I appreciate that I’m over thirty hours too late to do relevant hot-takes on the Nintendo Switch event, but here we are, you staring at my words, pronouncing them in your mind, me hammering away at the keys to try and get my thoughts into words.
It’s not the Switch I want to talk about, if you want to hear my thoughts on that then read our latest round-up piece where I give some quick thoughts on my perception of Nintendo’s current approach to the market.
No, I want to talk to you about Ultra Street Fighter II.
Ultra Street Fighter II was a surprised, right? If I knew that Capcom were going to be at the event I would have assumed it would be with a Monster Hunter, possibly a Dragon’s Dogma (both fit the wide, open maps that Nintendo are targeting at the audience with the new Mario, Zelda, and the inclusion of Xenogears 2 and Skyrim in their line-up), maybe a new Resident Evil – after all, Daymare: 1998 moved to their own IP after Capcom reached out to them regarding their RE:2 remake– or maybe just a few compilations of older titles, a Megaman bundle, for instance.
Instead we got this.
I’m a stranger to the fighting scene, although I certainly know and appreciate the games. My first experience of SFII was finding a powered down machine tucked away in a walk-in cupboard at a family party. Two of my cousins, my brother, and I, all bundled into the sideroom, turned the machine on at the wall and played it for the best bit of an hour. a few months later I remember the same cousins having a version of it on their SNES. I’ve enjoyed the series ever since.
So, it was quite a surprise to see it there on the Nintendo Switch presentation, looking sharper and smoother than that first, arcade, outing.
There were, obviously, some major differences, which the 2:37 trailer (with gameplay starting at 1:16) made rather obvious.
What I’m most interested in however is three elements of the trailer, one clearly discussed, and the other two following near the end.
- At 1:45, the trailer starts showing off a two player co-operative mode. The two players, understandably, have an advantage against the opponent. What I’d like to know is how the game will balance this, or, a bigger question, will this mean potential for 2vs2 in local or online play?
- Because, if yes to that second one, we could have just got a glance at what Nintendo were talking about regarding older ‘classic’ games with online features. Imagine Excitebike online, or even Smash Bros (64) with online multiplayer. It’s completely crazy in concept, but if Nintendo are as dedicated to (milking?) their back-catalogue then a team of people working on netcode could do amazing work.
- Right there at the end, yeah, you saw it, 2:20 to 2:26. Evil Ryu & Violent Ken (as later confirmed in a press release from Nintendol) are in the game. The two of them being present in the game, combined with Nintendo and Capcom’s starting to shift to games as services, could mean we’ll see more characters in the game for, or after, launch of the game.
- Finally, as shown in the GIF below, there’s a brief moment at 2:10 where we see Ryu delivery a hadouken at one of M.Bison’s Shadaloo soldier, but in first person. It’s unlikely that this is part of an opening sequence, so I’m definitely starting to think -but, mostly hope- that it’s in fact indicating that the Switch could be receiving several extra mini-games with the title.
- The fact that we’ve already seen a fighting title manage duelling from a similar perspective in ARMS, lends some credence to this. The optimist in me hopes that we’ll see at least half a dozen similar mini-games in the title, be it slow-motion blocking E-Honda’s Hundred Hand Slap, or Chun Li’s Hyakuretsukyaku. Maybe even a take on the title’s bonus mode where you beat up cars, or an ARMS tribute but with two versions of Dhalsim.
For now, however, we’re just going to have to wait and see.
Note: As pointed out by Blueflash_UK on Twitter, this isn’t the first time SF has featured a co-op mode as a bonus.
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