Street Fighter 5's beta returns on October 22 with a handsome new Ken

It still has a few bruises from the last beta, but Street Fighter 5 is coming back for more. Capcom announced that the second Street Fighter 5 beta test will begin on October 22 and run through October 25, and this time PC players who pre-order on Steam can get in on the battle.

Starting on October 24, Capcom will let players from across both PC and PS4 duke it out in series-first cross-platform play, including ranked matches. Not only will you have more people to fight, you'll have new characters to fight them with: the second beta will let players choose from Ken, Necalli, Vega and R. Mika up front, and will add in Rashid on day two and Karin on day three. The characters from the first beta won't be available, so you'd better check out our Street Fighter 5 roster to get a feel for the new world warriors ahead of time.

The second beta will also let you spend your hard-earned Fight Money on titles and even stages. None of your unlocks will carry over to the final game, or even the next beta session, but it will give you some idea of how the Fight Money system works. If you were in the last beta, you already have guaranteed access to this one; if not, you can still pre-order for guaranteed access in North America, or sign up for a chance at a slot in Europe.

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Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.