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Capcom reveals Street Fighter VI teaser and Capcom Fighting Collection

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It was 6:30 this morning when I woke myself up and grabbed my phone, remembering that Capcom’s mystery countdown timer would have hit zero by now. For those who hadn’t been following the news – on February 14th Capcom tweeted out a link to a page with the URL “capcom-games/countdown” – the page itself had a dark background and a timer counting down a number of days and hours. A quick bit of maths revealed that the countdown was scheduled to end at what would have been the end of events such as Capcom Cup and the Capcom Pro Tour; had those events not been cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic, it was likely that they would have ended with whatever this reveal was. Since these events are focused on competitive gaming, a few people assumed that this would be some kind of fighting game announcement. However, nobody knew if the fighting game in question would be Street Fighter, Darkstalkers, Rival Schools, MvC (or another “vs” game entirely), Power Stone… the teaser site and countdown didn’t give away a lot. Street Fighter VI seemed like the announcement most deserving of this kind of build-up, but there are plenty of other franchises that are worthy of a revival.

Capcom Fighting Collection reveal

Images for the Capcom Fighting Collection and Street Fighter VI teaser

Eventually, everyone was satisfied. Well, sort of. After the countdown expired we were treated to a back-to-back of two different reveals: Capcom Fighting Collection – a compilation of various “vs” games – and a short Street Fighter VI teaser. The Capcom Fighting Collection features Darkstalkers, Night Warriors, Vampire Saviour, Vampire Hunter 2, Vampire Saviour 2, Red Earth, Cyberbots, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, Hyper Street Fighter II and Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix. In addition to arcade modes and local versus play, the games will feature online play, training modes, galleries of music and art, and some welcome quality-of-life features such as quick button customisation. It’s a smart response to those who have felt that other Capcom fighting games get neglected as the company focuses on Street Fighter, but I can imagine that some people might be disappointed that the announcement wasn’t of a fully-fledged sequel to one of those neglected games.

Street Fighter VI teaser

Images for the Capcom Fighting Collection and Street Fighter VI teaser

Meanwhile, the Street Fighter VI teaser wasn’t prepared to give anything away. A dimly-lit CG scene that showed Ryu and Luke squaring off against one another isn’t really much to go on, and people even found the new logo disappointing – instead of the traditional red-yellow gradient of the full name, we have a white hexagonal “SF” logo with a small 6 in the corner. I remember that the Street Fighter V “Rise Up” trailer was similarly vague, but that at least had brief flashes of gamplay in between its shots of arcade activity and gamepads in hands. A quick visit to Capcom Unity isn’t that much more revealing; only promising that more news will be shared in the summer. (The Capcom Fighting Collection, meanwhile, will be released on June 24th.)


I’m not as invested in fighting games as I was during the height of my frequent Street Fighter V content updates, but the Street Fighter VI teaser leaves me keen to know more about the new gameplay systems and what the approach to netcode and testing might be (let’s not forget the news of Altimor’s patch that fixed Street Fighter V’s online issues in a matter of days, or the unfinished state of Street Fighter V at launch.) I never really got into Darkstalkers and so the Capcom Fighting Collection didn’t do a whole lot for me, but I did enjoy the inclusion of Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix in the Street Fighter Alpha Anthology. If you have any thoughts on the Street Fighter VI teaser or the Capcom Fighting Collection, feel free to leave a comment below.

Deconstructing footsies – a discipline, not a command

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Or more specifically a state of play. Fighting game terminology is unfriendly at the best of times, and when you want to go about deconstructing footsies, you can’t talk about them in the same way you talk about throws, guard breaks or super combos. Instead, it’s better to think about it as a traditional discipline carried out by players, or a specific segment in the “timeline” of any fighting game match – whether that game is Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, BlazBlue or whatever. Footsies are a thing that’s likely to occur at the beginning of a round but can also be re-established in an emergent fashion later on. Many fighting games can display a message at the side of the screen when you perform a throw tech or a crush counter, because those are gameplay mechanics built into the game. Conversely, it would be hard to imagine a fighting game flashing the words “Good footsies! (500 pts)” on the screen, because it’s a state of play formalised by players and you’d need some kind of advanced machine learning to analyse what’s happening and decide if footsies are happening.

