Street Fighter 4 as a sign of the times
I've been out of the gaming loop as a whole for a long time. It's been years that I've owned an up to date current console since the N64 era and even then owning that system meant being stuck in a bygone era. You might as very well said, I love slim pickings. However I still have my opinion and even though I might not be in the experience, only getting what small chances I can to barely update myself on the ubermesche of gaming from time to time; the recently released Street Fighter 4 does bring up some ideas of what gaming is and where it's going.
It makes me contemplate whether the idea of a good game or even a decent game had already been established long ago when Capcom decided to backpedal one of it's flagship franchises around Street Fighter 2. For those who might not know the history of the franchise, SF1 came out, then the blockbuster of SF2. After countless sequels a prequel franchise of Street Fighter 2 came out in the form of the Alpha Series which was used to showcase the CPS-2 graphics board. The in game timeline set the Alpha series before the events of SF2.
SF3 then came out setting the in game timeline far after the events of SF2. However SF4 is set in the very aftermath of SF2. So if anyone is following it goes as such.
SF1 -> SFAlpha -> SF2 -> SF4 -> SF3
Fuck Capcom inable to count to 3, they can't even count in the proper order.
However enough of that. What's most likely just trying to relive theold days of success I still feel that SF4 has something significant to say about gaming culture. With the resurgence of remakes, uprgrades and the new market of aging gamers, a new sort of niche or gaming market is coming out. Where we laughed at the Namco or Atari collections of the silver age of gaming of Centipede, Asteroids and Pac-Man; as an aging gamer myself we are beginning to see collections of gaming childhoods being presented to us either through download services ala Virtual Console or X-Box Live Aracade, repackaging ala FF updates or just plain collections such as the SNK collections.
This idea of a retro gamer market of the 90's emerging seems lucrative not in the sense bringing back old franchises in a current gen setting such as Golden Axe: Beast Rider or Rygar...but to bring back the gaming we like in general such as Bionic Commando Rearmed. However the interesting idea behind Street Fighter 4 is that it straddles between the new and old. SF2 being the money maker it is and with the cast being literally plucked out of that franchise with nary a care in the world makes SF4 seem like another in a long line of updates than an full fledged installment to SF2. Sure there are new characters in it, but the lengths that Capcom decided to try and mesh them in with the old guard falls very short. The simple fact that they placed the in game timeline nearer to SF2 than even SF3's timeline makes for a simple statement about the gaming community: gaming was good in the 90's and while a lot of new franchises have refined the idea of game design, it goes to show that there's a recognition of the design concepts of the 90's far more than we realize in the jump between 2D gaming into the 3D world or even trying to progress the 2D world itself. With Super Mario Galaxy essentially being Super Mario Bros. 3 3-d it goes to show that perhaps being stuck in gaming nostolgia isn't necessarily a bad thing since it shapes how well we receive games today.
It makes me contemplate whether the idea of a good game or even a decent game had already been established long ago when Capcom decided to backpedal one of it's flagship franchises around Street Fighter 2. For those who might not know the history of the franchise, SF1 came out, then the blockbuster of SF2. After countless sequels a prequel franchise of Street Fighter 2 came out in the form of the Alpha Series which was used to showcase the CPS-2 graphics board. The in game timeline set the Alpha series before the events of SF2.
SF3 then came out setting the in game timeline far after the events of SF2. However SF4 is set in the very aftermath of SF2. So if anyone is following it goes as such.
SF1 -> SFAlpha -> SF2 -> SF4 -> SF3
Fuck Capcom inable to count to 3, they can't even count in the proper order.
However enough of that. What's most likely just trying to relive theold days of success I still feel that SF4 has something significant to say about gaming culture. With the resurgence of remakes, uprgrades and the new market of aging gamers, a new sort of niche or gaming market is coming out. Where we laughed at the Namco or Atari collections of the silver age of gaming of Centipede, Asteroids and Pac-Man; as an aging gamer myself we are beginning to see collections of gaming childhoods being presented to us either through download services ala Virtual Console or X-Box Live Aracade, repackaging ala FF updates or just plain collections such as the SNK collections.
This idea of a retro gamer market of the 90's emerging seems lucrative not in the sense bringing back old franchises in a current gen setting such as Golden Axe: Beast Rider or Rygar...but to bring back the gaming we like in general such as Bionic Commando Rearmed. However the interesting idea behind Street Fighter 4 is that it straddles between the new and old. SF2 being the money maker it is and with the cast being literally plucked out of that franchise with nary a care in the world makes SF4 seem like another in a long line of updates than an full fledged installment to SF2. Sure there are new characters in it, but the lengths that Capcom decided to try and mesh them in with the old guard falls very short. The simple fact that they placed the in game timeline nearer to SF2 than even SF3's timeline makes for a simple statement about the gaming community: gaming was good in the 90's and while a lot of new franchises have refined the idea of game design, it goes to show that there's a recognition of the design concepts of the 90's far more than we realize in the jump between 2D gaming into the 3D world or even trying to progress the 2D world itself. With Super Mario Galaxy essentially being Super Mario Bros. 3 3-d it goes to show that perhaps being stuck in gaming nostolgia isn't necessarily a bad thing since it shapes how well we receive games today.
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