to the over-the-top experience of this movie.

    Contrary to the packaging, the theatrical trailer is not present on this disc.

    The Sony Pictures DVD Centre and the Dolby Digital City trailers are present on this disc in 4:3 mode, Dolby Digital 2.0 sound, surround encoded.

    The video quality is generally reasonable, with some flaws, but no major flaws.

    The audio quality is great in the action department, but a little lacking in the dialogue intelligibility department. Overall, it was a most enjoyable and aggressive soundtrack.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Michael Demtschyna
22nd December 1998