You could try deconstructing footsies yourself – with a visit to Google and a few searches you’ll find talk about “mid-range” “space control”, the “ground game” and “safe” “pokes” that help one player dictate the “pace” and “flow” of the game. I don’t intend to get too wrapped up in the minutiae (but we can still keep the above aspects of play in mind) – instead, let’s return to the concept of footsies as a moment in a round’s timeline.

Deconstructing footsies in a round

Deconstructing footsies

You start the round, you engage in footsies, you commit to a gamble… maybe you retreat. Then maybe there are more footsies. And so it goes on. The biggest mistake a glossary on fighting games can make would be including footsies as a regular technique amongst guarding and throws – in reality, it would probably need its own chapter in that glossary.

When deconstructing footsies, we could look at the established conventions first. One thing that is certain is that the “footsies” part of a round or match relies on constants for animation speed (the number of frames in each move’s animation), movement speed and hitboxes – essentially, players engaging in footsies are typically at “mid-range” (close enough for attacks to land whilst still offering a means to create distance if things get risky) using safe pokes (attacks that complete quickly so that it’s harder for an opponent to punish them, and serve to keep the opponent at a distance) on the ground to try and gauge (or, better still, control) the options and opportunities available to both characters. If there was a fighting game where the character movement speed, animation speed or hitbox sizes changed randomly during rounds, deconstructing footsies within that game would be impossible. Instead, footsies rely on the fixed parameters encoded into each game. Furthermore, a common understanding of fighting game design is that the more powerful moves are less “safe” to perform – nobody throws out their strongest move at the start of a round, because it’s often easy to avoid or counter such a move at that moment in a match. Instead, a player can rely on those safe mid-range pokes to gain vital information without the risk of (over)commitment.

Concepts and upsets

Of course, there are plenty of other elements of play that can upset the footsie game – what happens when you’re throwing out pokes and then a player decides to step back, throw a projectile, and then disrupt mid-range play by jumping at you? However, experienced players will know the strengths and weaknesses of their opponent’s character, and may anticipate this – either with a plan to punish the opponent or to simply nullify their efforts and bring things back to the footsie game.

The idea of footsies is an emergent concept that relies on established design tropes in the fighting game genre. Because the characters move in this manner and attack in these ways, people can understand what footsies between a particular pair of characters will look like. In a fighting game with a small cast, things quickly become pretty complex, but when you have bigger rosters and more potential matchups, the “mid-range” play becomes more varied. Even so, it’s a single-word term that encompasses a lot of behaviours and practices in the game, and so I can totally understand new players hearing the term and being a bit bewildered when trying to decode its meaning. However, experienced players need to educate rather than dismiss those who have more to learn.

Deconstructing footsies for others

Deconstructing footsies

As said in our opening, however, footsies aren’t a concept that can be measured by an in-game system, and so people will always dispute the terminology one way or another. I’ll admit that when I started paying more attention to fighting games, I mistakenly thought that footsies were what happened when players tried to bait out unsafe moves from their opponents, and I thought of it as a specific decision or strategy rather than an organic state of play. Footsies are the foundation of a match that incorporate smaller building blocks of fighting games such as the rock, paper and scissors game of attacks, blocks and throws, or the merits and pitfalls of jump attacks and anti-airs.

If you want to take anything away from this rambling, know this – there’s no need to be disheartened when you don’t understand every facet of a complex concept that affects and is affected by so many other genre tropes. The genre of fighting games dates back to the arcade classics of the 80s, and it’s a testament to their intricacy that people still end up debating terminology to this day. When drafting this article I never intended to set out a definition of the term, because I don’t want to jump into that particular fire, but I think that mistaking it for a singular action rather than an established “procedure” during a match was one of my own mistakes. However, everyone benefits from conversation, education and attention in the games we love, so let’s all get along, shall we?

