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Super Street Fighter IV took a turn for the hilariously bizarre when Capcom finally revealed Hakan this week, the final character for the update to last year's biggest fighting game. We've known about him and his gimmick for a while (since the Tokyo Game Show in September), but now we're finally able to see him. He actually has a rather appealing and endearing character design, though that's noticeable when we're not laughing at his main gimmick. Or his quotes in and out of battle.

And from the videos released this week, all over the internet from playtests from the Game Developer's Conference, it looks like he could be pretty formidable. Hakan uses oil to allow him to slide across the ground to his opponent, which is also an attack that hits low. It's sure to catch people off guard if they don't know the match up, and definitely has the potential to work incredibly well online. I can see this seriously pissing some people off online, which is great if you like hate mail or hearing people raging through the mic.

He also has the most hilarious Ultra combos in the game, definitely outdoing Dan's - who, might I mention, has a second Ultra that's very much a homage to Ryo and Robert's super from the Art of Fighting/King of Fighters games. You can take a look at both of them on the official Japanese website, or look at the American trailer. This game really needed another grappler character aside from the two we have (Zangief and Abel), and you can never get tired of seeing this guy's particular grapple.

(I still think this game could have used Alex, though.)

With Hakan, all ten characters for SSFIV have been revealed, so the only thing now is to wait until April 27th for the game to release. In the meantime, there are plenty of videos going around of match videos from GDC, and there are extensive walkthroughs (and I mean very extensive) for the Street Fighter III characters - Dudley, Makoto, Ibuki - on GameTrailers from US Champion Justin Wong. I think all the new characters should have lengthy walkthroughs like this. I'm sure Capcom is currently preparing a big trailer that will showcase all ten characters, the new stages, and features to entice anyone who still thinks this could have all just downloadable content. And when it's only $10 more than what Street Fighter IV goes for right now (and not full price, like Capcom's older Street Fighter updates), it should be more enticing than a lot of other semi-sequels.

We're going to start with a little something from Canada this week on the Geek News Roundup.  It seems that the Throne Speech delivered this past Wednesday mentioned the possibility of changing a lyric in our national anthem to make it sound less male dominant.  Then, barely two days later, after uproar from both men and women across the country, the proposal was tossed off a bridge wearing concrete shoes.

Anyway, getting back on topic, how would you like to win stuff?  Winning stuff is good, right?  Do you also like independent developers?  Okay, DIY Gamer has started up a forum on their website, and to encourage people to start posting to it, they've come up with the DIY Mega-Ultra-Super-Happy-Fun-Time Forum Contest.  What a mouthful.  All you need to do is create an account and post meaningful posts in their brand new forum.  All I can say from my own personal experience as a forum moderator is, best of luck to them.

A couple follow-ups now.  Last week, I mentioned that the ApocalyPS3 was in progress.  It's been fixed by now, but not without a loss of data on certain machines.  It seems the problem was that the older PS3 models are showing signs of Alzheimer's early: the pre-slim models forgot that we just had a leap year two years ago, and thought that this year was another one.  I understand the rules for leap years are confusing (if the year is a multiple of four, it is, unless it's a multiple of a hundred, in which case it isn't, unless it's a multiple of four hundred, in which case it is), but still: they got it right on the PS2, so why not the PS3?

Also, I've criticized Ubisoft's new DRM scheme in the past.  Well, a fresh batch of criticism has begun, because as predicted (although sooner than expected), their servers went down on Sunday, which meant that absolutely no one could play the PC version of Assassin's Creed II, among other games.  When the servers came back, Ubisoft passed the buck.  Apparently a DDoS attack hit their servers, which if you ask me, just highlights another problem with the DRM scheme.  If someone decides to flood the servers, they'll go down just as easily as if Ubisoft had issues themselves.  At least they've acknowledged this and have issued a patch, despite refusing to commit to any kind of patch a week earlier.

Some more bad news for Ubisoft: a team of crackers have managed to break the DRM after only 24 hours, or so they claim.  Thing is, Ubisoft claims that the cracked version of the game is incomplete.  Then again, if someone's giving away your product for free, you'd say anything to make sure people keep putting money in your pocket instead.

