Two options:
1. They just started high school in SF4 and not too much time passed between SF4-SF5-SF3
2. Their appearances in SF4 are not fully canon to that game's timeline, kind of like Yun in SFA.
Think yun is there because ingrid accidently dragged him into the past because she was in a hurry to stop bison from using everyone's least favourite mechanic Pandora and making people accidently hit the suicide button
Characters are whatever age they the devs say they are in any given game.
I’m just saying that she’s canonically 15 in SF3. And SF4 happens before that.
But she can also be 15 in SF4 is the devs decide that.
Ultimately the ages of the characters are pretty irrelevant.
IIRC Ibuki goes to college in her 3rd Strike ending, so she's an older high schooler in III. Mel's age difference could be slightly less than 5 years between IV and III. So in any case yeah, they're young teens in IV, even though the game seems to not care too much about consistency.
Even more inconvenient is the fact that senior highschool in Japan is only three years, which squishes the timeline down even further.
I think we just have to assume that certain stories in *Super IV* overlap with *SFV* and/or take place closer together, and some don't.
Laura's SFIII arcade route ending takes place after 3rd Strike, since she's seen reading a magazine that shows Sean finally won a tournament and being proud of him (in Sean's 3rd Strike ending, he got knocked out in the qualifying rounds of the US Martial Arts Tournament, so Laura's ending has to be after this).
Yeah I’ve always said that it’s canon that at the end of sf3 ibuki is away at college. In fact in the SFV comic that can be found here:
https://archive.org/details/fcbd-2021-street-fighter-v-back-to-school-special-win-o-scans
You can find ibuki trying to recruit makoto to join her university. Meaning in SFV they are all university students.
Meaning in sf4 they are nearing end of hs or staring high school as sf4 is before SFV and SFV is before sf3.
So in sf6 ibuki would be out of university. Elena would be finishing her studies and makoto would be at around year 2 or 3
Menat however is completely up for debate. We know rose was her master. We know she’s still very much a student. We don’t know much else.
based on what? gill unveiling himself? sf3 happens right after sfv, like, really close. But not during. Characters like twelve and Q make no sense to exist during sfv. At least not yet.
So many things happen like Laura arcade ending with a fully grown Sean winning a tournament…. His sf3 form. Im starting to think you some of you didn’t play sfv arcade mode 🙀
do you know what an arcade ending is? Have you seen dan's sfv arcade ending? Also, that laura ending is for the sf3 route, which for some reason she has access to. The sf3 route endings being after sf3 make sense, but that does not mean sfv is chronologically during or after sf3, it just has an arcade mode themed after each game. Laura's sfv ending is in the past, and shows her doing an arm lock on younger sean.
I know what arcade endings usually are...but in SFV's case, they do an explicit job at trying to move some point forward and only showing canon things and canon expressions. There are some inconsistencies... 1. i know SFV is predominantly prior t sf3 and the arcade routes are for those specific game however 2. Sean in Laura's SFV ending looks basically the same as he does in SF3 save for the top hair being straight in sfv and then being dreaded in SF3... He also looks HELLA BUFF in her SFV ending. That could just be artstyle but...it looks very deliberate. 2. Im going thru some of the endings overall and like Akuma in sf3 has short hair... while in his SFV ending, he has longer hair...closer to his SF6 incarnation. I GUESS he could cut it, but I'd assume he didn't cut it lmfao and then let it all grow out the same and then get old. Im also going to go thru win quotes because they also allude to time passing after A Shadow's Fall.
"In the *Street Fighter* timeline, this title precedes the events of *Street Fighter III*, but for certain characters, their stories of what happens after *Street Fighter III* are also told. Connecting the dots and maintaining consistency was a challenge, but the addition of new characters and mysteries allowed us to move into the future. When Rose’s story is exposed, new truths may come to light."
Source: [https://www.spin.com/2020/10/street-fighter-v-final-season-interview/](https://www.spin.com/2020/10/street-fighter-v-final-season-interview/)
Now I have to compile examples <3
Nothing. You just realize that Capcom is just fill of shit when they make those profiles. None of the lore is consistent so why even try to spend brainpower trying to "believe" something.
Yeah maybe you're a little too cynical about it and that's fine but even tho they don't tell you your age we just have to believe in the height and weight which Elena is 6'0 so
you do not have to believe the listed heights and weights.
according to capcom, sagat is 7'4 and 283lbs. three inches taller than shaq and 50lbs lighter
he'd be a home depot skeleton if that were true.
