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TGS 2008: Feature-length Street Fighter IV anime in the works

Popularity of Street Fighter IV's promotional anime clips pushes Capcom to make a full-length version.

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TOKYO--Sometimes, a marketing promotion becomes so popular that it gains a life of its own. This has proved to be the case for Street Fighter IV. As part of the promotion for the game, Capcom has been releasing short anime clips that depict what happened to the warriors after Street Fighter II. At the 2008 Tokyo Game Show, producer Yoshinori Ono revealed that the promotional clips have been such a success that a full-length version of the anime is now in production.

According to Ono, the feature-length anime is scheduled to run around 50 to 60 minutes, despite cuts in the script to shorten its length. While the anime is long enough to sell as a product of its own, Ono instead plans to tie its release with Street Fighter IV, though details haven't been decided as of yet.

Ono showed off a three-minute trailer during his stage presentation, which included scenes with Cammy walking through the woods with a group of troops, Ryu awakening to his dark side, Sakura and Chun-Li fighting together against a gang of thugs, and Crimson Viper fighting against Ryu. The anime is being created by Studio 4C, the same company that worked on the original promotion clips. The artists are also the same, with Koji Morimoto (Animatrix) as supervisor, Jirou Kanai (Steamboy) as director, Akiko Saito (Spriggan) as CGI director, and Katsumi Matsuda (Spriggan, Steamboy) as character designer.

Ono also talked about the home ports of Street Fighter IV, though much of what he unveiled has already been reported by the media. In addition to Akuma, who's already playable in the arcade version, the console versions will allow players to also control the last boss, Seth. Sakura from the Street Fighter Alpha series will also be in the game. No mention was made about whether Gouken will be playable in the home release; the character was recently unlocked as a CPU boss in the arcade version.

Ono didn't reveal any further details on additional characters, though he hinted that looking at the character-select screen layout on the TGS version should give hints to how many additional characters could be in the game. Furthermore, he added that there are still surprises to come, and some may be unveiled at the Street Fighter IV tournament preliminaries in Japan on November 3, as well as the finals on January 18.

The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of Street Fighter IV are scheduled for release in Japan during Q1 2009. No date has yet been released for the PC version.

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