Capcom released and already extended the beta of Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (abbreviated SFIITHDR) for the Xbox 360 a while ago. Now, they released a patch for the current beta. This patch didn't only fix broken gameplay elements (you could do more than 3 dragon punches in a row with Ken), but it also introduced a new netcode that improves the overall online experience in laggy situations immensely.

Despite what many players thought, that the beta wasn't only there for testing and balancing the netcode, new gameplay changes were also introduced with the patch. The game speed, for example, being much too fast in the first beta build of SFIITHDR was an issue that got solved with the beta patch. Thus, thanks to the patching, the game speed of the current beta build matches the one of the original arcade version now (= US Turbo 2 which is the same as Japanese Turbo 3). I think we can go safe if we say that this isn't subject to change in the final version either.

David Sirlin, Street Fighter veteran and game designer, is in charge of the game balance for HD Remix. Renowned for his expertise in balancing and designing competitive games, and - in the Street Fighter scene - for his infamous stoic play style, we are certain that David Sirlin will do a fabulous job with Capcom's HD resurrection of Street Fighter 2 Turbo.

The full list of changes for the beta patch:

1. Crash while joining games has been fixed.
2. Headsets no longer transmit constantly. (Please note: on some Arcade Sticks, the connection to your headset can be a little wonky, so if you're hearing static, check your connections!)
3. Ken's strong Shoryuken no longer juggles.
4. Ken’s fierce Shoryuken now only juggles for a maximum of 3 hits.
5. Ken’s roundhouse Hurricane Kick now leaves him slightly farther away from the opponent on hit.
6. Default round number has changed to 5 for Ranked and Tournament matches.
7. Win/Loss data now shows up in Player Matches.
8. Game Speed has been fixed to match the original arcade game.
9. Game no longer crashes when trying to select Akuma by the old code.
10. Super Finishes now display correctly in 4:3 mode.
11. Game no longer crashes when signing out during a Tournament.
12. New netcode to reduce lag generate by packet loss.
13. New rewind code that mitigates latency by smoothing out what people see on screen.

Time to go for some more dragon punches on Xbox Live, ain't we? Too bad, though, that Capcom wasn't able to get the gamers some more characters to play with in the HD Remix beta . Though they'd have loved to do that, according to Capcom, but it simply wasn't technically possible to integrate any further characters into the beta build on Xbox Live.