I’ve been a fan of the Street Fighter games for more than half of my life. The first game in the series I ever played was Fighting Street on the TurboGrafx-CD. Despite its crappy two-button controls, narrow selection of playable characters (Ken and Ryu), and a multitude of other “flaws,” I absolutely loved the game, and on some level, I still do.
Ever since then, I’ve picked up every Street Fighter game brought to the home market (with a few exceptions) on the day they’ve been released, but with the release of Street Fighter IV, that long tradition has finally been broken. Though I did feel some pull to pick the game up when it hit stores last Tuesday, I ended up passing on the purchase, and so far I haven't regretted it. I’m sure I’ll end up buying the game eventually, but I’m not entirely certain that’s going to happen this week, or even this year.
What does it take to make a die-hard Street Fighter fan pass on the first major Street Fighter game to be released in almost ten years? Hit the jump to find out.
[Update: A lot of the people who've commented here seem to be under the impression that I have not yet even played SF IV (probably my fault for not mentioning it). So yeah, I have played SF IV... and that's the problem. If I wasn't lucky enough to try the game out before it hit retail, I would have pre-ordered it out of pure loyalty alone. After playing it for about an hour, I came to the conclusion that I didn't need to have it on the first day, hence this post.]
#7 The Economy
Just because I work in game journalism doesn’t mean I don’t have to buy my own games. In the past two weeks, a lot of really kick-ass games were released, and I had to pay for most of them from my own pocket. Ultimate Shooting Collection, LIT, Noby Noby Boy, LocoRoco 2, Prinny: Can I Really Be The Hero?, House of the Dead: Overkill, and Retro Game Challenge are all of the games I paid for in the last three weeks, and though none of them cost $60, put them all together and you have a pretty big chunk of change.
If there was a drought of good games to buy right now, I probably would have picked up SF IV, but that's really no excuse, is it? It's like when you ask someone to hang out, but they say they are really busy and they can't. Busy doing what? Well, busy doing something more important than hanging out with you. The reason why I didn't buy SF IV isn't really because I didn't have enough money; it's because I chose to buy the above games instead of SF IV, which is pretty crazy considering how long I've loved the Street Fighter series.
So why didn’t I hold off on one or more of those games and buy SF IV instead? Well, a lot of that has to do with the fact that ...
#6 I’m still actively playing Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix and Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom
It’s hard to get excited enough to spend $60 on a new game when you already have not one, but two great games that already hold the place in your life that this new game would take.
Street Fighter IV basically has two selling points:
1) It’s got online play
2) It’s introduced some new stuff to the series
As nice as those things are, I kind of have both of those bases already covered. Even though I think Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix looks like ass, I’ve had a blast jumping online every few days just to put my skills to the test against random players. As for Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom, I still can’t believe how much stuff there is to learn in the game. It is by far the “newest” feeling fighting game I’ve played in a long time.
That brings me to point #5 ...
#5 Street Fighter IV doesn't have enough new characters
Or should I say, Street Fighter IV has one new character that's just another Shoto-clone, one that is perhaps the cheapest character in fighting game history, and four other new characters that aren't that compelling.
From that perspective, you can see how I’d perceive Street Fighter IV as a pretty serious downgrade from the last Street Fighter game I bought, Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX (which features thirty-eight different characters, about ten more than SF IV).
Don’t get me wrong -- it’s not the size of the roster that counts, it’s the amount of new gameplay that roster offers. I wasn’t at all disappointed with SF III’s roster, despite the fact that it only featured twelve characters, because ten of those characters were brand new.
By adding just six new characters to the mix, SF IV feels less like a true sequel, and more like a “3D Remix Edition” of Street Fighter Alpha 3, with a few new characters put in, and quite a few old characters taken out.
And speaking of remix editions ...
#4 Street Fighter IV: Championship Edition is inevitable
If I've learned one thing from being a Street Fighter fan over the years, it's that Capcom will put out an improved version of every Street Fighter game they make at least twice before they stop and move on to the next game. They may release new SF IV characters via DLC, but they will also definitely release a new version of SF IV no more than twelve months from now.
And why shouldn’t they? Street Fighter IV has some problems (like Seth) that players are already hoping to see fixed, but more importantly, SF fans have proven over the years that they will buy anything and everything with the Street Fighter name on it. A Street Fighter IV: Championship Edition would make money, and therefore it will be made.
Speaking of making money ...
#3 Fighting games just aren’t as exciting without the arcade
Back in the day, I used to justify buying Street Fighter games as a way to actually save money.
A lot of kids today don’t understand that once upon a time, the better you were at videogames, the less you actually had to spend on playing them. There was a time when you could get really good at Street Fighter, go to the arcade, put one quarter in the game, and play for hours. If you sucked at Street Fighter, you could easily spend $60 a week playing the game in arcades. If you bought the game, got good at it home, then took your skills to the arcade, you'd end up spending a tenth of that, at least.
