To further celebrate Mortal Kombat week, Steve and Jon discuss their favorite Fatalities, and after the triumphant return of Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, we pose the question; “What other 2D classics or not so classics are ripe for a full on 3D rebirth?”

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Well, I finally caved and did it.  I bought a fight stick.  I have officially bid farewell to the fightpad.  This is a major move.  Things are going to change forever.  Gulp.

A few observations thus far:

1.  That GameStop 50% extra trade-in sale realy isn’t too shabby.  The stick itself (the Marvel vs. Capcom tournament edition) was hugely expensive at $140, but if you’ve been wanting to make the plunge and you’ve got a pile of games sitting around, consider heading over to your local GameStop.  The bonus trade-in credit brings the values to almost bearable and you should be able to take a monster chunk out of the asking price.

2.  Er, it’s not easy making the jump from pad to stick.   I played virtually all of my Street Fighter back in the day on home consoles, so didn’t get much practice with the arcade sticks.   If that’s you and you’re looking ot upgrade your fighting game peripherals, know this: there’s a steep learing curve.  I’m a Zangief guy and while it’s a lot easier to piledrive someone, I get harassed by quicker characters because I’m still working out button location and stick reaction.  Hopefully in a few weeks or so I’ll have committed much of this stuff to muscle memory.  They key is, I suppose, not to get frustrated.   Which isn’t easy when some Cammy player won’t leave you alone.

3.  The stick really is cool.  The tournament edition I scored is huge and weighty and responds well to my inputs.    Any lack of winning is completely on the user end.   

4.  I can not wait for Super Street Fighter IV.  I was wavering a bit here because I felt I had maxed out what I could do on the fightpad, but the stick offers new opportunities to raise my game.  Hopefully.  Anyway, look it’s Dudley!

Gamestop has Street Fighter 4, the greatest fighting game ever made, on sale for the ridiculous amount of $20.

Now there is no excuse for you not to go online and get yourself acquainted with my spinning piledriver, unless of course you’re an El Fuerte player, then stay the @#$% away.

So I’ve been logging some serious online multiplayer hours with Street Fighter 4.  This is kind of new for me as my only other online exploits tend to be the co-op based functionality of Halo 3 or Gears of War 2.  I tend not to be an antogonisitic multiplayer guy.

Street Fighter 4 and my undying love affair with hitting opponents with Zangief’s Ultimate Atomic Buster changed all that.  I’m hooked on multiplayer versus, but with this new addiction has come the rage-inducing cheapness of the early disconnect.

This is surely old news to most of you fragaholics, but the early quitters have become an enormous source of irritation for me.  I’m typically an easygoing guy and sure I’ll get upset during the course of my Street Fighter 4 playing, especially when some cheap-o Ryu player spams fireballs and short dragon punches all day, but there is no purer distaste I feel for my fellow man than when they crap their pants and quit the game when I’m on the path to a sure victory.

It doesn’t happen all the time though when it does I’m usually in desperate need of a win to break a losing streak.  And with Zangief’s ultra combo–the great equalizer–the animation is so long that my cowardly opponent has plenty of time to head for the hills.  Hey, it’s a hard life playing the ‘Gief when every other player chooses Ryu or Sagat or some other infernal projectile-chucker, making the hard-fought wins especially savory.

Once in a while I’ll send a “nice quitting job!” taunt instant message, but who knows the psychos on the other end of the line?  I mean if he’s the kind of person to quit a Street Fighter match early, then it’s not far off to surmise he has the means and the willpower to track me down and murder my cat.

And why is that I take it all so seriously?  In games like Call of Duty 4 and Rainbow Six Vegas multiplayer wins actually lead to practical in-game awards, right?  With Street Fighter 4, it’s just a fluctuating “Battle Points” score that does absolutely nothing save make you feel good about yourself.  Yet losing out on BP is enough to stick in my craw enough that my wife will frequently say “It sounds like you’re having a heart attack.”

Ah, the entertaining wonder of gaming!

