Capcom hypes SFII for Xbox 360

In Bill Gates' keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show, the Microsoft founder and chief software architect casually mentioned that Street Fighter II would be coming to the Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Marketplace. The impending arrival of Capcom's seminal fighting game classic piqued the interest of Street Fightin' men (and women) everywhere, but Gates' announcement immediately raised a number of questions. Would it be one of the upgraded iterations of the game instead of the original? Would it be playable online over Xbox Live? Would it cost an arm and a leg? Some of those questions received answers today, and they are "yes," "yes," and "maybe."

While no price tag was announced, Capcom has confirmed that Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting (known in the arcades as Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting) will become available over the Xbox Live Marketplace, with a number of new features (including online play) sometime in early 2006. In addition to the Xbox Live standard quick match and optimatch, Hyper Fighting will include a new quarter match option.

Intended to replicate the arcade experience, quarter matches will let two players duke it out while a group of spectators wait for their own chance to dethrone the reigning champ--similar to the online mode of the Xbox 360's only fighting game so far, Dead or Alive 4. Just as in the arcades, onlookers will be able to watch the brawls while they wait their turn, trash-talking the fighters or discussing strategy. Players' "quarters" will be used to represent their spot in line.

Before entering a quarter match, players will be able to choose ranked or unranked matches to determine whether or not stats will be tracked for the Xbox Live leaderboards. Beyond the somewhat common all-time and monthly leaderboards, Hyper Fighting will include rankings broken down by character, as well as a board for the most consecutive wins.

Capcom is also promising more than 10 online and offline achievements to reward players for meeting certain tasks, and a "feature limited" demo version will allow gamers to play single matches with two playable characters