Disposable Media attends EGX 2018

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As I write this, EGX 2018 has come and gone for me. Since attending the show with company last year, word of mouth got around and I was asked to pick up more tickets for more peeps who were keen on attending this year’s show with me. As usual, I had done my research beforehand and looked at the available games that would be playable on the show floor, and since I wasn’t desperate to play any one thing I kind of let others lead as I followed.The only things that piqued my curiosity from the list were maybe Tetris Effect – which I quickly crossed off my list when I realised that the demo was PSVR-based and you needed to book a session; not something I could be bothered doing when I just want to dip in and out of playable games with others – and Jump Force – which I saw being played and then decided that I wasn’t too desperate to get involved in after all. I know what everyone is thinking; truly, this is the investigative reporting that Disposable Media readers deserve – or maybe I’d just prefer to experience such games with the luxury of spare time and fewer distractions.

EGX 2018 – peripheral vision

EGX 2018

One thing that did affect my usual schedule in EGX 2018 was that there were a lot more Nintendo fans in our group this year (I think Nintendo make great games but I’m too busy with the libraries of the systems I have to justify more consoles) – for starters, we managed to get our hands on Nintendo’s Labo hardware. Labo shouldn’t need much introduction – these DIY kits transform a joycon into one of several cardboard peripherals… and even though a cynic may scoff at the depth of the games on offer, the youngest member of our group thoroughly enjoyed the immediacy and ease of use that the peripherals offered. At the other end of the peripheral spectrum, Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown offered a flight stick, throttle and other knobs and sliders that I was too scared to investigate… however, the youngest in the group enjoyed climbing, diving and swooping. I imagine I’ll take a closer look at the game upon release (especially after seeing the recent PSVR trailers shown on YouTube.)

EGX 2018 – game of the show

EGX 2018

As ever, the “Replay” area and its retro offerings were a reliable source of quick entertainment without long waiting times or busy crowds, and we played everything from early FPS games to Puyo Puyo-style puzzle games and classics from the Super Mario series. (And yes, I was That Guy and hopped on to Super Mario Bros. 3 long enough to get the warp to world 8 and then walk away from the NES. Sorry.) As for my Game of the Show… well, in my last write-up I said that Space Invaders and Super Mario Kart were probably the most entertaining things I played. For EGX 2018, there was one clear winner. Walking past a Whack-A-Mole style cabinet and seeing art of Ryu, Chun-Li and “Dictator” around the screen, I made an audible squeak to the group and pointed excitedly at the Ken Sei Mogura: Street Fighter II cabinet. Released in 1994, this is essentially a Whack-A-Mole game where players hit the rising and falling “Dictator” heads with a mallet, and successful hits result in attacks playing out onscreen. It’s the kind of arcade game I would never, ever expect to see – even back when we still had arcades in the 80s – so playing this ended up being a lot of silly fun, and much easier to get to grips with than your conventional Street Fighter games.

EGX 2018 – wrapping up

EGX 2018

These little flashes of random entertainment make up for any pre-show stress about “making time to see new games before crowds make things impossible for everyone”. If you’re looking for a fun day out with likeminded gamer friends, shows such as EGX 2018 are well worth a visit. Outside of the playable games, I even managed to get hold of a natty Persona 5 tee – I already have a couple of shirts based on P4 (indeed, I was wearing one to the show today) but hadn’t got around to picking up P5 shirts before now, so I’m satisfied with my goods. Oh, and there was no sign of Tornado stands either, so I managed to avoid that nightmarish mix of show floor fatigue and energy drink buzz. With another show visit wrapped up, all that’s left is to organise these photos offline and publish these words online. As always, leave a comment below if you’d like to share your own anecdotes of EGX 2018.

The new SF 30th lobbies are the best bit of the collection’s update

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It’s fair to say that the SF 30th lobbies turned out to be one of the biggest disappointments when I first tried Capcom’s most recent collection of fightjng games. You can talk about how the product is just a lazy collection of roms with a few token extras, how the museum could have had more content, how the display filters seem limited, and so on… but online play has the potential to inject new life into those old classics. That potential, however, was not shown in the initial release – attempting to set up SF 30th lobbies on launch day only resulted in a bizarre situation where the game would never register your opponent readying up at the lobby – and when your opponent had the same issue on their end, it led to some amusing exchanges. Happily, a patch was released this week that addressed the SF 30th lobbies (as well as fixing sound issues in the SFIII games, adding a connection-based matchmaking filter and banning Akuma from ranked Super Turbo games), and I was able to play a few games of Street Fighter II recently.

