Fantasy Strike wants to change how you think about fighting games

When you talk about fighting game theory, it's impossible not to mention David Sirlin. Whether you know him as the guy who wrote Playing to Win, the defacto guidebook to improving as a fighting game player, or as the guy Capcom called in to re-balance Street Fighter 2 Turbo for the HD re-release in 2008, or as the creator of Yomi, a strategy card game based on fighting games, his impact on the genre can't be denied.

Now, Sirlin wants to make his presence felt again. This time not through essays, or by retouching a masterpiece, but with his own original game, Fantasy Strike. Given Sirlin's enormous street cred in the fighting game community, you might expect any game he'd design would be for the hardest of hardcore crowds.

You'd be wrong. Fantasy Strike is designed to bring the high-level thrills and mind-games of the best of competitive fighting games to the common gamer.