Let's see, what else is there?  Well, Sony's patented something they call "feature erosion", but I call "jabbing people in the eye a few times with a stick after five hours and demanding they buy your game or else they won't stop".  Metaphorically speaking.  The Portal 2 is not a lie.  Another study is showing that violent video games lead to violent youths; I wish they would keep their politics out of so-called scientific studies.


And finally, Activision has been busy peeing in everyone's Frosted Flakes this past week.  First, they told Phoenix Online Studios that they're not allowed to do anything with a project they'd been working on for eight years, despite having already gotten permission from Vivendi to pursue said project.  Guess who bought Vivendi between then and now?

Then, barely a couple days later, they began a coup the likes of which we'd expect to see in Russian or French royalty.  They sent in their hired goons to keep the peace while they ousted two of the lead developers of Infinity Ward, who are known mostly for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 1 & 2.  It's claimed that Jason West and Vince Zampella have been very bad boys.  West and Zampella fired back with a lawsuit and it began to look like Activision staged the coup so that the company could avoid paying them substantial royalties.  Just how much does a new yacht go for these days?

Activision fired back with a statement of their own, no doubt carefully prepared to make West and Zampella sound like the bad guys in this affair.  Right now, I don't think enough is known about this situation to judge which side is truly in the wrong.  It's probably a knee-jerk reaction to say that Activision are a bunch of greedy fuckers who should crawl under a rock and die, but given their history, it could be the right thing to say, too.

At any rate, until more is known, here's the legal documents that were filed in court.

Though their better days are unfortunately behind them at the moment, SNK is still making ways to stay relevant in a time where 3D has overtaken 2D. But in reality, the problem is how they're trying to stay relevant, and the fact that they're not doing the best job they could. During this time, we've realized that the company's fans are actually pretty tolerant of their mistakes, and have decided to stick with them despite their constant tripping over their own shoe laces.

It seems that Ignition Entertainment is no longer publishing SNK's material. Their most recent games, Metal Slug XX for PSP and Samurai Shodown Sen for Xbox 360, are being handled by Atlus and XSEED, respectively. The former is now available in Japan and America, and though the latter is available in Japan, it will make its way to America and Europe this spring. It seems all the problems with last year's King of Fighters XII netcode debacle really took their toll on Ignition, leaving them uninterested in dealing with SNK any longer.

Metal Slug XX (pronounced "Double X") is a remix of Metal Slug 7, which was released for DS back in 2008. I haven't been following Samurai Shodown Sen (previously known as Samurai Shodown: Edge of Destiny) that closely, but it's a 3D fighter with most of the characters from multiple entries in the series. Oh, and people who've played the game in Japanese arcades warn to stay away from the game at all costs. Sounds like a good time!

Metal Slug XX is also supposed to be making its way to Xbox Live Arcade one of these days as well, along with King of Fighters 2002: Unlimited Match and Neo Geo Battle Coliseum. The last of those is much more than your usual port.

NGBC will have graphics remastered in HD along with some new stages when it hits XBLA sometime in the spring. Though it's not the best fighting game around (despite its plethora of fanservice), the result looks pretty nice so far. Hopefully the online will be competent, which can't be said for their other games.

SNK has also recently announced that King of Fighters XIII will be unveiled in Japan on March 25th. KoFXII had quite a few problems, like the aforementioned bad online, a lack of stages, characters (like, you know, Mai Shiranui), and techniques for specific characters (Terry lacking the Power Dunk, etc.). Those are all problems I hope are remedied with XIII.


While this hasn't been official announced, the ESRB has rated a bunch of Neo Geo Classics for Playstation Network. You can see the list of all the games at Siliconera. Also noteworthy is that they've been rated for both Playstation 3 and PSP, meaning they'll probably be distributed like PSOne Classics. We still haven't heard anything more about the Tubrografx-16 titles that were supposed to be on their way to America; though knowing SCEA, we'll probably have them by the end of 2012.

All of the games that have been rated thus far were also on the SNK Arcade Classics Vol.1 compilation disc that SNK released back in 2008 on Wii, PS2, and PSP. Unfortunately, the emulation there left much to be desired, especially in the slowdown-plagued PSP version. Hopefully the emulation here will be up to par with the Virtual Console editions. It better be, given how the Neo Geo Classics editions will inevitably be more expensive.

