Boom Roasted Sports Hall of Fame Inductee: Street Fighter X Tekken

Perhaps it's a bit of a risk inducting an entity into the Hall of Fame that a. is still a year away from launch and b. has so few details about it out there beyond the normal speculation and rumor mill gossip. After all, you wouldn't punch a quarterback's ticket to Canton midway into their senior season of high school, right?

My unabashed co-signing of this month's Boom Roasted Sports Hall of Fame inductee has more to do with excitement I possess over the concept of this proposed masterpiece than the masterpiece itself. Last month, we paid tribute to one of the hip-hop industry's greatest sidekicks and gave Nate Dogg his just due(albeit posthumously) for his impact on a genre that has since deteriorated over the last half decade.

This month, I push all the chips to the middle of the table, Jim Fassell-style, and go all-in on next year's anticipated fighting game opus, Street Fighter X Tekken.

If you were like me growing up, you spent a month's rent worth of quarters at arcades serving up piping-hot plates of ass-whooping playing any one of the numerous editions in the Street Fighter franchise. When spending money at the arcades got old, I took my talents to the consoles and got real heavy into the Tekken series(which was a much better carbon copy of the Virtua Fighter series, another fighting game franchise I spent most of my childhood with). Nowadays, the Tekken series has slipped a little while Street Fighter made a spirited comeback with the release of Street Fighter IV in April of last year and then tacked on another run with the Super sequel. The problem with fighting games is they lack longevity. With so much focus going to making the visuals look stunning, the game engine run smoothly and the controls not being too complex, finding a compelling story to keep gamers interested beyond busting their opponents' snotbox fell by the waist side. For all the glitz behind both recent Street Fighter editions and the equally gorgeous Marvel vs. Capcom 3, the gameplay went stale quickly with no real plot to keep you hooked.

That being said, when word broke out that developers behind the Tekken series and Street Fighter franchise were going to join forces to bring the world the crossover game, Street Fighter X Tekken, well, I nearly shit my pants. Fighting game nuts like myself got a taste of what mixing two great entities and making a cross-brand fighting sensation would feel like when Capcom and Marvel came together for the Marvel vs. Capcom trilogy. However, that pales in comparison to this. This is a union between two of the most world-renowned fighting game franchises in the history of gaming. Other than Mortal Kombat(which tried to copy the Marvel vs. Capcom blueprint with DC vs Mortal Kombat, which was rather ho-hum), there may not be a better match to team with the Street Fighter world than Tekken.

The word right now is Capcom and Namco will be doubling up, leading off with Street Fighter X Tekken(which will be using SF's famous 2D system) and then following up with Tekken X Street Fighter(which will use Tekken's 3D system). Both games aren't expected to see the light of day until next year, at best. As it stands, ten characters have been revealed for Street Fighter X Tekken. Representing Capcom's hit franchise will be longtime lynchpins Ryu, Ken, Guile and Chun Li as well as Abel(who made his debut in SF4). For Tekken, old-timers Kazuya, Nina and King give gamers some familiarity while Bob and Craig Marduk represent the newer class.

More characters and news will surface as we near the release date(which is still unknown) but the trailers available online have succeeded in whetting the appetite of hardcore fans like myself who still long for the old days of classic games. While there is still a chance that this joint venture flops, I'm still going to put my stamp early and tip my cap to the effort behind putting together a union of two of the biggest footprints of my childhood.