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Street Fighter IV

We played Street Fighter IV so you don’t have to. Just kidding. You should also play it, unless you’re scared to lose.

This weekend, fellow Street Fighter aficionado Peter Rebelo and I went to Richmond Hill to get some face time with a little game known as Street Fighter IV. The arcade in question is Lovegety Station at 505 Highway 7 East, and it’s evidently the only arcade in Ontario at the time of this writing that has Street Fighter IV.

We got there after a day of gaming at Jorge’s place, so by the time we walked in it was a little after 9 p.m. and naturally the machine was taken. However much to our surprise there wasn’t a lot of other people waiting for their turn to get their fight on. I put my quarter up on one side of the machine (it’s a Japanese one, where you sit down and each player has his/her own monitor) and waited patiently for my turn.

It’s a little sad that so many of the other games at Lovegety Station are so loud by nature as many of them are rhythm titles. These games drowned out any and all of the music in Street Fighter IV but the special attacks and hits were still easy to hear over the sound of people drumming away just a few paces to the right of the cabinet. When I got my chance to play, I immediately picked the default game mode (there are three to choose from). The default one is the standard arcade mode, and I cannot for the life of me remember the proper name of it. I would have written it down but really, who goes to the arcade to take notes?

A second game mode is called Beginner’s Mode and that’s the one I should have picked, considering it was my first time playing the game and from the looks of things, everyone else there might as well have been born in that arcade. Yes, they were that good. Not necessarily in a stylistic sense - everyone I faced had the style of a computer player that exploits every possible weakness you could have. Remember the first time you ever played Bison and lost terribly? Well, that’s what it’s like being a newcomer here. What Beginner’s Mode does is give you the chance to play the first three battles against the CPU before allowing another player to challenge you. My first fight didn’t go so well because I just challenged someone right off the bat. Subsequent battles were a little better, though I did always lose every round when it came to playing against another human.

Peter and I played about four credits’ worth of fights, mostly on the Beginner’s Mode. The final mode allows you to play one round against each of the twelve fighters unless you lose or time runs out. We did not play this mode. We played characters that we were familiar with, for the most part, but Peter was adventurous and chose Crimson Viper, who I think might be the first fully-clothed woman in a fighting game ever. Of course, her dress shirt is only buttoned from the belly down, which would show off plenty of cleavage were it not for a well-placed necktie.

If you’ve never played on a Japanese arcade machine, they do require some getting used to. For one, the attack buttons are convex and they’re positioned in a curve. The joystick is very short with a ball grip on the end and it has a surprisingly wide swing radius considering how short it appears to be at first. Because of this, and because admittedly we were both super excited to be playing this game, we fanned on a lot of special moves. Each of the characters I picked played and felt exactly as they should (Ken, Blanka, and Ryu). Blanka was undoubtedly the most fun because he’s wild and all over the place. Each of the original fighters from Super Street Fighter II Turbo have all of their moves so although this is a new game, it still felt very familiar.

But it’s not “more of the same,” in case you might be thinking that. Most obvious of the upgrades is that the characters are not sprite-based anymore, but 3D models instead. Now I don’t believe this arcade unit has HD screens, but there was just a staggering amount of detail to be had nonetheless. Characters have changing facial expressions, costumes have stitchlines, and Ryu’s belt has stitched kanji on it. Still screenshots from this game will never be able to do it justice. It just looks fantastic. The characters have life to them and they move with all the grace you’d expect of a real martial arts master.

Ryu prepares to unleash a world of pain.

Super moves are once again back, though there is no way to select which one you want at the character select screen as in Street Fighter Third Strike. Figuring them out, however, isn’t that hard for those who have played previous games in the series. Another take on the Super moves is the Ultra Combo, which sounds like it’s right out of Killer Instinct. Each player’s charge metre has three stages. If it charges up to its fullest, the Ultra Combo can be pulled off. During this move, the camera moves in and pans around as gamers are treated to a quick little cinematic of the attack taking place. It’s almost like the Naruto series of fighting games in terms of cinematics, though the outcome of Ultra Combos is not quite as over-the-top.

Another type of move that we saw is one we referred to as “unblockable.” We’re not sure what the proper name is but the term we picked is quite self-explanatory. These unblockable moves are visually styled with the black ink visual shown the much of the early press shots for this game (and it’s hinted at in the image of Blanka up top here). It looks good, but being on the receiving end is frustrating. The only time I saw this attack happen was when I almost won a round against one of the regulars at the arcade. His Ryu busted out a series of unblockable attacks and I was done for.

That said, I still had a smile on my face even when I was losing. It’s kind of hard not to when you’re playing a game you’ve been looking forward to for what seems like forever. When Street Fighter IV is released on home consoles, I’ll be among the first in line to get it. I’ll even make sure to have a few Hori arcade sticks for the arcade experience.

If you are in the Toronto area and want to play Street Fighter IV, check out Lovegety Station in Richmond Hill. It’ll cost you $1 a play, and you will very likely have your ass handed to you by kings of the game. But it’s an experience not to be missed, especially considering the scarcity of good arcades these days.

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