Street Fighter on your Cell Phone should never be this good
User Rating: 10 | Street Fighter IV IOS
Since getting an iPhone 2 years ago, i have periodically checked for Street Fighter games. I figured eventually someone would port SF2 or one of the Alpha games that would maybe be as good as Alpha 3 Max is on PSP. So when i read on Gamespot that Street Fighter FREAKIN' IV was coming out for iPhone, the news sort of floored me. After spending a whole whack of subway rides with the game, i can honestly say that this is as close to the home-console versions of the game that we could ever hope for on a portable system, never mind a cell phone. The virtual fight stick is responsive and while i do find myself approximating dragon punches and occasionally doing a half-circle to guarantee my fireball is going to work, they condense 6 attack buttons down to 2 quite intuitively, having the distance you are from the opponent and the situation dictate whether you are firing a strong, medium or quick attack. The SP and Focus buttons also help simplify things. You use the SP button to do an Ultra combo or an EX move and the Focus button to do a focus attack/parry. Throws are even now mapped to the punch button, so you never have to worry about trying to hit two soft-buttons at once (which would be touchy at best, I'm sure).
The normal difficulty is a bit on the easy side, but the two harder difficulties are extremely challenging, so it'll take some work to master Arcade mode. There is also a blue-tooth multiplayer mode, so if you have some iphone buddies, tell them it's worth the one time $10 price for limitless SFIV multiplayer anywhere in the world (my favorite place, Tim Hortons, nothing breaks up a session of reading/studying like a Street Fighter break... k, maybe a Tetris break). And if you have a battle that is particularly epic, you can save your replay! I'm looking forward to this feature being implemented into Super Street Fighter IV and really hope there is some way to export replays to Youtube/Facebook; I think Street Fighter match of the week would be a million times more fun than a news feed constantly telling your friends about farmville and mafia wars (play REAL videogames facebook people!)
Anyway, if you like Fighting games, you won't find a better one in the world for $10; and it is by FAR the best one on iPhone. Enjoy and happy hadokens to all! 
