It's a gorgeous port of Street Fighter IV, from flaming dragon punches—when you can pull them off—to ultra moves, which retain the quick cut scene close-up as a prelude to beating the unholy crap out of your opponent, to the booming, overly enthusiastic announcer that no Capcom fighting game is complete without. If you remember the days of Mortal Kombat on the Game Boy, it's kind of awe-inspiring how richly they've translated the audio and visual experience, even if the framerates do get a little choppy on anything pre-3GS.

What's missing? A bunch of characters, namely. You get just seven and a half: Ryu/Ken, Guile, Bison, Axel, Dhalsim, Chun Li and Blanka. Where's Honda, or Zangief? Multiplayer is over Bluetooth only—no Wi-Fi, no online service to get your ass beat by Japanese dudes who can EX counter your every move, half a world away.

Oh yes, the controls. The make or break. You have a sparse selection of buttons, at first glance, just four onscreen, plus the virtual joystick: punch, kick, special attack (which can be used for fully automatic specials, or just be the button you tap after performing the full movement for EX specials), and saving, which is used for focus attacks and counters. What you didn't know is that the ultra and super meters are buttons themselves, which you can tap to unleash ultimate destruction, if your meter's filled. Truthfully, this layout is as good it could get. It works, and feels as natural as it possibly could, tapping on a piece of glass with no feedback as to whether you hit the right "button." You won't even notice all that much that you're covering a bunch of the screen with your meatnuggets, honest.

What's both shocking natural and at times utterly frustrating is the joystick. It's awesome and smooth when you want to do nothing in particular. Like jumping, or moving back and forth. But when you NEED to nail that dragon punch, it will fail you more often than not. If it's more complicated than a hadouken, you will not pull the maneuver off flawlessly ever single time. I guarantee you. (This, I suspect, is one reason Zangief, my main character, got ditched. I'd have a stroke trying to pile drive people.)

If you're using a notebook right now, I want you to make a dragon punch motion on the trackpad with your thumb. See how weird that feels? Also, notice how you have no feedback as to whether you actually swiped correctly? There's no precision. And nothing guiding you to be precise. So, if you're a skilled player, who expects to nail your god combos flawlessly, you'll be frustrated by the touchscreen controls, because it's not going to come out every time you want it to. In fact, the better you are at Street Fighter, and the more skillfully you try to play this, the more this game will piss you off.

But! If you're in their spamming fireball motions, jabbing at punch and kick trying to kick the shit out of somebody for fun, you will have a blast. It's real Street Fighter, in your pocket, and it looks, sounds, feels and just plain is awesome. [iTunes]

Gamepro got an early hands-on with the iPhone and iPod Touch version, and while they haven't published their first impressions yet, they were able to confirm with Capcom that it's due to hit the App Store next month—and film the below video showing the game in action. It looks like the game control still blocks out the characters (your thumbs are literally on top of them), so it'd make more sense if Capcom had more ground and less air in the gameplay. [Gamepro via Kotaku]

Image credit: IGN

While Capcom built the iPhone's SFIV from original SFIV assets to create one of the most beautiful iPhone games yet, the virtual controls look like to be layered right on top of the two fighters, making all the character artistry in the world a moot point*. I'm one for authenticity where it works, but maybe reconfiguring the layout so that healthbars took up the bottom of the screen would have been a safer call.

But a redesign isn't necessary. Capcom can just rename iPhone SFIV as Hadouken Thumb War, take my money and call it a day. [IGN via Kotaku]

It should be mentioned, however, that the Bluetooth-enabled head-to-heads sound fantastic.