There was a kind of excitement behind having both your gaming pride and your actual money on the line that made arcade fighting games an experience that can’t be replicated today, online or otherwise. As weird as this may sound, if there were an arcade near my house that had SF IV, I might have looked past all of the the factors that have led to my disinterest in the game and picked it up last Tuesday. Then I could practice at home and put my skills (and quarters) on the line in the arcade with some level of competency.
That kind of compatition and skill honing is probably about 1/3 of why I've always loved Street Fighter. The other 2/3 is because of the way the games look.
That's right ...
#2 I am a 2D graphics whore
Remember when I told you that I bought just about every Street Fighter game that hit the home market? Well, one of the exceptions I made was deciding not to buy games in the Street Fighter EX series. In case you don't know, the SF EX games were a series of spin-off titles that played mostly like Street Fighter II, but added a few new characters, and utilized a 3D graphics engine in order to bring the series into the “modern age of videogames.”
Sound familiar, Street Fighter IV fans?
The SF EX games weren’t bad or anything, but to take Street Fighter and put it in 3D was like taking the crime out of the GTA games, or taking the rolling out of the Katamari series. That's how intrinsic the sprite-based graphics were to Street Fighter's appeal. Along with the first three Metal Slug games, the Street Fighter series was the premiere showcase of what the upper levels what of 2D graphics could achieve. In my opinion, Street Fighter III 3rd Strike is still the best-looking sprite-based videogame ever made. The game is ten years old now, and it still hasn't been topped.
That’s not to say that it couldn’t have looked better. It could have had more detailed sprites, a more unified character design, and some (please, Dudley fans, no hate mail) cooler looking characters. For the past ten years, that's what I’ve been hoping Street Fighter IV would offer, a game that actually looked better than the best looking 2D fighting game of all time.
And that’s not all I was hoping for in Street Fighter IV.
#1 There are one hundred and one things I always dreamed SF IV would be ...
... and the Street Fighter IV that came out last Tuesday isn’t any of them.
When this kind of thing happens to a fanboy (and it happens a lot), I call it the Phantom Menace Syndrome. This is the phenomenon when the excitement felt by the fans about a movie, game, or TV show is so intense that they’ve already created a version of the upcoming entry in the movie, game, or TV show in question in their minds, and nothing can live up to what they've already mentally created.
The Phantom Menace Syndrome has long plagued the Street Fighter series. Many SF II fans were extremely disappointed with SF III, despite its amazing visuals and new gameplay techniques. Their complaints? "Ryu's feet aren't suppose to be that big" and "It doesn't have a cyborg version of Sagat like it's supposed to" were a lot of the things I heard.
Yep, that was one of the rumors back in the late '80s and early '90s: that Sagat was going to appear in SF III as a cyborg, that Ken's son was going to be in the game, that Ryu was going to kill Akuma and become the new villian of the series, etc. Keep in mind that these rumors circulated at a time before Capcom even had a Web site, so videogame news was just as often spread through word of mouth as it was through official press releases.
Back to the point ... here's what I imagined the ideal Street Fighter IV to be:
All the fighting would happen in full 2D, with graphics that surpassed SF III. Beyond just being a fighting game, SF IV would also have a World of Warcraft-style open 3D landscape where you could meet other fighters online for matches, item trading, clan formation, marriage, whatever.
Every Street Fighter character ever would be included in the game, as well as many brand-new characters, and characters from other Capcom games like Final Fight and Rival Schools. Thing is, you’d never play as any of them. Instead, you'd play as yourself (via a create-a-character mode), and from there you'd choose one of the packed-in characters to be your teacher. So if you choose Blanka as your master, your character would then dress and fight like Blanka (green fur and all); if you chose Ibuki, your character would look dress and fight like Ibuki, etc. As you played the game, you'd learn skills from the character you trained under, and could later change your teacher, which, in turn, would change the physical appearance and fighting style of your character.
I know this all sounds like a fanboy-ish dream, but so does the idea of Star Wars Episode One where a young Anakin tears the wings off of flies and talks with James Earl Jones' voice, and Yoda fights evil with lightsaber-infused nunchucks. That still didn’t stop people from deciding way ahead of time that that’s exactly what they wanted The Phantom Menace to be, or stop them from being disappointed when they didn’t get anything like that from the actual movie.
Now, if just one or two of the things I wanted out of Street Fighter IV (2D graphics, a create-a-character mode, etc) were in the game, then I probably would have been satisfied enough to buy it last Tuesday. As it stands, practically none of the things I wanted in Street Fighter IV are in the game.
That's what has caused me to feel like the real Street Fighter IV hasn't been released yet. The Street Fighter IV we have now feels like a placeholder, like the first step towards the creation of another game that will deserve the name of Street Fighter IV.