(Note: as I was joining a friend’s lobby I didn’t check to see if the previous issues with filtering by game were resolved, but the next day I tested some filtered searches myself and they still seem as bizarre as before, with search results ignoring the deselections you make – once again, if you only tick Super Turbo in the filter, you’ll see lobbies that only host Super Turbo, lobbies that host ST and Hyper Fighting, lobbies with all four games available, etc. So this is still a curious oversight.)

SF 30th lobbies – the stutter

SF 30th lobbies
Embarrassingly, the biggest issue I faced during my matches was probably a result of my own connection – I noticed a few momentary split-second pauses in a few matches as the netcode and my own connection tried their best to keep up with the action. These micro-pauses weren’t really an issue with a game as slow as Street Fighter II, but I think they may have had a worse impact if we were playing Street Fighter Alpha 3 or Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike. Like I said, I’m willing to take part of the blame here as I don’t know how much other network activity might have been going on at the time, but in casual friendly games where I don’t care about frame-perfect actions I think that these momentary stutters can be overlooked a little.

SF 30th lobbies – the spectators

SF 30th lobbies
When not in the middle of a match, waiting players can pass time in one of two ways. If they hit the Spectate button before the next match is underway, they can spectate the next match in the way we’ve become used to in SFIV, SFV and SFIII 3rd Strike Online Edition. If they don’t push the button, the lobby’s player list updates to show not only the active combatants, but also a crude graphical representation of their lifebars, a basic indication of round wins and the characters selected by the players. It’s a cute way to keep the spectating player engaged in the lobby activity even if they missed the button prompt, but it probably would have been better to assume players would want to spectate, and instead offer a button press if players want those basic lifebar and round win indicators. (As an aside, I didn’t look into voice chat that much, but I would assume it’s perfectly fine to use something like PSN’s Party feature – making sure that you have a headset that slots into your fighting game controller or a USB port, of course!)

SF 30th lobbies – getting there

SF 30th lobbies
Like a lot of aspects of the collection, online play doesn’t feel revelatory but at the same time you can still play it without wishing you were in the middle of another Fighter with seemingly solid netcode. Online play in this game is neither flawless nor a disaster, but it is “good enough” and perhaps makes up for the lack of substance elsewhere in the collection. I still have to give the other online-enabled games more lobby time, but if you’re keen on killing a few hours with online friends, SF 30th lobbies might tick that box for you.

Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection is available now for PS4, Switch, Xbox One and PC.

Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection review

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Never underestimate the strength of “convenience” as a selling point. A new compilation of games from your favourite series has been released – that’s great! Oh, but what about when you move on to the new generation of hardware, or when more games from the series have been released? You’d better make sure that you pick up the next compilation as well. And so it goes on. I’m bringing this up because when I saw the amount of games listed as part of the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection, I felt relieved that I didn’t have to dust off my Xbox 360 to play 3rd Strike or the SFII series – similarly, I thought it would be nice not to be left digging out the PS2 every time I wanted to play the SF Alpha games on the Anthology. And sure, there’s nothing on this collection that you couldn’t emulate on PC, but even that would involve BIOS hunting, controller configuration, hooking the PC up to the TV and more bits and pieces that feel… well, inconvenient. Let’s take a closer look at those listed games – the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection has the original Street Fighter (itself something that I haven’t seen since maybe the Capcom Classics compilations on PSP), all major SFII games (with the exception of the Switch-exclusive Ultra SFII), all three SF Alpha games and all three SFIII games. It’s the most generous and convenient collection of Street Fighter games I’ve seen in a while, and you can play it on the same system you use for SFIV and SFV matches. Well, if you own a PS4 or PC.

Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection – curious lobbies

Street Fighter 30th

Unfortunately, some people may be disappointed if the best thing to say about the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection is “well, all of the games are there”. Training modes are stuck in the past as you practice against a dummy – there are no trial modes or combo examples that help you learn. Online lobbies are a welcome feature, but searching is unusual – first, you toggle the games you wish to find lobbies for, and then it shows results based on those toggles. You’d think this would be useful if you’re never going to play Alpha 3, but instead the results ignore the games you’ve deselected. If you just want to play 3rd Strike, you’ll see results for purely 3S lobbies, but also lobbies for combinations of games that include 3S. I’m not too bothered because most of my online play will probably come from invites to private lobbies from friends, but it’s still peculiar.

There’s also a Museum segment with a series timeline and zoomable art, character details (including bio details and a neat sprite viewer), a “Making of SF” segment and – my favourite inclusion – a Music menu with playlists from all twelve games. There are even shuffle and repeat modes for when I want to listen to Jazzy NYC all day. The repeat function won’t go as far as making clean loops from the songs, but it’s a fun distraction.

Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection – memory lane

Street Fighter 30th

As for the games themselves? They mostly play how you remember – SF1 is still a nightmare to control, Alpha is all about daft custom combos and neglected ISMs, and 3rd Strike isn’t the labour of love that Iron Galaxy released last gen, but it’s still lots of fun. The online play seems smooth enough – I’ve had hardly any issues jumping around with my SFII Honda, getting guard crushed in Alpha or dashing through opponents with my Ibuki in 3S. After a win or loss there’s the option to rematch, but again, there aren’t the bells and whistles seen in 3rd Strike Online Edition such as visible ping or disconnect rates. Of greater concern is the weird nature of joining friends’ games – right now people are running into situations where both players will try to ready up for a match, but they can only toggle what looks like the ready status of the opponent, and even if both players try this it still looks like only one player is ready. Cue a lot of “why haven’t you hit the button” confusion until both players realise that the game can’t communicate the ready status correctly. Hopefully this gets fixed soon.

For the time being – especially in terms of local play, where a lot of my time will disappear – I’m satisfied with the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection. Again – it’s hard to think of another Street Fighter collection that’s this generous in terms of games offered, and whilst more could have been done in terms of training/challenges, better lobby filters, more display options (there are screen size and filter toggles but they seem more like a token gesture) or even dipswitches (something I appreciated in 3S: Online Edition)… if you just want to play the games without swapping consoles or configuring emulators, it might be worth a look.

Street Fighter 30th

Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection is available now for PS4, Switch, Xbox One and PC. The official website can be found here.

Street Fighter V Arcade Edition – first impressions

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Okay, I’ve probably said a number of times that I would be covering Street Fighter V a little less in the future. The game managed to be rescued from its initial rushed and unfinished form to grow into a decent beat ‘em up once the lobbies, cinematic story, trials and store became available, and the character roster today has lots of variety. I would have been eager to get hold of season three’s content as well, but considering how busy 2018 will be in terms of game releases, I can’t guarantee that I’ll have the time to cover the next season. However, this week saw the release of the free upgrade, Street Fighter V Arcade Edition, and it would be remiss to ignore the new content available, especially when – together with so much of the previous DLC – it fleshes the game out way beyond the skeletal and broken form we witnessed during those disappointing beginnings.

Street Fighter V Arcade Edition – it’s in the name

Street Fighter V Arcade Edition

As we mentioned in our original news piece, Street Fighter V Arcade Edition features new V-Triggers, a “gallery mode” that allows you to see various artwork and other extras, the return of Team Battle mode, the mysterious “Extra Battle” mode and – of course – Arcade mode. Those V-Triggers range from new counter-attack moves for Ryu and Karin, a Shinryuken for Ken, and an example of R.Mika taking lessons from Persona 4 Arena’s Kanji – R.Mika’s new V-Trigger sees her call in Nadeshiko and lets her attack the opponent with a chair. It’s a smart way to encourage players to leave their favourites behind for a while and explore the cast again – I feel like my “main” character jumped from Necalli to Rashid to Juri to Menat and back to Rashid, so I welcome the opportunity to revisit old favourites in Street Fighter V Arcade Edition.

