Street Fighter sequel so soon?

An impressive comeback earlier this year sustained Street Fighter IV through seven successive weeks in the UK Top 10, and 12 weeks in the UK Top 20. This makes it bigger than even The Beatles: Rock Band. Perhaps SFIV publishers Capcom are rightly confident in bringing a sequel so soon to market: Super Street Fighter IV anyone?

Like Abba's "Dancing Queen" to those of us who enjoy the very occasional boogie, the appeal of Street Fighter IV for many gamers is a no-brainer. It's one of the greatest hits of all time (if you'll excuse the pun) and you don't need a degree in first-person-shooters or real-time-strategy games to have loads of fun. You've got six buttons with which to smash rivals in the teeth, and the direction pad gives you extra special moves if you can be bothered to learn them. Since they look so amazing, you might even try and succeed. Everyone can play Street Fighter IV though, and have a pretty good idea of what's going on.

One of the reasons for this is that the game's creators tracked back to the core gameplay, stripping out confusing and precariously balanced features that began alienating players after Street Fighter II around 1992. Today's announcement of a ‘Super' sequel has therefore made us as fearful as we are admittedly quite keen.

Our ideal scenario for Street Fighter IV prior to this morning would've been to have the option of downloading additional characters, and preferably series favourites such as Dee Jay and T. Hawk. We won't get into how much we'd be prepared to pay, especially not after Capcom fleeced everyone on the price of additional individual costumes only to then offer them all for a cut price bundle. New characters though are a good idea.

However Capcom hasn't been able to resist falling back into 1990s mode, deciding to make Super Street Fighter IV a full-on sequel that will need to be purchased separately - albeit at a slightly reduced price. Is this wise? Well, our issue here isn't so much about convenience, rather the driving force behind the need for an on-disc retail release. And this would be the added gameplay features.

It may seem strange that we're cringing before such gifts as new Ultra Combos and an enhanced online experience. The reason is that these will be at the expense of the existing online Street Fighter IV community that will need to start from scratch to build reputations.

We can't help thinking that preserving the popularity of Street Fighter IV would've been more wisely handled as download content, allowing Street Fighter IV to remain the name of the game and nothing more.

Will you be prepared to pay for Super Street Fighter IV, or are you perfectly happy with your existing options to enjoy the occasional fight ‘em up? Super Street Fighter IV will be released on PS3 and Xbox 360 in early 2010.