Tetsuo Time

I read recently that Capcom is working with Mad Catz to make a bundle of Street Fighter IV and their controls they made specifically for it for the PC. I think that's a pretty good idea since not as many PC players have the right controls to play SFIV. But I already know one person from PC Gamer Magazine who is going to hate on the game because he doesn't like any game that's not good to play with a keyboard and mouse. He's going to say, "why are they bringing a fighting game to the PC? Fighting games are for consoles!" I hope he doesn't get the review. It'd get a unfair crap review.

There's nothing stopping fighting games on the PC except peoples misconceptions. partly coming from those days when they had to be made for DOS and didn't turn out very well. For the longest time there wasn't a decent control or way to be able to hook 2 controllers to play one game either. But things have changed since then... the only thing that hasn't changed are people's perception. Perhaps that will change with Street Fighter IV. Those who play fighting games through emulation should already have their perceptions changed as well.

Well.. the game was pretty broken with lighting being missing and stuff.. but it looks like they have come out with a patch to fix that and the difference is like night and day.

The US Version isn't out yet though and they shouldn't bring it out until they need to include those fixes and also have ingame cut scenes like in the gamecube version and also put in native mouse+keyboard support for those people who want it. There is a utility to emulate a gamepad with the mouse and keyboard but that doesn't give you the full benefit just like emulating the gamepad with a keyboard and mouse using the adaptor on the 360 doesn't. The PC version needs native keyboard and mouse support if it is to compete with the console versions especially the Wii.

At least they have taken care of the most glaring problem so far but I still think it wasn't wise to outsource the porting of that game. They also better bring out fixes for Devil May Cry 3 PC.

It looks like Capcom is bringing more and more games to the PC now. Recently they have announced Lost Planet is coming and with enhancements (better special effects and higher resolution artwork) and "XHD" (extreme high definition) 2560x1600 although you will need one of those cool 30 inch monitors to see that resolution.

The good news is that they are working on the PC versions of their games inhouse now with a new engine they made specifically for cross-platform. Before they where outsourcing that work to another company and that company was doing shoddy work. So now I have more hope that DMC4 will be better this time around. It was announced to be a simultanious port last month.

In other news it looks like they are not done (milking) Street Fighter II. They are now making a Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix meant to be played at 1920x1080p. I'm not kidding! Here is a comparison of the new HD and the older sprites.. including one from Guilty Gear for good measure.. and here I thought that game looked good. It was rendered much higher resolution than Street Fighter.. and much much higher resolution than a Neo Geo game. You can tell by how much bigger the sprite is than the first one which is the unscaled original SFII sprite........ Anyway, this seems even higher resolution than even that. The one that says scaled up with nearest neighbor sampling shows you how pixelated low resolution artwork gets when you blow it up to HD resolution and then they show you the HD specific versions after that. This makes it look even better than Street Fighter III actually. It's also not just resolution they are working on they are also putting in more frames of animation.

I would like to see the HD treatment given to other 2D fighting games. Only thing is it wouldn't be as easy to do it with a game like Mortal Kombat because that game used digitized footage of live actors so they would have to be reshot in HD. Whereas in Street Fighter they simply can redraw the sprites.. although that is a lot of work but they can handle it. =P Now that I think of it it wouldn't be hard to have these games in widescreen because the stages are always wider than what a normal screen can show they will simply show more of the stage at the same time.

It would also silence some of the critics. ;) Although some people (like those guys who used to review on G4TV) are simply allergic to 2D in general. Some people think that there isn't any room left for improvement with 2D games.. but that's not true. It's just that 3D games are easier to scale to HD where 2D games have to be totally remade like this new version of Street Fighter is. Think about it.. movies are pre-rendered to 2D no matter where you see it and they just increase the resolution.. everything looks better with a resolution increase and detail increase in the media to go along with it. Some people also probably now believe that 2D is only worth doing on a handheld now. That's also not true.. you can't do HD on a handheld. =P

I would want to play them with a controller with 6 buttons on the front for the true Street Fighter experience. Perhaps even with a fighter joystick. I hope they bring it out to more systems than just XBLA and PSN.

They are also doing Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix.. HD Chibis! ;)

I would also like to see Capcom VS SNK HD, and Guilty Gear HD for starters. Then it would be cool if SNK made new versions of their 2D Games like Metal Slug in HD.

BTW, on an old\regular TV a lot of people probably wouldn't see a difference. =P