Dear Capcom,


I am writing to humbly request for SSF4 what I and many others believe to be the most important feature that vanilla SF4 did not have.

In SSF4, please implement the option of enabling letterbox for play on TV's with a fullscreen (4:3) aspect ratio.  Adding this feature would allow the game to be played in its correct widescreen (16:9) shape, the intended visual format, on a fullscreen TV.

This feature was notably included in SF4's arcade version specifically to accommodate for cabinets with fullscreen monitors, but it was jarringly absent from SF4's console releases.  A player used to the normal widescreen experience that is exposed to the game on a fullscreen TV will immediately notice that the picture has been horizontally compressed by over 25%.  To a player who has grown accustomed to this squished form, he will see the game running properly in widescreen as though it has been horizontally stretched by over 33%!

The feature is essentially a reverse application of the same concept behind the pillar boxing option that was impressively included in both SSF2THDR, and the recent XBL and PSN ports of MVC2.  Both of those games were originally designed for fullscreen monitors, and the pillar box option is included to allow players to preserve the games' original aspect ratio on a widescreen TV.

As you are no doubt already aware, a SF4 player's precision of horizontal spacing is a crucial element in determining his success or failure.  Having to deal with a distorted image is a very real cause of misjudging distances, and it's a serious detriment to the game when played competitively.  While practicing the game both ways is a possibility (and some players do!), it is a really unfortunate one for no other reason than that it requires two separate TV's.

SF4 was of course designed for the widescreen format.  Fittingly (no pun intended), a widescreen display is without a doubt the optimal choice for playing the game.  If you don't have a widescreen TV or monitor yet and you'd like to play SF4 looking as good as it can possibly look, the easy and obvious solution is to buy yourself a widescreen display.  This is good.

However, please do not make the mistake of believing that the fullscreen TV is a thing of the past.  For the competitive scene, fullscreen TV's have remained almost as important as ever.

The reality at this time is that nearly all consumer widescreen TV's suffer from crippling amounts of lag due to internal factors such as the post-processing and re-scaling of images.  (For the sake of simplicity, please bear with me in that I will treat all widescreen TV's as HD LCD's or plasmas, and all fullscreen TV's as SD CRT's.  While there are exceptions, this generalization accounts for all but the tiniest fraction of TV's in use today.)  Lag from widescreen TV's was a serious issue for the players and the organizers alike at both Evolution 2009 and Tougeki Super Battle Opera 7, the two most prestigious tournaments in the world for SF4 this year.  Only the few most major tournaments in the world, only the tiniest handful, are able finance the purchase of widescreen monitors that they can guarantee are lagless.

HDTV lag is another factor that is a serious detriment to the game in a competitive situation.  As a matter of fact, it can hamper one's enjoyment of the game at any level of skill or seriousness.  It dulls reactions, ruins timing, and literally makes the game less responsive to control.

The vast majority of SF4 tournaments out there live and die on the equipment their players can and will bring out to them.  Street Fighter has a long and proud history of things being run by the community, for the community.  These are local tournaments, regional tournaments, special exhibitions... virtually every non-arcade event for SF4 other than that aforementioned tiny handful.   Put simply, at almost all competitive gatherings for SF4 around the globe, as far as TV's go, people are forced to use whatever's available.

At innumerable events since SF4's console release, players complained that the widescreen TV's provided for them suffered from lag.  In almost every situation where an expensive, reliably tested, trusted and guaranteed lagless TV was not available to swap in for them, the solution to this was almost always the same: use a good old fashioned fullscreen SD CRT TV, because those things never, ever lag.  Ever.

... but, you see, therein lies the problem we started with.  That lagless fullscreen TV compresses the picture.  In a competitive situation, it is extremely disappointing to the players when they are forced to choose between the lesser of two evils: laggy controls or a squished  screen.

Adding the option to enable a letterbox mode for fullscreen TV's is something that the worldwide competitive community would appreciate more than I can possibly explain.

I know there's not much clout I can levy to put real weight or gravity behind this; SF4 sold just fine without this feature, casual players don't even care about this, and nobody would boycott SSF4 just because this one feature is again absent.  I wouldn't pretend to try and threaten you with some ridiculous "Or else!" scenarios.  People would buy it anyway, people would play it anyway.

All we can ask is please.  Please, please, please.  Please do this for the most hardcore player base of your most treasured and timeless franchise.  We are the lifeblood of Street Fighter, and we are the most die-hard fans that you have.

Thank you very much for your time and consideration, and thank you for making us SSF4.


Sincerely,
deadfrog

Your request would best be in here.

Oct 14, 2009 -- 9:24PM, RagingDemon015 wrote:

Your request would best be in here.

Hardly. If he were to post the idea in there, it would be lost among the tons of garbage in that thread.

I support you, OP. Having a proper ratio for a 16:10 display would be great, too.

Better yet, if they could "zoom" the image out in 4:3 like they do in HDR so that you get the whole playfield with some extra on top and on the bottom (no black bars).

Sign & kudos for the long write up.