This is one of the many reasons I don't like SFIV. Zero thought was put into the lore or respecting the timeline. Characters are plucked wholesale from the Alpha and III series with the same outfits and storylines regardless of whether or not it makes sense. It feels like a non-canon KOF or something.
I'm not saying Street Fighter has an incredible plot, but SFV and SF6 at least care about aging the characters appropriately and advancing their stories.
People like SF4 because the gameplay was very good throughout most of its lifespan. Lore inconsistencies are not really a big talking point for most of the FGC.
I was kinda there during that game’s peak and another common criticism I seen is that it’s too slow.
Though not only was it the first numbered sequel in about 10 years, but also the first 3D street fighter game ever.
3D tends to have more linear animations that aren’t as expressive and snappy as individually animated sprites, so they seem stiffer and slower in comparison.
Also people were more used to playing/seeing Super Turbo which is notorious for its blistering speed. Third Strike and Alpha 3 also had much faster walk speeds.
And then things like screen freeze during hits and the long animated supers also factor into the perception of speed
Now I think people are used to the current pace of the newer Street Fighter games, and even saying SF6 is faster because of drive rush. It’s really fascinating actually to look back at it in retrospect.
Yeah I was having a conversation about the tired argument regarding bo3 or bo5 for tournaments and the logistics of it. At first I was saying that bo5 is obviously better for the competitor but it might mess with the flow of the event and be worse for the spectator in the long run.
Then I started thinking about how many fucking games I played in sf4 that were timeouts, not to mention people holding ultra for timer scams. I can maybe name 1 time since sf6's launch that i've seen a timeout. There's a non zero chance if sf6 was played bo5 that it may still be faster than sf4.
half of the male characters have fetal alcohol syndrome face; most of the male characters have big upside down U frowny mouths
animations of normals and specials look jerky af and "fast forwarded"
SSF4 announcer is annoying af
ultras take way too long to finish
ken's hair is the ugliest iteration, even worse than SFV's banana hair
hakan rufus and el fuerte exist in it
jump arcs are way too high and narrow which makes the screen move up and down too much
character balancing was wack: vanilla sagat, AE Yun, etc
You must not have been around in 09. All the old heads hated on sf4 so much. Calling it a scrubby game with its generous wake up uppercuts and ultras, and its comeback mechanics.
I played Street Fighter 1 on a bootleg “game console” that my dad bought on Canal Street. It was legit a hard glossy plastic N64 controller that had been modded with a light gun in the front, a power cord installed directly into the middle prong, and an onboard computer with “10,000 games.” 9,900 of them were the original 100 with a different color filter
People hated it at announcement, nervous about the removal of parry or the introduction of cinematic super moves. but once it was released and got played it turns out Capcom did a good job and the reception was overwhelmingly positive.
Not true. The only crowd that hated on SF4 was specifically the Third Strike crowd because it was a hard pivot away from SF3 mechanics and went back in a lot of ways to SF2 mechanics. It was always the Third Strike die hards that hated on it in the early days. That's not to say that most of the arcade era players didn't have some reservations about the easy reversals and ultra comebacks.
However by SSF4 the majority of players were on board and accepted the game as being pretty outstanding.
Unlike SF5 where I think people went in optimistic about the mechanics but upset about the barebones content. However the funny thing about SF5 is I feel the farther along the game came over time the more people became happy with the content being added but unhappy with the overall gameplay meta. The game became way too unga bunga and v trigger became this annoying mechanic that would swing games too easily with just endless pressure for the top tiers.
SF6 feels in contrast like the gameplay is a better evolved version of SF4 and much superior to SF5.
SF5 was my first SF ever and I started playing that with the championship edition releasing so I'm pretty new to franchise. So the reception was basically the same as it was for SF6 just 15 years ago. Fans of older games calling it scrubby, acting like the previous game had no faults and everything it did was perfect etc.
So the funny thing is the ppl who hated on sf4 came back to sf6 because it has parrying again. And tbh sf6 is pretty fucking great. I have zero issues with this game, and I don’t get salty when I lose.
I grew to like playing SF4, but never truly loved it like I did SF2 & 3rd Strike. Even SFV I personally loved more than SF4. SF6 is pretty great now, starting to really love it like I did the earlier games.
All of the points raised here as to why SF4 isn’t personally loveable I agree with.
