Daigo Umehara is arguably the most famous Street Fighter fighter on Earth — for this clip, perhaps. But which is his favorite SF game?

"SFII holds a very special place in my heart. It was the very game that introduced me to the world of Street Fighter," Daigo tells Kotaku. "I know Street Fighter IV will be another important game for me in my gaming history. It is the title which gave me new inspiration after 3-4 years in a rut and the title I played through to reach the top and got the sponsorship.  In fact, it is becoming a very special game for me in a whole different way from SFII, but both are very important for me."

So... he likes both! But for different reasons.

The sponsorship Daigo is talking about is his deal with peripheral maker Mad Catz to use the company's Tournament Edition FightSticks (like the newly released Super Street Fighter IV arcade stick) at all tournaments. Daigo will also apparently lend his gamertise to Mad Catz in the creation of new sticks. "With the Mad Catz sponsorship, I don't allow compromise and practice even harder," Daigo adds. "My mindset has changed with the Mad Catz deal. I'm more determined than ever to be the best to live up to the "pro" status."

When I interviewed Daigo a few years ago at a Tokyo arcade, he had dropped out of the fighting game scene. It's good to see him back and keen to compete.

An official home page for Daigo has been launched — check it out. Or you might be able to catch him on Xbox LIVE and watch as he kicks your ass. Enjoy!

[Pic]

Street Fighter IV? Great game. Guitar? Cool instrument. The sound of SFIV being played with a guitar?

Pretty bad.

This guy isn't playing Street Fighter IV a guitar because of the way it sounds, he is doing it because he can. OpenChord.org creates an open source guitar control, but it's meant for use with music games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Progress!

Play Street Fighter With Your Guitar - never know tech - never know tech [Never Know Tech via Joystiq]

Is Legacy really the best piece of footage based on the illustrious Street Fighter name? Guest writer Sinan Kubba explores.

OK, after three straight posts of ranting, it's time to shower a bit of love. And nothing released last week is more deserving of a love shower than the excellent fan-made production Street Fighter: Legacy. It is three minutes of absolute awesome. The fighting moves are so well executed, the music is tremendous, and the special effects are very impressive – Ryu's fireball is suitably intense. Check out the film below.

But is it the best piece of footage based on the venerable Street Fighter series? It's debatable whether it matches up to Jackie Chan looking disturbingly attractive in Chun-Li's garb in the infamous scene from the 1993 film City Hunter.

And even if it beats that, I think it doesn't even come close to Cammy's raw sexuality in the Street Fighter animated series – supposedly designed for children, by the by. Don't you just hate it when your plane loses both engines?

But we all know what the winner is. Raul Julia's should've-been-Oscar-winning 'Tuesday' speech as M.Bison in the best film of all time, Street Fighter: The Movie, of course.

Sorry, Street Fighter: Legacy. You're good, but not you're not that good.

Republished with permission.

Sinan Kubba is a London-based writer who contributes to Games Abyss and has his own blog, You Have Lost!. He also co-hosts the Big Red Potion podcast.

SOTA Toys, specialists in the world of Street Fighter collectibles, will for their 10th birthday be releasing something extra special. Something large. Large like a statue of Ryu that's a whopping 18" tall.

Due out by the end of the year, there's no word yet on price or availability, but you can presume "expensive", and assume "somewhat limited".

Note the pic above is a render based on the sculpt's final design, not a picture of an acual statue. A toy world bullshot, if you will.

Earlier this month we flew ourselves out to Hawaii to soak in half a week's worth of news, hands-on time with games and interview opportunities with Capcom's top developers.

Here's a look at what came out of the event that included news of a new Marvel Vs. Capcom title.

Bionic Commando Rearmed 2
Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 Puts the Jump in Retro Fun

Dead Rising 2
Dead Rising 2 Lets You Play Through With a Buddy
Dead Rising 2 Case Zero is a Prologue with a Purpose
Watch Zombie Hunting, Poker Playing With Friends in Dead Rising 2
Dead Rising 2 Examines the Power of Multinational Pharmaceuticals
Dead Rising 2's Dark Comedy and Interactive Vomit

Ghost Trick Phantom Detective
Ghost Trick Brings Ace Attorney Aesthetic to the Afterlife

Lost Planet 2
Underwater, Armed to the Teeth in Lost Planet 2
Dead Rising, Gears of War, Resident Evil Represent in Lost Planet 2

Marvel Vs Capcom 3
Marvel Vs. Capcom 3's Bombastic Trailer Reveals 16 Characters
Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 Will Be a "Living Comic" With A Deep Story
A First Look at Marvel Vs. Capcom 3's In-Game Graphics
How To Select Fighting Game Characters The MARVEL Way
Who Should Be In Marvel Vs. Capcom 3?
Who Shouldn't Be In Marvel Vs. Capcom 3?
The Histories Of Fighting Games
Marvel Vs. Capcom Comic Books a "Natural Thing" [Update]

Okamiden
Okamiden Will Be A True Successor to Okami
Okamiden Proves the Stylus is Mightier Than the Remote (Or Controller)

Sengoku Basara Samurai Heroes
Can Americans Love A Dreamy Samurai Game?
A Look At the Real, Not-So-Sexy Samurai of Capcom's Latest Game
Would You Like to Feel Some Dragon Claws... Ripping Your Flesh?
Take The Samurai Hero Soap Opera Challenge!!!

