Street Fighter is an institution, having repeatedly revolutionized the fighting game genre, and after a few years of obligatory overhauls and re-releases for SF4, it's finally time to see what the next chapter holds. Street Fighter 5 is coming to PC and PS4, and we've played it extensively. Fists were broken, teeth were knocked out, and many, many fireballs were thrown to bring you the information you're about to read.

SF5 retains the core principles of the series: one-on-one 2D fighting, with only a joystick and six attack buttons to work with. But as with any new fighting game, there's a lot you'll need to learn on the path to greatness. To bring you up to speed, here's everything we know so far about Street Fighter 5, from the comfortably familiar to the excitingly fresh.

If Sony's trying to establish itself as the premier destination for console fighters, snagging exclusivity for a franchise as legendary as Street Fighter is a big win. Xbox One and Wii U owners hoping to duke it out in SF5 may want to invest in a PS4 or now, because it looks like the next chapter in Capcom's fighting franchise won't be available anywhere else for some time. But there's a silver lining: this is actually a great move for the game's lifespan.

That's because Capcom's developing SF5 for cross-platform play - a monumental first for the series - in an effort to unite the community into a single centralized playerbase. Online bouts against friends or high-level competitors will no longer be restricted by whichever platform you own, and both versions are being built to maintain 1080p/60fps parity in Unreal Engine 4. Instead of fracturing the audience into isolated spaces, everyone's invited to the same online party in SF5, which should greatly enhance matchmaking and the rate that new combos and tactics get shared around.

The Street Fighter cast is packed with fan favorites, and so far it seems like Capcom is leaning on nostalgia as the guiding force behind its character choices. You'll want to check out our full breakdown of the , but Ryu, Chun-Li, M. Bison, and Nash (who you may know as Guile's counterpart Charlie) are all familiar faces that have made the return for SF5. It's standard operating procedure for new Street Fighter games to mix a bunch of established characters in with some newcomers, but it's still unclear what that balance will be in SF5's final roster.

We also don't exactly when SF5 takes place in the timeline, though visual details both small (Bison's head of white hair) and large (Nash's stapled-together zombie body) imply that these battles could be taking place long after the events of the Alpha series and SF2, but potentially before SF4 and SF3. If Capcom's not careful, the Street Fighter timeline could end up being just as confusing as Legend of Zelda's.

Focus Attacks are the central mechanic in Street Fighter 4: the ability to absorb a hit and unleash a devastating, inky-looking counterattack, or cancel a move to strengthen your offense or defense accordingly. Street Fighter 5 does away with Focus Attacks entirely. Instead, the focus (sorry) is all on the new V-Gauge, a small red meter just above your super bar. The length of the V-Gauge depends on your character, varying between two and three segments (from what we've seen so far). And managing this bar is key to victory in SF5's fast-paced brawls.

All the core mechanics of SF5 (V-Triggers, V-Skills, and V-Reversals, but more on those in a minute) come back to the V-Gauge, as you build or deplete it over the course of a fight. In the simplest terms, a player with a full V-Gauge has far more options than one without. So what can you actually do with these precious ruby-colored bars? Well, for starters...

Ultras are the other big system in SF4, where taking damage is the only means to activating a potentially tide-turning attack. They're designed to be the ultimate equalizer, but SF5 ditches Ultras and the idea of soldiering through the pain so you could dish it out yourself. Instead of flashy Ultras, each fighter has a unique V-Trigger, a special mode activated by pressing HP+HK. And though they can help you mount a comeback, they're more about playing your character to their full potential.

You're all but guaranteed to build up at least one V-Trigger each round, and once you've got it locked and loaded, there's no reason to save it for later. That's because of how powerful they are - giving Ryu chargeable, guard-breaking fireballs, or adding multi-hit properties to Chun-Li's normals, for instance - and the fact that the V-Gauge empties between rounds. While some are special move-enhancing modes, others like Nash's short-range Sonic Move teleport are a single action. Learning how each fighter's V-Trigger works will be crucial to your success.

So you know you want the V-Gauge to fill up, because it enables your powerful V-Trigger. And while taking and dealing damage will build it up little by little, your V-Skills are your primary method for boosting up your meter. Executed by pressing MP+MK (the old Focus Attack input), V-Skills are little maneuvers that provide tons of utility. They're a bit like the traits from : individualized modes or moves that can bolster your usual playstyle.

