For all those obsessed fighter players, now there’s a way to practice your combos, air cancels and all other weird moves without looking ridiculous taping your fingers in the air. This new cell phone strap from Strapya is designed to detect the special moves of Ryu, Ken, Dhalsim, and Chun-Li from Street Fighter and play the  sounds from the game. Selling it as a cell phone strap is quite a stretch though, the thing is bigger than a lot of current phones, but I guess you could put one of those little plastic cords to a toilet and call it a cell phone strap.

[Tokyomango]

Last Friday Yoshinori Ono, producer for Street Fighter IV revealed that due to the popularity of the Street Fighter 4 anime clips they would go ahead and produce a feature length anime. Made by Studio 4C, known for its quality animation and taking artistic risks, the anime might be bundled with the game, rather than sold alongside it.

This raises some interesting questions, is the western market going to embrace including a feature movie with every game? Will it be sold separately or made into a pre-order only item? More importantly, will the studio have to hold back on the content of the anime to avoid raising the game’s rating? In any case, don’t hold your breath for more of Chun Li’s hygiene habits.

[Gamespot]

Slightly late news from the front. Friday Acclaim held a Mortal Kombat vs DC Comics panel at San Diego Comic-Con 2008. Velcor and I were there covering the event, we were promised a giant poster in the press release. We were giddy as a couple of schoolgirls.

Highlights of the panel:

• MK wanted to do a crossover with Tekken and Street Fighter.
• This game is a reboot of the MK franchise, back to a clean slate.
• Heavy focus on the story, you get to pick sides in character-specific chapters.
• New gameplay mechanics: Free Fall Combat, Klose Fighting mode, clothes damage, improved scenario transitions.
• Jax, Kitana, Green Lantern and The Joker announced into the rooster.
• Heavy hinting at Aquaman being there.
• Mortal Kombat compilation announced for release on September.
• Comic will be released to tie-in with the game.
• Might be released for the Wii.

Read on for our complete account of the event!

Read more!

A homebrewer going by the name of Fuzzy has made a very crude version of Smash Bros. for the DS as you can see on the video above, called Smash Brothers Rumble. It seems to be a completely new engine of sorts with custom sprites and the likes. Its still at a very early stage as you can see but the project shows promise. Lets see how far he can get before the cease and desist arrives!

Download Smash Bros. Rumble files here.

Thanks grumbr!

So Brawl came out today, but this might not be exciting for all of you. Some of you have already been playing it either imported or from inside contacts in retail stores and whatnot. So its time to ask the distinguished Dark Diamond readership, whats your Brawl story? How have you been getting your Brawl on, if at all. How many neckbeards did you fight off while waiting in line? Share you glory and horro stories in the comments and happy Brawling!

Variety follows up on last year’s news that a new Street Fighter movie was in the works. This time announcing that Andrzej Bartkowiak is going to direct the film. This are bittersweet news, on the one hand Andrzej directed Romeo Must Die, which had sweet fighting scenes, on the other hand he directed DOOM, which… you know, sucked hard.

Personally, I’m happy the film wont have Van Damme but helplessly sad that it also wont have the best Bison ever, Raul Julia.

If the Hollywood-Gamer relationship could be explained in a sexual analogy Hollywood would be a dominatrix with a strap-on and we gamers would be the willing salaryman gratefully taking it up the ass. Why do I say this? Because a new Street Fighter movie is being made, no Van-Damme this time, thankfully. Hyde Park Entertainment and Capcom Ltd. will be bringing the franchise out for another silver screen run but this time Chun Li will be the flick’s main character.

There has been no info regarding the plot, perhaps it will explain how Chun Li’s legs came to be the deformed trunks of muscle-mass they are today. The film will come out in 2008 to match the 20th aniversary of Street Fighter.

And what does all this have to do with us taking it in the ass? Because as much as we like to bitch about video game movies sucking, in the end we gladly pay up and go see it. Expect to see me there first in line for the premiere.

[Variety]