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I can still clearly remember the first time I played Street Fighter 4, for what would be one of the first reviews I ever wrote for a games magazine. It was just before the game launched in Japanese arcades back in 2008, at Capcom's old offices in Hammersmith. It was running on a single arcade cabinet, and with a few members of the UK fighting game community also in attendance, a long afternoon quickly turned into a winner-stays-on format where everyone was trying to combo into an Ultra. I thought the game was one of the most masterful sprite to polygon adaptations I'd ever seen, and although I'd barely scratched the surface of the Focus Attack system, its versatility was clear. In the end, I scored Street Fighter 4 a nine.It's a decision I've always partially regretted. It didn't seem right to fire off my first 10 so early in the game. I couldn't be entirely sure if Street Fighter 4 would hold up with extended play and there was no way of knowing if one of the characters (perhaps a certain Muay Thai fighter) would turn out to be overpowered. As it turns out, I wasn't the only one who had a few doubts.
"I played Street Fighter 4 very near the start of its development in 2006", recalls lead game designer at Sony and former Capcom community manager, Seth Killian. "So while I was ecstatic that the game was going to exist, my first impression wasn't great. They had two characters in a partially playable form, but the transition to 3D models was very difficult. But we worked hard to make sure the community had many chances to try it before release. By the time we launched in 2009, everyone felt confident that Street Fighter 4 had the magic needed to get people street fighting again."
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