The revelation that Capcom is remastering Super Street Fighter II Turbo in high definition for release on Microsoft's Xbox Live and the Sony PlayStation 3 store stirred up a lot of fanboy joy, so I expect that now that the first image of Ryu in HD has been leaked the frenzy shall truly begin.  Retrogaming with Racketboy analyzes what little we've seen so far and speculates on the future of remastering classics games for HD.

When I laid my eyes on this new sprite, I really had to do a double take to make sure that I was reading it correctly. But indeed, the new character sprites for SSF2T HD are so big and detailed, they don’t look like sprites at all. It looks like one of my remake dreams that I thought would never come true is actually becoming a reality.

As good as this single sprite looks, the true test will be seeing it in action. The number of frames in the character animation can make a huge difference. If they could exceed the animation in Street Fighter 3, I suppose that would be excellent.

A co-worker of mine suggested that all 2D games should be gussied up for the HD future, and while I love what I've seen of Street Fighter's HD future, I can't imagine developers taking the time and resources to remaster too many classic games.  As much as I'd love to see Mega Man or Castlevania take this route, I just don't see it happening.  If I'm wrong about that, however, expect me to be the first in line to blast Elec Man to bits in all his high definition glory.