38. Street Fighter IV

(Arcade/PS3/Xbox360/PC, Capcom, 2008)
When it comes to the bare-bones concept of two people facing each other and locking horns in a battle of martial arts and mystical powers, one name stands out amongst all others. Street Fighter.
Since it's incarnation in 1987, The Street Fighter franchise has had many incarnations, spin-offs, compilations and remediations. Whatever your preference in the fighting genre, there is no denying that, in name at the least. Street Fighter is the king of the one-on-one fighters.
I also want to take this moment to say that the Street Fighter movie was AWESOME, anyone who gets angry about it was missing the point entirely, as it's FAR less embarrasing than any video game movie that takes itself seriously.

2008 saw the arcade release of Street Fighter IV. Returning the series to it's basic, tried and tested roots, SFIV removed some of the more elitist elements that the series had in the last few installments and went all out to attract a major, mainstream audience. Whilst for many, myself included, the SF series had become a hardcore, intelligent and deep fighting series, Capcom were looking to rejuvenate the spark that brought people flocking to the earlier smash hit Street Fighter II Turbo.
SFIV is an incredibly straightforward, no questions asked, one-on-one fighter. An array of classic SF characters team up with four new entrants in a return to the glory days of SNES Vs. battles.

With a much simpler system and a diversion from the parries, custom combos and other features that made Third Strike and friends tournament mainstays, SFIV is a game that people who have never played a fighter in years can pick up and start to learn very quickly, whilst still having a nice technical edge to keep the faithful somewhat satisfied.
SFIV has a great selection of characters and well designed backgrounds that really have life in them. The game has some cool music and solid sound effects. The graphics are crisp, colourful and clean, but some of the models are hideous, Ryu is now the whitest, most American man youve ever seen and Blanka is presented purely as a comedy character. The battles flow as smooth as silk regardless of the skill of the players involved. SFIV has a magic touch that makes it accessible, playable and exciting to gamers of all abilities, marking a return to the series just being "fun" above all else.

The home versions were incredible, with a huge selection of extra features and modes, a reliable online system and, above all, a whopping selection of extra characters, including three of my favourite cuties, Rose, Cammy and Sakura. The home versions feature some brutal, story based, anime cut scenes. These look as bad as the very worst Saturday morning Americanised anime and are ear-rapingly bad in their English dub. These scenes take away from the high standards Capcom committed to the rest of the game.

There are very few issues, the aforementioned cut scenes and a cheap, un-original and uninteresting boss are the only black marks on Street Fighter IV, Well, in the game itself anyway, on the human side of things, many players online are big time whiners and a few months after the game's release many were complaining that they hated the game because they "weren't winning" which was both hilarious and depressing.
Whilst I'm a hardcore fighting games fan and find much integrity in installments such as Third Strike and the Alpha series, with IV I have been able to rediscover the pleasure of playing an enormous range of human opponents and hooking up with friends for entire afternoons of rematches. Street Fighter IV may not be the deepest or most technical of fighting games, but it's one of the easiest for all to pick up and as a result, one of the most fun.
The updated Super Street Fighter IV is on the horizon, promising a new selection of backgrounds, tunes, bonus stages, online modes and another huge chunk of characters. The good times are set to keep rolling.

Street Fighter is back. Indeed, it's indestructible.