Street Fighter x Tekken: craziest panel at SDCC

I don’t think I have ever played a fighting game, but after sitting through the Street Fighter x Tekken panel at Comic Con (it was just before the SWTOR one), I think I may be tempted.

Here’s a link to video of the entire 45 minute panel.

I’ll try to sum up below. The Japanese developers came on and showed some video of the new characters, to rapturous applause. They got fans to wave $10 in the air if they wanted to get the new game sooner (the air was awash with sweaty arms waving dollar notes). They also discussed issues around balance and invited players to contact them via social networks if they had any balance issues or suggestions (can you imagine a MMO dev doing this?) And then things started to get weird.

The Streetfighter producer announced that his colleague who developed Tekken had suggested that he be in the game as a fighting character. So to decide this, they’d agreed a series of 13 challenges, which they then showed on a video in the style of a Japanese game show. Challenges included competitive coke drinking, hot dog eating, hitting each other with weapons that looked like large balloons, etc etc.

(The other developer lost, although I have to say he was actually quite butch especially in the tile-breaking challenge, but then came on stage in person to accept this with good grace.)

And then, they announced another of the new characters for SF vs Tekken via a trailer, a scantily clad dominatrix called Poison.

The crowd cheered. Evidently a fan favourite (can’t imagine why :P). And then Capcom brought on a model dressed as Poison to more cheers, then another, and another, then a couple of male models dressed as Poison too, and finally the Street Fighter producer himself came back on stage … wearing the same costume.

This is the point where I again lament the loss of my camera because words can’t really do justice. And if you thought things were weird then, they got even weirder when one of the Poisons started whipping the Tekken guy and no, I don’t entirely understand why.

If that has intrigued you, just watch the video of the panel. I don’t know if all Japanese developers are as batshit crazy as CapCom, but it was like nothing on earth I’ve ever seen. Maybe I should just bite the bullet and get hold of a copy of Streetfighter …