New footage shows off the game's mechanics, Charlie's mysterious resurrection, and Chun-Li's delicious new hat.
Saturday night, Capcom crowned the first winner of the now-to-be-annual Capcom Cup. Yusuke Momochi proved himself worthy by taking out the EVO 2014 Ultra Street Fighter IV champion Olivier Hay and EVO 2013 Super Street Fighter IV champion Ho Kun Xian. The guy won a nice prize purse of well over $30,000 and thanks to Capcom’s new partnership with Sony (and more importantly, Sony’s wallet), next year’s tournament will have a prize purse of half a million bucks. Nice.
The carrot on a stick leading more eyes to the Twitch-based tournament was Capcom releasing more info on their upcoming Street Fighter V. Just recently, they released a trailer that shows Ryu taking on Chun-Li. At the Capcom Cup, they showed off a more complete trailer, including a little stinger at the end.
Oh snap! Charlie’s alive! Then again, it’s not that surprising. They brought back resident dead character Gouken in Street Fighter IV. They just need to reveal that Q is secretly Chun-Li’s father and we have a trifecta.
Charlie (or Nash, as he’s known in Japan) is a character introduced in Guile’s Street Fighter II backstory. He died at the hands of Bison years ago and Guile’s dedicated his life to vengeance. When they made the Street Fighter Alpha prequel games, it seemed almost explicitly made so they could put Charlie in a game and give explanation to how he died. What followed was Charlie getting killed in various ways through the different Alphainstallments – and even X-Men vs. Street Fighter for good measure – until settling on the idea that he sacrificed himself to blow up Bison’s headquarters.
One can only speculate as to how Charlie’s back, especially with that weird jewel on his head that strongly resembles that of Gill and Urien in Street Fighter III. In the Marvel vs. Capcom games, they had Charlie reborn as brainwashed-Shadaloo-soldier-gone-rogue Shadow, who also showed up in the UDON Street Fighter comic. Maybe they’ll revisit that concept.
Rather than simply show off a trailer, they had two fighting game community heavyweights Mike Ross and Combofiend play the demo. They went two matches with one win each, showing off the game’s style and giving some hints at the engine. Stuff like how Ryu would have three EX bars compared to Chun-Li’s three, while they had special modes where their fists or feet would start glowing in some way. What that actually does isn’t fully understood, but we’ll find out in due time.
The memorable thing everyone takes away from the clip is the environmental cutscenes gimmick. Ryu knocking Chun-Li through the wall with a Hadoken is one thing, but once he knocks her into the wall and causes a bowl of noodles to fall onto her head, well, now we’re talking. What’s especially funny is how the bowl remains on Chun-Li’s head for the rest of the battle, even when she’s doing her win pose.
Street Fighter V will be exclusive to PC and PlayStation 4 (with cross-platform gameplay) and will be presumably be coming out sometime in 2015.
Gavin Jasper is still holding out for a sequel to Street Fighter: The Movie with a digitized Dudley. Follow Gavin on Twitter.
