*UPDATED DECEMEBER 5* (At bottom of page)

Game site Insert Coin is reporting that December 6 will mark the start of the open beta period for NeoWiz’s MMO fighting game, Perfect KO.  That’s right, an MMO fighting game.  The game will feature melee battles of up to 6 characters at once in a fully 3D world.  What’s perhaps most exciting is that the Korean developer also revealed that Street Fighter veterans Ken Masters and Chun-Li will be available as playable characters in the game.  In addition, players will be able to customize the two well-known fighters just like any other MMO character, which will no doubt lead to some interesting configurations…

My Ken will be fully prepared for zombie ninja toaster oven Chun-Li

 

NeoWiz has also stated that they will be pursuing other licensed fighting game characters to include in the game.  The fact that they were able to procure the rights to Capcom’s warriors is a major surprise considering Capcom has no other involvement in the project, such as co-developing or publishing.  We will have to wait and see if Perfect KO will be able to offer us a dream matchup like Zangief vs. Liu Kang vs. Jin Kazama vs. Jeffrey McWild vs. Mai Shiranui vs. Lei Fang.

I've got $20 on lag.

A video of the gameplay (sorry, no Ken or Chun-Li) follows: 

 

UPDATE Dec 5, 2007 at 01:52AM

NeoWiz has been nice enough to post images of the in-game character models of Ken and Chun-Li plus a shot of Ken's character select screen on 4gamer.net.  Have a look-see...

 

I'm a huge fan of the Street Fighter series and 2D fighters in general, but I gotta say that these look fantastic and I can't wait to see their movesets in action when this game comes out.  I just hope I don't have to move to Japan to play it.