That wasn't my last brush with the game. We were asked to come out and beta test it one warm night in 1995. We'd take turns playing while some guys with clipboards took notes. I guess it's not that different than the user experience testing I've had to sit in on during my own programming career (although the users aren't having as much fun). The game was a tad buggy at that iteration, I remember juggling a character in the corner infinitely at one point. Still I thought it was a pretty good game.

That's right, I thought it was a pretty good game. It's so easy to look at it now and laugh at the digitized graphics and mock it's transgressions from the Street Fighter canon. Back in 1995 it looked great, better than the original Mortal Kombat. The play mechanics, although mostly different than Street Fighter II, were solid. "Different" doesn't mean "worse" people. Yeah it kinda felt like a Mortal Kombat rip-off but it was fun. After playing ~4 hours that night I still wanted more. To this day I prefer it to many fighting games of the era such as: Killer Instinct, Mortal Kombat III, and Samurai Shodown. I will concede it didn't best Mortal Kombat II or Super Street Figher II Turbo though. Since those were the primary rivals it had something of an uphill battle.