Ultra Street Fighter 4 Patch 1.04 Adds Omega Mode

Capcom will be rolling out Patch 1.04 for Ultra Street Fighter 4 on PS3, Xbox 360 and PC. The update makes several changes to the game and introduce a brand-new game mode called Omega.

Omega Mode gives every Ultra Street Fighter 4 character a new set of attacks. Some of these abilities have never been seen before. Others, like Ken’s Shinppu Jinrai Kyaku and Sagat’s Tiger Raid, are popular moves returning from older games. Omega Mode will be playable online, though not in serious competition. They emphasized fun over balance in designing the mode.

"Omega mode will be restricted to unranked matches only," Capcom says on their Unity blog. "Additionally all official Capcom tournaments and Capcom Pro Tour affiliate tournaments will use the default Ultra balance, not Omega mode, as the tournament standard."

The latest trailer from Capcom shows off a few minutes from this mode:

Patch 1.04 will shake up the normal balance as well. Decapre and Rolento's recent changes are being rolled back. Cody's Light Ruffian Kick will be able to knock down airborne opponents again. The full list of balance changes will be announced at a later date.

Training dummies, meanwhile, have a new trick: delayed wakeup. Delayed wakeup is a recently added mechanic that lets players wait on standing after a hard knockdown. This obviously takes some getting used to. Thanks to this patch, players can test out their moves against dummies with or without this delay.

PC gamers are also getting some needed improvements for online play.

"For example, we noticed that when players were in the middle of matches, they were still getting pinged by those outside of the match, thereby creating slowdown. We’ve fixed it so that this will be no longer the case. Additionally, a few other connection fixes are going in as well, all of which should reduce the connectivity issues experienced by players."

Ultra Street Fighter 4 debuted on Xbox 360 and PS3 in June before hitting the PC in August. USF4 adds five characters to the cast while also revising the existing cast. A new feature called "Edition Select" lets you switch to different versions of the character from previous SF4 editions.