Some of the mistakes SNK has been making this generation are mistakes I'd seriously expect newcomers to make, not decade old veterans. You could excuse them for not being the same SNK that existed for years, but this current team has been around for about eight years. And putting together a good netcode for an online fighter is something the fan community do, so I hope SNK really starts to listen and realize that its fans aren't satisfied with the quality of their current output.

Details are finally beginning to trickle out about Vanquish, a new third-person shooter from Platinum Games, and the fourth and final game within Platinum Games and Sega's publishing contract. It was originally unveiled on Gametrailers TV about a month back in the now-infamous CG teaser form, complete with ominous hints as to precisely what kind of game it actually was, and what factions it involved. That teaser showed a presidential figure that a lot of gamers said resembled Hilary Clinton (which I wouldn't be surprised was intentional), and displayed a soldier fending off a mysterious alien force. Or are they aliens?

Oh, and it didn't tell anyone what console(s) the game was heading for. Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 were the obvious initial guesses, but some also suggested that it could be a Wii title; or even a PSP title. CG teasers can be made for anything - though that teaser was much to elaborate for a DS title -- so all of the guesses were logical.

But that element of surprise is gone, as this week's Famitsu magazine - and now Platinum Games' website - revealed that the game is headed for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 and due for release in winter 2010. It's no surprise to anyone to see those are the systems it's headed for, given how many shooters there are on the system; not to mention how well they sell on those systems. But what's surprising me concerning the formal announcement are comments from gamers who think it will inevitably be generic.

Those are pretty disappointing expectations from people I thought would know better. The developer's pedigree thus far has been anything but generic. Platinum Games contains a lot of the staff that previously worked for Capcom's now-defunct Clover Studios, which gave us great games like Viewtiful Joe, Okami, and God Hand. I don't think a company that has, thus far, made games like MadWorld, Infinite Space, and Bayonetta will make something that's like every other third-person cover-based shooter out there nowadays.

There's also the fact that Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami is at the helm. He was also involved with the aforementioned God Hand, and given his pedigree he's bound to have some interesting ideas to make this stand out from the rest of the pack. On the other side of the spectrum in terms of initial perception, there are quite a few gamers who wouldn't be surprised to see this being a spiritual sequel to Mikami's cult classic: P.N.03.

And it very well could be, given some of the admittedly scant details being dropped. Apparently Mikami wants this game to have some sort or rhythm-based shooting system. And to hint at some potential zaniness, apparently the main character, Sam, has a low visor because he wants to smoke while he battles. The game itself is also much more fast-paced than your average shooter, according to some of the press that saw the demo event in Japan.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, Playstation 3 is the lead console this time around. This should avert another porting disaster like Bayonetta.

I think Vanquish will be a good game to watch, like all of Platinum Games' titles thus far. And maybe this one will actually sell pretty well! Let's just hope Sega doesn't send this one out at a bad time like Infinite Space will inevitably be when it releases later this Month. Keep your eye on this one.

Okay.  Some patents can take years to clear, right?  Well, according to the unimaginatively named Patent Compliance Group Inc., Activision has been falsely using the term "Patent pending" lately.  Also, apparently, some applications of their patents have been misleading.  The penalties for this kind of behaviour are small to start with, but given how many copies of the games in question Activision has sold, it could easily add up.  There are those who think that this kind of lawsuit is somewhat bogus, although certain points may hold merit.  In the end, this is the kind of story you won't hear about ever again, unless PCG actually wins.

Bringing games from one continent to another has always been a sketchy deal.  A company has to decide whether a game will actually sell or not.  Inexplicably, Mother 3 (and indeed, two thirds of the Mother series) doesn't seem to meet Nintendo's criteria.  Then, it has to take into account whether the content is appropriate for the audience or not.  Most dating sims and eroge like RapeLay and the Maple Colors series obviously won't make the cut (oddly enough, games with rather weird titles like Let's Meow Meow! did make the cut, see the screen shot above).  Some companies are even running into the problem where Australia is refusing to classify certain games, which makes selling them in that country illegal.  And now, Australia is looking to block people from even knowing about those games, but such a measure probably wouldn't work, according to Kotaku.  Myself, I don't think Australia needs to have the same reputation as China when it comes to Internet censorship.