As you’d hope, Arcade Mode is one of the most welcome additions to Street Fighter V Arcade Edition – more than just a sequence of eight battles against randomly-selected opponents, it actually consists of six themed gauntlets where characters are limited to the series that made them famous. Pick the “Street Fighter III” challenge, for instance, and you’ll have to use Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Akuma, Alex, Ibuki or Urien. Er, or Kolin. Or Laura. (I guess they had to make some characters fit somehow, and it kind of works if you consider Laura’s relation to Sean and Kolin’s connection to Gill.) In addition to the fights themselves, another neat feature is the ability to select your next opponent, 3rd Strike style, from a choice of two. Each choice has a different score bonus for completion, and it encourages risk taking. And there’s even a bonus piece of art and narrative if you complete one of the gauntlets.

Street Fighter V Arcade Edition – an extra bonus

Street Fighter V Arcade Edition

Moving on to Extra Battle, it’s one of the more intriguing additions to Street Fighter V Arcade Edition. It was originally described as a way to buy in to special challenges that reward you with a chance to gain exclusive costumes – the catch is that each attempt at a challenge costs Fight Money, and you can only attempt a challenge a certain number of times. At first that seems a little greedy, but when you consider what you can earn from the daily challenges introduced in September ‘16, it’s something to keep in mind. Finally, Team Battle mode is exactly what you think it is; fighters from each team go against each other and the first player to eliminate an entire team wins. It’s great for people who want to host team tournaments, but sadly this mode can’t be enjoyed with online friends.

However, we’re not done exploring Arcade Mode just yet – this mode also holds a welcome returning distraction in the form of bonus stages. Partway through the SFII themed arcade mode gauntlet I had to do the Barrel Buster bonus stage – barrels come down from two slopes at the side and fall down the middle; some break normally, others explode, and Two-P from Final Fight is in the arena trying to send the barrels your way. It’s a nice callback to the original Barrel Buster and was a fun surprise that I didn’t expect to see.

Despite my original issues with Street Fighter V, I have to commend the work that has been put into all of the free updates – if anyone grew tired of the game before, Street Fighter V Arcade Edition gives you plenty of reasons to come back. The arcade mode challenges are great for killing time without the misery of being decimated by online warriors, the gallery has a bunch of fun unlockable, Extra Battle is yet another way to earn in-game content and I’m sure there are local players who will love Team Battle mode. Just like the March update felt like a big improvement thanks to challenges and online lounges, this is another expansion that makes today’s SFV so much better than what we had at launch. As ever, let us know what you think of Street Fighter V Arcade Edition in the comments below.

Capcom announces a new SFAC for consoles and Steam

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Just as I was about to tune out for the night, I recently heard news on Twitter that there would be a brand new Street Fighter Anniversary Collection on the way. This new SFAC seems like one of the most well-rounded packages yet, although of course as the news has only just emerged we may need to wait and find out what kind of other details will be made available. The announcement of the new SFAC comes more than a decade after the release of Street Fighter Anniversary Collection for the original Xbox – a collection which contained Hyper Street Fighter II, Street FIghter III: 3rd Strike, online play and the (censored) Street Fighter II animated movie.

A new SFAC – lots of games

new SFAC

This new SFAC sounds almost too good to be true – the trailer posted by the official Street Fighter Twitter account reveals that the new SFAC will feature twelve games. These are: Street Fighter, Street Fighter II, Street Fighter II CE, Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting, Super Street Fighter II, Super SF2 Turbo, Street Fighter Alphas 1 to 3, and the three Street Fighter III games. Also, there will be various galleries with art and music… however, most notably, there will be online play for a select few titles, with Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting, Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Street Fighter Alpha 3 and SFIII: Third Strike supporting ranked and casual play, lobbies and leaderboards.

A new SFAC – will it meet expectations?

new SFAC

It all sounds remarkably generous – I would have been happy enough with a current-gen port of Street Fighter III: Third Strike – Online Edition, but this is so much more. I have to wonder if the netcode used will be good enough, and if the price is right. That said, for the amount of content promised in the package I’d expect them to charge accordingly. In the meantime, I may have to reconsider shelving Street Fighter; I expected one of the many other new fighters in 2018 to vie for my attention, but the new SFAC could keep fighting fans occupied for weeks if not months.

