Producer Rey explained how critical it is to nail the online competition after the problems with Street Fighter II Turbo’s ham-fisted online play. HD Remix will be the first Xbox Live Arcade game to have a 360-exclusive open public beta (sorry PS3 owners). Every 360 owner who buys Commando 3 for 800 points will get eight weeks of access to an early test build of HD Remix featuring only Ryu and Ken to help stress-test the online play.

“One thing that Street Fighter specifically offers over other similar games is very refined tuning,” says re-balancing mind-genie David Sirlin. “Even though Guile’s Sonic Boom has HALF the recovery of Ryu’s fireball, Guile still can’t throw another one until just about the same time Ryu can throw another fireball. It’s very, very finely tuned and those are the sort of things I am not touching…” In rebalancing the game, Sirlin has no intention of crippling the tougher fighters and overpowering the weakest. Instead, the tiers are compressed; Balrog’s cheap tricks have been toned down and Cammy’s skills have been upgraded. Balrog is still stronger, but fights between the two will be close-fought battles rather than double-perfect annihilations. Ryu has only one change - a fake fireball.

The final game will feature a brand new training mode, online quartermatch ‘winner stays on’ battles and a global ranking system, and the delay has given the team time to squeeze in all the classic sprites, original and remixed music, an eight-man online tournament mode, and hit-box display for training so you can see exactly where your punches will land. We recommend landing them on your best friend’s face.

May 14, 2008