Capcom Announces “Edition Select” Mode for Ultra Street Fighter IV

Capcom had a surprise announcement at SoCal Regionals, a fighting game tournament that happened all last weekend at Irvine, CA. While they are saving the reveal of the highly anticipated fifth character for Ultra Street Fighter IV for Final Round, another 3-day tournament at the Atlanta area in two weeks, they had something else up their sleeve. The trailer below shows off another new mode for the update that is coming out in June as DLC for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

As if new characters and balance changes are enough, there is now an "edition select" mode for Ultra Street Fighter IV. This mode allows all iterations of the huge roster to be playable. In other words, you can play as the original Street Fighter IV version of Sagat where he deals so much damage back in 2009, Arcade Edition Yun which was when he dominated that version, Super SFIV versions, and AE 2012 versions along with the new Ultra iterations. While the older versions will play exactly like how they were back in their day, they won't have the new gameplay mechanics such as having both ultras available at the same time, red focus, and delayed wake up that the Ultra versions will have.
This is not the first time a Street Fighter game has done this. 2004's Street Fighter Anniversary Collection had Hyper Street Fighter II, where all the iterations of the SFII series were playable. Street Fighter Alpha Anthology also had something similar that was unlockable with Hyper Street Fighter Alpha, where various iterations from the Alpha games and even other SF games were there. However, this "edition select" mode in Ultra SFIV won't be available for online play on the console versions and not at all over at Japanese arcades. While we won't likely see this in the tournament scene, it is definitely something fun to mess around with and end long debates on which version of a certain character is the best.
Ultra Street Fighter IV is slated to come out on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 as DLC sometime in June, especially before the biggest fighting game tournament in the world, Evolution 2014. Retail versions alongside a PC version will be out in August with all the costume DLC available from the get go.