The PlayStation Network experienced some problems just now, which were apparently isolated amongst pre-slim models of the PS3.  This, plus the constant bricking of pre-slim models by their new firmware versions, might point towards a larger problem Sony is having in keeping their pre-slim PS3 models working.  My inner conspiracy nut wonders if Sony is deliberately trying to get rid of all the pre-slim models, especially the backwards compatible ones, for some darker purpose.  Maybe they want to keep selling the PS2, or maybe they plan on introducing a new PS3 model with a different version of backwards compatibility inside.  Somehow it's easier to believe that the company is just bumbling their way through another year, having grown heads so big that they bob around like bobblehead dolls.

Apparently, the Wii can help stroke survivors recover faster.  With the discovery of so many good things that the Wii can do, it's a wonder anyone is still trying to bring down the gaming industry.  Good luck getting a Wii, though.  Christmas sales of the Wii has oscillated the console back into the territory of very limited supply and high demand.

And finally, the PlayStation 2 is currently outselling the PSP Go in Japan.  Yes, I said "2", not "3", although the 3 is outselling the PSP Go as well.  What a failure the PSP Go was.

Blazblue: Calamity Trigger happened to be a case of a fighter releasing at precisely the right time when it came out at the beginning of last summer. Street Fighter IV had successfully brought people back to -- and, in a few cases, made new fans of -- the fighting game genre, making a market for fighting games again. But SFIV couldn't be the sole fighting game people wanted to play online exclusively for long; there comes a time where we need a little variety to balance things out, and Blazblue, releasing a tad over four months after SFIV, was just that game.

You could also say that SNK's major screw up could have been in developer Arc System Works and publisher Aksys Games' favor. SNK actually released three fighters in the early summer period; but it turns out they didn't realize that gamers actually need and like functional online in their fighting games. I hope they realize it now since they're still in the game, but who knows.

Blazblue was born of Arc's unfortunate inability to acquire the Guilty Gear franchise from Sega, who subsumed it when they purchased Arc's former publishing arm, Sammy Corporation. Upon losing their flagship series, Arc sought to make a new one that captured the spirit of that, and they succeeded. Well, mostly. Blazblue still hasn't hit its stride like Guilty Gear has, but it's steadily working its way towards that.

Blazblue's console release was very good. With a limited edition that cost no more than the average standard edition (with actually useful and practical contents), an appealing anime aesthetic and design (depending on your preferences, of course), and the best online play in a console fighter, people welcomed the game with open arms. The only aspect that held it back was its imbalance, with three characters dominating over the rest of the cast. But that didn't stop it from being a very enjoyable game.

And for anyone who wants to enjoy the experience portable, Blazblue: Calamity Trigger Portable just released for PSP in Japan this past week, with an American release coming on March 9th. The screen shots make it look pretty bad, worse than Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus on PSP in fact! But it apparently doesn't look as bad in motion. The resolution is seriously downgraded from its native 720p resolution, but the results should be fine on a small screen.

Also: would you believe that the first game still isn't out in Europe yet? It's due for a release there on March 19th. To its credit, the European release is receiving a rather spiffy limited edition, but it's a little tough to make up for it being eight-and-a-half months late. It especially hurts when the next installment is already out in arcades in Japan.

And said sequel, Blazblue: Continuum Shift, is due for a home console release on Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 in Japan on July 1st. It hasn't been announced for an American release yet, but hopefully Aksys can get the game out in America at around the same time like Calamity Trigger. There's been some dispute around certain parts of the 'net about this game being more of a shameless cash-in than Super Street Fighter IV, since CS features three new characters (one of which is exclusive to the home version) instead of SSFIV's ten. And that's silly, since Arc System Works is nowhere near as big of a company as Capcom. I also mentioned before that Arc is no stranger to sequels (or "updates," whatever), but funnily enough, CS is more significant than any of their usual upgrades.

While Blazblue is destined to stay, it would be nice if Arc could re-acquire the Guilty Gear series in order to make a new game in HD. Oh, and I guess a Guilty Gear and Blazblue crossover would be pretty nice.

For as great of a game as it was, and as saddening as it was, it probably wasn't a surprise for fighting game fans to see that Virtua Fighter 5 didn't take of as well as Sega intended when it released on Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 back in 2007. The PS3 version, though, sold around 500,000 copies worldwide, and it might have been enough for the game to make its budget back. Those sales were pretty OK for a game released on a console in its infancy, and for a fighting game with no online play. What probably hurt Sega more is the enhanced version of the game they made Xbox 360, which bombed pretty hard despite having more and enhanced gameplay modes and online. But there's a good excuse: the 360 was hardly known as a fighting game console back then (can you believe how far it's come in two years?), so fighting game fans hadn't gravitated towards the console just yet.

