I’ve been a fan of theStreet Fightergames for more than half of my life. The first game in the series I ever played wasFighting Streeton the TurboGrafx-CD. Despite its crappy two-button controls, narrow selection of playable characters (Ken and Ryu), and a multitude of other “flaws,” I absolutely loved the game, and on some level, I still do.
Ever since then, I’ve picked up everyStreet Fightergame brought to the home market (with afew exceptions) on the day they’ve been released, but with the release ofStreet Fighter IV, that long tradition has finally been broken. Though I did feel some pull to pick the game up when it hit stores last Tuesday, I ended up passing on the purchase, and so far I haven’t regretted it. I’m sure I’ll end up buying the game eventually, but I’m not entirely certain that’s going to happen this week, or even this year.
What does it take to make a die-hardStreet Fighterfan pass on the first majorStreet Fightergame to be released in almost ten years? Hit the jump to find out.
[Update: A lot of the people who’ve commented here seem to be under the impression that I have not yet even played SF IV (probably my fault for not mentioning it). So yeah, I have played SF IV… and that’s the problem. If I wasn’t lucky enough to try the game out before it hit retail, I would have pre-ordered it out of pure loyalty alone. After playing it for about an hour,I came to the conclusion that I didn’t need to have it on the first day, hence this post.]
#7 The Economy
Just because I work in game journalism doesn’t mean I don’t have to buy my own games. In the past two weeks, a lot of really kick-ass games were released, and I had to pay for most of them from my own pocket.Ultimate Shooting Collection,LIT,Noby Noby Boy,LocoRoco 2,Prinny: Can I Really Be The Hero?,House of the Dead: Overkill, andRetro Game Challengeare all of the games I paid for in the last three weeks, and though none of them cost $60, put them all together and you have a pretty big chunk of change.
If there was a drought of good games to buy right now, I probably would have picked upSF IV, but that’s really no excuse, is it?It’s likewhen you ask someone to hang out, but they say they are really busy and they can’t. Busy doing what? Well, busy doing something more important than hanging out with you. The reason why I didn’t buySF IVisn’t really because I didn’t have enough money; it’s because I chose to buy the above gamesinsteadofSF IV, which is pretty crazy considering how long I’ve loved theStreet Fighterseries.
So why didn’t I hold off on one or more of those games and buySF IVinstead? Well, a lot of that has to do with the fact that …
#6 I’m still actively playingSuper Street Fighter II Turbo HD RemixandTatsunoko Vs. Capcom
It’s hard to get excited enough to spend $60 on a new game when you already have not one, but two great games that already hold the place in your life that this new game would take.
- It’s got online play
- It’s introducedsomenew stuff to the series
As nice as those things are, I kind of have both of those bases already covered. Even though I thinkSuper Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remixlooks like ass,I’ve had a blast jumping online every few days just to put my skills to the test against random players. As forTatsunoko Vs. Capcom, I still can’t believe how much stuff there is to learn in the game. It is by far the “newest” feeling fighting game I’ve played in a long time.
That brings me to point #5 …
#5Street Fighter IVdoesn’t have enough new characters
Or should I say,Street Fighter IVhas one new character that’s just another Shoto-clone, one that is perhaps the cheapest character in fighting game history, and four other new characters that aren’t that compelling.
From that perspective, you can see how I’d perceiveStreet Fighter IVas a pretty serious downgrade from the lastStreet Fightergame I bought,Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX(which features thirty-eight different characters, about ten more thanSF IV).
Don’t get me wrong — it’s not the size of the roster that counts, it’s the amount of new gameplay that roster offers. I wasn’t at all disappointed withSF III’s roster, despite the fact that it only featured twelve characters, becausetenof those characters were brand new.
By adding just six new characters to the mix,SF IVfeels less like a true sequel, and more like a “3D Remix Edition” ofStreet Fighter Alpha 3, with a few new characters put in, and quite a few old characters taken out.
And speaking of remix editions …
#4Street Fighter IV: Championship Editionis inevitable
If I’ve learned one thing from being aStreet Fighterfan over the years, it’s that Capcom will put out an improved version of everyStreet Fightergame they makeat leasttwice before they stop and move on to the next game.They may release newSF IVcharacters via DLC, but they will also definitely release a new version ofSF IVno more than twelve months from now.
And why shouldn’t they?Street Fighter IVhas some problems (like Seth) that players are already hoping to see fixed, but more importantly,SFfans have proven over the years that they will buy anything and everything with theStreet Fightername on it. AStreet Fighter IV: Championship Editionwould make money, and therefore it will be made.
Speaking of making money …
#3 Fighting games just aren’t as exciting without the arcade
Back in the day, I used to justify buyingStreet Fightergames as a way to actuallysavemoney.
A lot of kids today don’t understand that once upon a time, the better you were at videogames, the less you actually had to spend on playing them. There was a time when you could get really good atStreet Fighter, go to the arcade, put one quarter in the game, and play for hours. If you sucked atStreet Fighter, you could easily spend $60 a week playing the game in arcades. If you bought the game, got good at it home, then took your skills to the arcade, you’d end up spending a tenth of that, at least.
