This, ladies and gentlemen, marks the two-year birthday of AWN's "Press Start" review article. This year we decided to kick off the New Year with a variety of games that reek of sheer awesomeness. Games that just scream "epic," or at least they have a long-running fan base that screams "epic." Right now is actually the calm after the storm; game developers that actually have a brain and that wanted to make a profit have already released their big babies and have made themselves a nice hefty wad from the holiday rush. The American economy might be worth less than road kill right now but the game industry (despite layoffs and the outstanding troubles that Midway has been facing, for instance) is still doing better than any other form of business.

Back to the main idea of this article, when you think of an epic game what names come to mind? It can't just be one good game because you just can't build up a fan base with one game; it has to be a sequel of a long running series... a good, long-running series not like the moronic Leisure Suit Larry games! And there is where we find our Catch-22: we're looking at games with a long running series behind them but, at the same time, this last holiday season we have seen more completely new, independent properties come out of game studios than ever before. Now it does seem pretty hard to find a good series installment with all these new series' running around, but it isn't impossible and we have damn good variety in this month's edition of "Press Start"!

Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix is the newest addition to the ridiculously long running Street Fighter series. Technically, this is a remake of Super Turbo but with all the new changes and additions, it qualifies as a stand-alone

Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix for Xbox LIVE Arcade and PlayStation Network; Publisher: Capcom; Developer: Backbone Entertainment; Release Date: November 25, 2008; ESRB Rating: T for teen; Genre: fighting; Players: 1-2; Support: N/A; Online: 2 player matches

Sho-Ryu-Ken! There has never, ever been a fighting game franchise as popular or as spectacular as the Street Fighter series! Now that might seem like a pretty ballsy statement but think about it for a minute, how many different fighting game franchises can you think of? Of those different franchises, how many iterations were made, including sequels and spin-offs? More than 20 different versions of Street Fighter titles have been released in the U.S. alone and that doesn't even include remakes and re-releases like Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition and Super Street Fighter II: Turbo Revival. The only fighting game franchise that even comes close is the Mortal Kombat series with about 12 different Mortal Kombat releases in the U.S.

Real Men Use Dhalsim
The newest addition to the ridiculously long running Street Fighter series is -- now this is a mouthful -- Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. Technically, HD Remix is a remake of Super Turbo but with all the new changes and additions to this version it qualifies as a stand-alone Street Fighter title. HD Remix contains the original 17 fighters found in Super Turbo and all of the environments, but the first thing you notice is are the new visuals: every character and environment has been dramatically re-imagined. "Who created all these new visuals for HD Remix?" you might ask; UDON Ent., the same guys that first released the extremely beautiful Street Fighter comic series a few years back. All of the characters and environments now have a hand-drawn style along with a seriously improved framerate. The reason that the letters HD are in the title is because everything is a much higher resolution than before, the character models alone have been re-drawn into a resolution that is more than nine times higher than the original Super Turbo resolution. Illustrator Long Vo was the lead designer of all of HD Remix's new visual content. Every character now looks more prominent and some look even more muscular -- as if Zangief couldn't get anymore "swole" than he already is! The visuals are kind of like a hybrid of American comic art and Japanese anime.

Many of the moves in HD Remix have been slightly tweaked to make the fighting experience more enjoyable. One addition is that the damage system has finally been balanced when fighting against a computer opponent. © Capcom.

All of the background music has been replaced with remixed versions of the original themes. Right off the bat that might offend some seriously hardcore Street Fighter fans but take a step back and a deep breath... the music was actually made by the fans! Almost all of the music in HD Remix has been pulled from the developer-friendly site OverClocked ReMix. Musically talented fans have been uploading their remixed versions of classic game theme songs onto OCRemix.org for years and not just Street Fighter themes. The classic sound effects are the only things that have not been changed. You'll still feel that nostalgic shiver shoot up your spine when you hear Ryu let out a Ha-Do-Ken!