Street Fighter 4, released first on the arcades in 2008, was seen by many as the revival of 2d fighting games and right fully so. Spearheaded by Yoshinori Ono, Street Fighter 4 will go to become a massive success for capcom and get a great reception from fans of sf and the 2d fighting games genre. It can also be seen as a catalyst for fighting games on esports. But before we had SF, and ssf and usf after it, we almost had another street fighter4. One that is vastly different that what we ended having.
The year is 2006, it has been 7 years since the last Street fighter release, which was street fighter 3 3rd strike. Fans around the world were crying for a new sequel. The franchise saw interest in it spike for many reason one of them were the excellent ongoing Street Fighter comics by Udon comics. So one particular company, which worked with Capcom previously decided to make a move a propose a new sequel to the dormant street fighter franchise. The company in question is backbone entertainment and the title of the game is Street fighter 4 flashback.
Backbone entertainment is no stranger to video games, they have worked on 1942: Joint Strike, Wolf of the Battlefield and were hard at work on the Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, an HD remaster of the classic title. Led a street fighter superfan, David Sirlin, backbone apprached capcom with bold idea for a new Street Fighter.
The name of the title Flash back was meant as a reference tot two main things withing the game. The fact that story of the game is set inf lashbacks, and second a new gameplay mechanic called, you guessed it, flash back.
Let’s start with story, the game was suuposed to offer two gameplay modes, the classic 1 vs 1 figthing mode, and 3d adventure mode where the player controls ryu as he travels the world during the time of SF2. The story begins with an older ryu who now has an apprentice, and he remembers how the story of SF2 unfolded. Think of the story mode as sort of an MK shaolin monks style or, as thbackboen entertainment pitched it to capcom , a ninja gaiden like experience. The player will meed various NPC and characters form the game lore as they tour the world, and then enter the SF2 tournament to stop Bison with the help of ken, chun li, and Guile. The pitch document shows a number of locales and situations and detailed stages let’s take a look at some of them.
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The 1vs 1 mode introduces the flashback mechanic, which is once activated, the player can rewind time and fix mistakes they did duering the match. Now I have to be honest, I was quite excited about the story mode portion but I have to say the flashback mechanic sounds quite scary, imagining your oponents rewinding time and removing punishes. But I will not judge something I have not player, and in fact no one played. The game never had a playable version and was only a picth document with some graphics.
Speaking of grachics street Fighter 4 flashback was to be developed using Unreal 3 and would release on the ps3 and Xbox 360. As far as characters, the game would bring the original 12 world warriors from sf2 turbo with the addition of Sakura, killer bee who is cammy before well becoming cammy and akuma.
Taking a look at the graphics concepts, it really looked good for a 2006 game. It also shows that they went with the cell shading effect which I always think works great for street fighter.
Capcom would actually turn down the picth for unknown reason, but luckily this was not the end of Sf as yoshinoro Ono would pitch the Street FighterIV we knew only few months later and the rest is history.
Looking back at this project and see where street fighter is now, with street fighter 6 releasing in few months, one cannot help but see some of th similarities between the sf4 flash back story mode and sf 6 world tour. A mode where you tour the world and fight and meet various npc’s for the woprld of street fighter. So at least I am happy caocom is bringing a full adventure mode in the upcoming street fighter as you might probably know I am a huge fan of the game’s lore.
