First Super Street Fighter II HD Remix video is underwhelming

by Justin McElroy { Oct 19th 2007 at 2:15PM }

So this is a fun lesson in how to handle your Super Street Fighter II HD Remix marketing campaign. Putting out a bunch of really sexy, high-def images of your characters is a great start. Following it up with great pictures of stages is just as good. But when things are going that well, don't let your first video be an ugly, poorly-lit shaky cam clip.

Here's a thought: What about capturing from the actual game? Sure, it's a few more wires to plug in, but isn't it worth it? See, when the whole point of your game is that it looks purty, you probably want a video that makes it look ... you know ... purty. As far as what we can see in this clip ... well, it looks like Street Fighter.

Tags: capcom, fighting, ssfiithd, streetfighter

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

Dread-not-naught @ Oct 19th 2007 2:23PM

Yeah, underwhelming to say the least.

FrankTheCrank @ Oct 19th 2007 3:58PM

SFII was boring...sorry.

SF didn't start getting real good till all those Alpha/Marvel style games were being released. That's when things were super tweaked. I couldn't put the controller down.

DangerMouse @ Oct 19th 2007 4:14PM

SFII was nuts. There was nothing else as advanced and intricate in the way of fighting games when it came out in '91. You can say SFA & MvC games were better, but weren't possible without SFII setting the precedent.

bm @ Oct 20th 2007 1:12AM

Well, you probably can't appreciate the advancements SF2 made without having first played SF1. :)

Mr. P @ Oct 20th 2007 3:00PM

Underwhelming? What the fuck were you expecting? From the beginning they said all they're doing is updating the sprites. In fact I'm pretty sure I made some posts here to let the idiots know that they're not changing the animations or anything like that because it would alter the gameplay too much.

Mr. P @ Oct 20th 2007 3:04PM

Or wait, is it underwhelming because you can't see the HD sprites on a YouTube vid? I guess in the end you're not any brighter for think that either. If you want a new SF experience, wait until SF4, and even then don't expect much newness.

Allstardan @ Nov 9th 2007 6:10AM

You idiots the reason the game uses the old frame rate is because its a download only title, so to make it easier for yall to download capcom didnt bother addin new animations, simple as! If ya want mint animation get 3rd strike but if ya want sf2 as it should av looked download this game n be happy with how pretty it is.

Muppets!

MasterInsan0 @ Oct 19th 2007 2:23PM

Hmm...it looks *too much* like Street Fighter 2 if you ask me. I mean, I know they're trying to be faithful to the original, but they're still not giving each character a custom "on fire" animation? That's kinda odd given the HD nature of the game.

Also, unless it's just the poor quality of the video, the animation looks waaay choppy. Not as in low-framerate choppy, but as in not-enough-animation-frames choppy. I'm not sure if it's just a result of the high resolution or what, but seeing the beautiful high-def sprites jerk around like it's 1991 worries me.

treqie @ Oct 19th 2007 2:27PM

That's what I thought also. Still looks like the same amount of frames on the characters.. I mean, come on.

tentaclesex @ Oct 19th 2007 2:35PM

Yeah, they didn't add any animation. That's the thing that really drags it down.

ratman @ Oct 19th 2007 2:36PM

They are not adding any new frames of animation, just redoing the sprites. This is to keep the game as close to the original as possible (with the HD Remix mode having additional balance changes - though they are also including an arcade perfect port of ST).

DangerMouse @ Oct 19th 2007 3:02PM

Adding frames of animation would result in the timing being thrown off and gameplay would be affected. They're keeping the game exactly the same for the SSF2T heads, just making it prettier. I think people are getting ahead of themselves thinking this'll be a big overhaul. It'll feel exactly the same game you've been playing for 13 years.

blooh (TIDF - Nipple Ring) @ Oct 19th 2007 3:06PM

i haven't played that game in like 10 years

upz @ Oct 19th 2007 3:43PM

I was a lot more excited for this before the announcement of SF4.

The number of animation frames in the characters remaining the same is somewhat understandable. After all, adding frames means changing the hitboxes of the characters in between the original frames, something veteran players will surely object to. However, if they really wanted to work around this, they could've just increased the number of frames while keeping the hit boxes and thus collision detection exactly the same. You may rarely run into instances where during one frame your appendage is already touching your opponent, yet it actually only connects on the next frame, but I think that's a 1/60th of second sacrifice most players would be willing to make in return for a much prettier game. If anything, Capcom didn't add extra frames for cost and time constraints, and used "staying true to the original" as a justifiable excuse. There's absolutely no excuse, though, for why the background animations are still so few frames. This game will look jarring with 1080p graphics moving like pages in a flip book.

Dave Silva @ Oct 19th 2007 4:26PM

@Dangermouse:
Uh. What? It wouldn't throw off the game, all you have to do is add the frames so they display during the exact same time the old "no animation" sequences are on screen. If an animation lasts for 30 frames, and it only uses 4 frames, you can add 26 more frames and it won't change a thing because each frame is on screen for uh, one frame.

Word of the street(IDF-Digital Ruler). @ Oct 19th 2007 5:28PM

That's the thing they should at least try to insert new frames, the animation still looks stiff.

phattie @ Oct 19th 2007 2:25PM

They have new shadow animations that match the stance of the players!

And, yea, the video sucks.. the final game will run at 1080p, so, it will only look 100x better than this cell-phone video.

arrrgh @ Oct 19th 2007 2:29PM

it looked like they were missing frames even...not as smooth as arcade sf2

arrrgh @ Oct 19th 2007 2:30PM

hopefully it was all due to cell phone cam...(wtf capcom?)

