It was recently announced by Capcom that they would be releasing a new version of Street Fighter II on Xbox Live arcade. Not only is Capcom bringing Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix to XBLA, but it is also giving the entire game an HD makeover (hence the "HD Remix" in the title). Racket Boy has gone into great detail analyzing a slide that came from the Capcom press conference discussing the game. In the image above you can see several iterations of Street Fighter sprites. On the left is the original Ryu sprite from SFII. Next to that is a sprite from Guilty Gear, the current standard bearer for high resolution 2D fighters. Next to that is a Ryu sprite from Street Fighter III, the highest resolution entry in the series. Now, you've seen what was, so what is Capcom doing for the remake?
The second sprite from the right is an upscaled version of the original sprite from SFII, next to that is the newly redrawn and remastered sprite that will appear in HD Remix. Damn. As Racket Boy points out, the sprite is so large and detailed it hardly looks like a sprite at all. Of course, we won't know how well it really looks until we see it in motion, but this is a great start. Tournament level players are also concerned that any tweaks to the frame rate will ruin the game, but frankly we're so flabbergasted by how pretty it is that it's hard to complain. We can't wait to see what Capcom has in store for us this fall.
Now if the folks at Capcom could just get together with the folks behind Castlevania, we'd be in business.
