This is part ten in an extended series of articles from David Sirlin, detailing the changes we’ve made to the rebalanced mode of the new Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix project. The previous articles can be found here.

Much time has passed since these articles were first written, but tweaking of the game has continued non-stop, even for the characters whose changes have already been revealed. As a result, in honor of the tenth article, this article provides a quick recap of “the changes to the changes!”

Part 10: The Story So Far

A lot of time has passed since I wrote the first parts of this series about the balance changes in Street Fighter: HD Remix (remember, I wrote them many weeks before they were posted). Some things have changed since then, so here are the updates.

Ryu
No change. He still just has the fake fireball, and it’s great. It tricks people like Honda into jumping at the wrong times and Zangief into doing lariat at the wrong times. He can also use it to pressure with stuff like low roundhouse, cancel into fake fireball, walk up throw.

Ken
I have a “watch list” of things that might be too good. (hit the jump to read more!)

Things are usually on this list because I think they might have some use I’m just not aware of yet, so I want to keep an eye how players use them. Ken’s new long-distance roundhouse Hurricane Kick was one of these things. Despite the worries of many players, this move was actually fine in all the usual uses of trying to hit someone who’s kind of far away. The problem is that after Ken’s knee bash mixup, he can threaten to do low medium kick (from either side of you!) into the new roundhouse Hurricane Kick. The Hurricane Kick starts with a hit on the way up that connects versus ducking opponents (unlike Ryu’s). In the SF2 series, if you get hit by a special move, you automatically stand up, so that means the rest of the Hurricane Kick will hit you too. Because the move travels farther and faster now, it’s better able to get all the hits in that situation and very, very often ends up dizzying the opponent. It’s too much reward for something you can do reliably after a knee bash mixup.

Roundhouse version of Hurricane Kick dizzy power is now cut in half.

Also, Ken’s knee bash throw now has just slightly less range. It makes no difference when Ken goes for his something like jump jab into knee bash, but it does give him some reason to attempt other throws when the opponent is at the edge of his throw range.

Balrog
I said that if I woke up one more night in cold sweats over the damage on Balrog’s super, then I’d change it. I did and I did. It now only does about 50% of your life, instead of even more, as it used to. It’s still incredibly good. I sleep better now.

Cammy
No change since the last update. Although one famous Cammy player thinks her Cannon Spike recovery shouldn’t have been made worse, most players are asking why it’s not being nerfed even more than it already is. In her current state, she can Cannon Drill (safe on block), then as long as she did the spacing right, Cannon Spike (also safe on block). It’s very strong. The Cannon Spike is only unsafe when done from close. The jury is still out on whether to keep this, considering the new Cannon Drill gives her a lot of power to apply pressure.

Sagat
No change since last update. He seems about right, and a lot more fun.

Blanka
Since the last update, I made his jab and strong horizontal rolls travel slightly shorter. Also, they now have the same sound effects and rotation (meaning the visual effect) that the fierce roll has. This makes whiffed roll into bite a little better of a tactic.

Some readers have complained that maybe Blanka is too weak, but in practice we have the opposite problem. In the original ST, he was good against Vega, Zangief, T.Hawk, and Cammy. He still is. He used to have big, big trouble vs Ryu and Sagat, but now he can roll without getting hit back by a fireball. Also, Sagat’s arms stick out farther after fireballs (same as ST New Sagat’s arms), so jumping over them and kicking Sagat is more realistic now. Basically, Blanka’s bad matches aren’t as bad anymore and his good matches are still good. His good matches are also more relevant now, because it actually matters if you can beat T.Hawk, Zangief, and Cammy now (they are much more viable characters).

If possible, we will try to make him take more damage than usual if he gets hit out of his horizontal roll (though not as extreme as in SF2: World Warrior). This would be a fair trade for his roll being safer on block. I know it sounds strange to tone Blanka down in any way because you’re used to him being so bad, but consider how few bad matches he has anymore. Blanka’s a new man now.

T.Hawk
Oh, T.Hawk. There’s too much to say here, so I’ll have to write a whole separate article on him. He’s been tough to get right.

–Sirlin

This entry was posted on Friday, April 11th, 2008 at 2:07 pm and is filed under Developer Blog, Behind-the-scenes, Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, Street Fighter®. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.