Our Japanese SFIV website and blog have been update-ified. The website has some more new portraits of El Fuerte, Rufus, and Dan in the new SSFIV pencil-style.  Check out the high-res files here.

The blog has a few notes about the Japanese National tournament (translation courtesy of Shoryuken.com's Azrael), but the real fun is the cropped screenshot of Chun-Li catching some ink-splatter from... who?

As I mentioned, we'll know more very soon :)

I find it inconceivable that I haven't seen this before, but I haven't, so maybe its new to some of you as well. 

Before Kreuk was Chun Li, before Van Damme was Guile, there was... "Future Cops."

Only one person can stop Bison (yes, "Bison") from achieving world domination, so he sends his minions Ken, Sagat, and E. Honda *back in time* to take care of him... in high school.  The forces of good of course have their own time-travelers, and send back the "future cops" (Ryu, Guile, Dhalsim and Vega) to try and foil Bison's plans. 

This has just enough of a budget to really get itself into trouble, and is chock full of insanity, but if you only have 5 seconds, you cannot miss this important lowlight in unlicensed Street Fighter history.

Thanks Raging Demon!

So Street Fighter IV has been kind of a big deal.  Aside from scoring stellar reviews, and offering unmatched replay value, Street Fighter IV has also given us some incredible moments.  

It's about a game you can pour yourself into, and in exchange you can find some button-mashy fun with friends, or go further into true emotional highs, devastating lows, and membership in a decades-long tradition of international warriors--part of something bigger than us all.  In short, SFIV is about passion. 

In a surprise to very few, SFIV has been nominated for "Fighting Game of the Year."  That's great, but we need your help to win.  Head over to the Spike's Video Game Awards page and vote for the game that reignited a genre. 

Vote early, vote often, and most importantly--vote SFIV!

PS- hugs to everyone shouting out for SFIV as overall game of the year. 

Niitsuma-san is here to 1) gripe about how busy he is, even though they just finished the game 2) tell you the story about how he's been climbing the mountain of putting a serious Wii fighting game online. 

--

Hi guys, it's me, still pretty busy even though development is finished.

So, the development is done!!  All we have to do is think of ideas to sell the game... but it's been busy all along, so that hasn't changed.  How can I be so busy even though development is over... I just wonder looking at this pile of stuff that are waiting for me to check.

So, I would like to talk about the background story of development #3 (last episode)

"Implementing of the Network Mode"

Going back a bit to when we started off the project...

When we were having a meeting about whether we will implement Wi-Fi network mode, the feature that we received strong user feedback, this kind of debate was going on:

"We would like to implement Wi-Fi this time"
"But Wii is wireless, can we implement this feature properly?"
"Doing Wi-Fi is fine, but can we do this on a 'fighting' genre?"
"Well, if we can learn from what Capcom has experienced with network?"
"Can we get any Nintendo's technical support?"
"Do we need to implement a network fighting game for Wii users to begin with?"
"Oh, let's not start that again!"

... is the kind of debate that we had.

While I was working on Street Fighter IV which implemented network features,  I asked our tech experts at Capcom at a meeting to decide about this feature for TvC:

"So how is it, fighting game, online on the Wii platform?"

"Might be difficult, but it's not impossible" After I heard this, I decided that I will implement the Wi-Fi mode.

After that, I asked many people for opinions and advise and when we talked to Nintendo about tech-support, the person at Nintendo also said:

"Ok, we'll do our best to help you!"

This was very encouraging too, but when we first mentioned it to Nintendo, the person was quite surprised too. 

So, looking into each of the online features.

Because it will be against Nintendo's regulations and policies, I can't mention too many details, but basically, it's about matching those with good connection and the one that is not as good, determining transmission speed, and nailing down where it is the most appropriate to develop and implement the online battle mode while we figure out the development restrictions that we have.

Through a long testing process with extensive trial and error, we were able to make it happen, so it would be great if you could try and test it when the game is released.

Lastly, having worked on a game/genre which tend to get a lot of challenging demands, people would ask me about Wii's network related things, it gave me the impression that it is not impossible, worth trying.

Of course, there were some realities that we had to face (like wireless)
but we spent a lot of time looking into it and there is something that can be done.
(we worked very hard on it, but we want you to tell us what you think).

To be honest, playing wired or wireless - wired is faster of course,
but this is really up to the users.  Thanks for reading, I hope to tell you more info again.

If there's anything you would like to ask , please feel free to send me messages here:  TvC official forums

Japanese Video DJ (I can't decide whether "VJ" is cooler, or much, much less cool sounding) Bonsajo has hooked up his Steel Battalion controller to run his light and video show.  V. rad!

via Kotaku and MechaDamashii