Best of the Decade: Street Fighter IV
Thu, December 9, 2010 at 11:45 PM 
Street Fighter IV
Platforms: Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Windows
Release Date: February 17, 2009 (PS3 and 360)
Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Dimps/Capcom
For a great many years, my heart belonged only to Soulcalibur. I dabbled with other fighting games from time to time, but I could never gather up the motivation to stick with any of them long enough to get past that initial awkward button-mashing phase that’s inherent to trying any new series in this genre.
Most of all I was mystified by the Street Fighter phenomenon. I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with Mortal Kombat, which is to say I hate the fighting but love the cheesy characters and world they inhabit, but the appeal of the series is clear enough: cheesy B-movie aesthetic and plenty of gore. Dead or Alive isn’t my thing, but it has lots of anime-inspired girls with giant floppy breasts in it so its success is easy to understand.
But when I looked at Street Fighter I was never able to grasp the appeal. Everything looked too simple and too repetitive. And, as fighting games aren’t exactly known for their ability to ease in newcomers, every time I’d try to pick it up I’d get stomped on and write it off. I had no street fighting friends to convince me to stick with it.
When Street Fighter IV came out, something clicked.