I always play SFIV with the Random option they got on the character select screen. It makes fights a lot more interesting for casual people, and it gives seasoned veterans someone else to try if they get someone they never used before. I wonder how many other people do what I do?

I do the same, Idolores, whenever I decide to attempt to play my friends. They're wholly dedicated to deep mastery, whereas I never really got into that level of play. I'm going to lose horribly no matter what, so I may as well change the scenery.

Hey quick question, can I interact with a player of the PS3 version if I'm playing the 360 iteration of this software? It seems there are more players on that side of the spectrum.

That'd be the day...

i wish, but it's not possible

Played a bit last night with Angela. She plays a mean Juri. I did manage to beat her once or twice, my first win being with Ibuki, but out of the new characters that I have tried (not many), I particularly enjoy both Ibuki and Hakan. He's just SO fun to play as. Gonna try some other new characters tonight probably.

Anyone know if this game will get an album release proper. I'm dying to have these stage themes.

Anyone wanna play sometime?

PSN ID: FuryofFrog

i'm currently trying to get better with guy, but he's pretty hard to use, so it's gonna take a while.

maybe i'm gonna try cody next, or dudley?

The Dojo Edition for 360 I ordered from Capcom has not yet arrived, nor has the second issue of the Ibuki miniseries. I have the PS3 version of the game on my shelf, but my PS3 is currently away, being repaired.

This whole situation is...inadequate.

Played a bit with Pellasos, Don, and XLord007 these past couple of days.  Despite what he says, Pellasos has gotten pretty proficient with Guy, effectively whupping my Juri down hard.  Don's keeping me on my toes with his trio team of Abel, Ibuki, and Hakan.  And XLord, it was fun checking out Spectator Mode; any idea how that "passing" of turns works?

I love the rate at which character-specific unlockables opens up now.  You need only use a character a couple of times, and a whole bunch of new colors, taunts and title/icons automatically becomes available.

By the way, I've updated the Character Sound Collection [Single Cut] tracklisting on VGMdb.  As you can see, songs don't loop, but I'm currently in the middle of incorporating my own for the eighteen new themes featured in Super IV.

Yeah, last night was a ton of fun. In particular, our final battle of the evening was absolutely amazing. Close, tight matchup where we were both on the edge of our seats! Still, it was the first time I beat your Juri so I was immensely proud.

My copy of the 360 version arrived today, finally. I figured I'd practice a bit with the 360 pad before taking it online, finally putting my 3-month-old Gold account to actual use.

Here's what I've learned that might help answer some of the above questions:

-Arrange mode BGM is unlocked simply by going online with the game.  Arrange mode only affects players that have it turned on locally, and it completely replaces the regular music (much to my annoyance -- I wish it would be added to a random pool of music).  So, if I have it turned on and you don't, I will hear the arrange old school themes and you will hear the regular music.  Works the same way as local voice language settings.

-Colors and taunts unlock in an alternating pattern with each versus use of a character until you unlock all of them for a character (also in arcade mode I think).  Note that using the REMATCH option in local play will not work to unlock these.  You must go back to the character select screen and choose the character again.  When you exit out of versus play, local or online, you'll get the huge list of everything you unlocked.

-In Endless mode online, if there are more than two people in the lobby, if one of the people takes more than 10-15 seconds to hit "ready," the option will automatically roll to the next person in order.

I'd still like to know what the "Save Reservation" option thing with the Select button is for spectators if anybody knows that.

Really?
I know Ryu and Ken tend to pop up a lot, but they're nowhere near as numerous as the Juri players out there in my experience.

My friends and I were watching the replay channel and sorry to say...the number of Kens and Ryu's outnumbered EVERYONE else by a large margin. Best thing to do is turn inputs on for replays and watch the fools spam the controls. Is pretty hilarious.

I will say Juri is the one character that all of us want to learn how to play better. She is FUN and is actually pretty diverse (can turtle with neutral jumps and HK, can rushdown, has comboable ultra, go-to EX move -the pinwheel-, decent fireball). On the flipside...all of us are convinced Hakan is pure garbage. The concept is okay, but non-oil, he's awful and the oil doesn't last long enough to make him truly fearsome (opponent can wait it out). The lay-down Ultra shuts down jump-ins though (although usually, whoever used Hakan was so far behind in life, hitting it really didn't matter, lol).

I'm trying to develop Adon as a fun character, but I'm REALLY disappointed he isn't better. His air normals are his best thing, but all of his specials have nasty drawbacks. And unfortunately, air normals aren't much help in a game like SF4. My main from IV got buffed pretty nice though (Rose...Soul Sattellites aren't damaging, but they are all-purpose and can turn the tide pretty quick. Pretty nice, considering her old ultra 1 was junk).

