street-fighter-iv posts (Subscribe to this feed)

Look, if people are going to eschew their work day in favor of having a gaming tournament, we're the first to sympathize. In the case of those in the business of protecting our lives from murderers and financial institutions though, we find it hard to offer much solace. So when eleven officials from several Florida agencies were caught on videotape playing games a couple months back and the story caught on internationally, we were hopeful that those found guilty would maybe, you know, actually receive some form of punishment.

Instead, the Lakeland Ledger reports that the offending officers will suffer such retribution as ... a few hours of retraining? The names of the officers are even being withheld due to their "undercover" status at the time. Lakeland sheriff chief of staff Gary Hester goes as far as to say, "We are learning from our mistakes ... I think we handled [the investigation] properly." He then hurriedly rushed back to a game of Street Fighter IV in progress against a competing police department.

... Okay, we made up that last part.

Plastic peripheral powerhouse Mad Catz has unleashed its fiscal 2010 Q2 earnings results (that's the three months ending September 30, 2009 for us normal folk) and, while the company is still making plenty of cash ($21.6 million this quarter, to be exact) it saw losses of 16 percent when compared to the same period last year, where Mad Catz' net sales earned it $25.8 million. Its biggest market, North America, also saw a dip in sales this year to the tune of 18 percent; US sales have fallen nearly 20 percent this quarter, while Canadian sales rose 55 percent.

When comparing its gross sales by platform, Mad Catz only managed to lose a small fraction of its PC platform business, while simultaneously building its PS3 and Xbox 360 revenue streams by ten and four percent, respectively, and growing its specialty controller business nearly 20 percent. The company did take a considerable hit in its Wii business -- sales dropped eight percent -- as well as in other platform markets, however.

Citing what its key products were during its fiscal Q2 2010, Mad Catz obviously had a lot of love for Capcom, as several of the fight sticks it offered for 2D fighters were top earners. Aside from that, it pointed to its new line of Rock Band accessories and some Wii items such as its Remote and z-Chuk as other successful ventures.

While this quarter may not have been the best for the company, all signs point to it being a successful fiscal Q3 2010 for Mad Catz. With its collaboration with the biggest game in the universe and its venture with Capcom to offer new fighting game stuff -- the company also confirmed that Marvel vs Capcom 2 stick is legit -- we have a feeling our next post on its earnings will probably have an image of Scrooge McDuck in it.

Much to the chagrin of many Street Fighter fans trying to get their online multiplayer on, matchmaking issues and lack of a multiplayer lobby system really stood out as glaring missteps in Street Fighter IV. Thankfully, it appears that Capcom has taken the hint and will be including an eight-person multiplayer lobby for groups to observe other matches and virtually "quarter up," as it were.

SSFIV's Masahiro Taguchi let the cat out of the bag on the official Japanese blog for the game (translated by Andriasang), saying that the regular ol' Street Fighter IV did not properly convey "the feeling of players gathering together for fights." He says that the ability to create multiplayer lobbies was on the table before creating SFIV, but was scrapped in favor of the one-on-one model currently in place. As frame rate can be a particularly important issue with fighting games relative to other genres, Taguchi makes a point to dispel any worries of online stuttering while observers look on to games in progress, though admitting that the process of making this lag free was a bit of a "technical feat." We're looking forward to putting Taguchi's claims to the test in 2010 when Super Street Fighter IV lands on our consoles.

[Via Andriasang]

This latest trailer for Super Street Fighter IV shows off the new online modes, including the "Endless Battle" mode that allows up to eight players to play multiple matches, with the loser of each match going to the end of the virtual line; the "Replay Channel," which allows players to record and view replays together with voice chat; and a bunch of new tournament options.

It's all great stuff, but we know what you came here to see: If you skip to about the 2:30 mark, you can watch Ryu car bashing and barrel bashing! Check out how excited the kilted barrel-dropping machine operator is -- he loves watching his barrels get smashed!

[Thanks, Vince]

After scans from Famitsu all but confirmed it, Capcom today revealed that the crescendo of humanity vs. his own creations – car bashing – will return in Super Street Fighter IV. Though the image of Juri above is all we're offered by Capcom-Unity for now, various Capcom staff Twitter accounts lead us to believe we'll be hearing more about this bonus stage next week. In the meantime, we've dropped an excellent video of John Cleese beating up a car with a stick for you just after the break. You're welcome.

While Street Fighter may be the perfect symbol of man's inhumanity to man, we always considered SFII's bonus stage (which used the punching of a car as a John Henry-esque metaphor for the struggle to maintain humanity in the face of an industrial age) as the more poignant symbolism. Capcom appears to agree, as some new Famitsu scans seem to indicate that the car-punching bonus stage will return in Super Street Fighter IV.

Also depicted is the barrel smashing mini-game, though that doesn't represent anything ... except that it's fun to smash barrels.

So what if you weren't able to make it out to Capcom's second annual NYC Fight Club last night? Don't worry, we went -- and got trounced by the competition -- in your stead. Though Super Street Fighter IV was only there for Capcom to demo (and give a small handful of community members time with), we snapped pictures of everything. We also played a mess of Tatsunoko vs Capcom in a next to final build (yes, we put the two recently revealed characters through their paces), and even shot some video of legendary Street Fighter player turned Capcom employee Seth Killian demoing new SSFIV characters in front of a roaring crowd (550 or so people over the course of the night, a rep approximated for us -- more than double last year's attendance numbers).

As we weren't able to get our hands on the three new fighters being showcased (Juri, Deejay, and T. Hawk), we talked to Jamal Brewster, a gentleman who exchanged kindness for some time with Deejay during one of the night's four live demos. "He doesn't feel cheap or overpowered .. he does feel good though, like he belongs in the game -- a lot of his moves have been retained from previous games," Brewster told us, echoing sentiments from Seth Killian earlier in the night. But how did you get chosen to play the game, you lucky dog? "One of the representatives here, she was almost passing out in the corner over there, and a friend of mine and I noticed this, so we did our best to try to help her out. We sat her down, gave her some water, and the people here were so grateful that they offered me a chance to play Super Street Fighter IV and they gave me an autographed hoodie of Tatsunoko vs Capcom."

In case it wasn't already clear: Yes, Capcom Fight Club is most certainly for the fans. Hit the break for a video of the new characters in action (sorry about the quality -- it was really dark) and be sure to peep the gallery below -- it's just like you were there! We'll have a hands-on of Tatsunoko vs Capcom's final two characters later on. Promise.

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