I've been playing an early build of Super Street Fighter IV for a week or so now, and it's convinced me of one thing: Picking up this latest Capcom fighter is a must for any fan of the genre.
Why?
There are the two new fighters: Korea's first fighter Juri and Turkish oil wrestler Hakan. There is also the addition of a slew of fighters from classic Street Fighter games like DeeJay, T. Hawk, Guy, Cody, Adon, Ibuki, Makoto and Dudley. And all of these characters are fully unlocked the moment you start the game.
But the biggest reason you're going to want to pick up the $40 Super Street Fighter IV is because of the way is strives to recreate the arcade feel of playing against your friends without having to get them all to come over to your house for a mini-tournament.
Super Street Fighter IV includes three new modes of online play.
Team Battles allow up to eight players to participate in their own team elimination tournament. You can set your mini tournament up anyway you want and almost instantly launch into the beat downs. This mode lets you set up whether the tourney will be 2 on 2, 3 on 3 or 4 on 4. You can also set the number of rounds, time limit, what region you want to pull players from and whether you have private slots.
Players can also choose to set up an Endless Battle. In Endless Battles up to eight players can be invited into an never-ending online match where the winner takes on the next gamer in the room. Everyone in the room can talk with each other and the two currently playing. Most importantly, the gamers not currently in the match can watch the fight unfold.
That's right, Super Street Fighter IV fixes the biggest issue I had with Street Fighter IV, it allows you to watch your opponents take each other on over Xbox Live or the Playstation Network.
Another really cool addition is the Replay Channel. Gamers can hop into this channel on their console to view "recorded" matches from around the world. Capcom folks tell me that the game doesn't even start considering whether you're bouts are good enough to make the channel until you've won three matches in a row. Once you've hit that level of success the game compares your abilities to others and pulls the best one to share with the world.
The Replay Channel sorts videos into several categories.
Originals allows you to check out the best matches between the game's classic characters. Alpha shows off replays of matches between characters from the Street Fighter Alpha Series. Turbo & III shows off matches with characters from Super Street Fighter 2 and Street Fighter 3. New Comers lets you check out fights between the characters introduced in Street Fighter IV and Boss is replays of boss character battles.
The Replay Channel also automatically saves your online matches for local viewing and allows you to save your favorite replays to create your own channel.