While we knew that Capcom was working on an update to Street Fighter IV, they announced at EVO that the update would be meatier than originally expected. In early 2014, the latest update will include five new characters, six new stages and new modes.
Four of the five announced new characters should be familiar faces to anyone that’s played Street Fighter X Tekken, as Rolento, Hugo, Elena and Poison will be making the jump. I wouldn’t be surprised if these characters ended up making the jump after modders discovered how ‘easy’ it was to port characters between the two. I’m excited to see how these characters will fit into the overall mix after they’ve been tweaked to work in this game. In particular, Rolento is my main character in Street Fighter X Tekken and I’m looking forward to dishing out beatings with him in IV. While they’re at it, I hope that Capcom tweaks Posion to be better than her Street Fighter X Tekken iteration, as she’s fairly useless. The fifth character will be revealed at a later date, though they have stated that this character has never appeared in a Street Fighter game before.
It won’t just be characters that are ported over, as the 6 new stages will also be ports from Street Fighter X Tekken. I’m fine with these as well. None of them will have a material impact on gameplay and most of them look cool, so why not? My personal favourite stage from that game is Antarctica, which features the fighters battling it out from the back of a hovercraft while a charging Tron-inspired mastadon follows behind. That stage unfortunately didn’t make the cut, but I’ll hold out hope that it comes as DLC.
At this point, we have no idea what new modes round out the package, but we do have a price and release date. If you already own Super Street Fighter IV or Arcade Edition, you can purchase the digital upgrade for only $15. I think that’s a fair asking price and will be there with my money on day one. If you don’t have those, you can buy the standalone game for $40, which also includes every DLC costume released to date. All of this can be yours in early 2014.
While I’m fine with waiting, that seems like an oddly long time to wait for this. By then, the new era of consoles will have begun and some potential players will have already moved on. Also, having an update as substantial as this probably means we won’t be hearing about a true sequel anytime soon. I adore Street Fighter IV and I can’t give my money to Capcom fast enough for this, but could this potentially be one major update too many?
What do you think of the upcoming update?
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