Sharp-eyed Unity visitors might have noticed this clever game parody from ToyFare Magazine's "Backpage" section -- we had it up on the White Board last week when we saw it in the new issue. It was pretty pixelated and not too easy on the eyes; Herc is a great camera, but is not a miracle worker, y'know. Fortunately, ToyFare has seen fit to put said image up on their own website, from which we've totally stolen it and present it here for you. In the meantime, do yourself a favor and subscribe to ToyFare, as it is always chock-fulla the stuff you spend your money on (when you aren't buying Capcom games, naturally).

Good news, everyone! We're pleased to announce that all of y'all in North America will be able to get your paws on Street Fighter IV starting Tuesday, February 17, while those of you from the Olde Worlde will be able to get in the ring on February 20! Capcom will be shipping the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions simultaneously, so regardless of your platform of preference, you'll be pounding faces and Focusing through fireballs day one.

Make sure to grab Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix when it (finally!) releases and start brushing up those fighting skills. For peace of mind, I'd also suggest pre-ordering the game so you're not left out in the cold, alone and friendless, while all the other cool kids are tearing it up with the World Warriors.

Japanese website IT Media has posted up a gallery tracing Ryu's handsome mug throughout the years. It's a fairly comprehensive gallery of his looks, from original wild-haired crazy man in Street Fighter to his anime look in Alpha and on through to his latest intimidating glower in Street Fighter IV. I don't want to ruin the effect of seeing all the artwork at once, so I've only included a teaser. Go here for the full magilla, laid out in glorious Web 1.0 design work. Honestly, do these Japanese websites do all their design in Dreamweaver or something?

These days, there's a lot of focus testing activities that happen online. It's great for marketeers, because we can set them up fast, get nearly instantateous results directly from the the type of people we're trying to reach and (most importantly) they're cheap. Well, relatively cheap, as we don't have to pay for one of those rooms with the one-way mirrors. Recently, Capcom did an online focus test of some potential Street Fighter IV ads, and a naughty, naughty testee grabbed screen shots of the images and sent them to Kotaku. Bad all around, guys -- the person taking part in the test shouldn't have done that and Kotaku really shouldn't have run them on their site. Our marketing guys were upset at first, only to have some of the sting taken out of the letdown by noting the generally postive comments that were being posted. Vindication never tasted so bittersweet. Or something.

Edge Online (must quit calling it Next Gen) also likes the SFIV ads! In an article entitled "Street Fighter IV Advertising Punching Above It's Weight," Thom Dinsdale refers to the marketing concepts as "an entertaining and remarkable print campaign," even going on to say "The ingenuity of these particular examples may also be unprecendented within the print medium." I don't know about all that fancy talk, but I know that I liked quite a few of the concepts that have been bouncing around internally. Thom has more to say on the ads, but some people around here are gonna be impossible to live with if I blog anymore praise (looking at you, Grant), so go check it out for yourself.