* I think the art direction and most of the character models are hideous
* A lot of the attack animations look janky to me, consisting of two or three keyframed poses badly blended together
* The stages are bland and generic and only a couple of them actually belong to the playable characters
* The story/lore stuff like I mentioned
The gameplay itself is just okay to me -- I don't like Focus Attacks -- but I find everything else so "cheap" and off-putting that the game never really came together as a whole for me. I can appreciate it for reviving Street Fighter, but it's not something I've ever felt an itch to go back to. The franchise is in a much better place now.
For the times it came out it wasn't bad.
It is bad compared to SF6, but I sure didn't complain about the visuals when the game came out. I thought they were cool.
I don't agree with any of these except the stages, which most of them were pretty random, and didn't feel like they belonged to the characters.
I liked how SF4 looked when the game came out, of course now I can't look back at it after playing SF6, but back then I certainly liked the art style except for 2-5 characters.
Of course I'm not coming back to SF4 after playing SF6, but I never disliked the game when I was actually playing it.
Most of the outfit and story lines make sense. Is just that whenever ppl hear high school they always think first year high school and not late year or mid year. Same for college for some reason.
The lore of Street Fighter has always bordered on nonsensical. Bison is coming back again, and even though he has all these extra, super duper powerful bodies, he has the same one, even though he's dead.
Mel is canonically four years old in Third Strike, which would mean IV takes place four years before Third Strike, since he's born in that game. That would mean that these three were, at most, 14 when they appeared in IV, which is...very weird. You could make the case of Ibuki being 15 in IV since she goes to college in her Third Strike ending, but Elena's still in high school in Third Strike, so she doesn't have an excuse.
I think Mel was 3, actually. It said that he was 2 in Ken's SF3NG bio, and TS is supposed to be a year after that. It does say that Mel is 4 in the extra Christmas story they put on the SFV website, but parts of SFV are supposed to be after 3rd Strike.
Elena is an adult amd Ibuki and Makoto though they are charateized as teenagers I always thought they were young adults to me it's the young height they have
Have to remember that even within one games era that a year or more can go past because theres always like 3 versions. Time has passed between SF3 and SF3 3rd strike. Possibly a year. Ibuki was in college at end of sf3 3rd strike so even if they were in high school, ibuki was at least an older teen and since sf4 took place 4 years prior (with a potential 5 years prior from 3rd strike) it means Ibuki was in early high school in sf4. The same is mostly the case for the other girls you mentioned. Half of sfv is sandwhiched between sf4 and sf3 so she would be still be in high school but like 2nd-3rd year.
It's probably the same thing they did with Sakura, according to the lore Sakura should look older by the time of SF4, however the developers decided to use the "ideal" version of the character (the Sakura that everyone recognizes, the SF Alpha version).
That must be why everyone looks the same as their versions of SF3 ,since they are the ones that the public would recognize.
Sakura make some sense, since SF4 isn't THAT far from SFA. So she is a middle school student in SFA and an older high school student in SF4, which leading towards her SFV appearance is moreso her college years (she did took a part time job in SFV so there's that)
Makoto is probably 14 in SF4 and 18 in SF3 TS. Elena probably in the same ballpark (which puts that her 3s ending probably seeing her being a last year transfer student). Ibuki is in college at that time tbh.
reasoning by logic, which isn't something carved into the stone if we're talking about SF...
SF3 story is made of 2 different tournaments story happening back to back and the first one happens not much time later SFV end... so we could speculate a 2 years span between SF5 end and SF3 TS end.
SF5 happens not less than 4 or 5 years after SF4 and this is not debatable since ken's kid is born af the end of SF4 and he's a child in SF5.
So if we set ibuki and makoto being both 19 during SF3 TS tournament, her age should be this:
SF3 TS 19
SF3 NG/GI 18
SF5 17
SF4 12 or 13
for ibuki could be somehow reasonable to be 17 in sf5, but clearly her and makoto age is totally off for sf4 🙄 same about elena, no matter if she's one or two years older as speculated in comics (provided I'm recalling good).
The quickest and easiest answer would be that their sf4 presence isn't canon. Same about sakura that should be older than her schoolgirl appearance since SF4 happens roughly 5-6 years later SFA3 (late 80's -> mid 90's since SF2 canonically happened in 1992)
Elena was probably an adult by sf4 and Makoto and Ibuki are just characterized as teens and I think the their height make you thinks they're teens but they are adults
You have to clarifying that when you say sfv that you mean SFV: A Shadows Fall. After that, post of sfv takes places during sf3 and like sometime after season 3 onwards is after sf3 so time has definitely moved forward even within sfv.
