SSF2THD Remix Will Be Worth The Wait

I was excited for Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix back when it was first announced in April 2007. HD remakes of classic 2-D games always make me smile. A year and a half later, though, the game is still not released. And with Street Fighter IV just around the corner, I was beginning to find it hard to stay excited. Thankfully, I finally got a chance to see the near-final game (it exists!), and chatted to Capcom's Seth Killian about its release date, pricing, and how much better the online experience is.I first wanted to find out just when the hell this game was coming out and how much it'll cost. I've read "very soon" to "sometime this year" for the past couple of months now. I've even heard a few bits about a possible November release date. I asked Killian if we should expect it sometime next month. "That's what we're looking. I think you'll see it before Christmas. I don't know the price, I think it's going to be more than $10, but I don't know where [Capcom] is going to put it," he said. Killian also added there are no plans right now to release DLC, and he wasn't sure if the PSN version would support trophies. Since the game was in development before trophies were announced, it's looking like they might not be there. We'll have to wait and see. By far the biggest hurdle for this game has been the art. Re-drawing all the sprites and animation takes a lot of time and costs a lot of money. But Capcom wasn't concerned so much with the release date as they were making it look good. "On one of the FTP's some of the art leaked out and everyone was ‘Oh my God, look how bad this art is!'" Killian said. "We responded to it on our blog saying the bad news is, yes this is actually the art from the game, but the good news is we know it's shitty, and it's so shitty we actually fired the company before it leaked." So how does it play? Well, it's Street Fighter, but it looks great on a HDTV. Everything is crisp and clean looking. They've refined the gameplay a bit by making some of the moves easier to pull off. Not much else to say other than you have to see it for yourself. There are some fun options, too, like being able to turn on the hit boxes or play the non-HD version of the game. With Street Fighter IV planned to ship to consoles this Winter, I think a lot of fans will overlook it or have simply just given up on it. For as sexy as HD Remix looks, SFIV has the graphical "wow" factor. I asked Killian if he felt Capcom missed an opportunity by not being able to release the game earlier this year to get fans hyped for Street Fighter IV. "Yeah, we definitely intended to release it earlier, hopefully this won't be a missed opportunity because I think Street Fighter IV got people hyped up for Street Fighter in general," he said. "The fan anticipation was very high for this game, so hopefully those people who were excited about it will still be excited. The extra time it's taken has been put into making it a better product and, frankly, it really is better than it was." So what about the online? Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting had wonky online. He even agreed with me saying it was "shitty" as well. But he reassured me HD Remix would be the best online fighter yet. "This game actually feels like Street Fighter. This game online is crackin'. They've sunk a lot of time and had a lot of specialists involved in that," Killian said. "I actually think it's the best fighting experience online. For anyone that likes Street Fighter and wants more competition, I think the game will sell itself." Capcom loves to do re-releases and remakes. This much we know. I suggested to Killian the idea of doing Final Fight HD with online co-op. It obviously interested him, too. But right now they're going to see how HD Remix does and, who knows, maybe that's something they'll consider later on if fans demand it.