The Ryu fan girl of the Street Fighter series has made it into Street Fighter IV. So here’s some videos. In the trailer you can also see Dan in anime form, not fighting unfortunately but that will come soon enough.

Last week Capcom came down with two Street Fighter IV arcade machines, so I did the only thing I could do and played it all day. Almost literally, I took a break for some lunch.

Anyway Street Fighter IV is great, I managed to get a bit better with Abel as well as trying out most of the other characters. It was a brilliant day and possibly the only good day of last week. It was so much fun getting the combos in, busting out the super cancels and finding juggles into Ultras. I, obviously, was the best at it. So don’t believe what Chris wrote on Play Mag’s blog about beating me. Fair enough he did in the last game, but come on he was using Ryu and being really jippy about it, constantly jumping backwards and blocking in the corner like a right turtle . And the sun was in my eyes, and glaring off the screen, and I wasn’t even looking and I was trying to hold a conversation at the same time. And it was really close. Well that should be enough excuses.

Unfortunately this build didn’t have Akuma in it, nor the newly announced Gouken – Ryu and Ken’s mentor – but here’s a couple of pics of what he looks like in the game. Also Capcom and Mad Catz are teaming up to make official pads (with six buttons next to each other and d-pad that actually works) and sticks which will use the same components that were in the arcade machines we were playing on. I cannot wait to get this home.

I went to Battle Of Destiny last Saturday (www.battleofdestiny.com) to enter the Street Fighter III competition, which thankfully turned out to be on the Sunday. Thankfully because I got absolutely kicked by everyone I played against. I won a round once, but everyone there was way, way better than me or using Ken.

Ken’s crouching medium punch seems to beat out nearly everything Alex can do. Obviously a head stomp will beat it, but these guys have perfectly honed reactions and kept parrying the move. It was all a bit depressing really.

What wasn’t depressing was playing Street Fighter IV, it’s awesome. And you can read about that, once I’ve written it, in issue 40 which goes on sale 4 September.

So it is:

*As in “to the fore” like forefront. Look I’m runningout of things that rhyme with Four and make some sort of contextual sense.

Anyway, there’s an absolutely amazing new Street Fighter vid on the net. Here it is! Points of incredible interest come from El Ferute coming to the fight with a frying pan, M Bision’s Ultra combo combining most of his specials into one massively damaging sequence and, well, all of it really. Watch it here, now.

Or - Look at how fat Rufus is. He’s the fat one. And he’s new. latest rumours that will probably turn out to be true are that the console versions will have more characters than the arcade release. Hopefully Capcom will chuck in a few from SFIII just for fun. The other guy in these shots is El Fuerte, he’s a Lucha libra type.