Ultra Street Fighter 4

Capcom's fighting game classic Street Fighter IV has been added to Xbox One's backwards compatibility library.

Competitive Street Fighter and Marvel vs. Capcom player Noel Brown has been banned from a series of high-profile fighting game tournaments following an instance of "unwarranted and unwanted contact" with a fellow attendee.

We've produced hundreds of platform comparisons over the last nine years, but few that concentrate exclusively on the differences between one franchise entry and its shinier, more modern successor. With the arrival of Street Fighter 5, we thought we'd have a little fun - we decided to use our dual-system control set-up (a system we first used here) to play versus mode Street Fighter 4 and its sequel simultaneously. In effect, it would be an actual live Face-Off - the edited highlights of which you can watch in the video below.

Evo, the biggest fighting game tournament in the world, has set the cat among the pigeons by dropping Street Fighter 4 from this year's event.

The Evolution Championship Series 2015 wrapped up last night - and once again the biggest fighting game tournament on earth delivered.

The PlayStation 4 port of Ultra Street Fighter 4 just got a lot better with the release of a new patch.

Ultra Street Fighter 4 has received a major update on PS4 after its launch on Sony's console was so shoddy that Capcom decided to use the Xbox 360 version instead for its own tournament.

This 1.02 update makes numerous improvements. You'll no longer have to worry about disappearing projectiles, Decapre's teleport animation has been fixed, and the sound effects for the Red Focus Attack and Akuma's stomp have been sorted. There should also be less interface lag in the menus and the general word from the community on NeoGAF is that while not perfect, it's a massive improvement over how the game played before.

Here's a list of the full patch notes (via NeoGAF):

Read more

UPDATE June 4th, 9:00am: After just one week on the market, the PS4 version of Ultra Street Fighter 4 has received its first patch bringing with it a host of improvements and changes designed to address complaints in the original release. Straight away, we noted that the menu system has been bumped up to a proper 60fps, making a world of difference during navigation. The patch notes mention changes to anisotropic filtering to "decrease blur" but it would appear this effect is applied only to specific stages. Namely, the training stage is now much cleaner with higher quality texture filtering that almost completely eliminates the issue. Unfortunately, this does not appear to be a global change as most other stages that we tested appear identical to our tests prior to the patch. Anti-aliasing also remains missing in action, while the low resolution transparency effects also appear unchanged.

A number of players are already putting the game through its paces and reporting a decrease in input latency. Running a quick trial on our own setup, there does appear to be a tangible decrease in latency across the board. Using the same technique detailed below, this updated version appears to reduce latency by one frame, or roughly 16ms.

The patch also addresses other issues such as disappearing projectiles, various UI issues, and Decapre's teleport animations. We can't say for sure if all of these issues have been fully corrected but we didn't encounter any missing Sonic Booms during our session, which is a good sign. That said, Decapre's Air Scramble still comes out at a different angle compared to the other versions of the game. We also noted minor issues with the audio mix with certain sound effects seemingly playing louder than they should.

Read more

UPDATE 01/06/15: The organisers of Evo, the biggest fighting game tournament in the world, have decided to go with the Xbox 360 version of Ultra Street Fighter 4 instead of the embattled PlayStation 4 version.

The PlayStation 4 version of Ultra Street Fighter 4 supports PS3 fight sticks, Sony has announced.

Ever wondered where Street Fighter pros look on the screen while they're playing?

Ultra Street Fighter 4 will be heading to the PlayStation 4 on May 26th.

The port, being handled by Other Ocean Interactive, brings over all the DLC and all the characters Capcom's fighter accumulated across its numerous versions last generation, and paves the way for the launch of Street Fighter 5, the PlayStation 4 exclusive that's not yet got a release date.

The PlayStation 4's Ultra Street Fighter 4 also addresses some of the input lag problems some players had on the PlayStation 3 version, according to an official entry on the PlayStation Blog.

Read more

Ultra Street Fighter 4 will launch on PlayStation 4 in spring 2015, Sony has announced. All DLC costumes are included.

At its PlayStation Experience event Sony said the fighting game was due exclusively for PS4, suggesting it will not release for Xbox One.

The news comes following the leak of Street Fighter 5, due out for PC and PS4.

Read more

Capcom will release a big patch for fighting game Ultra Street Fighter 4 in December.

The patch, due out shortly after the Capcom Cup tournament on 13th December, adds Edition Select online, new training mode trials and the long-awaited Omega Mode.

The update brings the game up to version 1.04.

Read more

The upcoming Omega Edition of Ultra Street Fighter 4 adds a number of new abilities to the fighting game's gargantuan 44 character roster - and a few of them rekindle memories of Capcom's much-loved Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike.

