Street Fighter IV - is this the year?

[The King of All Kupos]

While I don't play it nearly enough to be even remotely considered a "dedicated player (it's been like 6 months since I've touched it)," I do love SF3 to death and consider it the greatest fighting game ever created. I openly admit that though I do try to learn and improve my technique whenever I do play, I'm still probably what most would call a novice, but I'd like to think I'm at least an upper-level novice, however little that actually means in the scheme of things.

But yes, I would absolutely love to see an SF4, and personally, I don't think Capcom's quite so stupid as to not make it.

[Martin Penwald]

It's likely that Ryu's outward style won't change that much. He'll likely have a couple of new specials and super combos.

What I'd like to see is more of a marked difference between Ryu, Ken and Akuma. Individual fighting stances and distinct flourishes. Ryu would be middle-of-the-road, cautious and calculated. Ken would be be flashy and showboaty. And Akuma would be undiluted fury.

There's only so much pallette swapping I can put up with.

While I support any motion calling for more differences, you have to admit that there has been progress made when it comes to this. The only difference between Ken and Ryu in SF2 was one of their throws; in SF3 TS, however, they and Akuma have different Special moves (some of them), different Super Arts, and some of the standard moves also differ. Moreover, they have a different feel to them; fighting with Akuma will result in something completely different from fighting with Ken.

[Evilhead]

Personally I'm extremely bored with the Ryu/Ken/Akuma thing, aside from the fact that they should have a place in any SF game. I thought Oro's backstory was really interesting though, especially since he's pretty much (storywise) the strongest character in the SF universe.

[Eternal Testament]

The interesting thing is that the SF3 characters have so little backstory compared with SF2/Alpha characters.

I'd have to agree with Evilhead in that Oro is probably storywise the strongest character. He's certainly up there with Gill, Akuma and Alpha 3 Bison as a top tier character.

[dsx100]

If by some miracle chance they did make Street Fighter IV and it actually turned out good, I would like Akuma to be more distinct from Ryu and Ken. The return of his Alpha fighting stance would be nice plus some more unique special moves (he already has enough Super Arts). Ryu and Ken I don't mind to much being similar because they trained by the same person at the same time and plus they are rivals. I think the fact that Ryu focus more on power and the hadoken and Ken focus more on speed and the shoruken (forgive me if I spelled it wrong) is good enough to make them seperate and different characters. More back story for the rest of the characters would definately be a plus. I love games that have a lot of good back story.