The Street Fighter Anniversary Collection will be released on PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and Steam in May 2018.

Our initial impressions of Zeku for SFV

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The introduction of Zeku for SFV represents the last of the season two DLC characters for Capcom’s latest entry in its popular fighting game series. If you recall, the first season of DLC featured established characters from older games – Alex, Ibuki, Guile, Urien, Balrog and Juri – whilst the first season of DLC promised Akuma and five brand new fighters – namely Kolin, Ed, Abigail, Menat and Zeku. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but I originally doubted whether or not the newcomers would be as fun as returning favourites… however, pretty much all of the new season two fighters have been quite enjoyable, and trying out Zeku for SFV has been similarly entertaining. Before we get to the gameplay, there’s a bit more going on with the character itself. From the moment the character trailer showed off Zeku for SFV, many internet voices speculated that Zeku was a Strider. One of Zeku’s key abilities allows him to change between a younger and older (present-day) form, and the younger form has various visual motifs that bring to mind Strider Hiryu – a red scarf, sleeveless blue outfit and short(ish) brown hair. Playing the story mode reveals that Zeku for SFV is a member of the Bushinryu looking to hone his skills and discover new fighting styles by – how else? – picking fights among the locals. With his own fighting style established, he suggests names for students of the art, including “Striders”. This suggests that he pioneered the fighting style of Striders (or it would if it didn’t fade out to him reeling off increasingly daft names afterwards…)

Zeku for SFV – a split personality

Zeku for SFV
In battle, trying out Zeku for SFV (in his initial older form, at least) reveals a series of special kick attacks that leave large flashy effects behind (the stronger the kick used, the larger the effect, each one being its own sizeable hitbox. He also has a jumping flip reminiscent of the one used by Guy in SFIV (who himself is a Bushinryu master), but the options increase when you perform any move (including the V-Skill) that allows Zeku to transform to his younger self. Now, he loses his kick variations but gains a ninja run (with various follow ups), a Yun-style palm attack, a Yun-style shoulder attack and an air grab. Meanwhile, the V-Reversal pushes the opponent back and away, and the V-Trigger enables a special dash that allows the user to follow up with a unique custom combo (not unlike the new combos available in Juri’s Feng Shui Engine). So, for instance, you can perform the dash and then hit jab, short, strong, forward, fierce and roundhouse in succession for a simple 6-hit custom combo. (This particular example works in both old and young forms, but there might be some that are only effective in one or the other.)

Zeku for SFV – a decent end to season two

Zeku for SFV
At first I thought that the idea of having to learn two movesets would be a bit intimidating, but we’ve had “stance characters” in many fighting games in the past, and this is no different. Whilst I’ve enjoyed all of the season two characters for Street Fighter V, I’m interested to see if Capcom can continue delivering interesting content in the future. 2018 will be quite a busy time for fighters (as I mentioned in my initial coverage of Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition) and I don’t know how often I’ll be able to continue covering SFV DLCs if the newcomers turn out to be as enjoyable (or, indeed, more fun) than Street Fighter V. Until then, there’s plenty of fun to be had with Zeku for SFV.

Zeku for SFV is available now.

SFV Arcade Edition announced

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SFV Arcade Edition marks the first fully-fledged upgrade to Street Fighter V. Whilst there have been numerous stages, characters, costumes and other features added to the game over the recent months, it was all available as individual pieces of content to pick and choose from in the shop, and you could either play enough to earn Fight Money for the content, or pick everything up as DLC from your digital marketplace of choice. SFV Arcade Edition will come with all of the Season 1 and Season 2 characters, new V-Triggers for the characters, a gallery, a mysterious “extra battle” mode and the much-demanded arcade mode. Better still, SFV Arcade Edition will be available as a free update if you already own vanilla Street Fighter V.

