Street Fighter IV

Street Fighter IV (Arcade)

Is this the Greatest Comeback in the History of Videogames or Just Another 2D Fighter? We search our soul for the truth and our pockets for more 50ps.

People stand to play arcade games in the UK. They sit in Japan. It costs us 50p for a credit, in Japan it’s 100 Yen – so about the same. The very idea of pumping small change into a videogame cabinet is becoming old hat wherever you live. But Street Fighter is, and always has been, a different animal.

Apparently, because I was oblivious to this living in Rochdale, the arcade business was in poor shape in Japan c. 1991. Folks had grown tired of racing and shooting against the computer, or playing the lone ninja-lante against impossible odds. Then Street Fighter II arrived and it was like the new rock and roll. Not long after that, everybody was kung-fu fighting. This momentum would carry Street Fighter and all its pretenders through approximately seven glorious years. 2D fight ’em ups peaked in ’99 with Street Fighter III Third Strike. We doubt you’ll find many that will argue.

10 years down the line, all eyes are on Street Fighter IV to bring about a similar renaissance in Japan. But perhaps the best that it can achieve is to be recognised as a pretty damn entertaining fighter and not suck in the slightest. If Street Fighter IV is ‘broken’ – to use fighter-fans’ parlance – that’ll be Street Fighter grabbing its coat.

Well, so far so good. Street Fighter IV is now in Japanese game centres gobbling coins like there’s no recession. Or perhaps because of the recession, who knows. Point is the world’s most critical players are enjoying the finding-out process until now and evidently discovering enough to keep them coming back for more.

Hence yours truly visited Capcom last Friday to sit down at the Japanese Street Fighter IV cabinets installed in the basement to try and appreciate what could be the kind of comeback last seen in Rocky Balboa.

SFIV is colourful and crazy-looking for starters, and this is good. Catch a glimpse of SFIV running in a store front window and most kids would be curious to know why a green monster was attacking a fireball throwing giant, or be held mesmerised by a Chinese lady who can turn upside down and use her power legs as a helicopter. Then there’s the stretchy Yoga guy, the brightly-painted sumo guy, and the…

SFIV will be intimidating as hell for anyone nervous about videogames! But it is a loud hailer for teenage thrill seekers with time to kill. The game is intended to be fun and this is blindingly obvious; compared to the Soulcalibur IV’s pseudo-medieval clan, the Street Fighter crew looks straight out of Hanna-Barbera. Street Fighter IV doesn’t need Darth Vader or Yoda to have instant appeal.

But what to do about that muscular control system? The six button plus joystick configuration remains – always a mountain to climb for absolute beginners and completely crap when transported to a standard PlayStation or Xbox controller. Although Capcom gamely agrees with supportive journos about SFIV’s mission to attract newcomers to the genre, in truth this is about appeasing the hardcore – guys who never hung up their mitts or lapsed 30-somethings who remember the good old days of Street Fighter II. The true home for SFIV is the arcade, or in living rooms where a specialist six button plus joystick controller is allowed to eat up space.

My personal view, in case you’re interested, is that I love Street Fighter IV. I could’ve sat there until the small hours learning how to apply the new Focus technique while getting acquainted with the SFIV debuts of Crimson Viper, Rufus, Abel and El Fuerte. It was gratifying to hear from the assembled Street Fighter professors that SFIV, in losing some of the features of Street Fighter III, has returned to a game of distance and timing. The Focus technique can be seen as a simple way to land a heavy strike or a very complex key to unlocking new kinds of combination attacks. In terms of success this makeover is on par with Robert Downey Jr’s recent Iron Man performance.

But will it be seen this way? Will hundreds of thousands of adolescents decide that Street Fighter IV matters just the same or even more than GTAIV? Learning a move that requires “toward, down, down-toward + punch” is almost Shakespearean to a kid raised on a decade of simple move and shoot or drive and dodge commands. But the fans might argue: how else are you going to get poetry in motion?