Dan hits Street Fighter 5 in February 2021, Capcom has announced.

In a video message to the Street Fighter community, Street Fighter 5 producer Shuhei Matsumoto said the developers were working as fast as they could to get the fighting game's fifth season out in the wild, pointing to difficulties around the coronavirus pandemic.

"Year 2020 has been a difficult one due to the effects of Covid-19, having a significant impact on our life and work styles," Matsumoto said.

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Capcom has detailed the year ahead for Street Fighter 5 Championship Edition in a new livestream, revealing the identities of four of the five new characters - Dan, Rose, Oro, and Akira - heading to the game as part of its fifth and final season of content.

Characters will arrive across four major updates scheduled to release between the winter of 2020 and autumn 2021, with Capcom's initial update ushering in Street Fighter Alpha martial artist Dan Hibiki. He'll have four different costumes, and be accompanied by a new Capcom Pro Tour stage, and new costumes for other characters. Capcom is also promising new battle mechanics and balance changes in its winter update.

Then, in spring next year, it's the turn of Italian fortune teller Rose, who gets five costumes and her own stage, arriving alongside three new Professional Costumes.

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Modders have had their fun with Nemesis from the Resident Evil 3 remake - and Mr. X from the Resident Evil 2 remake before it - for quite some time. But as a Street Fighter fan this latest mod caught my eye.

Instead of the hulking monstrosity that is Nemesis, we have the hulking monstrosity that is Sagat, the original Street Fighter boss, the Emperor of Muay Thai, and in the world of Street Fighter, Ryu's very own nemesis.

The Resident Evil 3 remake Sagat mod, from Nexus Mods user sidemilu, does exactly what it says on the tin - and the plan is executed perfectly. Sagat, wearing his trademark eyepatch and with the scar Ryu gave him during that fateful battle front and centre on his chest, stalks poor Jill Valentine, who must be wondering which dimension she fell into.

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A fighting game fan has taken it upon themselves to improve Street Fighter 5's controversial netcode.

Redditor Altimor, who has created hitbox viewers for Guilty Gear Xrd and Dragon Ball FighterZ in the past, took just two days to address a bug that has plagued Street Fighter 5 online play since the game launched back in 2016.

According to Altimor, and indeed other prominent members of the fighting game community as well as developers of other fighting games, Street Fighter 5 includes a bug that can cause one players' game to lag behind the other's during online play. The upshot of this bug is one-sided "rollback" for one player, while the unaffected player remains oblivious.

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Street Fighter is not, it's fair to say, a series that's shy about repackaging itself up for another turn, and now Street Fighter 5 is primed to receive its third release, this time in the form of the Champion Edition, which comes to PS4 and PC on 14th February next year.

The Champion Edition, which follows on from last year's Arcade Edition, includes almost everything so far released for Street Fighter 5. In total, that amounts to 40 characters, 30 stages, and over 200 costumes, although Fighting Chance costumes, brand collaboration costumes and Capcom Pro Tour DLC will not be included.

Street Fighter 5: Champion Edition is getting a physical and digital release on PlayStation 4 and will also be available on Steam, with all versions costing 24.99/$29.99 USD. Additionally, those that already own a previous edition of Street Fighter 5 can purchase the Upgrade Kit for 19.99/$24.99 USD. It's available now and grants immediate access to new Championship Edition content ahead of February's launch.

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For years now, Yoshinori Ono has been the public face of Street Fighter. And Street Fighter's defined his life - having fallen in love with Final Fight, Ono made a beeline for Capcom and found himself working there soon after Street Fighter 2's release and through the series' glory years. He became a household name, though, for helping bring Street Fighter back from the wilderness.

"This was before social media, before the internet, before Facebook," Ono told me during an on-stage interview at last month's EGX. "It wasn't until I was working on Onimusha that I could see what a phenomenon it had become. I was going around with Inafune, but people would always be asking me about Street Fighter. So I went back to Capcom and said the world was ready for more Street Fighter."

Bringing back Street Fighter wouldn't be simple, though. "It was tough. As a company, Capcom were past making fighting games in general. It was 99.99 per cent decided that fighting games were done and dusted and we were moving on to other things. But I managed to convince [Keiji] Inafune and the then-chairman - they were like, okay we'll give it a shot. That's all it took for me to flip those percentages. If it hadn't gone as well as it did, I might have been fired... I'm glad Street Fighter 4 did as well as it did."

The series has flourished ever since - even if it hasn't been without its struggles. Street Fighter 5 saw through a rough launch period and is now an assured fighter with one of the strongest communities around it - at EGX, the Capcom Pro Tour stage was one of the most vibrant, well-attended of the whole show. And next year it's becoming part of the Intel World Open, a tournament that welcomes all-comers through its early online rounds before the grand finals take place alongside next year's Olympics in Tokyo, with a $250,000 prize pot up for grabs.

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Five of the Best is a quite-new weekly series celebrating the incidental details in games we don't celebrate enough. Things like maps - everyone loves maps. They're the kind of things we can't do without, the kind of things which give games so much flavour and charm.

It's also designed to promote discussion because, let's face it, it's all subjective, what someone thinks is best. I have different ideas to you and, um, most people, apparently, and that's OK! I think. I hope. So join in. We've had some lovely discussions so far and you've reminded me of so many things. It's Friday after all, what else are you going to do - work?!

You can find all the previous Five of the Bests in a handy archive.

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Early August 2019, Evo - the world's largest fighting game tournament - concluded on a tragic note. What should have been a weekend that ended with celebration was instead tarnished by reports of sexual harassment and spiked drinks at the event's afterparties.

What followed was a surge of support from many of the most prominent voices within the fighting game community (FGC). Victims spoke out about their past traumas, and there was a collective call for action. In what can be interpreted as the FGC's very own Me Too movement, well-known figures in the community, such as competitor Leah "Gllty" Hayes and photographer Chris Bahn, had allegations raised against them, resulting in public apologies from the pair and a ban forbidding them from entering some of the USA's largest tournaments.

This recent turmoil has raised uncomfortable and important questions about the FGC, on whether those guilty of these actions are simply bad actors, or whether the FGC has a deep-rooted problem at its core. I talked with women in the community who've worked in this environment long enough to know the reality of what it's like at these events, about their thoughts on the culture, recent allegations, and what needs to change.

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Ah, Asura's Wrath. How I miss you so. Your over-the-top, QTE-fuelled combat lives long in the memory. I close my eyes and I see a planet-sized man press his finger down on Asura, the demigod's six arms a flurry of punches. You were deeply flawed, but remarkable, a true last-gen diamond in the rough.

While Capcom seems unlikely to return to the wonderful world of Asura's Wrath any time soon, it lives on in the form of Street Fighter 5 costume DLC. This week the company announced an upcoming Asura's costume for Kage (the evil Ryu-esque character), due out via Extra Battle 27th September.

Kage really does look the part as Asura, but the costume is of course no substitute for a brand new Asura's Wrath game (Asura's Wrath was one of Eurogamer's games of 2012), or even a guest appearance by the character in another Capcom game.

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Valve has issued a public apology for leaking Street Fighter 5's next round of DLC characters.

The upcoming new DLC characters, E. Honda, Poison and Lucia were all leaked on Wednesday when Steam published the trailer for the DLC reveal early. Capcom had planned to make a big splash during this weekend's Evo fighting game tournament.

Now, Valve has apologised in a post on Steam, saying there was "a mix-up in the publishing process".

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