Street Fighter IV Coming Home in ‘09?

It’s more likely than you think.

Street Fighter IV has begun showing up in Japanese and American arcades—yes, the latter exists. In fact, this handy-dandy Street Fighter IV tracker marks the location of cabinets outside of Japan. My advice to you is to move fast.

(And my advice to whomever is maintaining this list is to consult a map of Southern Ontario before marking Richmond Hill as “Toronto.”)

Not all of us find graveyards to be cheerful places, so here’s the question: When’s Street Fighter IV coming home?

2009 looks likely; it’ll be Street Fighter’s 20th Anniversary and it will make the bone-crunching and blood-squirting that much more solemn and profound.

Producer Patrick Aiello confirmed the timing with Gamedaily:

“Capcom is releasing Street Fighter IV in 2009, which is the 20th anniversary of the game. The film and game release dates will coincide, but I’m not certain how much of the game will coincide with the story because ours is a very partitioned off origin story of the Street Fighter universe. So the release dates will coincide, elements between the two will coincide, but in terms of them relating to each other perfectly, I don’t believe that’s the case.”

Shucks, what could possibly go wrong if the film coincided with the game’s story?

(Image copyright Capcom)