Street Fighter
Super Street Fighter 4 Comes With A Tournament Manager, Special Trophies
Xbox 360 Avatars Get Super Street Fighter IV Costumes
Sudden Flush of Interest Led to Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Release

Other
Capcom's Three New Games, Tons Of New Details [UPDATE]
Mega Man on the iPad
Spot the Hidden Capcom Images
His Traveling Companion is 3-Inches Tall
Mega Man Creator To Assure Capcom's Future
Pikmin Says Hallo! On iPad
Culture Clash

We went fifteen years between Street Fighter movies, and what do we have at the end of it? Two awful flicks, one so awful it's great, one so awful it's just awful. Why can't we get one that's just great?

Great like these pics from Australian artist Kode Abdo, which show what must surely be real models in the guise of Street Fighter characters. They're not part of any ads, or any push for a Street Fighter movie, they're just fan art. Amazing fan art, that has us wishing it was for a Street Fighter movie.

Or at least a Cammy movie.

[BossLogic @ DeviantART, via GameSetWatch]

The man behind Mega Man is very busy these days.

Not because of his 1987 creation and the more than 50 games it spawned since. No, Keiji Inafune's work is sadly free of the blue humonoid robot and his endless battles. Nowadays Inafune spends most of his time traveling the world keeping an eye on Capcom's other creations.

As the game maker's new head of global production, Inafune says he has only one goal: To make sure that all of Capcom's games have that, to borrow a French phrase, je ne sais quoi.

"It's a common comment I hear that games created in Europe aren't really Capcom games, that games created in Japan are true Capcom games," Inafune recently told a gathering of journalists at their annual Captivate event in Hawaii. "I want to put an end to that, basically saying that whether games are created in America or Japan or anywhere in the world, I will be the one overlooking it and so it will have that Capcom flavor that fans know and love."

The news comes after a mixed year for Capcom. The past 12 months or so saw the publisher help to reinvigorate the fighting genre with the release of Street Fighter IV to consoles and the continued success of their Resident Evil franchise, but it also saw a few flops including Bionic Commando and January 2010's Dark Void.

Capcom's biggest disappointments of the past 12 months have to be Bionic Commando, which received middling reviews, and Dark Void which was perceived, at best, as forgettable. Both were products of a new initiative by the Japanese developer to try and blend the aesthetics, artistry and mechanics of Western and Japanese game design.

That initiative was announced at the 2009 Captivate event in Monte Carlo. At the time Inafune said that Capcom knew it needed to figure out how to climb out of what he called a pit that had Capcom at the bottom of the industry. The key, he realized, was to focus on globalization. The first result of that effort was the widely acclaimed Dead Rising, a game that other developers, he noted, said looked Western but felt Japanese.

So last year they decided to push things further west, perhaps a bit too far west.

Now, Inafune says the company is working to perfect this idea of collaboration not only between studios, but cultures.

Dead Rising 2, for instance, is being created by Canadian studio Blue Castle Games, but Inafune is making sure that the game will still have that Capcom feel.

"One of the biggest things we do is have more staff visits," he said. "We have a deeper collaboration through the sheer amount of communication, a lot more meetings, a lot more emails.

"Rather than have the development team do what they want to do by themselves, Capcom is trying to inject the Capcom flavor into it."

And, judging by what I saw earlier this month, it seems to be working. Dead Rising 2 feels like a game that has found the sweet spot between Western and Japanese game development.

While Inafune may have been overstating things last year when he said that Japanese game development has one foot in the grave, he's right to be worrying over his own company's health in an increasingly global gaming market.

The key, though, will be for Capcom and other Japanese developers to find a way to make games that appeal to a broad spectrum of gamers without losing a sense of where they came from and who they are. And that means being willing to make some bad games and learn from those mistakes.

The coming year should show whether Capcom is able to put into practice the lessons that Dark Void and Bionic Commando seems to have taught them and produce a game that is the best of two worlds.

British bookmaker Paddy Power has shown today it knows a fresh cash stream when it sees one, as it will soon begin accepting bets on video games. It also shows it does not keep up with recent video game news.

Two of Britain's better Street Fighter IV players will face off later this week, with Paddy Power taking bets on the bout. Punters can throw cash down on things like the winner and the length of the rounds.

"Videogames are as much a legitimate sport as any other," Paddy Power's communications director says.

"We wanted to offer sports fans and games players the ultimate thrill by offering the chance to win big on the outcome of a Super Street Fighter IV competition. If it proves popular, we'll open further books on other video game competitions."

The decision from Paddy Power comes in the wake of news that Korea's competitive Starcraft competition has been rocked by gambling scandals, discrediting both the competitive scene and its associated gambling in the process.

Interesting timing, that! Wonder what effect it'll have on Street Fighter gambling on a more intimate scale...

First ever video game betting service announced [CVG]

Street Fighter producer Yoshinori Ono tells Kotaku he takes mini-Blanka with him whenever he travels, snapping pics of the plastic pugilist everywhere he goes.

Fighter Cammy is finally joining the iPhone/iPod Touch fray. How...cheeky?

The character will be added via a free update. The release date is still TBA, however. The iPhone/iPod Touch version was released this past March with eight characters. Soon that will be nine.

This post originally appeared on Kotaku Japan.