Street Fighter vs. The World

SDCC brought fighting game fans one of the biggest surprise announcements since (zOMG) Street Fighter IV.  Not only is Capcom working with Namco to produce a Street Fighter x Tekken cross-over fighter, Namco is producing their own versus game, Tekken x Street Fighter,  presumably using the Tekken 6 engine. Both games are expected to have tag-team fighting and team-up super moves, and both are loosely scheduled for a 2012 release.

Capcom is already working feverishly on Marvel vs Capcom 3, but managed to put together a proof of concept teaser for fans. The announcement came at Capcom’s “Street Fighter Mania! SSFIV and Beyond” panel. Street Fighter IV producer Yoshinori Ono was stopped during his Q&A session once he asked where fans wanted to see the Street Fighter franchise go in the future. Katsuhiro Harada, producer of the Tekken series for Namco, stood and joined Ono at the speakers’ table to offer a challenge.

Ono has since mentioned that these games have been on the table for over a year but only began development in the past few months. He said neither side is assisting the other and each company has full creative control over how they handle the characters. Ono fully expects Capcom’s version to be ready long before Namco’s.

Famitsu was able to get a few answers out of Ono as he returned to Japan. So far, Ono only confirmed the appearance of the four characters featured in the teaser gameplay video, but said it would surprise him if either game had a smaller roster than Tekken 6 or Super Street Fighter IV. He also hinted that there may be alternate versions of Street Fighter characters to help balance the match-ups.

Ono said he’s aiming for 2 on 2 gameplay, stating that after seeing MvC3′s 3 on 3 fights, he realized he’s too old to handle that much chaos on screen. Gameplay of each company’s release will be very similar to current SF and Tekken releases and should feel very familiar to fans of each. He hinted at adding assists to help add some variety to his own project.

In regards to collaboration, Ono said that neither company is sharing 3D models or design assets and are going to recreate each character as an homage to their strengths and assets they’re known for. He joked that Namco wouldn’t know one way or the other if Capcom decided to make Nina appear naked in the game, but the same could apply to Chun-Li.

Ono has said not to expect any updates from Capcom until Captivate in April 2011, but with the recent string of leaks that have proven to be true, we’ll see how well they keep this under wraps.