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Ultra Street Fighter IV Lets You Swap Character Versions

If you'd rather play as Dhalsim from an earlier Street Fighter IV, now you can.

Mar. 3 2014

Posted by: Patrick

In This Episode:

Ultra Street Fighter IV

74 Comments

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Sooty

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Edited By Sooty

This is truly a great way to send off the SFIV series. Roll on Street Fighter V.

Excited to see who the 5th new character is in a few weeks time too.

@masterrain said:

This is fucking awesome! Capcom are so smart for hiring Combofiend. AE Twins vs Vanilla Sagat :D

Surely though the 'ultra' versions will be best, delayed wake up and no unblockables is a massive advantage. However maybe OG Sagat damage > everything.

I'm not sure if unblockables will be in the game because if they are character based, then no ultra versions will have them but older will, if it's game based then nobody will have them. I think it's a widespread game change because they are considered a glitch/exploit iirc.

In the case of Sagat most characters did quite a bit more damage in vanilla, I think the best thing about O.Sagat was his standing light kick being cancelable, his damage was pretty crazy but his standing light kick actually made him quite a big threat at close to mid-range, now he's pretty terrible at those ranges.

There are characters in AE2012 that have vanilla Sagat levels of damage or at least close to it but it isn't as easily achieved, so that's why I don't think vanilla Sagat's damage is too big a deal. Akuma was a much bigger threat than Sagat!

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HerbieBug

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Edited By HerbieBug

This is the first positive change i've heard about this game in quite a while. I think this will make tournaments a lot more interesting. Some of the character's vanilla and/or Super editions were a lot more fun to watch and play than their later ones.

more re tournaments: i think the fighting game community would be doing itself a great disservice should they disallow old character versions in tournaments. this blows the field wide open in an exciting way for all involved. my problem with recent balance changes in SFIV is Capcom's inability to promote dynamic play, rather typically just removing things any given character had that made them fun (and not overpowered) for the most inexplicable of reasons. i want to see low tk cannon strike Cammy's, Gen's with the old standing mk into full hands combos without the pushback, Balrog with the huge damage combos, monster vanilla Sagat, Yang's first version, etc. etc. Spare me your balance whinging until actual general idea of matchups with all character versions available has been established in a couple years/

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Dan_CiTi

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Edited By Dan_CiTi

@sooty: I agree, looking at the best Akuma players in Japan at the time of original SFIV, they were nearly unstoppable. I recall Momochi just tearing up really any Sagat because his fireball game being so rock solid.

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TheSouthernDandy

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I am not close to good enough to care about this but it seems like a pretty cool feature to include. Also I had to google this to see if this was the version with the new characters or if that had already come out...which maybe says something about how Capcom handles this stuff.

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GaspoweR

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Edited By GaspoweR

@sooty said:

This is truly a great way to send off the SFIV series. Roll on Street Fighter V.

Excited to see who the 5th new character is in a few weeks time too.

@masterrain said:

This is fucking awesome! Capcom are so smart for hiring Combofiend. AE Twins vs Vanilla Sagat :D

Surely though the 'ultra' versions will be best, delayed wake up and no unblockables is a massive advantage. However maybe OG Sagat damage > everything.

I'm not sure if unblockables will be in the game because if they are character based, then no ultra versions will have them but older will, if it's game based then nobody will have them. I think it's a widespread game change because they are considered a glitch/exploit iirc.

In the case of Sagat most characters did quite a bit more damage in vanilla, I think the best thing about O.Sagat was his standing light kick being cancelable, his damage was pretty crazy but his standing light kick actually made him quite a big threat at close to mid-range, now he's pretty terrible at those ranges.

There are characters in AE2012 that have vanilla Sagat levels of damage or at least close to it but it isn't as easily achieved, so that's why I don't think vanilla Sagat's damage is too big a deal. Akuma was a much bigger threat than Sagat!

Okay, just confirmed from watching the Gootecks and Mike Ross Show live stream just now and KBrad was talking about the unblockable Ultra setups in Vanilla SF4 and Mike Ross in response to that said that those unblockable set-ups will only work if the opposing character's version is also from vanilla SF4, so both you're character and the opponent's have to be from vanilla. :D

Man, if ever they do make Select Edition tourney standard, then everyone would have to learn 200+ matchups. 0_o As KBrad pointed out, it'd be too chaotic if that became tournament standard right out of the gate if that is going to be the case but man it'll probably only increase the legs of this games by several more years. My only concern though is if the OP characters from each version might end up stacking the top 8 of every tourney. Hopefully that won't be the case.

