TAI-X

I was hoping that Nitro+ would eventually take a more serious attempt at a crossover fighter, but it's rather disheartening that they're pandering to waifu obsession and shutting out any male characters from the very title of the game. Unless they try that same ridiculousness again where Taoluo was listed under Ruili's name and only used her voice clips. Mechanically, I'm expecting this to be a spiritual sequel to Aquapazza, which isn't a bad thing at all - that game certainly turned out far better than DBFC did. I have a lot of faith in Examu as a developer, though it remains to be seen how much they'll be constrained by these particular licensing agreements and publisher demands. Putting Sonico in a fighting game is sheer idiotic waifu bait, and I wasn't aware that Saber is considered a Nitro+ character now (also, I think we've seen waaaay more than enough of her at this point). This would be my hypothetical, ideal roster of playable characters for a "serious" Nitro+ crossover fighting game: Ein (Phantom of Inferno) Al Azif (Demonbane) Vjedogonia (Vampirdzhija Vjedogonia) Saya (Saya no Uta) Taoluo (Kikokugai) Nano (Togainu no Chi) Mishima with zombies (Hanachirasu) Rai (Lamento) Franco (Zoku Satsuriku no Django) Rimi (Chaos;Head) Kurisu (Steins;Gate) Muramasa with Kageaki (Soukou Akki Muramasa) Ren (Dramatical Murder) Bosses: Therion (Demonbane) True Saya (Saya no Uta) Not sure if Science Adventure (Steins;Gate, etc.) characters are off limits due to 5pb owning the rights.

Even more ideally, they should bring Yoko Shimomura back for a round of new iconic themes.

Yeah, now that I look at it again, Chun still has gigantic man-hands. >_< Also, Capcom has clarified that this game will remain exclusive to PS4 and PC, but that doesn't mean Super SFV won't be on Xbone.

There's also an enduring rumor that Resident Evil 7 is being propped up by Microsoft and will be an Xbox One exclusive, at least at first. This already happened with Dead Rising 3. Since they don't have the finances to carry their own major development projects by themselves anymore, Capcom has really been whoring themselves out lately. There's no way they're going to stick around for more than another couple of years without being bought out by someone. Seeing a numbered, main-series Street Fighter bypass the arcade market truly heralds the end of an era. Outside of Golden Age stuff like Pac-Man, it's THE most culturally iconic game series to be associated with the arcades (Mortal Kombat was quick to abandon them, and was always more defined by its console ports). I still have fond memories of playing various iterations of SFII and Alpha in arcades, as well as SFIV Vanilla when a place imported 4 cabinets from Japan at launch. I could tell even then that the game wasn't up to par, but we didn't care yet because it was flashy and new and our hype levels were going nuts. None of the places around here ever had SFIII during its heyday, sadly...

Not excited at all by the first proper play footage. On one hand, what they're showing is barely removed from SFIV; on the other, it bears an unfortunate resemblance to Killer Instinct (Xbox One), with a side dish of Marvel 3 mechanics. Did anyone really think that the stages in SFIV needed to be made even wider?

I hope the final DLC costume pack gives everyone hats made out of money with "Sony" stamped on them. I should have seen this coming after their multi-year sponsorship of EVO.

Any game can be fun with friends, no matter how awful. That's an inadmissible defense that says nothing about its quality. They can't, because SFIV's link-based metagame is completely idiotic (as explained at length in the prior review), and so is the concept of "metagaming" in general. http://culture.vg/features/art-theory/against-the-metagame.html http://culture.vg/features/art-theory/on-meta-and-mini-gaming.html Every opinion and thought that a human being has ever had is biased to some degree, doofus. What actually matters is whether it's backed up by evidence. I will admit that SFIV is a decently entertaining game with satisfying-feeling actions and animations that's good for blowing off some steam, and is occasionally capable of providing genuinely hype-worthy moments at high levels of play, but these alone do not make a game worthy of praise.

I will add that this is a really good summation of SFIV's numerous flaws and missteps.

You'll have to excuse the link to EventScrubs. Looks like a lazy retread of SFIV with the exact same sumi-e ink attack effects. At least they've toned down the ugly muscle shading and body proportions. I was hoping for a more dramatic stylistic overhaul i.e. SFIII, but modern Capcom has made no bones about their intentions to stick to what they think sells. Ultras are most likely back. I am not optimistic that this will be worth getting invested in for anyone who wasn't in love with SFIV (read: anyone with taste who didn't get swept up in all the ESPORTS sponsorship hype nonsense). I also strongly suspect that this will have an F2P component to go alongside Capcom's other PS4 freemium game, Deep Down. So far the game has been announced for PS4 & PC, but not arcades or Xbox One. It appears that Sony has moneyhatted Capcom to keep the game off Xbone (this was foreshadowed with that vague "SF on PS4" teaser way back), though I'd bet anyone $50 that it's a timed exclusive. I suppose this also signifies Capcom's final abandonment of the arcade market - they haven't had an official arcade division for many years now, but three iterations of SFIV found their way into cabinets regardless. Edit: The trailer suggests that Marvel-like air combos will be present in some capacity, though it could have just been a canned animation.

