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The other day, we were lucky enough tospend a whole day playing it in a room full of journos, top players and Capcom folk. Most notable ofthose Capcom folk? Yoshinori Ono, the game's Producer, and he had a few interesting things to say (once he was done with the Hadokens).
First up, you might have heard recently that Super Street Fighter IV will be the last game in the SFIV series. It now looks like that might not necessarily be the case. Having previously let slip the fact that a SSFIV coin-op cabinet is on the way (something else that was previously denied), Ono-san spoke a little more of his plans, and revealed that it's still possible that the arcade unit could spawn yet another upgraded version of the game:
"We're happy that we can finally get on with it. What should be in it, I have absolutely no idea. What kind of characters would you like in it?
Honestly, I don't quite know what to do with the arcade version, whether to straight port it or whether to add anything else in. What you want to do is buy Super Street Fighter IV, play it, and then let us know what you think about it, by e-mail, letter, anything"
So it seems things are a little less clean-cut than previously thought.Whether the arcade SSFIV is just that or a so-far unimagined Super Turbo Hyper Mega Ultra X Reload version seems to be in the hands of the fans. And we'd assume that'll also be the case for any sort of home port. But please Capcom, if you do decide to addone or two more newcharacters, DLC this time, seriously.
Above: Turkish oil-wrestler Hakan is one of the seies' most ridiculous additions
He also commented on Street Fighter's long history of using blunt and cartoonish racial stereotypes in its character roster. Rather than being offensive, Ono-san seems to feel, as many Street Fighter fans do, that every country is treated equally, and with a sense of fun. Discussing new oil-wrestling comedy Turk Hakan, he said:
"Don't you think in the classic Street Fighter roster there have been some crazy characters, like Dhalsim and Blanka? My inspiration for Hakan was basically to revive the wacky, very Street Fighter-esque characters back into the roster. So like Dhalsim and Blanka, I see Hakan standing next to them.
Why Turkey, I don't know. We'd been researching into alltheir various fighting styles, and it was very inspiring. Perhaps he looks quite normal to Turkish people (big laugh) but to me he looks quite bizarre, so he's a good fit for Street Fighter IV.
On the other hand, E. Honda is a ridiculous character to a Japanese person. No-one like that exists. In the same way, Hakan perhaps would be accepted anywhere but Turkey. If you could tell your Turkish friends, if anyone asks, just say someone in Japan decided to do that, and they're just playing with it"
Above: Ono's constant giddy enthusiasm just doesn't come across in text, unfortunately
And speaking of the roster, he also let slip who the game's development team currently sees as the best:
"When it hits half past five, the dev team put their battle chips out on the table and start playing. And the moment the top winner is usually Akuma, then Juri and then Dudley. Those three are at the top of our table. Though as you know if you've played with me already, the developers aren't actually very good. So when you play it, obviously the top three, top five will be so different"
And on the all-important,much-argued, lunchtime-ruining debate of whether any tactic in Street Fighter can ever be considered cheap? (Justin says yes, Dave H says no. Usually while winning). Ono-san's philosophy is simple. Unless something is broken, everything is fair game:
"We've left Super Street Fighter IV an open-ended game, so obviously you might find some special combos where you have to find a particular frame, but if you can actually find that and pull it off... Anything that's possible in the game isn't cheap, because if it's possible then it's doable"
Can't argue with that. If everyone has access to the same tools, then no-one can complain about them being used.
But what's your feeling on Super Street Fighter IV? As excited as you were about the first one? Moreso? Do you begrudge an upgrade appearing at all? Or did you always prefer Pitfighter anyway? Let us know in the comments, or through our portals onFacebookandTwitter.