SFV Arcade Edition – no separate purchase required

SFV Arcade Edition

Originally I wondered if anything like SFV Arcade Edition would ever be released – you might remember news and gossip surrounding the pre-release hype for Street Fighter V, where people claimed that you’d only ever need to buy one copy of the game. Making this a free update certainly means that the statement remains true, and whilst I think that the fighting game genre is going to be pretty crowded in the future (we have a new Marvel game, Dragonball FighterZ is on the way, Arika are working on their game, Dissidia NT is coming in 2018 and Fantasy Strike is in early access) this will make sure that Street Fighter V remains relevant.

SFV Arcade Edition – coming next year

SFV September Update

SFV Arcade Edition will be available from January 16th, so if you’ve been slacking with your combo practice because you’ve been distracted by new releases over the holidays, this will be a perfect excuse to get back into the game. After the troubles that originally faced the game – missing features at launch, online connectivity issues – this announcement is a welcome display of generosity, and I hope it encourages more people to try the game.

Read Capcom Unity’s official news on SFV Arcade Edition here.

An overview of Menat in SFV

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Fans of the latest Street Fighter game might be disappointed that fan-favourite Rose still hasn’t made it back into the roster, even with the generous number of new faces. Personally, I never really bothered to learn her in Street Fighter IV – although other people I played online with clearly demonstrated how much of a threat she could be in the right hands. However, it almost doesn’t matter now – the introduction of Menat in SFV brings enough orb-flinging, reflecting and jumping grabs to satisfy any fan of the Soul Power-wielding lady from previous games. And even if you didn’t like Rose in SFIV, there’s a lot to like in Menat once you find that she’s much more than a reskin.

Using Soul Spheres with Menat in SFV

Menat in SFV

Things immediately get interesting when you dive into the command list and only find a handful of special moves – when playing as Menat in SFV you can throw a soul sphere out until it stops at a certain distance, bring it back, and do an upwards grab move similar to Rose’s Soul Throw. However, her normal moves change significantly depending on whether or not the soul sphere has been sent out or not. With the sphere in hand, normal moves have better range and you can focus on your positioning a lot more as you make the most of those far-reaching attacks. Then, as soon as you perform a fireball motion and a punch attack, Menat throws her soul sphere out to a certain distance until it stops. This counts as a projectile when moving, and changes the properties of normal attacks, but the same command can then be used again to bring the soul sphere back.

What this means is that when you’re learning matchups with Menat in SFV you’ll be trying to create scenarios where the soul sphere is an onscreen threat and the opponent will always have to consider the fact that you could pull it back at any moment. Do you throw it out so that it stops behind them, pressure them into attacking Menat and then bring it back? Do you take advantage of different punch strengths which change the trajectory of the soul sphere when it’s sent out and brought back? It’s a very versatile ability and explains why the special move list doesn’t have too many other tricks.

A moment to reflect with Menat in SFV

Menat in SFV

Then again, if the Rose comparisons sounded a bit of a stretch before, they start to make a bit more sense when you get into the V-System. Players picking up Menat in SFV will not only have a V-Skill that reflects projectiles thrown at her, but her V-Trigger also causes a number of glowing orbs to materialise around her. However, these aren’t just the instant-hit hazards of Soul Satellite; instead, the six orbs act as single-use projectiles, each one being sent out a the corresponding normal attack. Meanwhile, the V-Reversal teleports Menat around the opponent, making for a neat escape route if a player is cornered.

Even outside of the moveset, Menat can be appreciated purely from a design perspective – all of her moves have neat flourishes to their animations, and the use of individual attacks commanding individual V-Trigger orbs makes it look like the character is batting each orb away with different normal attacks. And even though I was hoping Season 2 of SFV’s DLC would bring back more under-used existing characters rather than newcomers… I’m happy to see more newcomers if they’re as good as these. Speaking of which, Season 2 intially promised “Akuma and 5 brand new fighters”, so after Menat, Ed, Abigail and Kolin we’ll just have one more newcomer before the season’s over. Hopefully they’ll be as fun and diverse as Menat.

Menat in SFV

Menat for SFV is available now, as is the Season 2 character pass. We will cover future season 2 additions as they become available.

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