Oh, and releasing it in October, right when everyone else is releasing their big games, wasn't a good idea either. But hey, this is the same company that released Valkyria Chronicles in the middle of November, and is releasing Yakuza 3 and Resonance of Fate, two of their most important upcoming games, within one of the biggest months for gaming this year. Who knows when Sega will actually learn that this is not a good idea.

But the Virtua Fighter franchise has since lived on in Japan with Virtua Fighter 5: R, which according to fans is a healthy upgrade to the original. Whatever problems VF5 vanilla had are remedied; it has quite a bit of rebalancing, a few more stages, better music, and a couple of characters (returning sumo Taka-Arashi from VF3 and new character Jean  -- pictured to the left and right of the pic above). Upon hearing this, and realizing that the fighting game market is far better now than it was then, fans clamored for a console release for it. But it was not to be, with Sega still reeling from the commercial failure that was the last game.

But there may be still hope that a new edition of VF5 can hit home consoles. At the AOU (Arcade Operators Union) expo last weekend, Sega announced Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown. As the name implies, this will be the final upgrade to VF5. Details of what it will have specifically are unknown, but you can bet that it will be a hell of a send-off for a game that's lasted so long and has been so popular in Japanese arcades.

But hey, wouldn't it be great if was ported to consoles too? Absolutely. But it's incredibly uncertain given Sega's prior precedent as far as VF5, though its existence could be the reason why Sega hasn't ported R to consoles. The fighting game market has almost worked its way back to being completely lucrative thanks to the likes of games like Street Fighter IV and Blazblue: Calamity Trigger -- and I'd be saying Tekken 6 here too if Namco Bandai hadn't fudged up the netcode initially. But who knows if Sega themselves realizes this.

Personally, I'd be pretty saddened if Final Showdown never released on consoles. Virtua Fighter has always been my favorite 3D fighting game. There's something inherently appealing (or masochistic) about a game that requires a lot of dedication to learn, since that means it dissuades scrub-friendly behavior and has a gameplay system that makes sure button-mashing isn't the key to victory. Many other fans feel the same way, though they show their affection for it much more vocally than I. So let's hope Sega pulls a Yakuza 3 here, however minimal its chances are.

(And by that I mean localizing it and not removing content.)

Not even a week after I made a post about a trio of Dragon Quest games MIA outside of Japan, Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies gets announced for North America at a press conference from Nintendo earlier today. It kind of makes that post fortuitous, and makes the DQIX part sound completely silly in retrospect. But I'm not upset about that in the least.

Another question was also answered. In said DQIX part, I mentioned how curious it was that Nintendo had been the only company dropping the game's name in multiple interviews, and that Square Enix never mentioned it once. There was a reason for that: Nintendo is publishing the game in America (or "the Americas," as their press release states). Nintendo said they were going to help advertise the game in America since most games in the franchise had flown under the radar, and it looks like they're going to keep that promise.

Dragon Quest VIII may have had a modicum of success when it released in November 2005 here, but the same can't be said for every subsequent release. Not to say their sales were bad per se, but they could have, and should have been better. (Though you could make an argument about Dragon Quest V's sales being bad.) DQIX stands a good chance at being a game that can really make this franchise popular outside of Japan if Nintendo is capable of putting the entirety of their marketing prowess behind it.

Other good things about Nintendo publishing it are that they will definitely give it bigger distribution than Square Enix can, which means you might be able to find it easily after six months, unlike DQV for DS. Also unlike Square Enix, Nintendo won't price the game at an utterly moronic $40. They're also planning to release it this summer, so it should go without too much competition. I'm wishing it all the best, and I'm sure the other contributors here are as well.

Which just leaves the other games, now. I wouldn't expect to hear anything about Joker 2 for a while, but I wonder where and how Dragon Quest VI will fit into all of this.

P.S. By the way, this isn't the first time Nintendo has published a game in this franchise. They also published the original Dragon Quest on NES here under the name Dragon Warrior. But I think this one will sell good enough that they won't have to sell the remaining copies to Nintendo Power subscribers.

