Ever ponder the importance of a game logo? Ever ponder about how the right look is chosen or even how the name of a game is decided? If you have, you should continue reading Ayano-san’s blog below. If you haven’t…then continue reading anyway cause it’s a fun read!

 Hello everyone, Tomoaki Ayano here!

The 2013 Tokyo Game Show has come and gone and everything went off without a hitch. So now we can take it easy, right? Wrong! Gotta get back to the grind for the development of Ultra SF4!

The series on character portraits has been very well-received, so I thought I’d stick with that idea but change things up a bit; this week I’d like to talk about how we came up with the Ultra SF4 logo.

First off, you all know what the finished version looks like.

At Evo 2013, a lot of people were speculating that we’d announce something along the lines of “Ver. 2013/2014” as a follow-up to Ver. 2012, so it came as quite the surprise when we revealed a brand new title. We had a few titles in the running, including “Super Street Fighter IV X” (maybe “Super Street Fighter IV Turbo” for western gamers?) and “Super Street Fighter IV Ultra Edition.”

The debate between “X” and “Ultra” went right down to the wire, but after taking opinions from some of our global partners we agreed that “Ultra” has the most impact! But since we’re going to name it “Ultra,” we’ve got to make sure the game lives up to the name. This put a lot of pressure on us—uh, I mean, definitely increases our motivation!

So with Street Fighter IV getting an Ultra rebirth, the first step in creating the title logo was to come up with a concept design. We told our designers to come up with some designs on their own, and this is what they came back with.

They certainly came back with some unique designs! We were looking for something that was new and fresh, and conveyed the feeling of “ultra.” The black and white designs lose the Street Fighter series feel, so we decided to keep the base Street Fighter IV logo. And because that logo has got so much impact, we also decided that we wanted the “Ultra” to be placed in the background.

With those concepts nailed down, the designers came up with these!

Yet another batch of unique designs!

At this stage every staff member, myself included, had a personal favorite that they spent plenty of time arguing for. “This one best suits the SF image!” “This one really gives you that Ultra feeling!” “This design is very modern!” But even though we all had different opinions, we managed to come to a conclusion that we all agreed upon: the unique visual aspect of the SFIV series has been the brush stroke effect that’s been featured in promotional videos and in-game.

So we went back to one of the previous designs that featured the “Ultra” written using the brush-stroke effect, and we jazzed it up a bit to get that “Ultra” feel. This is what we’d been aiming for.

These were the final candidates.

Now that’s nice and flashy!

Then we had to imagine: when the game is lined up in stores, featured in magazines, displayed on large posters at events, and used as the last image in a promo video, which of these logos will do the best job of subtly imprinting itself in the back of your mind?

We thought about that and various other things as well, and in the end we decided to go with the purple base. Add a few subtle tweaks and we have our final version.

The title logo can make or break the game. What do you think of our finished Ultra SFIV logo?

Finally, I’d like to inform you that Kohichi Sugiyama will be taking over the Producer role on Ultra Street Fighter IV.  He has been my superior and involved in an integral part of Capcom’s fighting game team to date.

_{Sugiyama-san on the left and Ayano-san on the right}  

Moving forward, I’ll be working in the front-line of development which means my schedule will be more flexible so I can devote even more time getting to know all our fans. Rest assured I’ll continue to write this blog, so stay tuned for future installments.

Well, that’s all for this week. See you again next week!