In light of Ultra Street Fighter IV‘s inclusion in digital pre-orders of the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection, I’ve decided to dedicate some time to examining the most slept-on online-capable Street Fighter title: Street Fighter IV: Omega Mode. Packaged as a free alternate version within the edition select of USFIV, Omega uses leftover game files, recycled taunts, and repurposed animations to completely change each character’s toolset; it’s essentially a completely new and unique Street Fighter title built within SFIV’s engine, with an entirely different balance philosophy than Ultra.
Omega was not popular at release due to some easy infinite combos — not to mention players’ interest in Ultra as a more serious, competitive game. I personally think Omega went woefully unexplored for being an extremely interesting venture, and I’m starting a series where I document each character’s Omega changes, and then show off some basic optimal combos.
This week I’m looking at Sakura and Cammy. Sakura seems to be an early version of her SFV version, considering changes to her normals and specials, not to mention she has a new special move that’s a prototype of her VTI attack Hogasho. However, it seems that they were throwing all their special move ideas against the wall to see what sticks; her gameplay design is much more unrefined and experimental. Cammy, on the other hand, is almost nothing like her SFV version, with great hooligan abuse to control the neutral and a new special move that functions as a meterless launcher. To me, both characters are extremely fun to play.
Click here for a playlist of all Street Fighter IV: Omega videos I’ve released thus far. I’ll add future videos to this playlist as I finish them.
I plan to go through the entire roster over time, so subscribe to the ShoryukenTube YouTube channel if you don’t want to miss out!