Canada's loss against the United States in men's ice hockey at the Olympics this Sunday meant nothing to me.  But the uproar over the Internet sent me into hiding for two days, and I've only just emerged to talk about some geeky news, then go back to video games.

It doesn't help that there's an idiot down in Australia who claims that gamers are more dangerous than biker gangs.  He must've been watching too much CSI: Miami.  Oh no, he received a piece of paper in the middle of the night!  He's gonna die!

Speaking of idiots in the gaming industry, Ubisoft has pushed ahead with its rather horrible idea for DRM which I mentioned in a past roundup.  The PC versions of Assassin's Creed II and Settlers VII are going to be absolutely horrible to play if your Internet connection is spotty.  Does Ubisoft care?  Probably not.  They gave an interview and not only did they say that they're going ahead with their DRM, but they also refused to promise that they'd patch out the DRM if they one day randomly decide to take down their servers.

Sony's taking another shot at the pre-owned games market.  They announced that the new SOCOM game on the PSP will require you to register it before you can play multiplayer, and apparently this will only work one time, since anyone buying a pre-owned copy of the game will have to pay Sony a $20 fee to obtain a new registry code.

Apparently the Swiss stay awake at night crying over how their children are killing little collections of pixels in bloody ways, for they're considering banning violent games outright.  I really hope that Switzerland doesn't become another Australia, and right now I'm glad I live in a country where I'm allowed to push buttons that cause my television screen to show oozing patches of red every so often.

And last but not least, the International Olympic Committee is bullying bloggers again.  You know, if the Olympics weren't such a waste of money to host, I'd actually enjoy hearing about this stuff.  (Oh no, I said something bad about the Olympics!  I'm going to be fired from my job!)

...was the most important day of the month for many Street Fighter fans. But for me, it was Tuesday. But it was a pretty exciting day.

But man, dedicated Street Fighter fans are something else. Endless lists about characters they want for the next installment, balance changes they feel need to be made, and other usually minimal criticisms that they feel are important. Not to say some of those aren't important (usually when it comes from someone sane), but there's a lot of crap you have to wade through to get to the sensible, genuinely concerning material.

But last week, dedicated fans of the franchise got something they really wanted; something...some characters, rather, that they wished were a part of the original Street Fighter IV. Within the pages of Famitsu last week, Dudley, Makoto, and Ibuki from fan-favorite Street Fighter III: Third Strike were revealed to be a part of Super Street Fighter IV, which releases on April 27th in North America. And as you could expect, they all look great within a 3D space; more than some of the existing characters.

(Yeah, they were pretty much already known because of the leaked "rumor" list from late September, but actually seeing them is pretty special for a lot of people.)

Before they became well liked characters within Street Fighter canon, SFIII's characters actually received a lot of bile directed towards them. That's mainly because the game did away with all of the fan favorite characters everyone had become attached to after quite a while. It was a pretty gutsy move on Capcom's part, and the game lost them quite a bit of money since it required an incredible amount of 2D artwork from hard working, dedicated artists to animate so fluidly. But it wasn't long until fans grew to like the new characters, and despite the general audience finding the game a little too difficult to learn, the game still demands a cult following.

But fans wanted that representation within SFIV as well, since it's the game that's drawn both general and dedicated fans. And by adding these particular new characters to SSFIV, producer Yoshinori Ono has proven that he really does listen to fans. So the main concern now will be whether the developers can keep the game balanced with so many characters, a cast whose final number will apparently be 35. Vanilla SF4 is a pretty well balanced game, moreso than many other Street Fighter games before it, and it would be great if they could maintain that. The 3rd Strike characters look pretty solid, judging from the multiple videos. Especially Dudley, who looks pretty beastly.

It's also funny to see the opinions of these characters from people who never got into any of the SFIII titles. Some think Ibuki looks like some Naruto rip-off  (despite the character existing a little before the Naruto manga came around) and think Makoto looks a bit too masculine. The latter of which is rather understandable, as upon her unveiling for 3rd Strike, many fans weren't precisely sure of her gender. Now with the obvious cleavage there's no way you can't know -- her chest was only slightly visible in her dizzy stance before.

At this point, there's not much longer to wait for its release, so hopefully you've started saving for a SSFIV Tournament Edition Fightstick S. Or if you're already set, you can just sit and wait until Hakan is eventually revealed.

(I still would have liked Alex and Karin, though.)