Street Fighter IV Preview

10 years after the last proper Street Fighter sequel, IV is almost upon us.

My face is inches away from my television. My eyes are bloodshot and my blistered thumbs are bleeding. I'm trying desperately, fanatically, to juggle Ryu's Ultra Combo off of a Shoryuken using the new Focus Attack Dash Cancel technique, but I can't do it. I get close. I throw out the Shoryuken easily enough, and I have no trouble cancelling it with the Focus Attack Dash Cancel (press and hold MP and MK, tap forward twice then release MP and MK), but I just can't get the Ultra Combo out. I'm frustrated, I'm not even sure I'm having fun, but I can't stop. And then, suddenly, I feel like crying.

It's during this moment of digit destroying practice that my mind is sucked back in time, perhaps via Bill and Ted's phone box, to the early nineties. I'm 10 years old. Street Fighter II is the biggest game in the world, and it's not even out on the Super Nintendo or the SEGA Mega Drive in the UK. It's always the busiest cabinet in your local arcade. It's the talk of the playground. Kids sink their weekly allowances just to practice, "insert coin" as impossible to resist as Transformers and Thundercats. For my birthday my parents rent a SNES, a PAL Super Mario World, a converter and the Japanese version of Street Fighter II. People turn up to my party that I've never seen before. New friends desperate to play the game for free. For free! As I throw Sonic Boom after Hadoken after Yoga Fire I'm transported to gaming heaven. This is what it's all about.

Then something weird happens. I can't do Zangief's Spinning Piledriver. I know the command, I know what to do, but I just can't do it. As my party comes to an end, as parents arrive to pick up their sugar-fuelled sons, my face is inches away from my television, my eyes are bloodshot and my thumbs are bleeding. I'm trying desperately, fanatically, to do Zangief's Spinning Piledriver, but I can't do it. I get close. Zangief looks like he wants to do the move, but I just can't get it out. I'm frustrated, I'm not even sure I'm having fun, but I can't stop. And then, suddenly, I feel like crying. And then I do cry.

The phone box flies off into the sky and it's Christmas 2008 again. The PS3 preview build of Street Fighter IV I'm playing, complete with console exclusive playable characters Sakura, Akuma, Gouken and Seth, is proving itself incredibly popular round my place. Friends and family pop round regularly to play, to marvel at just how beautiful the game looks in motion, to gush over the wonderfully dramatic Ultra Combos, to get to grips with what's new, and, most importantly, to try and beat me. They do not.

Street Fighter II fans will find Street Fighter IV instantly familiar.

Getting to grips with Street Fighter IV, learning its nuances, its subtleties, its strategies, its pace, what's good and what's bad, reminds me so much of doing the same thing with Street Fighter II on the SNES back in the early nineties it's almost scary. For 90 per cent of the 1.5 million people Capcom reckons will pick up the game when it comes out in February, this "blast from the past" feeling will be the primary motivation for a purchase. Playing Street Fighter IV is like watching the Transformers movie as a child of the eighties. It's a trip down memory lane, it's a chance to see your childhood dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century. And it's a whole lot of fun.

While some reckon Michael Bay ruined Transformers with his return to perhaps the greatest kids TV show ever, Capcom's return to perhaps the greatest fighting game ever is about as conservative as tea round David Cameron's house. All eight of the original World Warriors return, as do the original four bosses, complete with all the iconic Street Fighter special moves. Take Ryu, for example, easily the most popular Street Fighter character. He works almost exactly like he did back in the day. His Hadoken is a quarter circle forward and punch. His Shoryuken is forward, down, forward and punch. His Hurricane kick is a quarter circle back and kick. Bar throwing with LP and LK, dashing with a double tap and getting up quickly after falling by pressing and holding down just as you land, playing Street Fighter IV is like riding a bike: If you learnt how to do it when you were a kid, you'll be able to pick it up as an adult without even thinking about it.

The entire character roster tells a similar story. Chun-Li's Spinning Bird Kick is in, and it's still charge down then up and kick. E. Honda's Hundred Hand Slap's back and it's as annoying as ever. Blanka's Electricity hasn't gone anywhere. Guile's Sonic Boom, Zangief's Spinning Piledriver (don't worry, I can do it now), Dhalsim's Yoga Fire, they're all back. At first Street Fighter IV feels, for all intents and purposes, like Street Fighter II HD Remix. Like all the Street Fighter II games, World Warrior, Champion Edition, Hyper Fighting, Super and Super Turbo rolled into one, and with a brand new art style powered by "next-gen" processors.

This will be enough for many players. That playing Street Fighter IV feels just like playing Street Fighter II should, from Capcom's point of view, be considered a job well done. Street Fighter IV is not the game to revolutionise the fighting genre, one that along with the RTS is notoriously difficult to innovate in. If that's what you were expecting, were hoping for, then I'm sorry to disappoint you.