Back in the mid-Nineties the 3D beat-’em-up was king. Virtua Fighter, Tekken, Battle Arena Toshinden, Soul Blade, Dead Or Alive, Bloody Roar, Rival Schools – these titles were wowing gamers with their chunky 3D graphics, and spectacular cinematic moves, leaving the beat-’em-up champion of the earlier part of the decade, Street Fighter, stuck between something of a rock and a hard place. At fi rst, Street Fighter stuck to its guns and stayed 2D, tweaking, but not fundamentally messing with, its near-perfect formula. While this strategy ensured that Street Fighter maintained a loyal cult following, particularly in its native Japan, there was no denying that it wasn’t the commercial powerhouse it used to be. It was getting overlooked because it looked dated. People thought Street Fighter couldn’t keep up.

However, the truth was quite the opposite. Two generations of 3D Street Fighter EX games – which were okay, but just too slow – demonstrated that Street Fighter was perfectly capable of handling 3D graphics. The problem was that 3D graphics couldn’t handle Street Fighter. Not just yet.

But now, fi nally, graphics-processing technology has caught up and made possible what Capcom has been gagging to do for years – a proper, full-speed Street Fighter game with contemporary 3D graphics. We didn’t really believe it ’til we played it, but then we played it and now we do believe it, if you can believe that, which you might not, seeing as you haven’t played it yet. This paragraph really needs to end.

So, during our hands-on with Street Fighter IV it proved itself to be fast enough and 3D enough for all tastes, but there was an even more important issue at stake: would we, proud representatives of Play magazine, prove ourselves in the Street Fighter arena. As games journalists, we feel we have an obligation to not be embarrassingly bad at Street Fighter, particularly when playing it in a Capcom offi ce in front of Capcom people. And the fi rst thing we saw when we stepped into the room didn’t fi ll us with confi dence: two joysticks. Two massive, massive joysticks. Seriously, it was like John Holmes and Peter North lying side by side. We were quite intimidated, not just by their size, but by the fact that, being fervent PlayStation gamers, all our skills are in our thumbs. Our fi ngers and wrists are comparatively underdeveloped, and lacking the precise co-ordination required to pull off special moves consistently. Indeed, most of what were supposed to be our Dragon Punches ended up being ineffectual jumps forward, which was bad news seeing as you can’t block in midair in Street Fighter IV. However, just like in any other Street Fighter game, you can win by keeping things simple, staying calm and waiting for your opponent to screw up. And it still feels as satisfying to play it this way as it ever did.

See, that’s what those two generations of gamers slavering over Tekken, Dead Or Alive and Soul Calibur never really understood about real fi ghting games. It’s not about what moves you know, but how you implement them into your own particular fi ghting style. It’s about timing and about thinking on your feet and about outsmarting your opponent. Remembering a huge sequence of buttons won’t get you anywhere, and if you are struggling to pull off specials you can go a long way simply by making clever use of your basic kicks, punches and throws. And we did just that, at least until we’d won enough matches to earn the respect of our rivals, at which point we began taking risks and experimenting with some of the new stuff.

We mostly used the ‘Charge Attack’ because it involves simply holding down both medium attack buttons together, although even that was diffi cult for us with those massive joysticks and their massive, really-far-apart buttons. It’s a useful move too though. If you just tap the two buttons, you get a kind of fast dodge/counter/jab move, but you can hold them to store increasing quantities of attack power. The real beauty of doing this is that your opponent has to hit you twice to break the charge, so you can charge until he hits you once then let one go right in his face. Of course, two hits can come in very quick succession in Street Fighter so, as ever, precise timing is key.

Overall, we had a great time with Street Fighter IV even in this fairly early state. We had just enough time with it to get us excited about the different tactical and technical possibilities offered by the new mechanics (and new combinations of old mechanics), but not enough time to uncover any fl aws or balancing issues. There’s bound to be loads in there, and the only way to weed them out and perfect the gameplay is to get lots of people to play lots and lots of matches. This is why Capcom plans to release limited numbers of unreleased versions of the game into Japanese arcades months prior to its general release. A PS3 release, by the way, is not yet confi rmed, but why would Capcom invite us to play if there wasn’t going to be one?