EDIT: You know, I'd REEEEALLY LOVE to see some sort of 32 man EDITION SELECT tournament composing of the best character specialists using the best version of their respective characters.

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JamesJeux007

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I can't wait for the really dumb exhibition matches with Vanilla Sagat against AE Yun. This sounds like a really dumb fun mode to watch. Good on you, Capcom !

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Edited By GaspoweR

@rodiard said:

@punkxblaze said:

@vikingdeath1 said:

That sounds SUPER nuts, and I don't even know what a Streetfighter does!

HE FIGHTS STREETS, SON. YOU'RE GOIN' DOWN, OVERPASS. LOOK OUT, BOULEVARD.

BUT CAN HE HANDLE A CUL DE SAC?! OH NO SECRET BOSS ROUNDABOUT!

I HEARD SIDE WALKS ARE A 10-0 MATCH-UP AGAINST A STREETFIGHTER THOUGH!

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MichiganJack

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Oh yeah, Bison without his busted Ultra 2 from AE. I'm scared to see the return of Sagat though. Seriously this is going to make for a very interesting EVO 2014.

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RuisuX

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Hugo
Y???
Poison
Elena
Rolento

Do it, Capcom.

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vaiz

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Edited By vaiz

@gaspower said:

@rodiard said:

@punkxblaze said:

@vikingdeath1 said:

That sounds SUPER nuts, and I don't even know what a Streetfighter does!

HE FIGHTS STREETS, SON. YOU'RE GOIN' DOWN, OVERPASS. LOOK OUT, BOULEVARD.

BUT CAN HE HANDLE A CUL DE SAC?! OH NO SECRET BOSS ROUNDABOUT!

I HEARD SIDE WALKS ARE A 10-0 MATCH-UP AGAINST A STREETFIGHTER THOUGH!

SIDE WALKS ARE BROKEN TIER MAN DON'T BULLSHIT ME.

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Feedbacker

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Jebailey and MrWizard already stated that the plan is to keep CEO and EVO Ultra only. Whether that changes or not by June, we'll see. I don't expect it to.

There's really no reason to make Version Select a tournament standard unless the Ultra version of the game starts to go stale. And I don't think that's going to happen for quite a while. Character variety in tournaments is still growing and new tech is still being rolled out frequently.

There will undoubtedly be invitationals, exhibitions and side tourneys for version select. Events like that will test version select out and see if it's potentially broken or not.

With a feature like this, I imagine this is the final version of the game and is intended to hold everyone over until the inevitable Street Fighter V.

I really wish they'd allow it as a separate online mode, though. I have way more friends to play with online than offline.

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orange_pork

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Jebailey and MrWizard already stated that the plan is to keep CEO and EVO Ultra only. Whether that changes or not by June, we'll see. I don't expect it to.

Thank Christ. We couldn't even get a best of 5 Honda vs Adon match at SCR without it turning into a Vanilla Sagat mirror like it was 2009 all over again.

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eduardo

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Edited By eduardo

This is amazing news, but man, they probably won't even have a way to balance it out. Definitely something cool to see in exhibitions.

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smokyexe

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This is pretty nuts. Wonder about balance.

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theinnkeeper

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@masterrain: This is fucking awesome! Capcom are so smart for hiring Combofiend. AE Twins vs Vanilla Sagat :D

@malakaijub: capcom has just officially become the biggest joke in the video game industry!

Demonstrating the difference between those who care about SF and those who don't. It's kind of amazing to see the varying opinions on this depending on whether you play.

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Accolade

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On another note, DBZ whould have a game where King Kai can fight the World Martial Arts announcer. Anyone versus anyone.

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Xeiphyer

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Gimme dat SFIV Sagar and Zangief please.

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ProfessorK

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This is almost as good as Capcom officially making an SF4 Rainbow Edition. That really is the last step for 4 tbh. These comments doe. Man there really is a disparity between knowing why this is pretty hype and thinking it's a joke. Sad it's offline only, can't wait to see the side tourneys that pop up for this.

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MeatSim

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Edited By MeatSim

Sagat based night terrors!

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Sooty

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Edited By Sooty

I'd like it if you could choose between Super, AE 2012 and Ultra character versions at tournaments.

Maybe that'll happen, as Super and AE 2012 didn't have any characters you could really call broken or particularly overpowered, it remains to be seen how Ultra pans out. (then again, Super had Adon's fast wake-up and Cammy's crazy air drills)

Who am I kidding. I just want Bison's non-charge ultra back. They are gonna have to make it so it's obvious what version of a character a person selects to make sure people don't try and change on the sly if it's a Ultra only tourney. I'll assume it'll be added to the loading screen or health bar area in some way.