And when you'll bust them out depends entirely on your chosen character. For instance, Ryu's V-Skill, Mind's Eye, is actually a SF3-style parry exclusive to him, while Nash's Bullet Clear can absorb an incoming projectile (or bop the opponent if they're close enough). Using your V-Skill effectively is the best way to build up your V-Gauge, and there's no limit on how often you can utilize it. As with V-Triggers, true SF5 mastery will only be possible once you understand how all the V-Skills function.

The last ability related to the V-Gauge isn't as flashy as the other two, but it's arguably just as important. If you've played any of the Street Fighter Alpha games, you may remember the Alpha Counter, which lets you do a counterattack on the opponent while blocking. V-Reversals work almost exactly the same, letting you spend a bar of your V-Gauge to push back against an incoming onslaught and create some space.

Opportune use of the V-Reversal is crucial when you've got someone like Bison rushing you down, and you just need a moment to breathe and think about your next move. The input is a little tricky: while blocking an attack string, you need to tap toward the opponent and press all three punches. The distance it puts between you and your opponent also varies, so you'll have to get a feel for how they all work.

With all this talk about the V-Gauge, you might think that it's the only bar in the world that matters. Au contraire - the pulsing blue super meter and its four equal parts are still a factor in SF5, and it works the same way it did before. If you've got at least one bar of meter, you can unleash an EX version of your special attacks by pressing two buttons instead of just one. And once the meter's full, you can bust out a super attack, which have been renamed to Critical Arts in SF5.

Most players will probably rely on EX moves more than Critical Arts, but you'll need to decide whether you want more opportunities for decent damage or one chance for a devastating (but risky) attack. Finding that balance while managing your meter is necessary, and unlike the V-Gauge, any unspent super meter you build in one round will carry over to the next.

Having duked it out dozens of times in the two currently available stages, China and London, they're not too different from what you get in SF4: vibrant, moving backdrops that are interesting to look at without being distracting. Goofy spectators have lined up for each bout, including a four piece band in the London train station and an alarmingly stereotypical shopkeeper in the neon-lit streets of China.

But the levels can shift this time around. While SF4 had shattering pots and detachable plane wings, SF5 will let you open up entirely new areas if you KO your opponent in a certain spot. In China, you can cause a nearby tour bus to speed away or bust into the aforementioned shopkeeper's property. That said, the length of the stage will remain the same, and not every level has these transitions; what you see is what you get in the London level.

Netcode is a hotly debated topic in the realm of fighting games, given how it can completely determine the quality of your online experience. Slow matchmaking or rage quitters aside, you're guaranteed to have a bad time if every game you play on the 'net suffers from crippling lag, random drops, or missed inputs. SF4's netcode seems to run the full spectrum from great to unplayable, but SF5 hopes to smooth out online play with some new technology.

Dubbed "Kagemusha", Capcom has built this proprietary netcode for SF5 entirely from scratch, instead of porting over SF4's systems. If you're familiar with the popular GGPO netcode used in games like Skullgirls, Kagemusha is said to function in much the same way, utilizing mystical 'rollback' techniques to ensure that both players see and feel each fight in the same way. It's complicated stuff, but the bottom line is that SF5's online experience should be superior to that of SF4.

You've probably encountered the frustration of a one-frame link when messing around with SF4's combo trials. In essence, these are normal attacks that are crucial to some big-damage combos, but must be executed with the kind of precise, pinpoint timing (a single frame of animation) that eludes the majority of players. Capcom's Peter 'ComboFiend' Rosas tells us that they won't be as prevalent in SF5. "One-frame links are actually a big topic for us, because we know that it hinders some people from realizing their full potential," says Rosas. "In terms of input leniency and things like that, we're actually looking into methods to solve that, because we want everybody to be able to access damage."

That's not to say that executing combos will be easy, but reducing the need to master these overly-demanding timings should help reduce the gap between skilled and fledgling players. "Even if you can't perform a one-frame link, the damage differential between somebody who constantly does them and somebody who [knows some basic combos] won't be too far," says Rosas. "We want everybody to always feel like they're in the game."

It's hard to forget all the great 2D fighters that the Street Fighter franchise has spawned over the years, from 1992's genre-defining Street Fighter 2 all the way up to 2014's Ultra Street Fighter 4. However, within those two decades of Street Fighter releases there were a lot of oddball games that took the world warriors in some very... interesting directions. Most people are used to seeing Ken and Ryu square off in the ring, but their travels have also taken them into the realms of board games, slot machines, and even a pen-and-paper RPG.

