Street Fighter IV

PC/PS3/X360

Capcom

This column was but a baby when Street Fighter II exploded. A SNES sat by our telly, cartridge slot quivering in anticipation of the console release of this growing arcade beat-em-up legend. The game hit US shores months before its UK arrival, but so did our dad, packed onto an aeroplane for a meeting in New York. We looked at him, wide-eyed, as he left with instructions scrawled on a piece of paper in his hand. "Street Fighter II Turbo," they read. "Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Please god please."

This is the man that brought us into the world. In our lifetime, he has stood beside us throughout countless triumphs and tragedies, as only a father can. And yet the way we felt as he returned from his trip and placed that fabled product into our trembling hands, ranks among our greatest moments. It may never leave the top ten. It goes without saying that we didn't leave the house that weekend. If it hadn't been for school, we would have stayed indoors for the whole of 1993.

We're not alone. Street Fighter II has a very special place in the hearts of a huge swathe of today's players. Tens of brilliant and not-so-brilliant iterations and spin-offs have kept it alive for a decade and a half, but none have ever quite recaptured the magic. Street Fighter IV has been promising to do just that since it was first announced. Now unleashed into the hands of slavering fanboys across the world, the remarkable truth has emerged - it has succeeded.

Graphically, it's a peach, 3D fighters delivering pitch perfect expression while still fighting on a 2D plane. Control has been opened up, the hardcore parries of Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike usurped by a focus move system achievable by all. Characters who were always also-rans in most minds - Dhalsim, Zangief, Balrog - have become rounded. Each of the four new combatants delivers a distinctive playing style, although inevitably they cannot compare to the favourites. Design is proudly populist, sounds and menus paying tribute to the Street Fighter history. And it's fun. Incredibly, endlessly good fun.

Capcom is now the master now of finding fresh life in a back catalogue, retro-revisionism tested with the likes of Mega Man and Bionic Commando on Xbox Live and PSN. Simultaneously respectful and ruthless in its self-reference, at present the games company has no rival. Street Fighter IV is the greatest product of that trend. And it pulls off the impossible, batting away 15 years of rose-tinted memory to become, unquestionably, the best in the series. Considering the place that series has in so many gamers' hearts, that's no mean feat.

9/10