Everyone’s favorite cornball Shiozawa-san is back on the SFIV blog mic :

6/10/2008
Who is the number one in the West!?
Project Manager: Shiozawa Natsuki

Hey everyone!

Thanks for all of the comments you guys sent about our promotional video during Capcom USA’s CAPTIVATE’08 event! As we expected, the response to Ryu’s theme was very positive! Hehe, look forward to our next promotional video!

Now, back in April we posted a blog entry with SFIV main designer Ikeno Daigo and some concept sketches of Crimson Viper’s “Capital Punishment Combo”…

This time, we’re going to introduce you to some concept sketches of Rufus! We actually wanted to talk about this for a while, but we hadn’t revealed Rufus until very recently, so we weren’t able to do anything, and believe me, we were really tempted to just leak something out… but we had to wait until now.

So check out this sketch!

We had a lot of stuff with Rufus, so this time around we’re gonna show you two concepts we had! What do you think? This is basically a very rough draft of what we had, but I think it really captures Rufus’ movements and actions quite well, don’t you?

I guess for me I can really hear a distinct cry… a really strange voice in my head, hehe.

Rufus, no matter how you look at him, really gives off this Pooh Bear look because of his yellow costume and big belly, but he’s quite serious about being the number one fighter in the West. He really thinks that he’s the coolest, the strongest and the most charming man alive. (He also loves talking up the ladies!)

That’s Rufus’ style, and you can tell he truly believes it in this last sketch. It’s like he’s thinking to himself “I am the greatest and coolest man around!”

With his marvelously jiggly belly and that huge body of his, Rufus shows Ken who’s boss with a thunderous splash!

…Speaking of which, what does Ken think of Mr. Rufus…
Well, you guys can argue all you want and use your imagination, but you’ll have to wait for the real fight for the result!

And it’s not only Rufus against Ken, but Chun-li versus Viper, Guile versus Abel, and of course, Ryu versus Sagat. There are a lot of rivalries going on here, and it’s going to be a wild battle that’s sure to be interesting!

We’ll leave at that until the game is released…

Which is going to be real soon! We’ve been saying “Summer 2008” for a long time now without an official announcement, but soon we’ll be announcing the real release date very soon!

Keep coming back for updates, guys! Take care until then!