Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition - PS3 Review

Several months ago, I was on a serious Street Fighter kick. It started off by reviewing the first Street Fighter IV. I enjoyed the game quite a bit, but ever since it first came out, I joked about Capcom's penchant for re-releasing updated versions of the Street Fighter series. I once joked with my friends that I was waiting for the Super Duper Street Fighter Hyper Championship Edition. While they sadly never used my naming convention, a couple more updates did come out.

Then came the Super Street Fighter IV update, which I never played on consoles - but later got a taste of for the Nintendo 3DS, which I reviewed here. Both titles were fun, but I was a bit numb to the idea of yet another update. I am a longtime fan of the series (I also had a write up about my history with the series for its anniversary earlier last year, here). With the recent announcement that an Ultra Street Fighter IV was coming out (I popped a trailer of it over on Digitally Downloaded here), I thought this was a good time to look back at the 'Arcade' Edition

So what about this latest release? Well, it continues the trend of adding fighters to the series - we have four additions. There are some finer tweaks to the combat, and a nifty option to switch between online matches using Super Street Fighter IV or the Arcade Edition.

The only reason I got a chance to give this one a try was it was a PlayStation Plus perk a few months ago. Not a small download, this title rings in at about seventeen gigs. If you are a trophy/achievement hunter, this game is much harder to collect them in than the prior couple of releases. As I have commented in some of my other fighting games lately, it can be a bit hard to find an online match. Really once these fighters are more than a few months old, their online community becomes pretty sparse, and that is the case here as well. I managed to get into a few matches here and there, but I spent long periods of time waiting to load into somewhat choppy, laggy matches unfortunately.

Given the size of the roster and the considerable number of tweaks, this is without a doubt the best version of this game to release. That being said, it does not do a lot new from the prior iterations either. If you love street fighter, you will probably enjoy this, but if you have already played and traded/sold earlier copies of the game, you probably do not get enough new content here to merit another round of combat.