The Street Fighter franchise exists as one of the genre’s most challenging series to master. Where Tekken and Dead or Alive are extremely strategic 3D fighting sagas, Street Fighter remains as one of the most technical 2D fighters to-date. Despite the copious amounts of sub-systems, high-level tactics and variable combo strings, Street Fighter has never been one to feature any type of tutorial mode. A “Training” room is available for players to test out their characters of choice- the feature will include online play in Ultra Street Fighter IV- but a fleshed-out “step by step” tutorial continues to elude the series.
While Ultra Street Fighter IV continues the “no tutorials” tradition of previous Street Fighter games, the updated fighting game will include situational trials for each character. Each trial consists of a specific action or task that the player needs to complete with a selected character. While it’s closer to a “challenge mode” than an actual tutorial, the feature still allows players to explore the capabilities of each member of the Ultra Street Fighter IV roster. A similar example of Ultra Street Fighter IV’s character trials would be that of character-specific Event Matches from Super Smash Bros. Melee, or the character-specific missions from Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus.
Earlier today in a statement made to CVG, Capcom revealed that while trials will be available for the current roster of Street Fighter IV characters, the ones for the new characters will not be available at launch. When the digital upgrade goes live on June 3 for PS3 and Xbox 360, Ultra Street Fighter IV’s character trials will only be available for the pre-existing “vanilla” roster (i.e. the original roster from Street Fighter IV), and those who were added in Super Street Fighter IV. Along with the five characters added with the Ultra SFIV update, the characters added in Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition (Yun, Yang, Oni, Evil Ryu) will also lack trial challenges at launch.
The digital update for Ultra Street Fighter IV launches on June 3 for PS3 and Xbox 360, with retail physical copies arriving on August 5. The Steam-hosted digital version for PC is the last to arrive, as it releases on Aug. 8.