SSFII Turbo HD Remix 360 beta soon News

Capcom will let Xbox Live Gold subscribers who buy the Xbox Live Arcade version of Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3 access an upcoming Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix beta test, the US arm of the publisher said yesterday.

Commando 3 is set to cost 800 Microsoft Points (GBP 6.80 / EUR 9.60) when it launches this spring, and the HD Remix beta will launch shortly afterward and last for about eight weeks, with the aim of stress-testing the multiplayer network code. We've asked Capcom whether there'll be a PS3 equivalent but haven't heard back yet.

The company's prolific US bloggers have also shed some light on why we've been waiting so long for the HD Remix version of Super Street Fighter II Turbo, which was originally announced all the way back in April 2007. A lot of the delay is to do with revamping artwork, apparently.

"As a necessary part of development, we had to outsource a lot of the [artistic] work to an outside company that based their work off of Udon's key frames," producer Rey Jimenez explains. "This company has an excellent reputation and ability as an outside art contractor and we were very impressed with their overall resources and their infrastructure.

"Without going into the nitty-gritty of it, the art they were producing just wasn't up to par or schedule of what we needed. To be honest, a lot of their art was looking pretty good, but just not 'good enough'. It just wouldn't satisfy the quality bar that both Capcom and Street Fighter fans demand."

So Capcom redid it, reducing the number of tones for each colour, among other things. "We know that it sucks that we all have to wait longer to play HD Remix, but the plus side to all this is that with the extra time needed to reboot the art pipeline, we have extra time to: a) cram in tons of cool features that weren't planned from the onset of development and b) further refine and test features that we had planned all along," Jimenez adds.

"Recent tech solutions dedicated to online play" mean that HD Remix "will provide the best online console experience to date", he says, and the team has also added 8-man Tournament Mode, remixed and classic music, and "hit box display" which is good enough for a "Woohoo!" in Capcom-land. More features will be announced later, apparently.

So, look out for more on HD Remix soon, it would seem.