A Look at Street Fighter IV for the iPhone/iPod Touch

I have been a huge Street Fighter fan since the beginning. Some proof: I rent it on Netflix more often than most just to get my fill of the series. Street Fighter IV for iPhone features eight out of nineteen characters from the console version of Street Fighter IV. Role call! We’ve got Ryu, Ken, Blanka, Guile, Chun-Li, M.Bison, Dhalsim, and Abel present for the party. It is kind of disheartening that only one new character to the series exists in this lineup. Why bother calling it Street Fighter IV when it contains all but one of the characters from Street Fighter II?

The game includes four game modes: Tournament mode, or story mode; Free Sparring mode, which is a quick battle vs. the CPU; Dojo mode, that allows you to acquaint yourself to the controls and your special movies; and Versus mode, which allows a match against a friend via Bluetooth.

Since we’re playing Street Fighter on a touchscreen device, gameplay requires swiping and rubbing your fingers on the screen over the controls themselves. While the interface position is customizable, it isn’t all that impressive or comfortable to play. Instead of having to perform Super and Ultra Combo button inputs, they are achieved by tapping a section of the screen when they become available to the player. This comes as a relief, but where’s the fun in tapping a button for a finishing move? The lack of an internet-based Versus mode is also a nagging factor.

Overall, I would give Street Fighter IV for the iPhone/iPod Touch a 6 out of 10. This game looks, sounds, and performs (as an app) greatly! Capcom really put a lot of effort into this. However, the controls are a huge downside; they can get pretty frustrating. The learning curve here is somewhat huge; performing a simple Hadoken on these controls can be a pain the the M. Bison!

While the game may play great, the controls seem to really stop this title from being an ideal on-the-go game. Are fighting games a bad idea on a mobile touchscreen device? Do you think someone else can do it better than Capcom?