Chapter 1: The Beginning

One-on-one fighting games were nothing new in the late 80’s. People had already dumped a legion of coins into Konami’s Yie-Ar Kung Fu and Data East’s Karate Champ. Using these games as a starting point, Capcom producers Takashi Nishiyama and Hiroshi Matsumoto would bring Street Fighter to Japanese arcades in August of 1987. A US release would soon follow, and while it wasn’t a blockbuster by any stretch, Street Fighter’s success would bring the fighting game to the forefront of the gaming scene for over half a decade.

Street Fighter wasn’t a perfect game by any stretch. Yie-Ar Kung Fu’s controls were relatively smooth by comparison, and the computer opponents were ridiculously difficult. What SF had going for it was large character graphics and a six-button setup that added a variety of attack options not seen up to this point. It was a difficult game to learn, but could be very rewarding. Players had only two choices depending on which coin slot they chose, series icon, Ryu was the first player, while Ken, a simple palette swap of Ryu, would take the role of player 2. 10 other characters appeared, many of whom will be familiar to SF veterans, (Gen and Birdie would later appear in the “Alpha” series, and the final boss was the beastly Thai kickboxer, Sagat.) Ryu and Ken already possessed some of their signature special moves at this point, the dragon punch, hurricane kick,and fireball were included, though neither appeared in any documentation on or around the cabinet, and were notoriously difficult to pull off in the heat of combat.

Ryu in classic fashion.

My first encounter with Street Fighter came in the winter of ‘88, at a local arcade. Having played a lot of Yie-Ar Kung fu on my C64 at home, the detailed graphics and animation instantly appealed to me. It was an expensive play, two tokens instead of one, and it was the version with the novelty oversized two-button setup – whereby the strength of punches and kicks was governed by how hard you slammed those big-ass red and blue buttons. I made it a round or two in before the game utterly destroyed me, but I was hooked at this point. It was on one play through, after becoming severely frustrated with Sagat, that I accidentally discovered the Dragon Punch (and won the match in dramatic fashion!) Every subsequent playthrough became a test in replicating that damn punch. For the next few weeks that machine would be the only rig I touched, until the P2 buttons gave out – probably destroyed by pre-teens like myself wailing away in frustration. I know I hit those bastards really damn hard.

I didn’t have to wait too long to get my fix. The Turbo Graphx 16 popped up around town in the fall of ’89, and there was one under my Christmas tree that year, alongside the CD add-on and four or five titles. Among the pile was a fighter called “Fighting Street”. The logo on the cover was nondescript, and the artwork not even vaguely familiar. The screenshots on the back looked pretty bland and pixilated,  but as soon as I booted the disc, there was no mistaking it. The TG-16 version was a surprisingly solid port. The games colorful graphics were pretty much intact, the remastered music was fantastic, and the controller made the special moves a little easier to pull off. On top of that – the TG version “sort of” emulated the pressure sensitive two button layout of the arcade version, the longer you held the buttons on the controller, the harder your attack power (it was damn hard to pull off medium strikes). I never did get to fire it up in multiplayer, the damn TG-16 only had one controller port, but I played the hell out of that game for what felt like 5 years (it was actually about 2, as my TG CD-Rom died shortly before the launch of the SNES in 1991.)

Street Fighter comes home, sort of…

Street Fighter came and went without too much fanfare, but there was definitely demand for a sequel. In 1989, Capcom began showing a new arcade title at trade shows called “Street Fighter ‘89”. Instead of one character, you chose between three, and instead of one-on-one vs. matches, you were tasked with wiping out an entire gang a la Double Dragon. When the game finally hit arcades, the name was changed simply to “Final Fight”.

A taste of things to come…

A year later in 1990, Street Fighter spawned it’s first “true” sequel, in the form of an NES title called Street Fighter 2010: The Final Fight. This bizarre offshoot had players fight through a series of planets as a cyborg version of Ken, complete with crew cut and sunglasses. It was ridiculously difficult, and now languishes in obscurity, which is entirely suitable. I’m curious as to how many other people my age blew months worth of allowance, pathetic wages or scrounged change on that piece of crap.

Few live to remember it either… thank God.

Meanwhile, Final Fight was ripping up the arcades, and the chief creators, Akira Nishitani and Akira Yasuda, were gearing up for their next project. They were getting ready to drop a bombshell on the video game world.

