TBB

Fan service.

Every single company strives to keep their constituents happy, and in gaming one of the hardest things to do is keep your fan base happy.

Gamers are a fairly impatient bunch, and one little change, good or bad, sends them into a nerd rage.

So, I thought I’d look at some of the new stuff they’ll be adding to Street Fighter IV, mostly online stuff.

The one thing I’m really happy about is Replays! BlazBlue already has this, and well, I felt it was a huge oversight not to include it in Street Fighter IV. I’ve read some cool stuff about this feature. Apparently, you can watch unlimited match replays, and actually specify what kind of Replays to watch. For example, if you want matches with just Juri, you get to watch matches with just Juri.

A really nice feature. I hope you can also save unlimited Replays, as this would help me a bunch once I set up my DVC. I can watch my old matches and use it to get better.

It looks like the devs are also looking at making online play very similar to social arcades. All the modes appear to support voice chatting, so things like team vs matches and endless fights can now become trash talking sling fests.

The team vs matches are simply teams fighting each other, very similar to what happened in Bar Fights.

The Endless Fight mode appears to literally be winner take all. If you keep winning, you keep playing. Minus the quarters, that sounds very familiar…

Anyway, if you can read Japanese, head over to http://www.capcom.co.jp/sf4, which probably has a ton more information than I can get from google searches and speculation.

Otherwise, here are a few pics of the Bonus Stages returning to Super Street Fighter IV:

http://www.capcom.co.jp/sf4/bonus.html

http://www.capcom.co.jp/sf4/bonus.html

http://www.capcom.co.jp/sf4/bonus.html

Overall, I think it’s a very positive step forward. Capcom is striving to bring as much as they can to their fan base, as quickly as possible, while still keeping the integrity and balance of Street Fighter IV. They’ll get a TON of people complaining, but luckily that won’t matter much to those who’ll play, and love Super Street Fighter IV.

Hopefully they’ll be announcing the next batch of new characters soon. So far they’ve just revealed T. Hawk, Juri and DeeJay, and supposedly there are going to be 8 new fighters, so there should be some new announcements in the near future.