Street Fighter IV
We managed to catch two sides of the SFIV phenomenon at this year's Tokyo Game Show. The first was the buzzing arcade community which, thanks to arcades dedicating entire floors to linked SFIV cabinets, has reconvened with even more vigour than it had before. For what roughly equates to 50p a go, you can trade fireballs and Spinning Bird kicks with endless local opponents, the networked machines setting up matches automatically.
Dragon punches came as naturally as the game's new focus moves - blocks which absorb predictable attacks before retaliating, rewarding any subsequent damage to your health bar. We weren't able to test the previously announced online support, but there wasn't a single dropped frame in the action we saw.
Capcom has been steadily revealing new characters over the last few months, the game's roster looking increasingly healthy as its spreads out beyond vanilla SFII.
We know about the new guys and gals: Abel, Crimson Viper, Rufus and El Fuerte; and we know about the returning bosses: Vega, Sagat, M. Bison and Akuma. But at TGS we saw the latest exclusive additions to the PS3 game: Dan (from Street Fighter Alpha), Fei-Long (from Super Street Fighter II) and Sakura (from Street Fighter Alpha 2). The game's still a short while away - March 2009 is the rumour - so don't be surprised if a few more world warriors and game modes enter the contest before you get the chance to play.
Supercar Challenge
It is pretty good to know about the Ferrari Chanllenge. One problem is that, where were all the Pegani Zondas, Aston Martins and Lamborghinis? Oh, I think they weren't any.
The problem you have to live with when you make an official racing game for nay one manufacturer is your limited choice of cars. Anyway lets talk about only use one car in the game's challenge mode (the F430), which doesnt matter how good the handling is, if there are games out there like Gran Turismo, GRID and Project Gotham Racing that are allowing to get behind the wheel of all sorts of four- wheeled beasts, it cant possibly compete.
Its straight into the fast lane. The selection of over fourty cars ranges from Lamborghini Mericelagos to McLaren F1s and Ferraris. Now, sure 40s not that big a number, but system 3 tells us that DLC is planned, so we had expect more cars to be among the post release offerings.
Though the overall presentation of the game will need some real spit and shine to be up there with Gran, but with the new cars in there and hopefully, are thought championship mode, Supercar challenge should have the extra oomph that Ferrari challenge lacked.
