Considering it’s an update-cum-sequel to a game that’s been out for almost a year, Super Street Fighter IV finds itself cloaked by a staggeringly dense mist of secrecy. Following the drip-feed of information with the original that led to players getting more and more pumped for SFIV’s release with each new glimpse, Capcom seems to have opted for a similar strategy this time around. This is exemplified by the huge piece of board the Capcom guys use to hide the demo screen during anything that isn’t in-fight action, so while we got to hear the mocking blips and chings of the character select screen, there are apparently some faces on there that the team doesn’t want us to see just yet. With just three of the additional characters announced, there are still plenty of spaces for our far-fetched wishes to be granted and as a device to keep the buzz going, there can be little doubt that it’s working.
 
But for the time being, it’s all about the new challengers we do know about and we finally got a chance to go hands-on with both returning Super Street Fighter duo T Hawk and Dee Jay and new girl Juri. The latter was by far the most interesting, and not simply because the other two were left off the original Street Fighter IV disc with good reason. Juri’s damage, like with everyone else in this early build, is far from final but her combo potential already paints her as a monstrous opponent. Her dive kick swoops in quickly and can cross up, with the EX version even allowing a juggle at the end if your hands can find the Ultra quickly enough.

The cartwheel kick combos easily and serves to ward off jump-ins, but the most potential is arguably hidden in her fireballs. These can either be tossed out at various angles (based, as with Gouken, on the attack strength used) or stocked by holding the relevant button and by repeating and holding with all three strengths, she can carry on as usual with three flaming surprises on standby. She also has a counter, although seeing as how it just teleports her away when it eats a hit, it didn’t seem overly useful outside of avoiding wakeup attacks. She also served to all but confirm our suspicion of multiple Ultras selectable pre-match – her Ultra meter sported a II where every other character got a I and in a different colour, too. Exciting times.
 
Going back to the new guys, Dee Jay is actually far more interesting to play than we were expecting too, a charge character a little different to the others we’ve had all year to fiddle around with. As a charge character, he still suffers a little from the same issue as all his charging brethren – namely finding a reliable and not overly taxing way into Ultra – although we have seen him land his Ultra comfortably off his EX kick combo. Not that we managed to do so, mind, although we did have trouble replicating the crumple that led to the opening.

… continued