Retro|Spective 127R: Street Fighter

[Neon Ignition]

Game 20 - Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition
Following the decision to bring Super to arcades, Capcom couldn't just do a straight port and so this revision was issued that added Yin and Yun to the roster whilst fully unlocking Evil Ryu and Oni. As well as tweaks and rebalances this left console owners feeling left behind so quickly consoles saw the third version launched.







A worthwhile update?

[Asura]

I'm shocked at the lack of interest in Super Street Fighter IV here.

To me, it was huge. I spent months playing it, and tried to get particularly good. It's probably my favourite game in the entire franchise, certainly the one I profess to be best at. It fixed all the problems and really improved things, such as having proper lobbies and addressing balance issues. I also loved both Juri and Hakan.

Plus, Super IV has some of the best videogame trailers ever. Capcom were absolutely on fire.

The Arcade Edition was great too, as Yun & Yang were fun additions... But that's where the train stops for me, because I strongly disliked Ultra, and it was related to a bunch of stuff going on with Capcom at the time.

Also worth saying, Arcade Edition wasn't actually a new game; it was sold on-disc as a new game but you could buy it as an upgrade to Super IV, which most people did. I got it on-disc on PS3 but that's only because I jumped from 360 to PS3 around that time.

[Neon Ignition]

As much as Super added to SF4 it always felt like the delivery of updates and news softened the impact a lot more as much like SF5 there's a wave of interest with the initial release but for many it feels instilled at this point to wait a few years for the final version rather than keep shelling out. I could easily imagine Super making less impact because everyone believed something like Ultra was just around the corner.

[Nu-Eclipse]

I'm shocked at the lack of interest in Super Street Fighter IV here.

I'm not.

Vanilla SFIV was the high point of the SFIV era and arguably when it was the most fun. Sure, Super and Super AE might have improved upon the nuances but it already felt like everything there was to see about SFIV had been seen and no amount of reviving Final Fight/Alpha/SFIII characters was going to change that.

[speedlolita]

I found it very difficult to get into Sagat Fighter IV, Super is where it really clicked for me. Having the whole roster available to play from the beginning with all the character additions was great. The addition of a second ultra combo allowed more flexibility for the characters too. I still fondly remember the SF3 character unveiling trailer.

[Nu-Eclipse]

And I'll be honest: Super SFIV 3D Edition is (I think) my most played 3DS game!

Clearly and obviously totally unsuited to the hardware but it's an excellent proof-of-concept piece to show what 3DS hardware was capable of (much like Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 on the PS Vita).

[dataDave]

Game 20 - Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition

I played this a ton when I first got to Singapore. The arcades were so good (one had 16 SSF4AE Viewlix cabs networked) and cheap (about 10p per credit) that I didn't get a 360 for the home until months later.

It's the entry that I've played 'properly' the most by quite a margin.

[Asura]

Vanilla SFIV was the high point of the SFIV era

Wow; it's rare I say this but I flat-out disagree with that assertion. I feel that SFIV was widely considered good, but flawed, and it hit its apex after the release of Super. The follow-ups less so (AE was more of a DLC upgrade and Ultra was divisive).

That being said, I can't back that up with paperwork so it's all about how I felt at the time.

[Cassius_Smoke]

I think (i could be wrong) Ultra removed combo breaks and cancels and other little things, more for competitions, but it ruined the flow that Super had.

[Neon Ignition]

Game 21 - Ultra Street Fighter IV
Six new stages, five new fighters, a new announcer, the ability to mix version mechanics and Double Ultras were the main additions to this final incarnation of SF4 with the PS4 version often now being considered the entries definitive port.







An Ultra Perfected Version?

[Nu-Eclipse]

Wow; it's rare I say this but I flat-out disagree with that assertion. I feel that SFIV was widely considered good, but flawed, and it hit its apex after the release of Super. The follow-ups less so (AE was more of a DLC upgrade and Ultra was divisive).

That being said, I can't back that up with paperwork so it's all about how I felt at the time.

That's fair enough.