The Teamsters have always been corrupt as hell.

I'm going to scream if I see one more GGPO begging post for any fighting game ever. GGPO is not a magical one size fits all band-aid, and requires a huge amount of fine tuning and testing for each individual game to get it right. Japanese companies that are not overly Westernized like Capcom will not use it because of the emulation/piracy stigma. Also, if you want to use any kind of rollback netcode outside of emulation, a game's source code has to be designed from the ground up to accomodate it. We've already been told that this is why the KOF UM games on Steam will not use rollbacks. You should really be more happy that the developers have provided the means for us to play these games online at all. To put things into perspective, Chaos Code and Digimon All-Star Rumble are two recent fighting games that lack any netcode whatsoever.

I still call it "Tumblr: The Fighting Game."

It was actually going to have pre-rendered 3D converted to sprites, a la Donkey Kong Country. Thankfully, they didn't do this, or I seriously doubt it would have seen any sequels. Also, the PS4 install base in Japan is indeed very marginal right now, though not as much as the Xbox One's. Sony is probably giving ArcSys kickbacks for supporting it and making the limited edition PS4-exclusive there.

A warning to anyone with this game on Wii U: DO NOT POWER DOWN YOUR SYSTEM WHILE PLAYING. Always return to the channel menu via the Home button first before shutting it off. There's a major bug related to save data which is corrupting people's system memory and bricking their Wii Us, and it's apparently exclusive to Smash. I imagine it will be addressed in the next patch.

People who act smugly superior over their preference of dubs (I guess they're insecure about liking anime and deathly afraid of being labeled weeaboos, or something) are just as insufferable as the inverse. I realize that this has been a constant since BBCT, but ArcSys should really allow everyone to stick to the voice tracks they want to hear in online play.

Only if you run it in Speed Mode with background characters disabled, but yes. Even with them in, there will probably only be frame drops when both players are using ODs.

On Temple? Lolno. Team versus modes in general in any game are great for diminishing the importance of skill and strategy, since you can easily fall back on your teammates, power through with strength in numbers, and absolve yourself from responsibility for screwups. Of course that applies more in something like Halo than 8-player Smash, which is completely unintelligible nonstop chaos. (It's one of the reasons why the entire MOBA genre is a sham.)

I stand corrected. I'm sure he'll be the most expensive item in the in-game shop if there's an option to buy him with real money, though.

They're following the exact same DLC character release plan as BBCP. Sin = Kagura (story mode unlock for free, or cheap DLC instant unlock) Elphelt = Terumi (free for early adopters, paid for everyone else) Leo = Kokonoe (everyone's gotta pay)

You forgot the most important bit. It's being ported by Code Mystics, who are known for royally screwing up the Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection (it has severe input lag even played locally, and terrible netcode on top of that). They also did the Xbox One ports of Killer Instinct 1 and 2, which I haven't heard much about but I would imagine ended up similarly. Why SNKP didn't just do it themselves when the NESiCA version already has a natively PC-compatible codebase is beyond me. Maybe hiring these guys was a last resort measure to get it out before the end of the year, because they're preoccupied with their legal standoff. I would have been happy with Iron Galaxy, who I used to have a low opinion of at the time of 3S Online's release, but have done some really solid fighting game porting jobs since. At any rate, it's a shame that a formerly arcade-only revision of the game isn't getting the perfect treatment it deserves.

That wasn't what I meant. There's been quite a few formerly Japan-only PS1 games that have made their way to the US Store without any translation or localization, but that hasn't happened with any PS2 games yet. This is disappointing, but I was wrong to get my hopes up with SNKP. It's obvious that their console/PC division is throwing their full weight behind KOF XIV (and possibly a new SamSho) right now, and everything else released before that game drops is going to be a port or emulation.

So it did get translated, but not in time to be included on the disc when the US version went gold. I guess I can be happy about something for once. Good job stopping in to clarify this ASAP so you don't lose any sales over it, ha.

What a blue-baller. If the release dates weren't so close, I would have just imported the JP version like with BBCP and told ArcSys USA to go fuck themselves again. I guess Blade has his work cut out for him translating this shit now... Opening their own (clearly understaffed, underfunded, and incompetent) office in the US instead of continuing to rely on Aksys for localization was a dumbass move.

I wasn't expecting a sequel after how quickly sales dropped off for the first game in Japan. I'm willing to give CC2 the benefit of the doubt and hope that they've finally learned how to make a "serious" fighting game outside of the Naruto/DBZ mold that isn't casual garbage. But with dumb antics like that CPU vs. CPU "tournament," it really didn't seem like they had any desire to learn from their mistakes and improve.

No way in hell that a Japanese jury won't be biased towards the company that brings their kids Dragon Quest. It's like when Apple went to court against Samsung and won, despite the latter clearly having the stronger case. In the US they could easily argue for fair use/parody. I think the laws are more strictly defined about this in Japan, though, and if any company wanted to they could come down on the doujinshi scene real hard. Thankfully, there seems to be an industry-wide unwritten hands-off policy when dealing with such fan works, but that doesn't apply when one commercial enterprise uses another company's characters without permission. We'll really just have to wait and see.