FEATURE

Arcade Perfect: Street Fighter IV

Edge Staff's picture

By Edge Staff

January 10, 2009

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It’s time to resurrect a phrase we used to be familiar with: Street Fighter IV looks like being an arcade-perfect conversion. Visually, it’s identical. More importantly, its controls and moves are as smooth as the original.

With that out of the way, it’s time to look at what Capcom’s bringing in the way of extras. Aside from extended singleplayer, the main point of interest is the expanded roster. So far announced are Dan Hibiki, Rose, Cammy, Gen, Fei Long and Sakura – as well as Gouken and Seth, who were present in the arcade, but CPU-controlled.

The first four aren’t playable in Capcom’s latest demo code, but Gouken and Sakura demonstrate the distinctive touch SFIV is bringing to the shotokan fighters. This designation describes any character’s style that roughly mirrors that of Ken and Ryu, with fireballs, dragon punches, hurricane kicks and variants thereof. Street Fighter Alpha in particular suffered from an overabundance of indistinguishable shotokan fighters, but here each exponent has a definite style.

Gouken’s fireballs can shoot at three angles, while his hurricane kick is a lethal five- or six-hitter up close that leaves him terribly exposed if it’s missed. Sakura’s fireball is as limp as ever, but her dragon punch travels a great distance, landing multiple hits, while her hurricane kick is angled, making it trickier to defend against. It’s in the little differences between Street Fighter’s most overwhelming characteristics that you can see the depth of this game’s attention to detail.

The good news is that this is every bit the equal of the arcade original. The bad news? No, there is no bad news.

glennsurname29's picture

I hope the handling characteristics are gonna be like street fighter to turbo, the epitome of the entire series! plus what append to the dragon punch being relegated to tiger uppercut after turbo? "you must defeat Shenglong to stand a chance", well after turbo, shenglong gets beaten by weak punch or kick...like a tiger uppercut!(bearing in mind that dragon punch is supposed to be only vulnerable on the way down and invincble on the way up!)
I used to eat sleep and dream street fighter back in the 90s i hope they make a return to solid fighting foundations instead of like S F3 double impact/third strike having introducing to many pointless frames of animation that lets be honest was nice to look at, but slowed down the action and allowed the opposition to read you like a first years primary school book(in other words all the extra frames "broadcast" your very intentions! I lamented the direction the series was taken!

Jesse_Dylan_Watson's picture

For those in the US, and brave Europeans, Circuit City is selling the PS3 version for $49.99 as a pre-order, and they'll give you a $10 gift card immediately on top of that. (Actually, they put your pre-order in for $39.99 and then make you buy the $10 gift card.)

syztemlord's picture

I'm making my own stick, pretty easy to do and cheaper!

Akuma's picture

I'll be playing this with a PS3 pad. I can't afford an arcade stick, the 360's d-pad is awful, and my one is at death's door anyhow.

James Woods's picture

How about the lack of a good arcade stick on the 360? That's bad news.

Invader Phlegm's picture

So I guess that somehow, this does not count as a good arcade stick for the 360?

Or maybe this one . . .

savagehenry's picture

These Sticks are about as good as it gets. In my opinion, I'm thinking about getting a Tournament Edition version of this which premium parts that are the same as those in the arcade cabinets.. But the come in at the premium price of £150.

There is also a standard one that is slightly cheaper at £70 and doesn't have premium parts(so it says on amazon)I would imagine would be just as good though, although may not take quite as much of a beating.

thebrassthief's picture

Hori already makes a fine arcade stick for the 360. That, and MadCatz is coming out with a GREAT SF4 stick.