My first experience of Street Fighter was when I got a Super Nintendo in a  Street Fighter 2 bundle. I enjoyed the game with friends, pulling off fireballs and the very occasional flying uppercut type move.

Beyond that, my next experience with the series was Street Fighter IV. I completely missed out on all the super hyper alpha shenanigans inbetween in favour of some more varied gaming experiences like RPG's and the wonderful Lucas Arts adventure games.

In this long time away I thought I still knew one or two things about Street Fighter. Boy was I wrong. The only fighter I knew moves for were Ryu and Ken. I used to play as Chun Li quite a bit, why could I not remember any of her moves? And what's with all these focus attacks, super combos and ultra moves?! I played Street Fighter IV once online in an unranked match. Technically I have a 100% win record, and I wanted to keep it that way. The problem I found with SFIV was that it kicked my ass big style :(  I struggled completing the arcade mode on Very Easy for god sake!

It kicked me in the balls and I put it down. I hardly played it at all.

So here were are and I bought Super Street Fighter IV. I'm still wondering why, but the combination of getting the game for £20 and the temptation of some new 8 player lobbies made it more tempting. With my preorder locked in I even decided to buy myself an arcade stick, at £25 I really couldn't refuse! The stick presents a new challenge to me but it's something I think I can overcome given a bit of time and patience. The endless battle mode is the real winner here - it's a great way to battle against a few other opponents and gives you a great opportunity to watch and learn from the better players out there.

I still only really know the original 8 fighters and only feel competent with Ryu and Ken, so looking at the 30-odd  strong roster I'm overwhelmed with characters I don't know. Sure I recognise Cammy and Fei Long but I have absolutely no idea what their moves are. It's even assumed in the manual that you know a lot of characters special moves, hardly newb friendly and I just wish I could easily tell whether a character has charge moves or not (as my randomly flapping circular towards or away attacks doesn't normally work too well with those characters!)

This time round I'm convinced I'll be able to improve on my limited skills. Finding a few players around my skill level is really helping it to become an enjoyable experience again. That said, the trial mode is going to get a lot of use :D