If you want your fighters to look cool in swanky new outfits, Capcom says it’s gonna cost ya! Not an awful lot, though.

Used to be that to unlock an extra costume in a fighting game that all you needed to do was press a different button. At the very most you’d perform some impossible feat to earn yourself a pair of shades or a squirrel to sit on your shoulder. For Street Fighter IV, however, publisher Capcom is asking fans to spend real-world achievement points, i.e. some of your wages, on alternate costumes for the game.

One size doesn’t fit all, by the way, as there are five themed packs to cover the full roster. And to make things even more desperate, you’ll have to wait for these to arrive in instalments:

Brawler Pack, 17 February
Costumes for: Zangeif, E.Honda, Rufus, El Furete, and Abel.

Femme Fatale Pack, 24 February
Costumes for: Chun-Li, Cammy, Sakura, Rose, and C.Viper.

Shoruken Pack, 3 March
Costumes for: Ryu, Ken, Akuma, Gouken, and Dan.

Shadowloo Pack, 10 March
Costumes for: Seth, M.Bison, Sagat, Balrog, and Vega.

Classic Pack. 17 March
Costumes for: Guile, Dhalsim, Fei-Long, Blanka, and Gen.

Each theme pack costs 320 Microsoft points for Xbox 360 or £2.72 on PlayStation 3. The Street Fighter forums are going nuclear about this at the moment. We absolutely don’t recommend that you go anywhere near there.

On a brighter note, Capcom has also announced a freebie Championship Mode expansion pack that will be available to download soon after the game is launched on 20 February. It includes the following good stuff, in Capcom’s official lingo:

Replay Mode
Record, upload, and download top matches to share with the Street Fighter IV community. Players can analyse top tiered fighters matches, leave voter feedback for others, and share their own triumphant victories.

New Points System
Two new points systems to measure your skill (Championship and Tournament Points)

Enhanced Tournament Matching System
Skill level matching system offers improved tournament match making for beginners and mid-level players. Competitors earn Grade Points (GP) to earn entry into more advanced tournaments.

Despite the surprise extra costs, that we guess you can take or leave, we remain desperately looking forward to Street Fighter IV. Along with everybody else over the age of 30, or so it would appear.