Dood! It took like 6 tries but finally I got a chance to play Street Fighter IV at the 6th Lok Test (Which is Japanese English for "Location Test") in Sugamo on June 7th & 8th. All-in-All, SFIV is FANtastic! If you are a SF fan, your gonna love this game for several new and old reasons.

Well, it SF for one. How are you even gonna talk about fighting games without paying homage to the original flavor dood? SFIV comes back hard with the original 8 of Street Fighter II and the 4 Boss characters. Then there are 4 new characters up for the King of the Block Challenge. C.Viper and Rufus bring Big & Sexy combos to the table. Rufus, who I'm thinking is the "Dan" character for SFIV, uses something similar to a mantis style of fighting technique with an ill mid-air to ground up-down mix up game. I just wish that he would use his belly more to attack. He may look silly but he is very well animated. Then there is C.Viper, who gets my vote for the new sexy lady of SF! I know all y'all Chun-li fan boys are cursing my existence right now but that's where I stand. C.Viper and Rufus are both Rush down offensive type characters. C.Viper offers more aerial finesse and her ground launcher special is a nice surprise attack against any projectile based character. She's reminds me of cooler more vixen like Cammy. Where as Rufus, seems to be more of an rush down mix-up silly fighter. He's like a fat version of Gen, Yun and Yang. Then, out of Mexico we got El Furte that plays a lot like Ramon from the KOF series with his run command combo and attacks. He's the most SNK-esque character in SFIV. Expect to see more from this cat in the future. Then there is Big Frenchy a.k.a. Abel. Abel was the favorite new character of choice during this Lok Test. Power, Speed, an Alpha Chain like Combos that proceeded into High-Low mix up grabs. Then Abel has supers that go through projectiles at damn near full screen range! Yeah, so
the choice was easy. If you wanna win with a new character. It's 1-800-Abel FTW! The new character use ranking goes:

1. ABEL
2. Crimson Viper
3. Rufus & El Furte
   

But don't forget about the Original 8 and the four Bosses. Who are solid as hell. SFIV does offer some new moves to the older characters such as Guile's (Forward+Med.Punch), Sagat's (Forward+Short Kick), and E.Honda's new one-two combo just to name a few. These 12 characters seem to play with the same familiar priorities and start-ups from the SF2 Turbo. With Chun-Li being the exception, who still gets to use her Street Fighter 3rd strike stance and that Damn Kick Super.... (If you haven't guess it by now. I don't like Chun-Li!)

Graphically, you really can't compare SFIV to anything else out now. The cell-shaded ink splash flares are hot! The color pallete used in SFIV is mad juicy! Capcom went on a nice little acid trip and decided to abuse the Crayola vivid colors crayon set to the max. The ultra bright color scheme really pulls the characters out and puts them in your face when the do their supers and ultras. Or when the do something big like Zangief's Spinning Pile Driver. Man, the last frame of it is so sick looking! Also if you look closely, Capcom has put a lot of working into giving the characters facial expression to kinda match the damage inflicted upon them. Which is very important in this game,
especially, when playing against characters like Zangief. (I'll go into this a bit further later on DFP and SRK.) The Ultra's Combos are brilliant Vega/M.Bison's, a.k.a. the last boss, ultra combo finishes so nice and even though I don't like Chun-Li. The last hit of her ultra combo hits so HARD but finishes as smooth as a frigid Jägermeister shot. She is cold blooded man!

Gameplay: Saving Attacks, Ultra Combos, Revenge System, EX-Special Moves. Learn'em. Love'em. Abuse them! SFIV plays kinda like SF2 Turbo with EX moves from 3rd Strike. SFIV is still built on the foundation of pokes, zoning, and knowing your attacks' ranges and priorities. Even

though, I stopped playing SF2T a long time ago. SFIV is quite the refresher with a zesty twang of new school effects tot the SF series. Wait... Wait... Wait... There are things that need to be addressed though. Zanigief has ****ing power armor. This ain't no bug or slight mishap either. Some Zangief lovin' Capcom programmer came into the game play developing office after hours and gave him ****ing power armor! Like watch me take a hit , interrupt set combos POWER ****IN' ARMOR! Kunai's comment about having to play Zangief like he has the cooties is so true. Then there is Vega/M.Bison' super. Which magically slides through you to the other side even if you at the wall blocking. He will teleport behind you and have his evil way with you. FIX IT CAPCOM! If you don't fix it. I'm playing with the Red Cyclone and I'm doing it for Mother Russian. Conrad!

Audio Aspect: I really wished that they would have turned up the volume a bit because we couldn't hear it very well over the 10 Tekken 6 Noir cabinets. Which were literally bumping! Since, it was a Namco Arcade, I guess the Namco reps came in and turned down the volume on SFIV. So next time, I try to pay more attention to the back ground music. But to answer a question that a lot of the video game audio heads wanna know. Does it sound better than SF 3rd Strike? Hell No but you never know!

The Lok Test Event and Players: The set-up could have been like the last set-up in Osaka. The Sugamo test only had 4 cabinets and only 1 of the cabinets could select Beginner, Arcade, and Random mode. While the other 3 cabinets were on Arcade Mode only. So basically, Everyone wanted to play on the first Cabinet so that they could get a couple of rounds practice before. But as soon as you got on Golden Cabinet you could feel the hate ensue behind you as the line for SFIV, a.k.a. Snake Way, got longer. Kunai informed that the Osaka set-up had 5 cabinets. 4 cabinets for Arcade mode and 1 for Beginner Mode with 2 seperate lines. That would have been nice but oh well. We made due. Overall the game was pretty well received and the level of competition at the venue was high. On Saturday if my memory serves me correctly. I came out with about a 4-9 win ratio. But on Sunday, I came back hella hard with a 17-6 win ratio. I also managed to pull a 10 game winning streak with a photo as proof. (Jeah!) But not with Guile. Sagat is a Beast! The level of competition was high and just for the record. But I never beat that girl in the blue once. Every match, we went three rounds (Guile Vs. Balrog/Vega). But she had her Balrog/Vega pokes down to a science. Damn that CLAW!!!! But how I do love playing girls that are good. They have such interesting tactics!

Overall: Street Fighter is a thinking game. I'm not trying to put on the level of chess nor will I go into some Yoda spill about the force being within this game. But it is a thinking game. A lot of people
think that 2D fighters are old fashion but 2 .5D or whatever the hell everyone is calling it. I see it as a superb face-lift for the Street Fighter Series! The new system will take some time to get use though and the online updates will keep us on our toes. The Newbie, Casual and Pro Gamers will find this game entertaining, and challenging. I'm really am looking forward to the first SFIV tournament in the near future. Is this the last Lok Test before the actual release? I want to
say, "Yes." but with rumors like a possibility of Ibuki from 3rd Strike making an appearance. Then aren't there pictures of Cammy and Fei Long for SFIV somewhere on the net as well? You see you really can't tell. But I can leave you with this. SFIV is the TRUTH!

POPULAR RATING: 8.9 and waiting for an update.

P.S.: For more info Check-out Kunai's SRK post on (SFIV 6th Lok Test)

P.S.II: 3 more SFIV Lok Test have been annouced in Japan. So if you see me in the arcade. Say wassup and come ready to fight!

And a prayer for a those who lost their lives or were effected by
the tragedy at Akihabara on Sunday. (Kunai and Jeff ya'll got out of
there right before it happened and if I would have met ya'll down in
Akihabara. We would have been there when it did happen. GOD BLESS.)