I kind of really want SFV to have something like a simple "normal" arcade mode as opposed to those incredibly abbreviated and scripted story modes. I also really have enjoyed SFIV's ability to have vs CPU for when I just want to play around with the game (by far this is the mode I play most.) Although it's seen by its developers as a competitive head to head game, I've rarely played much Street Fighter of any series that way; back in the arcades in the old days, we'd usually play through against the CPU and somewhat rarely challenge each other. Then, of course, I had tons of console games, usually by myself, on older consoles with no internet connection. Because of that, I've rarely gotten involved in competitive battles, even though SFIV offers them. Nor am I particularly good at them, for that matter. I play Street Fighter to unwind, not to challenge myself with a really difficult challenge.
SFV, on the other hand, offers relatively little to the player like me who mostly avoids 2 player games and requires a good single player mode that actually offers some good replayability. Sigh. So, eventually I'll pick it up. It could be years yet before I bother, though. That said, I still check in every few months to see what's going on with it, and try and get caught up on the SF world, and although I'm not nearly as good at this as I should like to be, I did manage to catch a whiff of season 2 and what's coming down the pike in 2017.
First, let's set the groundwork. Although this wasn't obvious to me at first when I rented this title a few months ago, SFV is a sequel to IV (obviously) but a prequel to III—which remains the chronologically most advanced game of the series still. In other words; this is the order in which the series came out—and I've left off the EX series as a spin-off unrelated directly to the others:
- Street Fighter
- Street Fighter 2
- Street Fighter Alpha
- Street Fighter 3
- Street Fighter 4
- Street Fighter 5
But this is the order that they take place in chronologically:
- Street Fighter
- Street Fighter Alpha
- Street Fighter 2
- Street Fighter 4
- Street Fighter 5
- Street Fighter 3
Street Fighter V is the game that starts to (meaningfully) introduce characters and concepts from Street Fighter 3 into the game. IV was, on the other hand, most definitely a direct sequel to II. Of course, IV and even V had plenty of Alpha characters making appearances too.
We'll see how it shakes out when all is said and done, but what I'm surprised by is the character selection. The original Street Fighter obviously had only one (two, if you're being generous) selectable characters: Ryu (and Ken as 2-player alternate.) Part of the secret of Street Fighter II's massive success was the selection of the original 8 World Warriors: none of whom (except Ryu and Ken) came from the first game. Even later, when the bosses were added as playable characters, that only gave us Sagat from the first game. The fact that the roster of characters (both playable and not) had so little overlap between the first and second games has always kind of fascinated me. Since then, of course, Capcom has not really had the same degree of success, and they've never done a Street Fighter game that didn't dip fairly deeply into existing characters since (except for the ill-fated Street Fighter III series, which did actually eventually get a couple more classic characters, but which was also no doubt seen as a commercial disappointment in many ways.
The Alpha series deliberately brought back a fair number of the otherwise neglected original Street Fighter characters, as well as characters from Final Fight; a side-scrolling game that was originally developed to be a sequel to Street Fighter, but following the success of Double Dragon (by Technos/Taito) it changed it's focus. That said, the two were clearly occurring in the same "continuity" given the large number of Final Fight characters that eventually made their way into Street Fighter titles.
By the time the series reached their "final" chapter, both Street Fighter Alpha and IV had added every single one of the characters who ever appeared in any Street Fighter II game, and Alpha had four Street Fighter I characters (IV had two) and five Final Fight characters (IV had four.) Alpha also added a pretty fair number of characters that made their first appearance in this series: ten in all. III had sixteen characters that were new to it. IV and so far V have made generous use of many of these characters, although I wonder how many of the III characters that haven't already made an appearance in IV we're likely to see in V, given that they're often just too weird to really have picked up a fan following. IV had four of the Alpha characters while so far V has three; but there's no overlap on which ones are in each. IV ended up picking up seven of the III characters; probably almost all of them that are worth preserving, although V has rounded that out just a bit with three (again; so far) only one of which was in IV. V also has very few of the ten IV unique characters (only one so far).
I expect that we'll eventually see all of the rest of the original Street Fighter II characters make their way into V. I expect that a few stand-out Alpha and IV characters (especially Sakura, Crimson Viper maybe) are also inevitable, and it's curious that the III characters that have been added so far don't include many of the more obviously popular ones (like Yun, Yang and maybe Dudley.) They'll almost certainly make it eventually, but the rumors for five new characters through 2017 are all new V characters that if they've shown up at all, it's never been as a playable character before. And there seems to be a lot of the Dolls of various types in the game, although they're not playable as yet.
I also expect—or maybe this is just wishful thinking and I hope for it—that some more game modes are forthcoming before all is said and done.
By the way, the first of the Season 2 characters is Akuma, now with a bizarre lion-flower hair style (although there's a skin that recreates his classic appearance, more or less.)
By the way, the first of the Season 2 characters is Akuma, now with a bizarre lion-flower hair style (although there's a skin that recreates his classic appearance, more or less.)
