In his review, Nathan Brown said Street Fighter 5 is "so, so good for the genre-savvy" but that it "does nothing to help you grow as a player." Part of this was down to the fact SF5 shipped without a story mode, and a best-of-three versus mode and, crucially, an arcade mode. The latter is due on January 16, and looks pretty ambitious.
In Street Fighter 5: Arcade Edition, the base game's characters will be available to steer through six different narrative paths—culminating in 200 different illustrated and animated endings.
"You can head into the Gallery to find out the unlock condition for each ending," reads an update post on the Capcom Unity blog. "They range from simply completing a path to getting a 'Perfect' on the bonus stage."
The post says selecting Arcade Mode in the main menu, players will be asked to choose from the paths of Street Fighter, Street Fighter 2, Street Fighter Alpha, Street Fighter 3, Street Fighter 4, and Street Fighter 5—where they can also customise the total rounds and difficulty of each match before facing off.
"Each path stays true to the characters present in the respective series," the post adds. "For example, you can only select Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Akuma, Laura, Urien, Alex, Kolin, and Ibuki in Street Fighter 3’s Arcade path—Sean is represented through Laura while Kolin appears briefly in Gill’s intro."
"In some paths, the Bonus Stage, which first appeared in the original Street Fighter, will be available where you’ll be tasked with breaking 20 barrels as they plummet into the center of the screen from conveyer belts above. You’ll have 'help' from a computer-controlled character who will keep the barrels in the center using his own move set. Breaking all 20 won’t be a walk in the park, so be prepared to figure out what moves work best."
Will the car totalling bonus stage also feature here? I don't know. What I do know is that Street Fighter 5's Arcade Mode is due on January 16, 2018.
