Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition for arcades is being released soon in December, and the new game comes with some major changes.

Famitsu, a popular gaming magazine over in Japan, had an interview with pro gamer, and Street Fighter legend, Daigo “The Beast” Umehara about his impressions with the new Arcade Edition of Super Street Fighter IV. With that interview comes a new revelation; Daigo plans to switch his main character, deciding to switch from his long and often used main, Ryu, to the recent addition character Yun. This move is coming after a major change to the game, since  many players complained that the projectile attacks in vanilla Super Street Fighter IV (and Street Fighter IV) were easily spammed and exploited to gain player advantage.

When Daigo was asked for his first impressions of the new game, his response was:

“Impressions… Basically that it’s over for projectile characters (laughs). All the non-projectile characters have gotten buffed, whereas I think Deejay is the only projectile character that has really gotten buffed. Sagat has gotten better, but Ryu, Akuma, Guile, Dhalsim, and I suppose Chun, they’ve all gotten nerfed. And grapplers have also gotten buffed. Projectile characters were strongest in Vanilla, but it’s the other way around now in AE. But I plan to use Yun so it’s not a big deal for me. I guess that’s my impression of AE.”

As for Ryu, Daigo plans on using him for his second, as well as continuing on using Guile for the console version of Super Street Fighter IV, even though Guile had some of his more popular attacks nerfed. Though with new fighting games, players still have to tweak character choices to best match their unique styles of play, so saying Daigo will permanently stick to Yun as his main is still a bit too early at this point.

And as a special bonus, Daigo also talks about his experience with the pro tournament he had attended in Kuwait (a story that was posted here a while ago):

“It was like I was part of the main event, so my face was printed on the ticket and everything (laughs). I was playing the entire time…I think there was maybe a total of 100 people there. And considering that it’s a country of only 3 million people, that seems like a pretty big turnout. Ah, and there were also people from Dubai, too…There was a fair share of beginners, but people were a lot better than I expected. There were some really good Guy, Gouken, and E. Honda players. I shouldn’t be careless in what I say, but I think they were the best Guy and Gouken players I’ve played so far.”

Original article (in Japanese) [via Famitsu]

Translation [via Shoryuken member "Eoneo", Part 1 and Part 2]