I'll start off with the bombshell that is the announcement of Tekken Tag Tournament 2. It has been only a matter of time when Namco Bandai goes back to the tag style and people have been demanding it, so it makes sense putting this one for now after Tekken 6. From the brief teaser, you'll see new tag combos with the bound system being shown off by Jin/Asuka and Kazuya/Leo as the potential is there for some crazy stuff with the other characters. Of course, it is unknown how many characters will fill up the roster, but I can imagine everybody in the series will be playable. Tekken Tag 2 is expected to come out next year at Japan at arcades first with stateside to follow soon after. Since I haven't been playing Tekken 6 (even by running to some I haven't seen in a while at Arcade Infinity last night), Tekken Tag 2 will bring me back and perhaps seeing some friends was a sign that this will be announced.
Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition gets a proper arcade test at SBO as the trailer above finally shows footage of Yun and Yang in action. It will be interesting to see how much of their 3rd Strike game will be gone making the transition to SSF4 even though most of their moves remain intact. Yun still has Genjei-Jin as his super to wreak havoc, but I think it won't make him that high tiered in SSF4 as he was in 3rd Strike due to meter management as I don't expect it to be that game changing along with damage scaling as well. Personally, I think Yang will be the better of the two with his Rekka game staying the same for Super for the most part. Both characters do have dive kick pressure like 3S and boy we do love dive kicks in SSF4. The question is will the AE balance changes along with the new characters be a downloadable purchase for consoles, or is it worth it enough for another retail release. Who knows, but Capcom seems to do the right thing handling Street Fighter IV stuff lately as the arcade version should be out at Japan by the end of the year and stateside assuming arcades are willing to buy it next year.
As if showing off X-23 and Tron Bonne weren't enough, Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds gets two more characters into the action with Spider-Man and Wesker. It wouldn't be a versus game these days without Spider-Man as he seems to be better this time around with the addition of web zipping along with his familiar MvC2 movetest. His better looking Maximum Spider super is likely level 3 as Crawler Assault and the Ultimate Web Throw supers are still the same. Wesker from Resident Evil fame has some crazy tricks at his disposal such as stopping (or maybe stealing) supers where opposing supers are activated and also throwing a rocket to someone's face. He seems like another fine addition for the Capcom side (Chris being the other RE character in already) of the roster. Marvel vs. Capcom 3 has been bumped for a Q1 2011 release and there's a Fight Club event featuring it at Chicago next week.
As we would say, it has been a good time to play fighting games again, but next year keeps getting better and better as if we are at the 90s again.
