Holy smoke! Kotaku got a hot tip regarding a YouTube video showing YouTuber Gilleybaba hooking up his Street Fighter IV arcade boards and components -- at home! I'm hoping this guy is just fooling around a bit before taking the hardware to an arcade or something; If not, he clearly is richer than Croesus and drives a solid gold rocket car, 'cause this equipment ain't cheap. This man is clearly in the running for Good Housekeeping's "Homestead Most Likely To Burst Into Flames" award for 2008. According to Kotaku, he was also in attendence at our first Street Fighter Club in Los Angeles! Two words: Serious. Fan.
Gilleybaba, if you're a Unity reader, drop us a line to give us the details on your obession. And then I need a loan. About tree fitty.
If'n you're an old fogey like myself, you'll most likely remember Next Gen magazine (and nextgen.com) as the US equivalent of the UK's long-running and excellent EDGE Magazine. EDGE is to games journalism what the New York Times is/was to newspaper journalism: thoughtful, well-written, intelligent, the benchmark for its field and filled with information on interactive entertainment (much more than simple games!) that broke long before appearing anywhere else. It's tough to get the mag here in North America without having to pay through the nose for it, but it's well worth the read, and an argument for why magazines still have a place in our online world -- mostly because it's not written by idiots, as most of the internet is. Fortunately for us cheapos, the EDGE brand has been recently revived online, taking over for the slightly anemic Next-Gen.biz, which never really seemed to get off the ground to the extent that it should have. The Edge crew are notoriously tough on games, demanding that developers and publishers step to the levels of quality, design and entertainment that should be mandated universally. With that said, go read their review of the arcade version of Street Fighter IV. Wow.
Man, a million years ago I spent a whole lot of time down in this particular arcade -- it was filled with then-recent Capcom hits like Black Tiger, Mercs and Forgotten Worlds (my sixth favorite Capcom game!). The arcade was quite possibly the best thing about going to school at SJSU -- until I was old enough to get into the on-campus pub, that is.
Ono-san, producer of Street Fighter IV, was a busy man during the 2008 Games Convetion held in Leipzig, Germany. Not only did he (finally!) debut the console version of Street Fighter IV, but he dropped loads and loads of new tidbits about the game. Videogamer.com has probably the best interview of the bunch, getting Ono-san to open up about online play, thoughts on bringing SFIV to the Wii, why he is against console exclsuive characters and much more. Best part of the interview is his response to Ed Boon (co-creator of one of the many Street Fighter clones, now working on a Marvel vs. Capcom clone): "Bring it on!"
