I take it you mean Street Fighter V...

Indeed street fighter 4 champion edition came out after ultra street fighter 4 in 2017 I think. Least that's what I thought I heard from top hat gaming man. Have not played beyond super street fighter 4 myself, but I have played sf5 and it has a very cool arcade mode.

Champion Edition was before Ultra, if I remember right... in either case, I play much more SF V now than SFIV, so if people want to play, that'd be the game to find me in.

In 1987, the very first street fighter was released, revolutionizing 1 on 1 fighters as we know them. In 1991, street fighter 2 was released, adding the ability to choose between 8 characters, with 4 unselevtable boss characters. Next came street fighter 2 champion edition, which made balance tweaks, gave some characters new moves and making the 4 boss characters playable. Next came street fighter 2 turbo which further refined the engine and speed up the action significantly. In 1994, super street fighter 2 was released on the cps2, adding another 4 characters bringing the player count to 16. This is the first street fighter game to have stereo sound. It also was the first capcom game, possibly the first fighting game to have a combo counter. Next came super street fighter 2 turbo, which introduced akuma as a secret boss character, made more refinements to combat, and added a super meter. This is the game that is still played in tournaments to this day, known among competitive players as super turbo. And from here, the games branch out but to keep things on track, I will follow the street fighter 2 branch. In 2001, super street fighter 2 turbo revival was released for the gameboy advance, with quite a few play modes, and shin akuma as an unlockable character alongside the regular akuma. A few years later, super street fighter 2 turbo hd remix was released onto xbox live arcade,, with completely redone graphics, audio and online play. Years later, ultra street fighter 2 was released for the switch, and now evil ryu and violent ken are playable characters, and that is where this branch ends.

Shortly after the release of super street fighter 2 turbo, capcom released street fighter alpha on both the cps1 and cps2. Canonically, this game takes place somewhere between street fighter 1 and 2. The game has a mix of old and new characters, even characters that were in street fighter 1 but unplayable at the time. This is the game that divided your super meter into 3 sections for the first time, enabling you to use 1 section for a super, or the whole bar for an even more powerful super. Next came street fighter alpha 2, which added some more characters and gave the ability to perform custom combos at the cost of a section of super meter. Later on, street fighter alpha 2 gold was released for the sega satern, further refining the alpha engine, upgrading the soundtrack, and adding cammie as a playable character. It's worth mentioning that up to this point, the street fighter alpha soundtrack comprised of heavily remixed or altered themes for characters that have existed before in both street fighter and final fight universe. O yeah, final fight was originally going to be the sequel to the first street fighter, but it felt too different, hence the name change, but the 2 series share the same universe and characters often make appearances in each other's games.

Back on the alpha branch, street fighter alpha 3 came soon after alpha 2, adding tons more characters, replacing the entire soundtrack to a completely original one, and giving players 3 fighting styles to choose from, called isms. The aism style uses the super meter as it was introduced in the original street fighter alpha. The vism style only allows you to use your super meter for custom combos. Lastly, the xism style reduces your defense, increases your attack, and gives you a super meter as it was introduced in super street fighter 2 turbo, and restricting you to 1 special, rather than the several that you were given per character starting in the first alpha game. Soon after, street fighter alpha 3 upper was introduced into the arcades, which added 4 characters from super street fighter 2, which until this point were missing. At last, all of the characters from super street fighter 2 were available in alpha 3, bringing the total character count up to 33. The final game in the alpha series is street fighter alpha 3 max for the psp, which added 4 more characters from both the street fighter 3 and final fight games. It also added a ton of new modes on top of the alpha 3 released on playstation and Saturn. A particularly special mode allows you to have 2 on 2 tag matches, similarly to what is found in the original marvel vs capcom game.

Here are a few bonus bits about the alpha series before I move on with the series in general. In Japan, the street fighter alpha games are referred to as street fighter zero. One notable thing about the game's fighting engine is the ability to turn your block into a counter attack at the cost of your super meter section. You also have the ability to roll and land on your feet if an attack causes you to be airborne. Lastly, what makes all of the alpha games special is that they are among the only purely street fighter games to let you fight with more than 2 characters on screen at once, so you and a human or computer player can go against a series of opponents, or you can go up against a series of 2 computer controlled opponents. Of all of the street fighter games, the alpha series is my favorite, and the ones with which I am the most familiar. Everything beyond this point I am not as familiar with, but will summarize as best I can.