With hype rumbling in our minds, we got a hankering to comb through the franchise's storied history and shine some light on the curios that attempted to capture the spirit of Street Fighter, even if they abandoned its core gameplay tenets entirely. Here are our picks for the best (and strangest) Street Fighter games that have nothing to do with 2D fighting.

Street Fighter 2's board game adaptation feels like someone handed the designers a picture of the SF2 box and said, "Make a game about that." Up to four players pick a character and roll dice to move around the board (which, fittingly, is a bunch of streets). Eventually, two players will collide and a fight breaks out. This is also handled with dice, with higher die rolls trumping lower ones a la Risk. Fighters grow stronger with each victory, and the game ends when someone either reaches max level or defeats M. Bison, who is holed up in what looks like a Panda Express. With its over-reliance on random dice rolls, the Street Fighter 2 board game ultimately fails to replicate what makes the video games great - despite being entirely about fighting and streets.

To fighting fans, the Cannon Spike is best known as Cammy's Shoryuken facsimile, where she rockets into the air bootheel first. But it's also the title of a wildly offbeat shmup that Capcom quietly snuck into arcades and the Dreamcast in 2000. It's a top-down run-'n'-gun starring those elite, army-trained street fighters Cammy and Charlie Nash (who's back in Street Fighter 5, if you didn't know). They could team up with other iconic Capcom blasters like Mega Man and Darkstalkers' B.B. Hood to take down waves of robots who are quite clearly disturbing the peace. You've even got the claw-bearing Vega (aka Balrog, in this case) as a recurring baddie, complete with a redone goth-meets-SM look.

The backstory behind this Street Fighter 2 version of Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots gives a very dark alternate ending to the original Street Fighter 2. As narrated in , "From around the globe, the street fighters came, bashing and banging until only Ryu and Guile remain." So what happened to the rest of them? Did they all beat each other to death? In that case, M. Bison would've already been defeated, so what motivation do Ryu and Guile have to keep "bashing and banging" each other? When will the carnage end!?

FMV games were all the rage in the '90s, giving the the illusion that you were in control of a photorealistic experience, even though it was more like long periods of doing nothing interrupted by frantic Simon Says. To its credit, Capcom put a smarter spin the concept than most, repurposing the footage from Street Fighter 2: The Animated Movie by casting you as a voyeuristic Shadaloo cyborg observing the film's events from afar. Yes, there are some moments of 2D fighting as a reskinned Ken sprite in the Super Turbo engine. But all the the familiar street fighting is bookended by long periods of watching the anime with a distracting android-eye overlay, hoping to score 'battle points' by responding to button prompts with inhuman speed.

Continuing a proud tradition of random crossovers between Japanese companies that make fighting games, Namco X Capcom is a vehicle for watching adorable, sprite-based versions of your favorite Namco and Capcom characters hit each other. Player input and strategizing isn't as important here, as the game really isn't all that difficult, so you really can just sit back and watch the little guys do their thing. If you missed the original on PS2, then the spiritual 3DS successor should give you a good sense of its tactics. For the super fans who want to see these characters in a new setting - or in a new game whatsoever (poor Captain Commando) - this game is probably already in your collection, so let's just move on.

Localization is a delicate art, where taking some liberties with Japanese-to-English porting can create a franchise black sheep that causes ripples in the space-time Street Fighter continuum. Case in point: Street Fighter 2010, which was rejiggered for American markets to evoke two Capcom franchises that had nothing to do with the game itself (and if anything, it's line with Strider). The original version has you platforming and zapping aliens as Kevin Straker, a titanium-plated future cop. But to cash in on Street Fighter hype, the localization renamed him to Ken, implying that this was the same blonde-haired playboy who threw fiery dragon punches, then went on to become a world-renowned scientist and law enforcer.

This card game comes by way of Cryptozoic Entertainment, which has made similar games based on Naruto, The Lord of the Rings, and DC Comics. All of these deck-building games use the same ruleset, so if you want to make the hybrid Naruto/Batman/Chun-Li deck from your wildest dreams, that's entirely possible. The rules themselves are simple: you buy cards to power up your character, then use those cards to attack your opponent(s) and earn victory points. When all the cards are gone, each player tallies up their victory points to see who won. Sadly, this ends up feeling like the card game equivalent of button mashing, as the randomness of what you're buying and playing undercuts the strategic elements of any good fighting game. But hey, at least it's thematically teresting than a game of War.

