With 'Street Fighter IV' coming to consoles “this winter” the Capcom promotional machine has kicked into high gear. Leading way with the game’s advertising is an entertaining and remarkable print campaign. Each advert features shots of game’s characters in action and accompanied by one of several bold strap-lines.

The ads are playful, mischievous, very funny and packed to the brim with the arcade nostalgia that this title is gorging upon. Slogans such as “Return of the 15ft Pimpslap”, “To Haduoken or not to Haduoken” and “Reach Out and Punch Somebody” capture that cartoon violence and essence of fun that remains utterly unique within the Beat ‘Em Up genre, perhaps only successfully appropriated by the 'Super Smash Bros.' series.

These adverts personify in the most definitive way the accelerating trend toward genuinely creative and stimulating game advertising. The ingenuity of these particular examples may also be unprecedented within the print medium. Finally videogame advertising is cutting that umbilical cord between it and the movie advertising. These ads feature no grand panoramic screenshot or title card with a review score from IGN and a glowing strap line asserting its seasonal significance. This campaign understands the medium (a print ad referring to a videogame), the qualities of the product promoted (fun, classic franchise rerealised) and most importantly what its target audience wants to see (all these qualities exemplified with a minimum of pretention).

All of these ads are charged with a witty and engaging intertextualism. Rather than putting the nature of the end experience into literal terms these ads use a myriad of cultural references, from within and without videogames, to involve the audience and give them a kind of cultural interactivity with Street Fighter as a brand that will inform their expectations of the end product. Again, this is not textually explicit but instead a clever method of informing consumers by way of association. Of course the success of this technique depends entirely on the audience “getting” the reference and understanding - albeit subconsciously – the relationship. Capcom will have to carefully pick which advert goes into which publication lest their communication should fall outside certain readers fields of experience . The “Down, Down-Right, Right, P” tagline springs out as the most overt example of this.

If videogame advertising is to define its own position within the wider spectrum of different advertising styles then it needs to overcome the challenges of communicating physical interactivity through non interactive media. The style of these adverts manages it exceedingly well, even if in a round-about, postmodern literary way.

The Beat ‘Em Up genre in general is in decline. Its arcade roots are becoming less relevant to both the technology and demands of modern gamers and as such producers of such titles must look to ever more narrowly defined niches and angles by which to promote and position their games. Through positioning this title on its nostalgic appeal Capcom stands a good chance of giving it the unique selling point it needs in order to be relevant to gamers and ergo a commercial success.