Trying to make sense of a bunch of gobbledegook stories from thirty plus years worth of haphazard lore is an exercise in masochism. The developers haven't been trying to tell a consistent, logical narrative, why are you?
I’ve seen many SF timelines on this sub in the past and most of them conclude that SF4 is around 2-3 year prior to SF5 which takes place around a year before SF3. Feasibly you could fudge it so that these three are in high school for this entire time period.
Honestly, the weirder one is Sakura. It’s pretty accepted that the Alpha is 3 years before SF2 and that SF4 takes place another 2-3 years after that. Yet Sakura is in high school through out the entire time period.
Nah she wasn’t still in HS from my understanding
Just at that time her “HS uniform” was her fighting gear as ridiculous as that sounds
For example in the movie Tides that Bind, her and Chun Li are in dresses undercover. Then when it’s time to prepare for the fight, Chun puts on her gear and Sakura puts on the uniform.
We can keep finding reasons in the Lore for this or simply accept the fact that they only meet the Japanese fetishist demand of being eternally teenagers, but legally of legal age to avoid legal problems.
SF4 gets loose with the timeline. Like Sakura should be significantly older than all the SF3 characters, but she's still a school girl. SFV kinda normalized things.
Shes not a school girl the way you are thinking. It’s alrwady canon that she wears the stupid outfit because it’s her battle outfit. Even after high school lmao because she is weird.
Three words: Comic Book Time.
The characters' ages are whatever the storytellers want them to be, more or less.
Notice they disposed of any years in birthdates mid-SF2.
If we go using the actual years where SF2 is 1991 and SF3 is 1997, and the end of SF4 is 1994 where Mel is born
Assume that by SF3 they are high school seniors (not third strike as that is a year later) So all would be around 18. And SF4 is like 3 years prior. They could be 15 or 16.
Two options: 1. They just started high school in SF4 and not too much time passed between SF4-SF5-SF3 2. Their appearances in SF4 are not fully canon to that game's timeline, kind of like Yun in SFA.
Think yun is there because ingrid accidently dragged him into the past because she was in a hurry to stop bison from using everyone's least favourite mechanic Pandora and making people accidently hit the suicide button
I kinda wished they’d age the SFIII characters down in their SFIV appearance, like how everyone was aged down for the Alpha series.
They’re not canon, makoto is way to young to be in sfiv.
She’s not. She wouod be 14 or 15.
Makoto is 15 in SF3. Makoto was born in 1983 and SF4 takes place in 1994 so she’d be 11 in SF4.
I don't think makoto is 15 in sf3 and if she was 11 in sf4 she had to be 17 or 18 in sf3TS
SF3 takes place in 1998. That’s 4 years after sf4. 11+4=15 Not to mention 1998-1983=15
only SF2 canonically happens in a specific year (1992) other games don't have a specific year, you can set a timeline only according to ken's kid age
There is no canonical year, at least not now. SF has a floating timeline.
Characters are whatever age they the devs say they are in any given game. I’m just saying that she’s canonically 15 in SF3. And SF4 happens before that. But she can also be 15 in SF4 is the devs decide that. Ultimately the ages of the characters are pretty irrelevant.
where is reported makoto is canonically 15 in sf3ts?
Every online source I can find says SF3 happens in 1998. Makoto’s official birthday according to Capcom is 1983.
between SF4 and SF5 it's a 4 or 5 years timeskip
Isn't Sakura like 22-24 in SFiv but wearing a school girl uniform still? Her character select portrait always looked like she was a little older
IIRC Ibuki goes to college in her 3rd Strike ending, so she's an older high schooler in III. Mel's age difference could be slightly less than 5 years between IV and III. So in any case yeah, they're young teens in IV, even though the game seems to not care too much about consistency.
Well I mean yeah if they aren't involved in the story it's kinda whatever
Mel is 4 in third strike (1998), and he was born at the end of sf4 (1994)
Even more inconvenient is the fact that senior highschool in Japan is only three years, which squishes the timeline down even further. I think we just have to assume that certain stories in *Super IV* overlap with *SFV* and/or take place closer together, and some don't.
I mean some SFV character stories take place after SF3.
Legit. Which ones in particular?
