Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Ed. "The Good & The Bad"

Those of you who know me have learned that I love fighting games. It's my absolute favorite genre when it comes to video games, and I can definitely pwn some of the more hardcore online gamers. Before I made my transition over to the Xbox 360 console I was a very skilled PS3 fighting game player. In all honesty getting used to the 360's controller has not been an easy road for me, especially when it comes to pulling off ultras, and supers in SSFIV. I'm a gamer who takes full advantage of the thumb pad on a game controller, and the 360's is horrible. At times the thumb pad on it is almost unresponsive. Aside from those issues I've adapted fairly well to using the thumb stick. I can see there will be a long road of training ahead of me if I wish to become as good as I was with the PS3's controller. Now allow me to tell you the good, and bad features I discovered while playing the updated Arcade Edition ...


I would like to start with something that is very important to me in fighting games. I have a feeling it's not what you think. As an Otaku I absolutely love the Japanese entertainment culture. Fighting games that feature original Japanese voice overs really catch my attention. I feel that the Japanese voice actors can express a wider range of emotional, and vocal accents. The game always sounds more intense when you have quality Japanese voice acting to compliment it. Over the years I have seen many fighting game titles that were released with the option for Japanese voice overs. Some of the titles like the Guilty Gear, and BlazBlue series were greatly enhanced by this feature, in my opinion anyways. The release of Street Fighter IV, and Super Street Fighter IV also featured the Japanese voice settings, and I was grateful for this. The voice overs in the initial games were done in an excellent manner. They actually sounded like the characters we had learned to love in the Street Fighter series. To my dismay I found that the Japanese voice overs in the Arcade Edition were changed in a bad way. Ryu's voice over sounded like an older Japanese gentleman calmly quoting a phrase. There was no emphasis on the voice acting at all. It didn't even sound like Ryu either. This was the same for Gouken as well. I haven't heard the other voice overs, but I assume it's the same deal.  To me this was a huge disappointment. Evil Ryu's English voice also sounded horrible. I don't know what the developer/s thought when they were hiring voice talent, but they could have done a better job.

The combat system was also another issue. I took time to play through the story mode with Yun, Yang, Evil Ryu, and Oni Akuma. I also spent some time playing online matches with each character to see how they faired against real opponents. I found that both Yun, and Yang were severely weakened characters. I had to play more defensive while using them. I bring this up, because I heard that the developer of the Arcade Edition had 'balanced' the characters. It honestly seems to me that both Yun, and Yang's attacks were weaker than those of the original roster of Super Street Fighter IV combatants. Even in story mode I found myself easily defeated by the CPU opponent. This brings me to another point. The CPU in the story mode actually seems to be much more aggressive, and smarter in AI. The only 'good' I see in this is that it will definitely prepare you for the many losses you will suffer online due to the so-called 'balanced' fighting system. Out of the four new characters I only found Evil Ryu to be balanced. I had hoped that Oni Akuma would be an impressive character, but he had one major flaw. While using Oni Akuma I found that 90% of the time his jump kicks would not connect. It even looked as though his leg was going into the opposing character's body. I also noticed that when you are right up against another character his body/arm will go into the character, and glitch. This tells me that the character collision details for Oni Akuma were not aligned correctly. I found it very frustrating when attempting to jump kick an opponent/player.

In the end I found the Arcade Edition to be somewhat of a disappointment. I could probably overlook Yun, and Yang's lack of offense, but the rest is hard to deal with. I do not think it was worth the 1200 msp asking price, 800 msp would have been more like it. The extra characters looked cool, but there so-called balance was absent. I felt like the new characters were weakened way too much in comparison to the characters from the original roster to make the whining gamers happy. While the Japanese voice overs may not mean much to others they definitely meant a lot to me. They were delivered in a poor manner, and didn't keep true to the character voices I have grown used to. In conclusion I find that Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition seemed like a rushed, and partially completed release.