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Street Fighter IV's Dress Rehearsal

Street Fighter IV is coming, and the World Warriors are dressing up in their Sunday best for you.

Palette-swap “costume changes” are something of a tradition in the Street Fighter series and other fighting games. Said costume changes usually involved Ryu standing in front of his closet and musing if he should wear his purple gi or his white gi. But the latest installment in Capcom's famous series will actually offer alternative costumes that are seemingly based on the characters' history, personality and whether or not they have a bum that looks good in tight leotard.

Zangief wears the felt overalls of his hero, Mayor Mike Haggar. Guile remembers Charlie by wearing a yellow military vest. Vega dresses up in frills and a ballroom mask so he can run straight to Ken's son's Bar Mitzvah* after he claws out Chun-Li's eyes.

Check out the video after the jump. It's a cute and welcome touch that stands to add a lot of personality to the new fighters and the ones we already know. Something about El Fuerte with a frying pan seems right.

*Disclaimer: Ken probably isn't Jewish. Vega just looks so dolled up, y'know?

Playing Dress Up with Avatar Costumes

I finally got around to playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl this weekend and I got to thinking about how much time developers must spend designing alternate costumes for game characters. Brawl isn't so bad, condidering that most of the costume changes amount to a swapped pallete. But there are a lot of games out there that feature dozens of costumes for each character. In some cases it seems to serve a practical function. For instance, it's less complicated to stage a Scorpion vs Scorpion fight when one's a darker shade of yellow. But it's often just superfluous. Developers must spend hundreds of man-hours designing different outfits for game characters. Why? Do gamers have a pathological need to play dress up?

about the blogger

John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Nerve, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.