Hands-On With Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition: Messing With Macros

Remember those programmable Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis controllers? No? Oh, I guess I must be showing my age. Anyway! Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition has four customizable virtual buttons.

You can set specific special attacks like a Shoryuken – light, medium, or heavy punch to panels or save them for longer motions like super or ultra combos. It’s possible for players to create a touch screen combo by picking attacks that link up when you press numbers one through four. While the revised control scheme makes Super Street Fighter IV easier to pick up, it also allows players to spam attacks. Charge attacks pose the greatest problem because I was able to flash kick the computer in succession with Guile by tapping the touch screen.

Hardcore players have "pro mode," which still uses the touch panel buttons, but you can’t assign special moves to them. Macros are limited to commands like throw, focus attack, or hitting all three punches – a useful choice considering the Nintendo 3DS’ button layout.

The other new feature I played with was the over-the-shoulder camera. In 3D mode you can see fireballs flying towards your character and Ryu’s feet pop out of the screen a bit when he does a hurricane kick. Jump over an opponent in 3D mode and the camera follows your flip. When you land it the action appears over your other shoulder. It’s a neat way to play Super Street Fighter IV, but you have to adjust to it. I think it wasn’t until my forth battle using Fei-Long where I felt comfortable with 3D mode.

Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition includes some of the DLC costumes. There are two per character plus your character’s standard look.