To Be Continued…

The Charge
This is going to be one hell of a fight.

Opening Statement
Capcom returns to its bread-and-butter, unleashing the first true Street Fighter sequel in over 10 years. The mechanics are old-school, the plane is 2D and most of the fighters still aren’t wearing shoes–so why is it the greatest fighting game I’ve ever played?

Facts of the Case
Okay, let’s see. Apparently Bison died or something and reincarnates in a body but is also involved with building a new, more powerful being with an opening in his gut for him to inhabit, Krang-like. This sounds a little strange, perhaps. However, I will bet my money (party bets) that whatever Krang-like creatures sets up house in his gut will be nothing to mess with. In fact, staying very far away from this creature would be a good idea.

There’s another tournament and our fighters enter for various reasons, but ultimately they’ll have to square off with this guy Seth, who sounds less like a malevolent bringer of destruction and more like the starting fullback in a small Adirondack regional high school.

Blah blah blah ha-dou-ken!!!

The Evidence

So yeah, the story of Street Fighter IV makes little sense, but that’s not the point. Journeying through the game’s story mode really only serves two purposes: 1) to give you the opportunity to hone your fighting skills so you don’t get consistently horsewhipped in the online arena and 2) to grant Capcom the smirking satisfaction of subjecting players to yet another painfully cheap-ass final boss (though, in fairness, Seth is a far cry from the current title-holder of Cheapest F—— Final Boss, Gill from Street Fighter III).

As soon as you take this game for a spin, and would consider yourself even a mild Street Fighter aficionado, I have no doubt you’ll feel right at home, nestled in the warm embrace of quarter-circle D-pad motions. Unless of course you’re using the 360 D-pad, then you’ll be nestled in the embrace of an ill-tempered porcupine (if you have the 360 version and can find the Capcom fightpad –which I use and love–or the sticks, get them).

Gameplay is startlingly familiar. Were you a beast with Ken or Ryu or (shudder) Dan back in the day? You’ll be raining down Dragon Punches with ease. How was your spinning piledriver motion? Zangief players will have zero problem driving their opponents head into the pavement. Capcom has maintained the brilliant simplicity of Street Fighter II, making it accessible for newbies and easy to pick-up for rusty veterans.

And for the harder-core virtual pugilists, the addition of the Focus Attack (a charge move that can shield against some attacks) adds another layer of depth to master. Two gauges accompany, the Revenge Meter, which builds as you take damage and allows you to unleash a kick-ass special move to equalize the fight, and an EX meter, which you can tap into access special versions of the special moves or let max out and blast out a Super Combo.

My experience online has been virtually lag-free and the talent pool is varied. One moment I’ll be piledriving like crazy, the next some Ryu savant will smoke me. Offline offers challenges to unlock colors, icons, personal actions and titles. It’s a nice distraction but taking on humans is what this game is all about; if multiplayer isn’t your bag, this game may not have the lifespan.

Graphically, Street Fighter IV is a stunner. Though the fights take place on a 2D plane, the characters are 3D and they’re beautifully rendered. They’re highly detailed, well-animated and emotive (I can’t get enough of the wide-eyed “Oh crap!” expression on opponents as Zangief winds up for an Ultra Combo, especially if said opponent is that douchebag Sagat). Backgrounds are full 3D and great-looking, stocked with characters that react to the fight. The soundtrack is fine, reminiscent of the vintage themes, but not as memorable–for good or ill–as the Street Fighter III score. That opening rap song makes me want to claw out my eardrums with Vega’s claw, though.

The Rebuttal Witnesses
The training option really does kind of blow. It’s simple sparring against a CPU bot. Good to practice your thumb gymnastics, but you won’t learn anything, unless by accident.

Closing Statement
I made my pixel bones on Street Fighter II and my hype for this installment was stratospheric. It’s a testament to Capcom, that my expectations were eclipsed. It’s my all-time favorite fighting game, and brother, I’ve played a lot.

The Verdict

Platform:Xbox360/Playstation 3
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Release Date: February 17, 2009
Rated: T for Teen