Capcom will add a new mode to fighting game Ultra Street Fighter 4 that breaks the game balance deliberately.

The 2014 Evolution Championship series ended last night and it will go down as a tournament full of upsets.

A prominent member of the fighting game community has written a book designed to help newcomers learn how to play fighting games.

The Ultra Street Fighter 4 update is live now on Xbox 360 a day earlier than planned.

The 1.92GB update is available from the Xbox Marketplace priced £11.99. This is not the full digital version of the game, which launches alongside the disc version on 5th August.

Reports are coming in that the update is available from the North American PlayStation Store (thanks, EventHubs), but we can't see it on the European Store yet. We expect it'll be live there soon.

Read more

From an outsider's perspective, the differences between Street Fighter 4 and its three existing sequels must look marginal at best. The first game made its console debut back in 2009 and helped revitalise the fighting game genre. Super Street Fighter 4 surfaced a year later and added 10 new characters to the roster, but since then, the game-to-game differences have been tailored more towards the dedicated fans. Ultra Street Fighter 4 continues this tradition with five new characters, a trio of fundamental system changes and not so much as a story mode in sight.

If you're not the kind of player who spends hours learning combos in the training room, discusses the finer points of character match-ups on a regular basis and stays up till the crack of dawn watching the Top 8 duke it out at the yearly Evolution Championship Series, then the Street Fighter 4 series' consistent lack of single-player content will be a tough pill to swallow. But for those who view Street Fighter as a competitive fighting game that only truly makes sense when two minds are trying to outsmart each other, then Ultra can be seen as both curtain call from Capcom and the most substantial sequel since Super.

Of the new talent, Poison stands out as the easiest to get to grips with. Her lingering fireball and feet-first dragon punch mean she shares some shoto fundamentals with Ryu and Ken, but when you also consider her Rekka-like whip special and her command grab Ultra, it's clear that Poison isn't as orthodox as she initially seems. The larger than life Hugo, on the other hand, is about as heavy-handed as a grappler gets. His normal attacks have extremely limited combo potential, but if you can close the distance and land his wall-bouncing command grab, you can inflict severe damage.

Read more

Ultra Street Fighter 4 launches on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on 4th June 2014, Capcom has announced.

That's for the digital upgrade from Super Street Fighter 4 and Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition. Expect both from PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade for £11.99 / €14.99 / $14.99.

The disc version and the full digital version launch on 5th August 2014 for £19.99 / €29.99 / $39.99.

Read more

Decapre is the fifth and final new character for fighting game Ultra Street Fighter 4, Capcom has announced.

Last year, Capcom USA community manager Peter "The ComboFiend" Rosas met with those mysterious fighting game experts Capcom Japan has holed up in Osaka. This was his chance to prove himself.

Street Fighter developer Capcom has announced the Capcom Pro Tour, an annual gaming league in partnership with streaming broadcaster Twitch.

The tour will initially focus on Super Street Fighter 4: Arcade Edition, then transition to Ultra Street Fighter 4 when it releases this summer.

10 premier events will take place throughout the year, and any player who wins one of these events will ultimately qualify for the year-end Capcom Cup. A further six places will then be offered on a points basis.

Read more

Ultra Street Fighter 4 includes Edition Select, which lets you pick from the various versions of the characters from all the games released in the Street Fighter 4 series.

Editor's note: Street Fighter 4 comes to PlayStation 4 in Europe today, and to mark the occasion we're reprinting this look at the first five years of Capcom's modern classic, first published last year. You can find our review of Ultra Street Fighter 4, the version which is coming to PlayStation 4, here, and Digital Foundry will be taking a full look at the port over the weekend. Oh, and a quick disclaimer - since writing this, Matt Edwards decided he loved Street Fighter so much that he now works at Capcom, where he can take lunchtime trips to Hammersmith's Pret with Ken and Ryu every day.

Ultra Street Fighter 4 includes online training and three versus three team matches.

Capcom and art dealership Cook & Becker have teamed up to create a Street Fighter art print collection.

Ultra Street Fighter 4 launches early June 2014, Capcom has announced.

Capcom has unveiled new battle systems for Ultra Street Fighter 4.

Capcom has announced Ultra Street Fighter 4 for release on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in early 2014.

It adds five characters to the established roster, raising the total playable characters to 44, six new stages and completely rebalanced gameplay based on fan feedback.

Four of the new characters have been announced, all lifted from Capcom's Street Fighter x Tekken game: Hugo, Poison, Elena and Rolento. The fifth "all-new" character remains a mystery for now.

Read more