That’s not to say that the SF IV we have now is a bad game. It’s a perfectly fine game, but it’s far from being one of the best 2D fighting game ever made. In fact, from what I've played of the game so far, it’s not even in my personal top five. That would be OK if we were talking about any other series, but this is Street Fighter we're discussing.
This is the series that started it all.
With Street Fighter, there is no room for “fine.”
Contest:
4:00 PM on 02.22.2009
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![Seven reasons why I haven't bought Street Fighter IV yet [Update] photo](http://bulk2.destructoid.com/ul/122465-sf4header.jpg)
I don't have a PS3 or a 360.
Nice read!
I haven't bought it... Yet.
"So if you choose Blanka as your master, your character would then dress and fight like Blanka (green fur and all), if you chose Ibuki, your character would look..."
=) That was an awesome idea!
SF IV could have been epic. If Capcom had taken a risk...
@ PL- Trust me, I wish I was trying to convince myself. I really, really wanted to want SF IV. Sadly, I just don't.
But I'll be damned if I didn't have a ton of fun with it yesterday.
Someones never played guilty Gear X2 or Blaz Blue...
also, Phantom Menace would have been decent if there was no Jar Jar Binks at all
To me TVC is a different type of CAPCOM fighting game, as in the play differently if you see what I mean, so the two can co-exist together peacefully.
Personally I love the game though :)
I felt really weird about it at first too, thrown off by it. but I don't think it should be written off until people have really given it a good run through for a few hours. After playing it as much as I have lately, I have come to the realization that this is the most logical and perfect step for the series to take.
SFIV is epic and I think Capcom did take a risk by not making another 2D version of Street Fighter. It still plays like 2D and the animation and artwork is absolutely stunning. If they had gone straight 2D, there would be people complaining about them not doing anything different.
The point you made about SFIII introducing all of those new characters doesn't really mean much to me. About 6 of those characters were completely useless and far too wacky for my own tastes.
I also feel that the inclusion of these new characters in SFIV were carefully thought out and they offset the other characters perfectly. It forces you to completely rethink your strategies and adapt to new styles. That is the beauty of the fighting system in this game, that it is dynamic enough to allow for that kind of change while still being completely balanced.
As with the Champion Edition SFIV, why would that be so bad if they released some new characters and updated the game via DLC for $10 in the future? You said so yourself that you bought all the versions of other Street Fighters in the past... what is the difference here?
Sure Capcom wants to make money, who doesn't? If they didn't make money, we wouldn't get games. I think they made the right choice by making SFIV accessible to beginners more so than the other games. I have seen more people buy SFIV that have never even touched a SF game, than with any other version in the past. It is a testament to the care that was put into this game to make it the best Street Fighter Capcom could make. There is so much depth to it, yet new players to the SF world are being drawn into it and learning easily.
I think a lot of veteran SF fans can't handle the change in the fighting system and are too quick to write it off and are too lazy to try to take in the whole experience. It is too easy to just say, "Oh, this is not the SF I remember". Well no... it's not, that's why it has a "IV" at the end of it. It is a logical progression of a series, not a remake.
Also, while I agree that nothing compares to fighting in an arcade, online play in this game is nearly flawless and if you get yourself a good stick, you will feel that old rush minus the money factor.
I think you aren't giving SFIV enough time and respect that it truly deserves. Capcom has created a masterpiece.
Finally, I'm sort of done with fighting games, I feel like I cannot get back into them and as a gamer I'm just not that interested in them. I think I just want a new fighter series. I love Chun-li, Ken, Guile, Dhalism and all the SF characters, but I've hurricane kicked enough people and done way too many shun goku satsu's already. I want something new I guess from my fighters. Nice read Holmes.
I don't know.. I was just saying why I didn't have this yet. Why does everyone on dtoid always assume I'm sniping? I, as in killias2, do not have this because I, as in killias2, do not have a 360 or a PS3.
I think killias was talking about himself when he said he doesn't have a PS3 or 360, or am I wrong?
But my biggest is that I can't compete with fighting game fans, fighting game fanatics where poopsockers before the term even existed, they will drop a bunch of money on a joystick without batting an eye just to gain an advantage, they talk about HCF and down circle and frame data like they're discussing what they had for lunch that day, from an outsider's perspective, its insanity and I cannot compete with that nor I do want to.
So that leaves me with arcade mode which suffers from horrible button reading A.I and a cheapass final boss, not a hard choice to skip it really.
And anyways, you arent a true Street Fighter fan if you arent excited about 4. This is the best game SINCE 2.
And no offense at all(seriously, it's an awesome article), but why is this not in the c-blogs? Again, I mean no offense by that statement, I'm genuinely curious.
People don't buy the sticks for an advantage. I can beat a stick user with the 360 d-pad any day.
