Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat are the games that defined the arcade fighting genre and then redefined it when they moved from game halls and bars to the home computer. I confess to playing endless matches and tournaments with friends and family and to developing an unhealthy obsession for all things Vega. I'm the kind of guy that swore eternal loyalty to Capcom when they announced, late last year, that they planned to create a new Street Fighter game, labeled IV, but which is actually the fifth in the series.

Now, Yoshi Ono, who is general manager of the online game development department and R&D management group of Capcom, has been talking to Gamasutra about the game which is currently in an advanced stage of development. Juicy details coming up.

First off, the game will not be released at the same time for the arcade and for the home console. Capcom is apparently thinking that the game should go back to its roots and plans an early release for arcade platforms, sometime in late 2008, before getting a home console version out. A move that makes perfect sense, given the history Street Fighter has as an arcade favorite.

Other than that, Yoshi revealed that the graphic engine behind the game is being built entirely from scratch, even if Capcom has a powerful 3D engine in the form of MT Framework, which is used in Devil May Cry 4, among other titles. The shader units for the game required special attention. It even got to a point where the main artist for the game, Ikeno, produced a couple of art drawings that the tech guys actually sticked to their monitors in order to better compare their work to the art direction.

No questions about characters made their way into the discussion, although the rumored characters list contains favorites like Blanka, Ken, Ryu, Chun-Li, Guile or Dhalsim, alongside new characters like El Fuerte, who is a Spanish luchador, Abel, a French fighter with no past, and Crimson Viper, an American female fighter.