As I rattle my way through video game history, for almost every game there is a separation between the game as I play it and the deeper game beyond as more dedicated players find it. I’m far from alone there, which is the basis for my confidence in thinking I still have something to say. To flip it round, I can still find plenty worthwhile in the thoughts of someone else playing FIFA 08 even if they didn’t make it into the world’s top 1,000 players like I did (Wii version only). Of the people who bought the copies of a game to the top of the charts, only a minority are generally likely to be long-term dedicated players. These days, trophy completion percentages even give us hard evidence of that.
In the past the game as experienced by more dedicated players was often invisible to many. With online play it became a bit less so. For example, coming in late to Mario Kart DS and playing against strangers, it was impossible to not learn of the existence of its “snaking” exploit because everyone else was there doing it. The gradual move to an even more online world made that more prominent, but for some types of games higher level play was already a more obvious part of their cultural footprint. None more so than fighting games, and their competitive revival which Street Fighter IV was a part of.
I did not engage much with anything higher level on Street Fighter IV. I bought it in 2009, an out-of-character decision which I can’t actually remember the reasoning for. Perhaps it was just because I could, a hangover from my late C64 days of seeing Street Fighter II as the epitome of the glamorous, unobtainable and exclusionary console game.
I played Street Fighter IV on my PS3 online, got a few wins largely by luck and by playing as Abel, a new character that opponents hadn’t all figured out yet. I contested plenty of fights against flowchart Kens, and recognised even there a level of commitment and discipline which I would not reach. I tried the training mode, misunderstood how fast I needed to enter inputs on the d-pad, and ended up with literal blisters on my thumb.
I’m more conscious than usual of just how shallow my engagement with Street Fighter IV was and is. I’ve done a bit more compared staring in awe at the attract mode of the Street Fighter II arcade machine at the local leisure centre, but not much. As such, in 2009 and now alike, I found Street Fighter IV‘s most impressive achievement to be how close it comes to the awe of that experience. Games had moved on a lot in less than two decades, for better and for worse, but Capcom managed to produce a visual feast which feels both new and a logical extension and update.
Much of it is in the art style, 3D characters built on the same logic of being ready to compress to larger-than-life 2D gameplay. The fighters all feel ten feet tall, unworldly and yet concrete and weighty, and the brushwork looks like energy steaming off them even before they burst into blue or orange flame for the special moves earned over the course of a fight. There are lots more flames where that came from, not least on the character select screen. Old characters feel right, the assortment of new national stereotypes look great, and they lean into the silliness of everything without taking it too far.
That careful updating extends through the whole experience. I soon found a character I could work with the basics on — Chun-Li was good but I found Cammy the best, with the added bonus of British stereotypes in end-of-fight lines like “is it true the US military doesn’t let you take breaks for tea time?” — and eased into my own simple but engaging fighting. Trying to get the input sequence for the ultra combo just right to deal incredible damage or completely flub it is a perfect heightened moment. As a spectacle Street Fighter IV feels modern even now, feels classic, and happily exists in a world utterly outside of everything surrounding it at the top of the charts of the time.
Top of the charts for week ending 21 February 2009:
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