Some people just prefer to have it be an experience as close to the arcade version a possible and Street Fighter is best experienced with a stick. I do not believe however, that anyone should look at the stick as an advantage. That is an excuse for your own inability to win.
Exactly!
Also, I second Buster's statement.
I'm kinda bummed with SFIV too, but I figure that once thirty other version are released, I'll just get the best one. I mean, tons of things were added to different SFII and Alpha games. I'm sure that it'll be much more enticing later on when we've got some SFIII guys or whatever.
I was one of those people, I wrote it off and then later came to discover how absolutely amazing it is. I realized that it was a logical progression, just like SFIV is.
I just think it's a shame that a lot of people seem to be doing the same thing to SFIV. It's only been out for what... 5 days? Give it some time, not everyone understood the direction SFIII was heading right away, especially in the first 5 days of its existence.
You realize you're the guy who hasn't seen The Dark Knight yet because you're still watching Batman The Animated Series DVDs? This isn't some GBA port of an old game, dude. This is the real thing.
You can't afford it, fine. I saved and this game is my game budget for the rest of the spring (getting married in summer, gotta save money), but the pale "I already bought these games" line makes me think you never cared in the first place.
This is all fine, and you're entitled to your opinion, but know you just turned in your Street Fighter fan card with this post.
Also double fail on some of your excuses for not buying it being; Noby Noby Boy, Loco Roco 2, Retro Game, and House of the Dead...Seriously, do you think that you have you're priorities straight?
I'll grant you that SF 2 Turbo HD Remix is a plausible reason for not picking it up yet, but honestly, saying you're a fan and saying that you're not getting this game for at least ayear? Tsk tsk tsk.
I don't have an Arcade stick and I only have an Xbox 360.
Also, I suck at fighting games.
A lot.
Considering your reasons, I can tell that you haven't played SFIV yet.
He means 2D when a game's roots lie in 2D. Dead Rising has always been 3D, and Street Fighter is primarily 2D.
IMO, anyone that decided they didn't enjoy the prequel trilogy because it wasn't made to order "shoulda'd" their way out of enjoying some pretty bad ass, Crono Trigger-esque good times. I could talk for hours on that topic alone, so I'll stop there.
What I've experienced while actually playing SFIV is, honestly, a remarkably similar since of wonder and excitement to what I felt playing SFII (any version) in the arcades. At first start, it felt sluggish, but once I've played more of IV than HDREMIX, that's not even remotely a concern anymore.
Certainly, there are many repeat characters, but everything old is new again! Chun Li is tweaked just enough to feel like a new character with a few familiar moves. The new characters are very new and control as far from clones as possible. And Gouken move just far enough away from clone within the style (fun fact, he has no standard dragon uppercut) to feel fresh.
I would implore you to not get hung up on 3D vs 2D nomenclature. Capcom's done a stellar job of making this feel truly 2D control wise, and the style is great eye candy. This is not EX, and comparisons, once you've played IV, should be regrettable.
I mean, tell yourself what ever you need to if you don't have it in the budget to dive-in right now. But dude, seriously, this feels so legit its not even funny.
I'm thinking Capcom might go down the DLC route this time around, rather than Championship Editions - it would more business sense imo.
And yeah, you're clearly kidding yourself - just buy the game already!
What? I was never on the defensive. I was just saying that I don't own this because I don't own the system. I wasn't trying to criticize or anything....
It's not on the WII.
:D
@ Ice Max- I have played Guilty Gear X2 and Blaz Blue, and they look great, but I don't think those games even use sprites. They graphics look like scanned drawings, too high res for pixels.
@ Steel Squrill- It didn't mean to imply I thought it would be bad if Capcom releases a SF IV:CE. In fact, if they don't, I'll be extremely disappointed, because that's part of what I'm waiting for.
@ John Solgrim- A big part of why I bought House of the Dead:Overkill over SF IV is that I'm reviewing Hotd:Overkill for this here website (review should be up tomorrow). If had the opportunity to review SF IV for Dtoid, but I had to buy the game in order to do so, I definitely would have. Unfortunately for me, Nick got dibs on the review way before it hit retail.
As for my level of SF fandom, I'd say I'm a huge fan. I have all the Udon SF comics, most of the SF art books, and every other SF game other than SF: The movie game, the SF EX games, and SF IV.
Like I said though, a huge part of why I love SF is the 2D graphics. SF IV graphics are certainly nice, but if the game looked like SF III, I would have bough the game day one.
@ Usedtabe- This isn't a Cblog because I ran it by Anthony and asked if it would work as a feature, and he said that it would. Otherwise, it would be a cblog.
And no offense taken.
@ Everyone saying that I need to play more of the game to appreciate it- I hope you guys are right.
Anyone want to let me borrow their copy for a few weeks?