Putting the Super in Super Street Fighter 4

When one first looks at Super Street Fighter 4 the first think you’ll notice is that everything is new. New Ultras, new moves, new characters, new alternate costumes, new stages, hell there’s even a new announcer. Fear not however not everything is new, the old Ultra Combos are still in the game along side most of the old command lists.

First thing’s first because everyone loves to see Ultra Combos, every character has two selectable Ultras similar to the Street Fighter 3 series. The original cast of Street Fighter 4 retains their original Ultras as their option number one while gaining a new and more inventive one as option two. Obviously the brand new characters have both options completely new.

Secondly, new moves are not just limited to Ultra Combos, various characters have brand spanking new animations on some of their normal moves such as Chun-Li’s jumping medium kick or C.Viper’s close medium kick. Whether or not there has been new special moves added to the Street Fighter IV cast remains to be seen, though I know I personally would love to see Ryu get his HCF+K back from Street Fighter III or Ken get his old funky kicks from Super Street Fighter II Turbo.

New Online features include team battle where you and your friends can team up and battle pokemon style against another team of fighters from around the world, we’ll also see tournament mode, the ability to save matches via the replay feature, tournament mode, quarter mode which simulates the idea of the arcades in a loser passes the sticks fashion, and the replay channel where you can watch uploaded replays from other players.

New Characters currently include for those who don’t yet know are Dee Jay and T.Hawk rounding out the New Challengers, which is just dandy considering Cammy and Fei Long were looking a little lonely next to Gouken and Akuma on the character select screen. We’ve got more from the Street Fighter Alpha series in Cody, Adon, and Guy all of which are quite popular.

Lastly so far we’ve got brand newcomer the Tae Kwon Doe fighter Juri who’s got connections to Seth and M.Bison(Vega for you picky Japanese wannabes). Aside from these six there are 4 more to be announced. She’s also very special in being the first Korean Street Fighter character, although her stage representing Korea was the cause of some minor controversy in which actual Korean natives say that the depiction of their homeland looks like a rural Chinese area rather than the urban like country that they are.

We now come to the frivolous things, Capcom has provided every character now with not one but two alternate costumes. The original Street Fighter IV cast keep their first alternates and gain some brand new ones, that’s right I said ones the original 25 Street Fighter IV characters will have three alternate costumes, for those of us who purchased the Street Fighter IV costumes they are indeed compatible with Super Street Fighter IV so no worries there. Some of the new alternates are just amazing and although a little stereotypical really hit home as far as really nailing the character’s personality.

Moving on to my personal thoughts. I’ll start with the negative because there isn’t much. I hate that I’m going to have to pay again to play Street Fighter IV only a year later especially when this isn’t the 1990s where this sort of thing was just another day at the office because you paid the same quarter to play, it was the arcade owner who flipped the bill for the new machine.

On to the positive, I love all of the new characters they’ve added most of these characters were characters I was hoping would make it into the original game. The new alternate costumes look amazing and so do the new stages. While I’ll miss “I don’t care what the critics say, violence is a beautiful thing!” The new announcer certainly is less annoying, not that I paid attention to him when I was playing other than the last words he’d say, but when I did find myself listening to him I didn’t like what I heard. There will be new music tracks, one for every character and more I’m sure. Overall what makes Super SFIV something to look forward to is just the fresh life it breaths into the game.

This isn’t some DLC pack we’re talking that will extend the game’s life two or three months, this is a massive overhaul, everywhere you can think of from the online features to the announcer and opening theme song have changed or something has been added to make up for a past deficiency. Super Street Fighter IV is looking to be the sleeper hit of the year what with all those huge single player titles like Final Fantasy XIII and God of War III coming out at the same time, but hopefully come spring time people will keep some cash in their wallets to pick up what is sure to be a modern marvel.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Related posts:

1. Street Fighter X Tekken, Street Fighter III: Third Strike Online Edition, More Super Street Fighter IV DLC:Fighting Games Live!
2. Super Street Fighter IV Review – The Fight of the Century
3. Super Street Fighter 4: 3rd Strike: Fight For the Future
4. Super Street Fighter 4: The Reality is a Curse
5. Street Fighter 4: 1.5? What can we expect?