Yeah, Super Street Fighter 4 has been announced and "confirmed" (i believe) as a standalone game.

Supposedly it gives 8 extra characters, some character balancing and an improved online mode that was "too extensive" for DLC.

Bollocks if you ask me.

I lost interest years ago (wasn't the world's biggest fan even then) and don't really see what the fuss is, but I appreciate there's still the hardcore fans.

Actually, that's a good question; Are beat em ups a bit past it now?

I know the new Tekken is out soon etc, but I don't know anyone who plays one-on-one beat em ups these days

I was a SF fan back in the day. I think that persuaded me to get SF4. The problem is though I just cannot play it on the Xbox joypad. Neither the analogue or d-pad work well enough to pull off fluid moves. Gutted. I was tempted to buy one of those Madcatz pads but dont know how much better they are. The Madcatz arcade stick isnt an option tbh, Im not spending £70 to play one game!

I have tekken dark resurrection on my PS3 (cheapy download), which satisfies my occasional need to bash something, but I never got on with the Street Fighter series. I always found the special moves needlessly difficult to pull off.

I had Dead or Alive (4?) for the RROD 360 and that was impossible if you weren't psychic and able to pull off the right counter at the right time.

I also had Dark Resurrection for the PSP which was good and works well on the handheld - short fights and it doesn't use the analogue stick!

No
Comment
!

+1, Mortal Kombat got like that too in the more recent games...

I think beat'em ups follow (or generally should) the easy to play, hard to master train of thought.

As for whether or not they're past it, i would say that they are no longer as main stream as they once were. I own quite a few beat'em ups ranging from Virtua Fighter 5, Soul Calibur 4 and Street Fighter 4. Each has their own merits (VF5 is highly technical, SC4 is fun and challenging and SF4 is just different being 2D yet still very deep).

One of the main issues i've found now is that with the aforementioned difficulty curve, when my friends come round and play on them i have to either play badly, have a high handicap or something or else i will just most likely win.

I think console beat em ups were sort of a legacy of their original arcade units - amazing in their time (Mortal Kombat/SF2 at home!) but you start to realise there's only so far you can take a beat em up, and chances are you're gonna be playing it on your own cursing the difficulty curve, or even worse, cursing that foetus that just kicked your ass online

I think Joe Average, who at one point would have happily bought a home version of a beat em up, would actually be amazed to find out some of them are still going

Also, some of them are just too complicated now, and I'd probably be more likely to fire up MK2

I saw this in HMV on a test stand and wondered how closely they had kept to the original SF2 (ok I know it's not the original) formula.

I set up a fight between me (Ryu) and the AI (Ken) mainly because I know how to do most of their moves (in SF2).

Managed to do a fireball (HADOKEN) thing, a spinny leg jumpy flying kick thing and a dragon punch and I was impressed how easy they were to perform. I quite liked the analogue stick for the 1 round that I played.

I'd consider getting it for my PC but I probably won't.

Lube? Are you kidding Capcom. Oh dear.

I love SF and looking at those screens makes me want to play but I have to remind myself why I got rid of it 1) its [LIFTED] on the Xbox pad, 2) no one cares about new characters as we all play Ken and Ryu anyway, 3) its boring as sin playing alone or you can go online and get whooped by a spotty 13 year old

Yip, the idea always grabs you, but the interest never holds