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.

Street Fighter Club BLEW UP Brooklyn last night. Were you there? Over 300 of the East Coast's biggest Street Fighter fans turned up at Chief Bodega in Brooklyn to be treated to a storefront outfitted with an awesome array of phoney Street Fighter products, two secret basements filled with Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix and Street Fighter IV, free pizza 'n sodas and (from all accounts) an excellent dj. There were even some minor celeb sightings, including the producer of Street Fighter Devotion.com and Mike Fass, who played Zangief on College Humor's Street Fighter: The Later Years.

Seth is still groggily recovering in Manhattan, but we'll get a full behind-the-scenes report up for you on Monday. Until then, check out what some of the attendees are saying in their blog postings. We'll add more links to blogs and pictures as they go up on Unity! Email me or s-kill as you add pictures or postings.

Capcom Freak was there!

Joe was there!

Lou from A Mellow Moment was there!

Scarecrow was there, and drew pictures to prove it!

While we're at it, we should mention that this month's issue of Play Magazine is actuall a special Capcom fan collector's issue. Half of their magazines have Bionic Commando on the front cover, while the other half rock this awesome Street Fighter IV cover, with this great illustration from SFIV art director Ikeno-san! Make sure to pick up both issues to have the complete set.