I totally stand by what I've said though. The FGC/arcade scene in London was ignited and energised (albeit briefly) by SFIV and I know that for a fact because I was in and around it at the time. It was never the same with Super SFIV even if it technically was the better game

Super might well have been the peak but (at least to my mind) Vanilla had by far more of an impact on the scene in general given the obvious context of the SF franchise making a triumphant return/resurrection.

If anything, I'd honestly argue that Vanilla to Super to Super AE to Ultra was absolute diminishing returns for the SFIV era.

[Neon Ignition]

Game 22 - Street Fighter V
Launching with sixteen fighters, twelve being returnees and four being new, Street Fighter V infamously launched in a bareboned form with a campaign mode being patched in later along with various bugs needing to be ironed out. Capcom leaned also leaned heavily on using the DLC model for the game which meant the early days made the game a harder sell leading to lower than expected sales, something the game would turn around as time and iterations followed...







Looking back, how did you find the Vanilla SF5 to be?

[Asura]

Game 21 - Ultra Street Fighter IV

As a reversal of the prior trend, I hated Ultra.

Firstly, the new characters and backgrounds. The characters looked okay, but the backgrounds are hideous. They were designed for SF x Tekken and their shader work was phoned in for Ultra. I recall a skate park backdrop which just looked terrible.

Additionally, Capcom botched SF x Tekken with greedy microtransaction stuff (I don't remember exactly what, but I think there were consumable items?), but at the same time, they tried to insist that the characters in that game weren't the SFIV models, but were entirely new work, to justify the full price game (when in practice it was really obvious they were the SFIV ones tarted up, and people ripped them out the game to compare and found this to be true); this seemed to be refuted by Capcom themselves when suddenly the new characters like Poison showed up in SFIV.

But I could've lived with those. The thing I disliked was how they changed the focus system to add the "red focus" (or whatever it was), and maybe this is why I wasn't such a big fan of V. Something I like about Street Fighter III, IV and the likes of Soul Calibur or Virtua Fighter or Dead or Alive is their relative simplicity. They're quite complex games but their systems are pretty simple to grasp, and relatively few. The parrying in SFIII is a great example of an extremely simple mechanic you can explain in seconds and start to use in-game, but can take forever to master.

This is the opposite of games like Guilty Gear where the recent ones say, when you want to play the arcade mode, "do you want to do the 27-step tutorial so you can understand how to play?" Those fighters where you feel like you have five different meters to keep track of and tons of different mechanics just to start.

SFIV already had the focus system, and it followed a set of pretty clear rules. Initiating the focus move granted your character "armour". Armour can absorb one hit, and afterwards, if you avoid being hit for a time, the damage you take will recharge. Being hit more than once "breaks armour", i.e. will punch through. Additionally, some moves are inherently two-hit and will always "break armour", and some moves (such as Abel's wheel kick) specifically have the "armour breaker" property which also breaks armour.

The Red Focus move they added basically negates one of the above rules; you sacrifice more meter, but you can take infinite regular hits as long as you don't run out of health. I just didn't get the thinking behind over-complicating the focus system in this way, and it felt, to me, like Capcom were scrambling for some mechanical addition and went with this.

I dunno. Maybe some people liked the added complexity, but it defintely wasn't for me.

[Neon Ignition]

I definitely put the most time into the base SF5 despite the poor state Capcom rushed it out in. With each update they expanded the game but it also felt like there was a never ending list of upcoming reasons to put off spending any real time with it. By the time delivery settled down the game was old news. Ultra SF4 by comparison was easier to digest but I say that from a very casual stance, I think I spent as much time modding the PC version as I did playing it properly

[Neon Ignition]

Game 23 - Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition
Arcade Edition was a culmination of the first two years of updates and content released for the base game, bringing in around a dozen fighters and new stages whilst also adding an Arcade mode and additional V-Trigger on top of some other revisions. A new CG intro was also added with the game then being used as a basis for further content delivery that would lead to its final form.







Though many fans would be familiar with the content of AE before it was reached, was AE a worthy expansion like those in prior titles or just Capcom delivering what the base game should have originally been?