‘Street Fighter’ is a mainstay in the realm of video games and has collected a nice following of fans since the game first debuted in 1987. While the brand has had some success in manga and animated movies, the franchise hasn’t exactly gotten it’s fair shake in the live action movie realm yet. Fans were given the so-bad-it’s-good ‘Street Fighter’ starring Jean-Claude Van Damme in 1994, and then the just flat out bad ‘Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li’ in 2009. Now, it appears that Capcom will return to the small screen that made them famous, except this time, you don’t need a video game console to see it.

According to IGN, at the ‘25th Anniversary of Street Fighter’ panel at Comic-Con yesterday, Joey Ansah and Christian Howard, the men behind the fan film ‘Street Fighter: Legacy’, appeared in a video to announce that they have teamed with Capcom to produce a live action series based on the insanely popular game. Titled ‘Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist’, the series will follow iconic characters Ken and Ryu as they “live a traditional warrior’s life in secluded Japan” to learn the ancient fighting style known as “Ansatsuken” or “Assassin’s Fist”. They’ll also discover more about their mysterious master, Gouken, and the “tragic and dark legacy” of the style they’re learning.

Knowing that fans have been disappointed by live action adaptations before, Howard, who also played Ken in ‘Legacy’ and is co-writing ‘Assassin’s Fist’, had this to say about the upcoming series:

“Our priority is to stay true to the appearance, fighting techniques and canon of the Street Fighter game. At the same time we’ve managed to make this an emotion and character driven story, which will surprise viewers who might just be expecting a super faithful fight fest.”

You can see the full announcement video from Ansah and Howard below:

When ‘Street Fighter: Legacy’ first hit the web a few years ago, I was super excited because I’m a fan of the game and I was looking forward to seeing a faithful adaptation, even if it was a short film. Despite being let down when all I got was a fight scene, ‘Legacy’ was pretty good and it has since become “one of the most successful YouTube movies of all time in the film & animation category, with over 8 million views”. It proved that the filmmakers can stay true to the characters while they’re fighting, but the challenge will come when we need to know more about the characters than just their fighting style. We’ll see if they’re up to the task when ‘Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist’ is released in 2013.