East v. West; this battle’s about to explode.

Street Fighter IV may seem dead online, but offline, the game remains popular as ever.

This evening, Gootecks is hosting the latest Bar Fights event featuring Empire Arcadia against some of Southern California’s top talent. Look forward to seeing Justin Wong, Arturo “Sabin” Sanchez, L.I. Joe Marn Phan and Sanford Kelly go head-to-head against Alex Valle, Ed Ma, Combofiend, and  some unannounced participants.

It’s all going down very soon (22 minutes at the time of this article being published). Get hype! Thanks to Triforce for the heads up.

Free TV : Ustream

Twice the awesome for a retail title at 1/60th the price.

An excellent twin-stick shooter came out a few years back, a little before you couldn’t throw a rock without hitting five games that wish they were half as great as Geometry Wars.  Bullet Candy was a ton of fun, filled with lovely explosions and perfectly tuned fast-paced shooting.  Now, in anticipation of Bullet Candy 2 coming out soon-ish, the original has received an update with the new graphics engine, and is available at a bargain price, too.

The $1 price tag is actually a bit misleading, because that’s just the minimum you can pay.  The price is actually what you feel the game is worth, with $1 being the minimum.  I own the original and wouldn’t mind giving it a replay with a graphic tune-up, so I paid $5.   It’s only fair.

There’s a free demo and full game download here.

Ono spills more details. Whoo hoo!

We couldn’t think of a better way for this month to kick off than to hear more about Super SFIV. Today, IGN published a huge blowout that unravels some major areas we’ve been wondering about since Capcom officially confirmed the game’s existance.

Get the full 411 by clicking here. Get hype, spring can’t come soon enough!!!

T. Hawk and new femme fatale look hawt. Update: Dee Jay confirmed!!

We all knew all knew this day would come. Following in the foosteps of Street Fighter tradition, Capcom is hard at work on an updated version to Street Fighter IV. The title is now officially being marketed as “Super Street Fighter IV”, once reported throughout the grapevine and Capcom’s own Japanese blog as “Street Fighter IV Dash”. Eventhubs.com dropped hints that the SSFIV will feature several characters from the Alpha, SFIII and Super SFII Turbo releases.

Up till now, we’ve all been going on hearsay — some of which was hinted by “reliable sources” within the fighting game community. Several posts originally popped up on Shoryuken.com, only to disappear within hours of the threads going live. Then, over the weekend, a photograph similar to this materialized on the web featuring the ever-pleasant Ono and a Gamepro Germany editor peforming their best impression of Ryu and Ken in Hadoken stance… and quite possibly posing at just the right angle to conceal the next SF production. Oh, but perhaps it wasn’t an accident. “I can see T. Hawk in that picture with uh… some chick.” “Oh, and there’s a BIG S in a poster by them.” “WOW!!!!” This is pretty much how the discussions took place over at SRK and other online message boards.

Well, in case you haven’t heard by now, yes, T. Hawk is back, which suggests that Dee Jay has to be making an appearance as well (it’s only logical since Fei Long and Cammy are already accounted for). Other unconfirmed reports, based on info released by Eventhubs makes mention that Makoto, Ibuki, Cody, Guy, Dudley, Karin, along with two brand-new characters (one of the them is said to be called “Juri”) will join the cast. Additional gameplay details (again, unconfirmed) have also been published on the site. Check them out for more details.

For now, bask in the glory that is the mighty T. Hawk. There’s also two images of “Juri” who we don’t have any concrete information just yet other that she’s working for Seth (hooray for bad girls). I can’t wait till Capcom breaks the lid on this WIDE open… the suspense is killing me.

Update: We just finished breezing through SRK and someone was able to find scans featuring Dee Jay (told ya he was in the game). See the link below!

Shot #1

Shot #2

Shot #3

Shot #4

Shot #5 (New)

With bonus Space Giraffe offer, too!
It’s been a long time in development but Gridrunner Revolution has finally been made available for download.  The high-speed, pleasantly mad shooter has a legacy spanning 27 years and counting, and time has treated its evolution very well.  The graphics are much nicer, and the gameplay better developed, but the classic arcade action is as intense as it’s ever been.

The basic premise is pretty simple- move with the mouse, the ship auto-fires, and when sheep power-ups are collected the ship adds more guns.  There are gravity wells around the single-screen playfield, and creating loops of bullets around them increases the score for everything.  The Revolution of the title comes from being able to rotate the ship a full 360 degrees, meaning not only can the entire screen be covered in firepower but you can more precisely position yourself for prettier bullet arcs, which directly increase the scoring potential.  Playing for the sake of blasting everything in sight is fun, and making complex bullet patterns is pretty.  It’s eye-candy mayhem at its finest.

Sweetening the deal is an early-bird buyer promotion.  Gridrunner Revolution is $20 by itself, or $25 with the excellent Space Giraffe.  Either way it’s an excellent application of the gaming budget.