Steven E. de Souza directs Jean-Claude Van Damme, Raul Julia and Kylie Minogue in this video game adaptation about a group of fighters who square off against a hostage holding dictator.

I pumped so many 30ps and then 50ps into the arcade cabinet hidden between the magazines at the rougher newsagents near us. More often than not only to last two short rounds against the kids who spent entire weeks playing as Ryu or Ken exclusively. They’d laugh when you picked E. Honda or Dhalsim… and considering how they had mastered their characters more devastating moves, they were absolutely right to. The film came out long after the Street Fighter II craze had settled down. And while it slavishly does try to include every character (a few purely, others crowbarred in in almost unrecognisable forms) the overcrowdedness muffles any simple pleasures. Jean Claude Van Damme sits the middle act out, he has to, there are just that many pointless subplots. And all these characters are shunted into an overarching story that involves… barely any street fighting. The competition format is ignored… an Enter the Dragon style plot surely would have fitted this cash-in like Vega’s clawed glove. Instead we are left with a toyified adventure – way too cartoonish for adults but way too violent for kids. Raul Julia makes for a full fat parody villain but in the service of a project that only knows one type of rubbery dildo-esque excess. Far from PERFECT!

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