Capcom confirmed to our friends at Kotaku that this is the real deal, but I have no idea where you would get one or, more importantly, why you would get it. For God's sake, isn't owning the original Snuggie embarrasing enough? [Twitter via Kotaku]

While this port was previously released in Japan for other cellphone platforms, the gameplay clip reveals a pretty fluid experience with notable graphics. We're just not so sure about those controls. Seriously, when are we going to get the bulky iPhone Gamecube controller adapter that fans have been clamoring for? First no cut and paste, now this shit. Un freaking believable. [iTunes and appadvice via joystiq]

We are excited to partner with Zeebo on their visionary and ambitious global gaming initiative. The evolutionary combination of fast 3G wireless digital distribution and a simple yet elegant business model will open up new avenues to reach gamers directly with some of our top titles such as Street Fighter Alpha.

That corpospeak blurb is from Takeshi Tezuka, general manager of Mobile Contents Development at Capcom. Color me surprised. And Namco and THQ are also publishing titles. Apparently, the idea of distributing games easily—via the free 3G connection of the Zeebo—to millions of poor kids in emerging countries is an attractive proposition for these powerhouses.

I'm all for it. [Crunchgear]

These aren't some weird scam knock-offs. The Capcom-sanctioned cabinets made their public debut at a recent SFIV event. Each system one-of-a-kind, the work of various participating design companies. Proceeds from the sales go to charity.

Keeping in mind the free shipping on all of these cabinets, you have more than a few excuses to place a bid and fill your home with a sadly dated but still tempting dedicated full-out arcade cabinet.

Note: We're only linking one auction page, scroll to the bottom for the related cabinets that are up for sale. [eBay via Kotaku]

UPDATE: Ahh, there's a catch. It does appear that the joysticks/buttons do not work. You need to provide your own controller along with something to read the SFIV game.

Price: $40

Verdict: In one sense, the verdict is that straightforward—the fantastic floating D-Pad and arcade-style six-button layout crush the regular Xbox 360 controller when it comes to fighting games. The FightPad makes my game so much better, so much more precise, I don't think I could go back to using the old pad.

Here's what I mean: With the old pad, on average, I would successfully execute Fei Long's rising dragon kick (or insert any dragon punch-based maneuver) about 5-7 times out of 10 tries. With the FightPad, it's like 9 times out of 10. Moves requiring 720-degree motions, like Zangief's super, come off much easier as well, and exactly when I want it to (when someone's up in my face—PILEDRIVER). Back, forward, back forward style specials, like with Honda or Blanka, aren't noticeably easier to perform, though.

The shape and layout of the FightPad kinda reminds me of a Sega Genesis controller, and is for the most part, excellent, though if you have elven hands it might feel a little too big. For me, with medium mitts, it fits perfectly, no matter which way I hold it (I actually turn my right hand palm side down, so I can mash the buttons with my fingers whenever I play fighting games) and there's some breathing room for gorilla-handed people too.

But there are some things you should know about that would be dealbreakers if beating people didn't matter above all else. Numero uno, on the Xbox 360, this sucker is wired, which is lame balls for a $40 controller. It also feels very cheaply made, with glossy plastic Mad Catz found and melted down after it fell off a Christmas ornament truck. The rubber coating on the sides and back helps a little bit. Last, the sound quality coming through the headset on this thing is really terrible, like I was stranded on a desert island with a cellphone from 1987—it's noticeably crappier than it is on the regular Xbox 360 controllers.

Those things said, if you wanna do better in Street Fighter IV—or any fighting game really, since it worked fantastically with Samurai Showdown II and SFIITHDR as well—and not have a real reason to curse at your controller when you get scrubbed, but don't wanna (or can't) drop the money on the outrageously awesome Tournament Edition FightStick, this is a reasonable alternative, if you can actually find it for the $40 MSRP.

P.S. If you wanna play Street Fighter IV with me, @reply me on Twitter and we'll set something up later this week.

"...the price has been cut once and it is likely to be cut again towards the end of the year. I expect the (PS3's) installed base to grow gradually."

So what's in store for us next week? Yet another discount? Our hope: a Playstation 3 with every Happy Meal. [Reuters via Yahoo News]