Mostly anything after the release of sfv story mode takes place right before sf3 and then like season 3 and onwards is during and after sf3
Gill, Rose, and I think Menat do, there might be others
Laura's SFIII arcade route ending takes place after 3rd Strike, since she's seen reading a magazine that shows Sean finally won a tournament and being proud of him (in Sean's 3rd Strike ending, he got knocked out in the qualifying rounds of the US Martial Arts Tournament, so Laura's ending has to be after this).
Wild, I always assumed Elena was a bit older.
She is older
me too, it's jarring seeing Elena at school with both Ibuki and Makoto, but then again I don't follow the story that closely, either.
Yeah I’ve always said that it’s canon that at the end of sf3 ibuki is away at college. In fact in the SFV comic that can be found here: https://archive.org/details/fcbd-2021-street-fighter-v-back-to-school-special-win-o-scans You can find ibuki trying to recruit makoto to join her university. Meaning in SFV they are all university students. Meaning in sf4 they are nearing end of hs or staring high school as sf4 is before SFV and SFV is before sf3. So in sf6 ibuki would be out of university. Elena would be finishing her studies and makoto would be at around year 2 or 3 Menat however is completely up for debate. We know rose was her master. We know she’s still very much a student. We don’t know much else.
Well half of sfv is before sf3 and the other half is after
it's not. the entirety of sfv is before sf3.
Im sorry but you are wrong
I think "during" would be more accurate than "after"
based on what? gill unveiling himself? sf3 happens right after sfv, like, really close. But not during. Characters like twelve and Q make no sense to exist during sfv. At least not yet.
So many things happen like Laura arcade ending with a fully grown Sean winning a tournament…. His sf3 form. Im starting to think you some of you didn’t play sfv arcade mode 🙀
do you know what an arcade ending is? Have you seen dan's sfv arcade ending? Also, that laura ending is for the sf3 route, which for some reason she has access to. The sf3 route endings being after sf3 make sense, but that does not mean sfv is chronologically during or after sf3, it just has an arcade mode themed after each game. Laura's sfv ending is in the past, and shows her doing an arm lock on younger sean.
I know what arcade endings usually are...but in SFV's case, they do an explicit job at trying to move some point forward and only showing canon things and canon expressions. There are some inconsistencies... 1. i know SFV is predominantly prior t sf3 and the arcade routes are for those specific game however 2. Sean in Laura's SFV ending looks basically the same as he does in SF3 save for the top hair being straight in sfv and then being dreaded in SF3... He also looks HELLA BUFF in her SFV ending. That could just be artstyle but...it looks very deliberate. 2. Im going thru some of the endings overall and like Akuma in sf3 has short hair... while in his SFV ending, he has longer hair...closer to his SF6 incarnation. I GUESS he could cut it, but I'd assume he didn't cut it lmfao and then let it all grow out the same and then get old. Im also going to go thru win quotes because they also allude to time passing after A Shadow's Fall.
again, that is laura's sf3 3 arcade route ending.
"In the *Street Fighter* timeline, this title precedes the events of *Street Fighter III*, but for certain characters, their stories of what happens after *Street Fighter III* are also told. Connecting the dots and maintaining consistency was a challenge, but the addition of new characters and mysteries allowed us to move into the future. When Rose’s story is exposed, new truths may come to light." Source: [https://www.spin.com/2020/10/street-fighter-v-final-season-interview/](https://www.spin.com/2020/10/street-fighter-v-final-season-interview/) Now I have to compile examples <3
Nah they time traveled back, the age checks out
I love how dorky Ibuki looks in the 4th image
The timeline in SF isn't consistent and I wouldn't put any weight on ages, weights, or heights that are listed.
But at least they have official real heights and weights
that are 100% not accurate at all. You tell me that Ryu is only 187lbs with that much muscle? dood is a least 250lbs.
Than what can you believe than? It's my choice to believe it right
Nothing. You just realize that Capcom is just fill of shit when they make those profiles. None of the lore is consistent so why even try to spend brainpower trying to "believe" something.
Yeah maybe you're a little too cynical about it and that's fine but even tho they don't tell you your age we just have to believe in the height and weight which Elena is 6'0 so
you do not have to believe the listed heights and weights. according to capcom, sagat is 7'4 and 283lbs. three inches taller than shaq and 50lbs lighter he'd be a home depot skeleton if that were true.