There was a kind of excitement behind having both your gaming pride and your actual money on the line that made arcade fighting games an experience that can’t be replicated today, online or otherwise. As weird as this may sound, if there were an arcade near my house that hadSF IV, I might have looked past all of the the factors that have led to my disinterest in the game and picked it up last Tuesday. Then I could practice at home and put my skills (and quarters) on the line in the arcade with some level of competency.
That kind of compatition and skill honing is probably about 1/3 of why I’ve always lovedStreet Fighter. The other 2/3 is because of the way the games look.
That’s right …
#2 I am a 2D graphics whoreRemember when I told you that I bought just about everyStreet Fightergame that hit the home market? Well, one of the exceptions I made was deciding not to buy games in theStreet Fighter EXseries. In case you don’t know, theSF EXgames were a series of spin-off titles that played mostly likeStreet Fighter II,but added a few new characters, and utilized a 3D graphics engine in order to bring the series into the “modern age of videogames.”
Sound familiar,Street Fighter IVfans?
TheSF EXgames weren’t bad or anything, but to takeStreet Fighterand put it in 3D was like taking the crime out of theGTAgames, or taking the rolling out of theKatamariseries. That’s how intrinsic the sprite-based graphics were toStreet Fighter‘s appeal. Along with the first threeMetal Sluggames, theStreet Fighterserieswasthe premiere showcase of what the upper levels what of 2D graphics could achieve. In my opinion,Street Fighter III 3rd Strikeis still the best-looking sprite-based videogame ever made. The game is ten years old now, and it still hasn’t been topped.
That’s not to say that it couldn’t have looked better. It could have had more detailed sprites, a more unified character design, and some (please, Dudley fans, no hate mail) cooler looking characters. For the past ten years, that’s what I’ve been hopingStreet Fighter IVwould offer, a game that actually looked better than the best looking 2D fighting game of all time.
And that’s not all I was hoping for inStreet Fighter IV.
#1 There are one hundred and one things I always dreamedSF IVwould be …
… and theStreet Fighter IVthat came out last Tuesday isn’t any of them.
When this kind of thing happens to a fanboy (and it happens a lot), I call it thePhantom MenaceSyndrome. This is the phenomenon when the excitement felt by the fans about a movie, game, or TV show isso intensethat they’ve already created a version of the upcoming entry in the movie, game, or TV show in questionin their minds, andnothingcan live up to what they’ve already mentally created.
ThePhantom MenaceSyndrome has long plagued theStreet Fighterseries. ManySF IIfans were extremely disappointed withSF III, despite its amazing visuals and new gameplay techniques. Their complaints? “Ryu’s feet aren’t suppose to be that big” and “It doesn’t have a cyborg version of Sagat like it’s supposed to” were a lot of the things I heard.
Yep, that was one of the rumors back in the late ’80s and early ’90s: that Sagat was going to appear inSF IIIas a cyborg, that Ken’s son was going to be in the game, that Ryu was going to kill Akuma and become the new villian of the series, etc. Keep in mind that these rumors circulated at a time before Capcom even had a Web site, so videogame news was just as often spread through word of mouth as it was through official press releases.
Back to the point … here’s what I imagined the idealStreet Fighter IVto be:
All the fighting would happen in full 2D, with graphics that surpassedSF III. Beyond just being a fighting game,SF IVwould also have aWorld of Warcraft-style open 3D landscape where you could meet other fighters online for matches, item trading, clan formation, marriage, whatever.
EveryStreet Fightercharactereverwould be included in the game, as well as many brand-new characters,andcharacters from other Capcom games likeFinal FightandRival Schools. Thing is, you’d never play as any of them. Instead, you’d play as yourself (via a create-a-character mode), and from there you’d choose one of the packed-in characters to be your teacher. So if you choose Blanka as your master, your character would then dress and fight like Blanka (green fur and all); if you chose Ibuki, your character would look dress and fight like Ibuki, etc. As you played the game, you’d learn skills from the character you trained under, and could later change your teacher, which, in turn, would change the physical appearance and fighting style of your character.
I know this all sounds like a fanboy-ish dream, but so does the idea ofStar Wars Episode Onewhere a young Anakin tears the wings off of flies and talks with James Earl Jones’ voice, and Yoda fights evil with lightsaber-infused nunchucks. That still didn’t stop people from deciding way ahead of time that that’sexactlywhat they wantedThe Phantom Menaceto be, or stop them from being disappointed when they didn’t get anything like that from the actual movie.
Now, if just one or two of the things I wanted out ofStreet Fighter IV(2D graphics, a create-a-character mode, etc) were in the game, then I probably would have been satisfied enough to buy it last Tuesday. As it stands, practicallynoneof the things I wanted inStreet Fighter IVare in the game.
That’s what has caused me to feel like therealStreet Fighter IVhasn’t been released yet. TheStreet Fighter IVwe have now feels like a placeholder, like the first step towards the creation of another game that will deserve the name ofStreet Fighter IV.
That’s not to say that theSF IVwe have now is a bad game.It’s a perfectlyfinegame, but it’s far from being one of the best 2D fighting game ever made. In fact, from what I’ve played of the game so far, it’s not even in my personal top five. That would be OK if we were talking about any other series, but this isStreet Fighterwe’re discussing.
WithStreet Fighter, there is no room for “fine.”
