Thanks for submitting this article, Brock! Looked fun, wish I coulda been there, but at least I got to play the following day in the Mad Catz suite!
–gootecks

The  Super Street Fighter IV Capcom Fight Club, held inside a private suite at Planet Hollywood Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, was the first hype event of 2010. An invite only event, many familiar faces in the fighting game industry were in attendance, including Seth Killian, Joey “Mr. Wizard” Cuellar, Mike Watson, DJ Wheat, Justin Wong, and Super Street Fighter IV producer himself, Yoshinori Ono.

The night started off quickly, when all of the patiently waiting players were finally let inside the suite. After entering, every person there was rushing to a station to play the latest build of Super Street Fighter 4. It seemed as the first thing everyone wanted to do was try out the new Ultra combos. The selectable Ultra system is very similar to the Super Arts in Third Strike. After selecting your character, you are given a choice as to which Ultra Combo you want to use. It seemed as though all the new Ultras had a purpose beyond doing major damage. For example, Abel’s new Ultra is a throw Ultra, that has armor on it, and can be held for a few seconds until the Abel player decides to release the Ultra upon his opponent. It seems it can be used as a very nice anti air or after baiting what would normally be a safe poke. Another example would be Blanka’s new Ultra, “Shout of Earth.” There are two versions of the attack that can be chosen by the buttons you press. By using a 3p version, the move becomes a very solid anti-air attack that hits in full, and can be held down and release at a time of the players choosing. The other version is an “anti-ground” attack (and it literally says that in the command list!). That version of the move can actually punish fireballs at fullscreen!

The main event of the night was the first Super Street Fighter IV tournament held by Capcom. Just about everyone in the room was competing in the tournament. Some of the braver players used new characters, while other we’re more conservative and stuck with their main characters from the original Street Fighter 4. The tournament was very competitve, but in the end, two Las Vegas locals were in the finals. Daniel aka ruiN and Todd aka Rice151. The match was best 3/5 games. After a quick 2-1 lead by ruiN, Rice151 made a clutch comeback with great footsies and was constantly pressuring ruiN’s Akuma and forcing him into the corner. In the end, ruiN put up a great fight, but Rice’s Balrog was too much, and he completed the comeback to win the first official Super Street Fighter IV tournament.

The entire event was amazing to be at. Hype matches and new Ultras were all around, as well as smiles and laughs. Capcom is definately making the right steps for Super Street Fighter IV. There were already lot’s of tweaks to almost every character, but the main gameplay component that seems to be new to Super IV, was that connecting an Ultra Combo off of a focus attack dash cancel seemed to almost cut the damage of the Ultra by about a fourth of the total damage, or maybe even more. Sagat has the ability to connect his new Ultra, the Tiger Cannon from Tiger Uppercut xx FADC xx Ultra. When the Tiger Cannon hits by itself, without using a FADC to connect it, the Ultra seems to hit for about 500 damage. When it was used and after canceling with a FADC from Tiger Uppercut, the damage was noticeably smaller. Could this be one of the nerfs applied to Sagat? When I asked Seth Killian if this was a new feature to the game, the only reply I got was “Maybe!” with a big smile on Seth’s face.

With that being said, all that can be done for more confirmation on new game features, is to wait patiently. There are still four new characters yet to be revealed, and several months before Super Street Fighter IV is expected to be released. The build that was played at the Fight Club was far from finished, and much more will be done with Super IV before it’s release date. Keep up to date with gootecks.com and the other great Street Fighter related sites out there like I Play Winner and Event Hubs!