Street Fighter IV Officially Announced

Along with the announcement of the new-for-modern-consoles Bionic Commando, Capcom has also officially revealed the existence of Street Fighter IV . Other than the fact that it is in development there aren't a lot of details on the game, with little more than a gameplay-less trailer to view. Gamespot reports: "The trailer depicts longtime rivals Ken and Ryu duking it out once more, this time in a moonlit forest. The two friends and frequent rivals exchange, block, and parry blows for about a minute, busting out such familiar moves as the hurricane kick and dragon punch. With neither fighter gaining the advantage, Ryu charges up a fireball that bathes the screen in white before the Street Fighter IV logo appears with a splash of blood, followed by a warning to 'Prepare yourself.'"

Re:How do you pronounce Ryu anyways?

[Anonymous Coward]

RYE-you is what you call him if you've never spoken a word of Japanese if your life. It's pronounced REE-you. How would you pronounce Kyoto? KYE-oto? No, it's KEE-yoto. Ryuho, Ryosuke, Kyo, all the same way.

Re:How do you pronounce Ryu anyways?

[hansamurai]

It's a very difficult pronunciation for non-native speakers. It is actually pronounced something similar to "dew" but with a softer R-like sound than the straight D. The Japanese is phonetically spelled out as:

RI(yu)U

So the (yu) would modify the RI sound. There is a straight RU sound, so there is still some I sound left after the (yu) modification.

I still say Rye-yu though, because otherwise no one knows I'm talking about.

Capcom USA vs. Street Fighter

[Anonymous Coward]

Akiman announced years ago that Capcom Japan had sold off the Street Fighter license to Capcom USA, and that his team was no longer working with it (other than I believe to complete Hyper Street Fighter II, the commemorative anniversary remix game). I have very little faith in Capcom USA, who now own and control the license to all things Street Fighter. While nothing about the game except the inclusion of two characters (one of which whose face was very oddly designed) can be learned from the trailer, Capcom USA's track record with the parent company's franchises is very, very poor. If they think they can handle all the code themselves and farm out the art to those blasted amateur fanboys at Udon (for example), I really think the end product is doomed to mediocrity. OTOH, if they ease up on the reins and contract a sizable number of the original SF game team members, and also keep those non-existent-muscle-group-drawing-we-can-draw-Japanese-style-too fools at Udon the hell away from the project, I might be worried about nothing at all. Of course, the game would have to rely heavily on 2D gameplay (if not graphics), considering the traditional SF movesets do not translate well to good 3D gameplay (just look at SF EX). Or maybe it's a resurrection of the canceled Capcom Fighting All-Stars engine, and maybe it's 3D done right. Who knows? We'll have to wait for the first in-game shots at least to see how everything might pan out.

One thing I'd be interested in seeing is whether they continue to alienate new players the way the SF3 games did. SF3 was strictly a tourneytard's game; only existing fighting game players could approach it because high-level technical play was pretty much a requirement. SF2 and SFA offered significantly fewer rewards for the technical player over the casual player, but were far more enjoyable (and therefore marketable) to the casual player as a result. I'm not saying the SF series should be scrubbed down to a stupid level, I'm only curious to see what approach they take, assuming the current team has given the issue much thought.

Re:How do you pronounce Ryu anyways?

[dosius]

R-yoo. One syllable.

-uso.