I'll admit that I've never been much of a 2D fighter fan, well I guess that statement is half true I did love me some (super) Street Fighter II action on my friend's SNES - but after the introduction of the 3D modelled fighting games,  Tekken and Virtua Fighter bared privilege to my adolescent gold coins. However, I must say the upcoming Street Fighter IV (minus the weird voice movements) is looking mind-blowingly bad ass.

The characters are rendered in 3D however the game sees fighters battle it out in the 2D standard making the experience what has been coined out to be a 2.5D effect (amazingly, yes there is a Wikipedia article on this.) The game is set to be closest to a Street Fighter II experience with elements of previous Street Fighters introduced such as the super and ultra moves.

In terms of story line, it has been noted that Street Fighter IV will take place between numbers II and III. The arcade version of the game will premier throughout Japanese arcades later this month with a release on PS3, Xbox 360 and the PC(!!!) late 2008/early 2009.

Below is the trailer released by Capcom for E3 2008.