I need to reactivate my Live account in a few days.

My goodness, you just made me incredibly apprehensive about playing this online. Love them though I do, I've never been exceptional at fighting games. It's fine to admit amongst friends that I'm terrible, but the idea of well-seasoned strangers being able to look at my inputs and laugh as I flail makes me rather uncomfortable.
That said, I'll probably head online next week regardless. I'm on vacation then, and what better time to flail like a monkey in public?

Seriously!?
I loved using Rose back in the Alpha days, but she got SERIOUSLY nerfed in SFIV if you ask me.
All her moves are a lot slower than they used to be, leaving her open to attacks with almost everything she does. She's totally useless now.

Compare that to newcomer Juri whom I tried out yesterday, and who is quick, versatile and has some really easy and damaging combos, and I ended up once again being amazed at how unbalanced this game can be in terms of characters.

Rose zones with Soul Spark (which is a lot better now) and if they jump over it, crouch HP. I tend to play her like Guile. Her jumping mk crossup is really good and is a free combo if it hits or a poke string or throw attempt if it is blocked. Satellites hit as soon as you activate pretty much, so they can turn the tide if the opponent is right on you. I wish her crouching mid punch was as godlike as it was in Alpha 2.

I HATED Rose in vanilla SFIV because of her limited options, but her new ultra really makes a huge difference because it gets her off the defensive and on the offense pretty much for free each round (you can rush in if the satellites don't hit right away). Oh yeah, and she's probably one of the best anti-Guile characters in the game (sonic booms got seriously buffed up in this game). Her reflect shuts down his only worthwhile special move, lol.

Personally, I don't consider Juri easy to use at all. All of her special moves are easily punishable if whiffed, so they cannot be randomly thrown out and she lends herself mostly to the air, so she's susceptable to anti-airs (crouching uppercuts, dragonpunches). She has easy combos into her ultra (regular dive, ex dive, jumping mp air-to-air), but these have to be set-up and ex dive is frightfully easy to punish, since you need the full animation to get the juggle for the ultra. Juri lacks wakeup games, so she cannot really get people off her, aside from EX pinwheel (which can then be blocked, and Juri then dies horribly from the lag on it). That's her tradeoff for her offensive options.

Right now I am in the middle of crafting a Rose stick right now. I'm glad to see all the Rose love here. In vanilla she was really junky and I couldn't even pull off a quarter of the shit that I could in A3. In this game she got a little speedier and her links got easier too. A big part of my game was utilizing qcb + p to smack people in the face but the range in vanilla was ultimate crap. I'm so happy that she got a proper buff. That and soul satellite was much better then I expected to be. Death to the Shamwow Ultra I say.

I snagged a copy of this last week via Goozex. I'm a scrub, as always, but I'm eager to play. You can boost your BP by beating on me, lol. I promise I won't shoto spam...as much.

My PSN handle is Nekobo1. I'll probably be on all weekend.

Yun and Yang officially make their IV debut in the upcoming arcade version:

http://kotaku.com/5641478/first-footage … characters

Personally, I'm more excited about the currently revealed alternate outfits, which Shoryuken.com collects here:

http://shoryuken.com/content/every-new- … tfit-1814/

Some are obviously better than others (Fei Long, Balrog, Ibuki, Juri, Dudley, and Guy are particularly boss), but a big thumbs up for Chun Li's Alpha revival.

i really hate yun and yang, they're so generic.

Capcom really needs to lower the pricing of these costumes.  $0.80/costume might not seem like a lot, but if you want all 70 of the SSF4 costumes, that adds up to $56.  The game itself was originally $40 and can now be had for around $20.  Even if you wait to buy the costumes in the bundles, they're $0.51/costume or $36 for all of them.  Also, major BOO to Capcom for not letting PS3 owners see the new costumes worn by other players without having to buy them.  Why does only the 360 get this feature?

Fun games, Angela! I haven't played in such a long time, so I was a bit nervous playing against a vet like you. ^^;; I'm glad I was able to sneak one win in.

What kind of pad do you use? I was playing with the DS3 and my thumbs were a bit raw (also partially because of callouses on my thumbs from learning how to play a guitar) after a few rounds.

Still rocking the Logitech Precision, though admittedly I've had to go through quite a number of them since I started playing SFIV.  Extremely rigorous play had made the d-pads less responsive over time, and I'm now on my third controller, which I had bought off the_miker. 

On the side, I'll use the Tournament Edition Fightstick, but as mentioned, I'm inherently better with pad than with stick.