Capcom: The Making of Street Fighter IV

After a surprisingly long line, we managed to get inside of Room 6CDEF just in time to catch the beginning of Capcom's panel about the making of Street Fighter IV. Seth Killian, legendary Street Fighter champion and senior manager at Capcom came out wearing a sweet red Ryu headband and briefly discussed having the fan's ultimate dream job and the 20th anniversary of the Street Fighter series. He then introduced the rest of the panel: producer Yoshinoro Ono and associate producer David Crislip.

Ono started off by talking about how pleased he was at the size of the crowd, and he apologized for making us wait so long for a new Street Fighter. The panel was pleased to talk about how the game was already done and out in Japan, and that they've got it on the floor in their booth ready to play.

Street Fighter IV is less a sequel to Street Fighter III and more of a descendant of Street Fighter II, he said, much to the audience's applause. This is a point that he would reiterate several times throughout the course of the panel, though he later mentioned how he wasn't trying to badmouth SFIII as he loves that game--it's just that they came to realize how they changed too many things in SFIII and in part alienated their fanbase, which is why they've brought all the original cast back with their SFII combos intact in this iteration.

Ono said that when the first trailer featuring Ken and Ryu was released last year, a lot of fans were apprehensive because it seemed like it was going to be in 3D. This is obviously not true, and Ono specifically says that Street Fighter is a 2D series and that's something they are happy to preserve.

He went on to talk about the new characters, and in particular Crimson Viper and Rufus. They're American characters, he said, and they were created based on marketing research as to what sorts of characters an American audience would enjoy playing. Ono says that they're following message boards and that they know that the new characters aren't as popular now as the other characters, but he urges everyone to give them a chance and try them out before they make judgments. Seth agreed with this statement, and added that the new characters are all very smooth, and that Rufus is his favorite.

In order to promote Street Fighter IV, Capcom commissioned Studio 4° C to create series of anime clips based on Street Fighter, the first clip of which was shown at their Captivate event several weeks ago and was shown again at Comic-Con with a full dubbing. This clip featured a battle between Ryu and Akuma, which is ultimately interrupted by Ken, who jokingly chastises Ryu for trying to finish off Akuma by himself. It ends with a brief clip of an elderly (but massively tough) warrior training by himself in a waterfall, and the panelists teased that we'll have to wait until the console versions are released for more info, though they mention the famous Sheng Long April Fool's Day gag EGM pulled in 1992.

Ono began to talk a bit about the new Focus Attack system that's found its way into SFIV, and how versatile it is. Simply press the middle punch and kick at the same time to do a Focus Attack, or hold it down and time it to be used when attacked to perform a counter attack, similar to the parry system seen in SFIII. To better illustrate this, they showed us another clip that features the Focus Counters and Super Moves of all the characters in the game. They also dropped a few more nuggets of info, such as the fact that Cammy won the Capcom Unity (their community site) poll of which character everyone wanted to see most, making her the most likely of the Super characters to return in the console versions, and that the home ports are currently in development.

About this time, a crew of camera guys from HBO came in (about 45 minutes into the panel, no less) and decided that they should set up their camera equipment right in front of our camera and in our shot. Jan and I had to quickly set them straight on where they can set up their gear (certainly not in front of us), but they were complete tools about it and acted like we were inconveniencing them. Seriously guys, what gives?

The panel ended with another of the animated sequences being shown for the first time. It begins after the events of SFII with Chun-Li sitting on a park bench and listening to a couple guys talk about a famous martial arts tournament that recently ended with the final two contestants disappearing mysteriously. It then begins to show more about the various characters in the game, such as a scene where Guile is told that they military is calling off the search for Charlie, or another scene where Cammy is talking about how the bodies of Bison and his lieutenants were never recovered. The clip ends with action shots of the world warriors as they face off against each other again, because as Chun-Li puts it, it's their only option.

Watch the entire panel!