Street Fighter IV

Street Fighter IV marked a major comeback for the series in 2009 after an almost decade-long gap since Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, during which Capcom focused mainly on crossovers and spin-offs. The game first launched in Japanese arcades in 2008, but reached its real audience only a few months later on the home consoles PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, where it brought the series to a much wider crowd of players than fighting games were used to at the time. The illustrated cover art and stylized graphics carried on the series' tradition, but the game itself switched to fully three-dimensional character models for the first time.

Despite the 3D graphics, the gameplay remained strictly two-dimensional - characters move only left and right along a single axis, exactly as in the classic entries, a deliberate step back to the series' fundamentals after the experiments of previous spin-offs. Capcom added the new Focus Attack system, which lets you briefly absorb an incoming hit and answer with a powerful counterattack, as well as Ultra Combos, extremely powerful finishers activated after accumulating damage. The return of classic faces like Ryu, Chun-Li, and Guile alongside several new fighters immediately made the game accessible to both veterans and complete newcomers, and together with an active online community and a growing esports scene, it became one of the driving forces that brought fighting games back into the spotlight at the end of the decade.

The game's visual style, with painted backgrounds and bold color effects reminiscent of ink drawings, became a hallmark of the entire brand for years to come, and Capcom partially returned to it in later entries in the series. Focus Attack also introduced an entirely new tactical layer - players could charge the attack gradually and use it to break through an opponent's block, or instead cancel it with a quick sidestep, setting the game apart from previous entries built purely on classic blocking and counterattacks.

Why play it: Street Fighter IV is an ideal entry point for anyone who wants to experience modern fighting games in their classic, two-dimensional form - it combines accessibility for newcomers with enough depth for players who want to compete at a higher level.