When the HD generation of video games rolled around, I wasn't initially super interested. I was in my early twenties at the time and didn't exactly have a ton of extra cash. Besides, I still had plenty of older games to play. When the PlayStation 3 launched, I obviously thought it looked cool and intriguing. But it was also very expensive for me at the time. I couldn't justify the cost associated with such hi-tech hardware. Instead, I dug deeper into the PS2 and PS1 libraries that I had overlooked and could be picked up dirt cheap at the time.
Besides, these new HD graphics looked weird to me. I remember vividly thumbing through gaming magazines at the time and thinking Street Fighter IV looked weird when it was announced. I was so accustomed to the classic sprites of Street Fighter II and III. I mean, those were genuinely works of art. But Street Fighter IV looked almost vapid to me. Too flashy. And so I assumed it was lacking in substance and gameplay. At the time, I thought maybe this was it. Maybe I was officially just a retro gamer. Maybe I didn't need new consoles anymore when I was perfectly happy with old ones. And then something happened. Something important. My wife and I went Christmas shopping in the winter of 2009. We happened upon a kiosk of consoles hooked up in the middle of the mall. I told her to go ahead and look around while I checked out Street Fighter IV first hand. I remember standing there in the middle of the mall for a good half hour just plugging away at Street Fighter IV. Yes, it was flashy. Yes the HD visuals looked nothing like the classic sprites. But it played just like Street Fighter should. It was amazing. And I wanted a PS3 bad. Oddly, the first PS3 game I bought was Final Fantasy XIII, and that's a blog post of its own for a different day. But soon after I picked up Street Fighter IV and I loved it. I loved it so much that I was one of those suckers who picked up each subsequent revamp - Super Street Fighter IV, Arcade Edition, Ultimate. I bought strategy guides and a branded arcade stick. I actually wanted to get good for the first time in any fighting game I'd ever played. PlayStation 3 also meant that I was easily connected to the internet. Soon enough, I started a weekly fight night with a few friends. Mike, Mark and Colin were probably the initial group. Then I think Dave started showing up. And after that, it just kind of ballooned. Every Thursday night for months, there was an open call to our circle of gamer friends from all over the country to hop on PSN and jump into a lobby. It was an especially unique time in my gaming life. We had a small but happy group of friends who were keen to play the same type of games together. We'd all coordinate purchases, and over the months we'd pick up and play so many other fighting games too: King Of The Fighters XIII, Tekken VI, Soul Calibur IV, Blazblue, Battle Fantasia, Arcana Hearts 3, Street Fighter X Tekken, Marvel Vs Capcom 3, Mortal Kombat 9, Mortal Kombat Vs DC Universe, and so on. I cannot overstate what a fun time this was for me, and how nostalgic I am for this particular era of PS3 fighting games. But of course what I'm talking about here is Street Fighter IV, the game that was pretty much responsible for making me buy a PS3. While it wasn't the only game our Thursday night fight club played, it was easily the most popular. The one we came back to the most. The one we all rebought multiple times to upgrade the roster. Playing this game again in 2023, I still see what made it such a fantastic entry in the series. It's honestly in the upper tier for me. I mean, Street Fighter II is undoubtedly classic. That's pretty much that game that made me fall in love with the fighting game genre. And yeah, I kept buying SNES revisions back in the day as well. Street Fighter III is a misunderstood masterpiece. It kept the roster relatively small, and went really weird instead of just sticking to familiars. But Street Fighter IV almost feels like it was designed to be the grandest entry in the series. By the time we got to Ultra Street Fighter IV (the version I'm actually playing today), the roster was insanely huge and full of both mainstays and oddball newcomers. With that in mind, I want to just walk through each revision and comment on a few characters that have meant a lot to me over my years of playing Street Fighter IV updates. STREET FIGHTER IV In its vanilla incarnation, Street Fighter IV felt very much like a throwback to Street Fighter II. It included all of the original Street Fighter II characters, as well as a handful of new fighters. Chun-Li has been my Street Fighter main character since I was a kid. I've just always been a huge fan of the character, and I love her speed and reliance on kicks. My personal playstyle (as unrefined as it is) is to basically never even touch a punch button while playing with Chun-Li. In that sense, it almost becomes a three-button game for me, just focusing on combinations of low, medium, and high kicks. It helps that she feels a lot like an HD version of the Chun-Li from Street Fighter III in this game. Blanka's also been a longtime favorite to me. I like his speed. I like his rather long reach. I like his charge attacks. And I like that he's kind of a weirdo. Back in my fight-night days with my friends, I was always told that Blanka was actually my strongest character. A nice compliment from friends who were definitely better than me, but also a bummer because I wanted Chun-Li to be my best. Vega was another Street Fighter II favorite of mine. He's also fast, and I use him almost opposite of Chun-Li, focusing on punches more than anything. His ability to lose his weapon is kind of a hindrance. But let's be honest, the weapon is also kind of cheating. I got really into playing Cammy in Street Fighter IV. She was always really cool to me back when she was released in whichever version of Street Fighter II. Was it Turbo? I don't remember. But I was never great with her. I finally got the hang of her in Street Fighter IV and I feel like she's a total bad-ass if you know how to play her. Over the years I've gotten very rusty with her. But I still think she's awesome and wish I was better at playing her. SUPER STREET FIGHTER IV The Super update brought in even more of the expanded Street Fighter II roster, as well as Cody and Guy from Final Fight and others. Ibuki was one I was pretty excited about. As I've said, I'm a big fan of Street Fighter III and her inclusion here was welcome. I'm not really great with her, but I'm glad to have her as an option and mess around with her. Honestly, the Super update wasn't earth-shattering. But the addition of ten more characters was still exciting. And bringing in some more fighters from Street Fighter history to expand the roster was a nice touch. SUPER STREET FIGHTER IV: ARCADE EDITION Arcade Edition was a smaller update than the previous one. Really, this update was more about tweaking existing characters and game modes and not so much a huge roster update. It did bring in Yun and Yang from Street Fighter III, which is cool but I never use either of them. That said, the inclusion of Evil Ryu as a playable character was cool. ULTRA STREET FIGHTER IV The final revision came five years after the original game launched. It added in an additional five characters as well as even more tweaks. Of course, I once again praise the carry-overs from Street Fighter III - namely Elena and Hugo. Poison was easily the coolest addition for me, though. By the time Ultra rolled out, I had already been a fairly big fan of Street Fighter X Tekken, which was not exactly a popular game. Of course Poison was a cameo from Final Fight. But the Street Fighter and Final Fight series have been long intertwined. Personally, I was thrilled to have Poison in a mainline Street Fighter instead of a spin-off that most gamers forgot about instantly after release. As long winded as all of that was, I guess my point to all this rambling is that Street Fighter IV was a really huge deal to me. As I write this, Street Fighter 6 is about to be released. Speaking of, why did Capcom decide to suddenly ditch roman numerals for the mainline series? Ah well, a deep thought for another day. All I know is that back when Street Fighter V was released, I bought it and played it, and quickly moved on. It just didn't have the same staying power as Street Fighter IV. Which is evident given that I bought four different versions of Street Fighter IV over five years. And here we are in 2023 and I'm still able to sit down with it, have a great time, and write a long and rambling praise for it. Kudos, Capcom.
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