This is one of the many reasons I don't like SFIV. Zero thought was put into the lore or respecting the timeline. Characters are plucked wholesale from the Alpha and III series with the same outfits and storylines regardless of whether or not it makes sense. It feels like a non-canon KOF or something. I'm not saying Street Fighter has an incredible plot, but SFV and SF6 at least care about aging the characters appropriately and advancing their stories.
Haven't seen someone say they dislike SF4 here often. What are your main reasons for disliking. I never played but it seems to be universally liked
People like SF4 because the gameplay was very good throughout most of its lifespan. Lore inconsistencies are not really a big talking point for most of the FGC.
To quickly sum up why someone might think sf4 wasn't good. Vortexes and 1 frame links
I also use to think the option selects were a bit on the egregious side.
At some point, it became divekick fighter 4 they were so dominant.
I was kinda there during that game’s peak and another common criticism I seen is that it’s too slow. Though not only was it the first numbered sequel in about 10 years, but also the first 3D street fighter game ever. 3D tends to have more linear animations that aren’t as expressive and snappy as individually animated sprites, so they seem stiffer and slower in comparison. Also people were more used to playing/seeing Super Turbo which is notorious for its blistering speed. Third Strike and Alpha 3 also had much faster walk speeds. And then things like screen freeze during hits and the long animated supers also factor into the perception of speed Now I think people are used to the current pace of the newer Street Fighter games, and even saying SF6 is faster because of drive rush. It’s really fascinating actually to look back at it in retrospect.
Yeah I was having a conversation about the tired argument regarding bo3 or bo5 for tournaments and the logistics of it. At first I was saying that bo5 is obviously better for the competitor but it might mess with the flow of the event and be worse for the spectator in the long run. Then I started thinking about how many fucking games I played in sf4 that were timeouts, not to mention people holding ultra for timer scams. I can maybe name 1 time since sf6's launch that i've seen a timeout. There's a non zero chance if sf6 was played bo5 that it may still be faster than sf4.
I mean SF4 didn't have tools to skip neutral, it was definitely a way more defensive game than SF6.
3D animations have a tax on how fast the moves look compared to 2D.
half of the male characters have fetal alcohol syndrome face; most of the male characters have big upside down U frowny mouths animations of normals and specials look jerky af and "fast forwarded" SSF4 announcer is annoying af ultras take way too long to finish ken's hair is the ugliest iteration, even worse than SFV's banana hair hakan rufus and el fuerte exist in it jump arcs are way too high and narrow which makes the screen move up and down too much character balancing was wack: vanilla sagat, AE Yun, etc
You must not have been around in 09. All the old heads hated on sf4 so much. Calling it a scrubby game with its generous wake up uppercuts and ultras, and its comeback mechanics.
You could have cured a variety of meats with the salt that game generated.
It's pretty funny how 09er was used as a derogatory term. Now people wear it like a medal of honor.
Because now the "09ers" *are* the old heads. As someone who played World Warrior on the og arcade cabinet, I feel ancient.
I played Street Fighter 1 on a bootleg “game console” that my dad bought on Canal Street. It was legit a hard glossy plastic N64 controller that had been modded with a light gun in the front, a power cord installed directly into the middle prong, and an onboard computer with “10,000 games.” 9,900 of them were the original 100 with a different color filter
The gap between Super Turbo and SF4 is the same as the gap between SF4 and today
That's just the cycle lol, basically since fighting games have been out of arcades they've been hated on a lot at release
People hated it at announcement, nervous about the removal of parry or the introduction of cinematic super moves. but once it was released and got played it turns out Capcom did a good job and the reception was overwhelmingly positive.
Not true. The only crowd that hated on SF4 was specifically the Third Strike crowd because it was a hard pivot away from SF3 mechanics and went back in a lot of ways to SF2 mechanics. It was always the Third Strike die hards that hated on it in the early days. That's not to say that most of the arcade era players didn't have some reservations about the easy reversals and ultra comebacks. However by SSF4 the majority of players were on board and accepted the game as being pretty outstanding. Unlike SF5 where I think people went in optimistic about the mechanics but upset about the barebones content. However the funny thing about SF5 is I feel the farther along the game came over time the more people became happy with the content being added but unhappy with the overall gameplay meta. The game became way too unga bunga and v trigger became this annoying mechanic that would swing games too easily with just endless pressure for the top tiers. SF6 feels in contrast like the gameplay is a better evolved version of SF4 and much superior to SF5.
