Capcom has revealed that Street Fighter IV, one of the most succesful games in the long-running series, was almost a turn-based game.
Street Fighter IV was such a success that it resulted in a number of versions of the game being released — including Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition for 3DS — but prior to the game’s release, the Street Fighter franchise had been languishing.
Street Fighter III: New Generation was released in 1997, followed by Street Fighter III: 2nd Impact some months later, and Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike in 1999. The next installment in the franchise wouldn’t release until 2008, leaving the series to fall out of the spotlight in the nine years in between, while the arcade scene in the west continued to peter out.
Capcom Producer Yoshinori Ono began to consider other directions in which to take the series, and came up with the idea to turn Street Fighter IV into a turn-based game. In a recent interview at EGX 2019, he said:
“I did have an idea that I thought was revolutionary, to turn it into more of a turn-based simulation. So you would take the moves you want to do and put them together like blocks and they’d run automatically. But obviously we didn’t make that in the end.”
While the idea definitely sounds interesting, it was probably for the best (or put another way, in the best interest of the survival of the franchise) that that idea never came to fruition.
Still, what do you think about the idea of a turn-based Street Fighter game?
Source: Nintendo Life