Street Fighter IV is now available on Apple's App Store; you can pick it up right now for $10 if you'd like to see what Capcom can do with Apple's hardware. Capcom also threw quite the party at GDC, allowing the press and community some hands-on time with the game. After playing for about 15 minutes, the verdict is in: this is about as good as you can expect from a fighting game on the iPhone.

It looks great, but you'll still be fighting the controls

As a tech demo it's amazing. The characters are large and detailed, and they move fluidly with grace. Many people enjoyed simply watching others play the game; this is one of the prettiest portable fighting games out there. The problem is simple: the iPhone doesn't have any actual buttons. Many gamers are snobs about the input for their Street Fighter experience, playing with only arcade-quality parts. Going from my home set-up to virtual buttons on the iPhone screen took a while to get used to.

I was able to pull off the dragon punches and fireballs after a while, but the game never felt good to me. It never felt like a game I could sit down and play for hours. The iPhone just isn't set up for this kind of game, and Street Fighter IV felt like someone trying to prove that it could be done. The question they should have asked was should it be done. A good iPhone game takes advantage of what the hardware can do well and works around what it does poorly. Street Fighter IV is simply a graphical curiosity.

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