Street Fighter Fall Round-Up

The Street Fighter scene is ramping up this winter with plenty of anticipation surrounding its upcoming titles. Much overdue, 2008 and 2009 may mark a revival for not just the Street Fighter franchise, but for the entire 2D fighting game genre. Capcom has been dishing out announcement after announcement for their two front runners, Street Fighter IV and Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. If you’ve been out of the loop for the past couple of weeks, here’s some of the top tidbits you may have missed!

Over the past several months, Street Fighter IV has taken the Japanese arcades by storm, with a few machines making their way to the USA. Capcom is hard at work with the console version of the game, set to debut in Japan sometime in February 2009. Along with the usual game system tweaks, they plan to nearly double the cast of playable fighters. Among the most anticipated of the new characters are Gouken (aka Sheng Long), Sakura, and the recently confirmed Gen.

Also keeping world warriors on the edge of their seats is the ever-approaching release of Super-Turbo HD. David Sirlin and the rest of the development crew have released some of the final gameplay adjustment notes and there are also a flood of screenshots to showcase the incredible improvements of the graphics. While Super-Turbo HD was meant to be released prior to SFIV in order to generate hype, Capcom’s Seth Killian assures us that the game will be released “very soon” and that “it will be worth the wait.”

Video games aren’t the only form of new Street Fighter media to go around lately. Last month, Udon (the art studio behind the revamped graphics in “Super-Turbo HD”) released its newest line of comic books, titled Street Fighter II Turbo, continuing where it left off nearly two years ago with plans to include SFIV characters into the new stories. Set to be packaged with the Japanese console version of SFIV is a new anime DVD, Street Fighter: Renewed Bonds. If you missed the College Humor video series, Street Fighter: The Later Years, worry not! The cast has all signed on to a television series, titled Street Fighter: Reunion. Check out the announcement video below!