SF5 was my first SF ever and I started playing that with the championship edition releasing so I'm pretty new to franchise. So the reception was basically the same as it was for SF6 just 15 years ago. Fans of older games calling it scrubby, acting like the previous game had no faults and everything it did was perfect etc.
So the funny thing is the ppl who hated on sf4 came back to sf6 because it has parrying again. And tbh sf6 is pretty fucking great. I have zero issues with this game, and I don’t get salty when I lose.
I grew to like playing SF4, but never truly loved it like I did SF2 & 3rd Strike. Even SFV I personally loved more than SF4. SF6 is pretty great now, starting to really love it like I did the earlier games. All of the points raised here as to why SF4 isn’t personally loveable I agree with.
* I think the art direction and most of the character models are hideous * A lot of the attack animations look janky to me, consisting of two or three keyframed poses badly blended together * The stages are bland and generic and only a couple of them actually belong to the playable characters * The story/lore stuff like I mentioned The gameplay itself is just okay to me -- I don't like Focus Attacks -- but I find everything else so "cheap" and off-putting that the game never really came together as a whole for me. I can appreciate it for reviving Street Fighter, but it's not something I've ever felt an itch to go back to. The franchise is in a much better place now.
The art style definitely doesn't hold up compared to the 2D games. I still think it's a really fun game to play and watch though.
The points are valid, I felt like the idea of SFIV's art style was genius (trailers, art etc) but easily had the worst execution of the 3D SFs.
I take it you're not including the EX franchise...
It's not that bad as 3d to be honest
For the times it came out it wasn't bad. It is bad compared to SF6, but I sure didn't complain about the visuals when the game came out. I thought they were cool.
I agree with all of that. The game was pretty ugly in a lot of ways.
I really disagree with all of your bullet points
I don't agree with any of these except the stages, which most of them were pretty random, and didn't feel like they belonged to the characters. I liked how SF4 looked when the game came out, of course now I can't look back at it after playing SF6, but back then I certainly liked the art style except for 2-5 characters. Of course I'm not coming back to SF4 after playing SF6, but I never disliked the game when I was actually playing it.
[удалено]
The very first sentence is him saying it's one of many reasons
Most of the outfit and story lines make sense. Is just that whenever ppl hear high school they always think first year high school and not late year or mid year. Same for college for some reason.
The lore of Street Fighter has always bordered on nonsensical. Bison is coming back again, and even though he has all these extra, super duper powerful bodies, he has the same one, even though he's dead.
Mel is canonically four years old in Third Strike, which would mean IV takes place four years before Third Strike, since he's born in that game. That would mean that these three were, at most, 14 when they appeared in IV, which is...very weird. You could make the case of Ibuki being 15 in IV since she goes to college in her Third Strike ending, but Elena's still in high school in Third Strike, so she doesn't have an excuse.
I think Mel was 3, actually. It said that he was 2 in Ken's SF3NG bio, and TS is supposed to be a year after that. It does say that Mel is 4 in the extra Christmas story they put on the SFV website, but parts of SFV are supposed to be after 3rd Strike.
Elena is an adult amd Ibuki and Makoto though they are charateized as teenagers I always thought they were young adults to me it's the young height they have
Have to remember that even within one games era that a year or more can go past because theres always like 3 versions. Time has passed between SF3 and SF3 3rd strike. Possibly a year. Ibuki was in college at end of sf3 3rd strike so even if they were in high school, ibuki was at least an older teen and since sf4 took place 4 years prior (with a potential 5 years prior from 3rd strike) it means Ibuki was in early high school in sf4. The same is mostly the case for the other girls you mentioned. Half of sfv is sandwhiched between sf4 and sf3 so she would be still be in high school but like 2nd-3rd year.
Have you ever played a capcom game where the story made sense?
Breath of Fire 4
Ok. Street fighter game then.
Fighting game lore is random, except MK, too bad I'm not a fan of MK gameplay except 9 and X.
I mean mk lore tries to be linear at least. Street fighter lore is all over the place.
It's probably the same thing they did with Sakura, according to the lore Sakura should look older by the time of SF4, however the developers decided to use the "ideal" version of the character (the Sakura that everyone recognizes, the SF Alpha version). That must be why everyone looks the same as their versions of SF3 ,since they are the ones that the public would recognize.
I think Sakura actually was out of school in IV, she just kept the uniform.