Mr Slavio @ Oct 19th 2007 2:31PM

Looks ok. Don't know what you all were expecting.

mr nimblewick (SegaDF - Jogurt Ring) @ Oct 19th 2007 2:37PM

It's jarring to see pretty sprites with such poor animation and old gameplay.

VampireHunter Z @ Oct 19th 2007 2:38PM

Justin you are an idiot. It's a leaked video from a cellphone cam. It's not an official video. It's no different from the leaked Halo 3 videos months ago.

ViciousDude @ Oct 19th 2007 3:04PM

Why don't you hit the jump before you post next time genius. If you had you would have seen that it WAS an official blog post from one of the developers who took the video.

It's not Justin's fault if the dev's aren't smart enough to let the marketing department actually handle the marketing.

VampireHunter Z @ Oct 19th 2007 3:14PM

Ok, Justin is right. I couldn't imagine that they would actually release a video with such crappy quality. The actual thing will look 100x better. Shit, 1080p can't even fit on this monitor I'm using.

WiNG @ Oct 19th 2007 2:42PM

They can't add new animation because all the SF2 pros would crap a brick. An HD brick.

I don't see why they couldn't just add more frames, but treat the hit detection and priority of skills the same, i.e. the player sees pretty frames, but the computer is still using old SF2 calculations.

Ritz @ Oct 20th 2007 10:08PM

WiNG: The can't add any frames, because frame counting is just as important as hit boxes in competitive play. I f they added more frames, it would mess up timing of the moves and combos being pulled off, and professional players would dog the game.

Dave Silva @ Oct 19th 2007 4:28PM

@Ritz:
The hitboxes would stay the same. There's no reason for the game to have so few frames at all.

Ritz @ Oct 20th 2007 10:15PM

@Dave

The hit boxes have nothing to do with timing. Certain combos can only happen between certain frames of animation, and characters are vulnerable during certain frames as well. The best players know how to count these frames. Like I said, if they were to add frames of animation to the game, it would completely screw this up and change the balance of the game. To that end, there is a perfectly good excuse for the amount of frames. Outside of the HD graphics, the game is being made how it was, including frame rate and amount.

Dormammu @ Oct 19th 2007 2:46PM

Actually I think the sprites are obviously better looking even in this poorly made video. I think that shows that they are dramatically improved if you can see it with such poor framerate/resolution.

As to the people who are disappointed that it is old SFII gameplay... I'm surprised if you expected anything else. I thought it was an exact port.

Torin @ Oct 19th 2007 2:49PM

Why is everyone criticizing it based off a hazy cell phone camera video? give it a chance.

bounchfx @ Oct 19th 2007 2:50PM

how are people underwhelmed? what the hell were you expecting?

STREET FIGHER 4!

Norm @ Oct 19th 2007 2:54PM

I (for one) am still completely stoked about this game.

Zertoss @ Oct 19th 2007 3:02PM

The music sounded great. That plus shiny new sprites and backgrounds would make me buy it again. Hell, the last time I bought a Street Fighter 2, it was the original for the SNES.

arrrgh @ Oct 19th 2007 4:00PM

That's a REEEEEEEEEALLLY REALLY good point. Honestly, I think I'll pick this one up for the slick updated soundtrack more than the gfx. I loves me some sf music

Kensou @ Oct 19th 2007 3:09PM

Seriously, they never said they would add more frames, just that they were going to redraw them. People complaining are just some graphic whores who don't understand how 2D games work. The game looks awesome to say the least, that is compared to the original, and yes, as a street fighter fan I would cry out loud if they changed a single frame, wether adding in some or taking them out.

bm @ Oct 19th 2007 3:59PM

"People complaining are just some graphic whores who don't understand how 2D games work."

Haha, wtf kind of a bullshit comment is that? SF3 looked incredible, it was a 2D game, great animation as opposed to this, and it worked.

Kensou @ Oct 19th 2007 9:42PM

I agree that 3rd Strike looks great with its 60 frames per second, but that game was designed like that from the very beggining, this game on the other hand is 30 FPS.

On a sidenote for people who complained enough to make widescreen posible: please learn that the objective of a 2D fighting game is controlling space, making the playfield wider screws things up, just wanna see you all lose to a bunch of O. Sagat because you can't get near him.

Thankgod they said it's actually an option.

P.S. O. Sagat for those who don't know is a secret character, is the version of Sagat that was on the previous game, it has a very fast low tiger shot and little recovery from it; thanks to widescreen now it will be a lot harder than it already was. O. Sagat is considered argurably the best character in the game, at least in the US because Japan has it soft-banned.

bm @ Oct 20th 2007 1:15AM

"I agree that 3rd Strike looks great with its 60 frames per second, but that game was designed like that from the very beggining, this game on the other hand is 30 FPS."

Alright, now I know for sure you're just talking out of your ass. You were speaking of not knowing "how 2D games work"? Never mind.

creid @ Oct 19th 2007 3:20PM

So people complain when game videos (screenshots, etc.) are embargoed, AND when initial videos are bad because they were not embargoed? Awesome.

MasterInsan0 @ Oct 19th 2007 5:52PM

No, people complain when they get a video that is worse than Youtube quality for a game they are interested in. It really isn't so hard to record high-quality game footage, so they either just chose not to, or didn't pass this one through the marketing department before releasing it.

Hey Justin, if you actually read the original Capcom blog post

http://blogs.capcomusa.com/blogs/digital.php/2007/10/18/sfhd_in_motion

you would have learned that their video capturing equipment wasn't working, which is why they had to resort to using cellphone video capture.

What would you do in their situation?