Some time in the mid 90s, capcom outsourced the street fighter brand to a company called arika. They are responsible for the street fighter ex games, which featured 3d graphics, and characters original to the ex series. The games they released in order are, street fighter ex, ex plus, ex plus alpha, ex 2, ex 2 plus, and ex 3, each game adding more characters, modes, and combat refinements.

In 1996, capcom released street fighter 3 onto the cps3 arcade engine, which was so far ahead of it's time that it would be 3 years before capcom could port the game onto consoles powerful enough to handle it. Street fighter 3 introduced a parry system, and let you spend a portion of your meter to perform a more power version of your special attack. The game took place years into the future and didnt have many familiar characters, so fans were slow to warm up to the game. Like with the others, capcom released updates to the game, adding to the roster and refining the fighting engine, first with sf3 second impact, then sf3 third strike. Third strike was so far ahead of it's time that it took fans nearly 10 years to fully appreciate its intricacies. This game was partially responsible for the revival of street fighters in the late 2000s, along with the port of super turbo on xbox live arcade. To this day, third strike is still played competitively.

With the street fighter revival came street fighter 4 in 2008, which is the subject of this thread. Canonically, this game takes place between street fighter 2 and 3. The story is the same with this game, with the updates being super street fighter 4, street fighter 4 arcade edition, street fighter 4 championship edition, and ultra street fighter 4.

In 2016, capcom released street fighter 5. This is the first game that would operate on a live service. Canonically, this game takes place between street fighter 4 and street fighter 3. The original street fighter 5 had so few characters and modes that it left fans crying out for more. I mean the game didnt even have an arcade mode, only shipping with a lackluster episodic story mode with a few fights per character, and a survival mode as single player content. If you want a proof that content is king, look no further than the poor sales of street fighter 5. It was so bad that capcom offered up an arcade and story mode for free in an update to anyone who had the original game when they updated sf5 to arcade edition. Recently, sf5 championship edition was released, containing 4 years worth of additional content, making this a far better game than it originally was. And that concludes the long and confusing narrative of street fighter releases. Clearly, the iphone ain't got nothing on this.

@8, good recap... don't want to know how long it took you to write that. lmao

If you have the base version of street fighter 5, you can buy champion edition at a discount.

I also have the anniversary collection, but for the xbox. That is the game that includes hyper sf2 and third strike. It also included street fighter 2 the animated movie, not that bad live action one. That that was a pretty neat bonus as well. I just wish that 30th anniversary collection included a couple more games like sfa3 upper and sfa3 gold, or at least kept the definitive versions of the alpha games over the older ones if there had to be only 12, but it's ok for what it does.

Holy crap! Thanks for the help guys. So which one should I start with? Keeping in mind I'm *completely* new to SF and fighting in general.

@8 thank you for the full game history, now I’m going to YouTube for the full game play. What platforms can I use for all of the Street Fighter series?

But, but, but. Why does the audio always crackle and stutter? Why is there slight input lag when fighting? Why does OCR not work at all? What am I doing? What do I press? I shouldn't be button mashing, should I?
All questions from a complete noob.

@assault
Lol, you're always up-to-date about Japan, aren't you? (And I know that you're doing so by constantly talking with some of our real common friends)
Well, I've tried LINE once. I ended up with keeping mistyping using the onscreen keyboard and setting my online player name to something very random and sily. IIRC, my Pokemon display name when online matching is "つくもいふ" or something, which never makes sense and does sound funny. But it might be worth retrying since I heard that PS4 could handle USB keyboards.
Anyway, seems like no one has experienced this particular issue I posted. Probably I'll keep the license only and try again when I buy a new gaming PC although it's unlikely in a near future.
Edit: Wow, USB keyboard works like a charm! Now downloading games...

@KenshiraTheTrinity, Oh, yeah. Might have helped to know I'm trying out SF30thAC, for PC .

my psn is yn_cat. I'm completely new, so I still don't know much about psn and how the online matching works though.
I just asked my family to send my SFV and SCVI discs (I was playing them using my father's PS4, but I came back to Tokyo and bought my own one). I'm looking forward to playing.