Street Fighter IV Thoughts.

As many may now know Capcom has announced Street Fighter IV the 1st real Street Fighter game in about 10 years. I can't even begin to tell you how excited I got when I heard the news and saw the first teaser trailer of the game. But that has all changed and that excitement has manifested itself into doubt.

Recently on the 1up Show they talked about Street Fighter IV and showed the 1st footage of the game in motion. Now to start things off when I saw the style they were going for in the game from the screen shots I wasn't very happy. However I held off any doubts hoping that the game would look better in motion. Well now that I have seen it in motion I can say I am very very disappointed. The style they seem to be going for is the more American bulky looking fighters look. Hell if it wasn't for the Red and White karate suits that Ken and Ryu wear you wouldn't even know it was them in the video thats how different they look. And when I say different I don't mean in a good way, they look horrid. In addition to Ryu and Ken not looking like Ryu and Ken their bodies when not in movement just seem wrong somehow. It's really hard to explain unless you've seen it.

The thing that saddens me is that Street Fighter IV will most likely be a blast to play because Producer Yoshinori Ono is trying to appeal to all the things that made Street Fighter II the massive hit that it was. However in trying to perfect things like the game play it seems they have completely overlooked the visual appeal that Street Fighter II had with its more anime style.

Being a Street Fighter fan for awhile I am one who believes that Street Fighter IV shouldn't use 3d character models and that Capcom should stay with sprites. With the quality of the hand drawn sprites being done on the PS2 at the end of its life span with games such as Odin Sphere and the Grim Grimore I firmly believe that if they wanted to Capcom could get damn near anime quality sprites out of the Xbox 360 and PS3 hardware.

But I digress. This all may not even end up mattering as some may know a large amount of complaints about certain sprites for Street Fighter II HD was enough to make Capcom redo them and make them better. So who knows maybe Yoshinori Ono will hear the complaints from the fans and they may just end up changing the style of the game. Here's hoping Capcom is listening.