Given that the mobile game market is a bit like the Mega Millions Jackpot these days, Capcom would be foolish not to attempt a parlay of Street Fighter's fame into an Android/iOS spin-off. The result is Street Fighter: Puzzle Spirits, which is actually line with Puzzle Dragons than Puzzle Fighter. Instead of dropping blocks Tetris-style, you're tapping on a 6x7 grid of colored orbs, where adjacent spheres become mini-Hadoukens, and adjacent fireballs become nondescript swirls that look like candy. And rather than a team of monsters, you assemble a line-up of iconic specials (and even some normal attacks, like Ryu's overhead medium punch) that you can unleash in one giant combo. So, not too off from the source material, then.

While Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo contains 2D fighting, it is not itself a 2D fighter. Instead, it's a tile-matching puzzle game, similar to Tetris Attack or the Puyo Puyo series. Players build up clusters of similarly colored gems before shattering them with corresponding Crash Gems, 'bomb' pieces associated with the elements of fire, water, lightning, or leaves. The bigger the cluster gets before shattering, the more blocks get dumped onto your opponent. Therefore, the key to mastering Puzzle Fighter comes from learning when to hoard your gems and when to shatter them all in a chain of colorful explosions. Give and take - it's very Zen-like in that way. Unless you pick Dan, in which case defeat is inevitable.

Pinball is one of those fantastic mediums where anything (blockbuster films, typically) can be turned into an exciting and physically tangible game. Street Fighter 2 Pinball is no exception, condensing the spirit of Capcom's 2D fighter into a legitimately fun ball-and-flippers experience. It's all about capturing the theme on the playfield: you've got Chun-Li as a Spinning Bird Kick spinner, Zangief busting out a Spinning Piledriver on a ramp, and M. Bison staring back at you with an evil grin whenever you lose a ball. The artwork is all spot-on (giving that electrified beast Blanka primo placement), and the backglass even managed to capture the young heart of . If you can't find this Gottlieb machine in person, try the SF2 table for the digital Pinball FX2 instead.

When it comes to Street Fighter tie-ins, publisher White Wolf had the unenviable job of basing an entire game around one of the most invisible aspects of any fighting game: the story. It's hard to imagine a game of Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game that doesn't go the way of the 1994 Street Fighter motion picture: all random vignettes, awkward fights, and no cohesive plot to be found. Even so, this pen-and-paper RPG spawned four more books before going out of print, as well as a planned fifth book that will include characters from the Street Fighter 3 games. We salute those folks' dedication to carrying the SF2 tabletop torch.

If a Japanese franchise doesn't have a pachinko machine, it may as well not exist. Where Westerners have slot machines, pachinko is the mindless, minimally interactive gambling of choice in Japan. Folks of all ages line up to watch balls drop between pegs in a cacophonous room full of machines bouncing metal off metal. This Street Fighter-themed machine makes it more exciting than it sounds: all the while, you're watching a plastic-encased monitor embedded in the playfield that shows original CG footage of Ryu and Chun-Li teaming up against Akuma. And if you're lucky enough to trigger a jackpot, then entire machine lights up in an eye-searing rainbow of neon colors and loud noises that seem purposely engineered to trigger epileptic seizures.

Speaking of slot machines, it's nigh unbelievable that Capcom would give its blessing to the virtual Street Fighter 2 slots on InterCasino.com. We're staring at the legit-sounding copyright info emblazoned right beneath the slots, and we still refuse to accept it as reality. It's not that it's a fundamentally abysmal game, either; slot machines work with what little they can to capture a theme, in this case subbing in Vega's mask, Balrog's gloves, and Dhalsim's necklace for the cherries, bells, and 7s. You can even pick your own character - Ken, Ryu, Sagat, Chun-Li, or Guile - which is pretty neat. But the problem is that no matter who you choose, they're rendered as hideous, amateur-looking 3D models, squaring off with two frames of animation against an M. Bison who looks just as homely. while you spin is an affront to the eyeballs.

Released in 1999 for the Neo Geo Pocket Color, SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters Clash is a celebration of both companies' massive stable of characters, all crammed into a simplified card game. Players summon monsters (or, in this case, fighting game characters) which generate SP points. The 'monsters' then fight, while players use those SP points to play support cards and give themselves an edge. While these games didn't have a huge impact in the West, Card Fighters Clash (and its stellar chibi art style) did resonate enough with some to earn the sequel game an unofficial English translation patch. One super fan has even adapted it that you can print out and play at home.