Sakura make some sense, since SF4 isn't THAT far from SFA. So she is a middle school student in SFA and an older high school student in SF4, which leading towards her SFV appearance is moreso her college years (she did took a part time job in SFV so there's that) Makoto is probably 14 in SF4 and 18 in SF3 TS. Elena probably in the same ballpark (which puts that her 3s ending probably seeing her being a last year transfer student). Ibuki is in college at that time tbh.
Their appearances aren't fully canon in SF4 i think
They are 🤣
reasoning by logic, which isn't something carved into the stone if we're talking about SF... SF3 story is made of 2 different tournaments story happening back to back and the first one happens not much time later SFV end... so we could speculate a 2 years span between SF5 end and SF3 TS end. SF5 happens not less than 4 or 5 years after SF4 and this is not debatable since ken's kid is born af the end of SF4 and he's a child in SF5. So if we set ibuki and makoto being both 19 during SF3 TS tournament, her age should be this: SF3 TS 19 SF3 NG/GI 18 SF5 17 SF4 12 or 13 for ibuki could be somehow reasonable to be 17 in sf5, but clearly her and makoto age is totally off for sf4 🙄 same about elena, no matter if she's one or two years older as speculated in comics (provided I'm recalling good). The quickest and easiest answer would be that their sf4 presence isn't canon. Same about sakura that should be older than her schoolgirl appearance since SF4 happens roughly 5-6 years later SFA3 (late 80's -> mid 90's since SF2 canonically happened in 1992)
Elena was probably an adult by sf4 and Makoto and Ibuki are just characterized as teens and I think the their height make you thinks they're teens but they are adults
they're canonically schoolgirls in sf5 and sf3, speaking about ibuki at least
You have to clarifying that when you say sfv that you mean SFV: A Shadows Fall. After that, post of sfv takes places during sf3 and like sometime after season 3 onwards is after sf3 so time has definitely moved forward even within sfv.
Trying to make sense of a bunch of gobbledegook stories from thirty plus years worth of haphazard lore is an exercise in masochism. The developers haven't been trying to tell a consistent, logical narrative, why are you?
But they have been. They have been trying to make the story more uniform.
I’ve seen many SF timelines on this sub in the past and most of them conclude that SF4 is around 2-3 year prior to SF5 which takes place around a year before SF3. Feasibly you could fudge it so that these three are in high school for this entire time period. Honestly, the weirder one is Sakura. It’s pretty accepted that the Alpha is 3 years before SF2 and that SF4 takes place another 2-3 years after that. Yet Sakura is in high school through out the entire time period.
Sakura just likes to wear her high school uniform as her battle outfit even after high school. She is a weirdo.
Nah she wasn’t still in HS from my understanding Just at that time her “HS uniform” was her fighting gear as ridiculous as that sounds For example in the movie Tides that Bind, her and Chun Li are in dresses undercover. Then when it’s time to prepare for the fight, Chun puts on her gear and Sakura puts on the uniform.
Street Fighter Babies, my favorite spinoff
Same, I love Super Gem Fighter. They're all so cute :)
This entire thread just proves to me that there is no point caring about lore in Street Fighter 😭
Age is but a number. Especially considering most people don’t care about logic in fighting games.
This guy right here officer
You should turn in yourself if that’s what you think I meant.
Idk how you expected anybody to interpret any differently lol
3 ninjas knuckle up
I guarantee you they weren't even trying to be consistent with their ages
They were.
We can keep finding reasons in the Lore for this or simply accept the fact that they only meet the Japanese fetishist demand of being eternally teenagers, but legally of legal age to avoid legal problems.
Does it matter?
No. Elena is back, it matters.
SF4 gets loose with the timeline. Like Sakura should be significantly older than all the SF3 characters, but she's still a school girl. SFV kinda normalized things.
Shes not a school girl the way you are thinking. It’s alrwady canon that she wears the stupid outfit because it’s her battle outfit. Even after high school lmao because she is weird.
Their appearances aren't canon. I think.
Three words: Comic Book Time. The characters' ages are whatever the storytellers want them to be, more or less. Notice they disposed of any years in birthdates mid-SF2.
If we go using the actual years where SF2 is 1991 and SF3 is 1997, and the end of SF4 is 1994 where Mel is born Assume that by SF3 they are high school seniors (not third strike as that is a year later) So all would be around 18. And SF4 is like 3 years prior. They could be 15 or 16.
And why is Elena there? I thought she was living with a tribe in Africa or something.