Aaaaaaaaaaaand we’re back.

This is part five 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 first article went into some details about the design philosophy behind some of the changes, with subsequent articles on Ryu, T. Hawk, and Ken. This week brings us Brazilian baller Blanka, who I can tell you (after playing him for a few hours) has definitely gotten a lot more, um… beastly.

Blanka

Blanka is considered bottom tier in ST, but even in that game he has a lot of potential and a lot of things going for him. The throw range on his bite is enormous. His crossup (jumping short) is excellent and easy. After the crossup, you can go for a combo, a bite, a blocked hit into a bite, another crossup, or a blocked hit into another crossup. Also, Blanka’s roll attack does really good damage. HD Remix Blanka retains all those good features, and gets some boosts.

Horizontal Rolling Attack
In ST, most characters can hit back Blanka’s roll after blocking or even being hit by it. In HD Remix, it recovers faster, but it’s still not completely safe. Dhalsim and Balrog are still able to hit it back easily (with standing fierce and jab rushing punch, respectively).

Bison can still hit it back with a well-timed Psycho Crusher. But Honda no longer gets a free hit after the roll, and Ryu no longer gets a free red fireball. Blanka actually lands fast enough from his roll to jump over a fireball if Ryu throws one right away. That’s quite an upgrade from getting hit back and knocked down every time.

Diagonal Rolling Attack
The so-called Beast Roll or Rainbow Roll was not at all useful in ST. It has long startup time as Blanka jumps back before rolling and it has long recovery, allowing almost every character to hit Blanka back, even if he hits with this move. In HD Remix, the initial hop back part is greatly sped up, and the recovery is drastically improved. Blanka actually recovers before the enemy if they block this move, allowing him to keep up his pressure. At mid screen, it’s now a realistic way to go over fireballs, but the hop back part of the move still leaves Blanka vulnerable to a solid fireball trap.

Hop
The hop is a pretty good move, allowing Blanka to move around quickly and hop into position to throw. The old command is press all three kicks while holding either away or toward on the joystick. This motion still works, but now you can use either jab+short, strong+forward, or fierce+roundhouse instead of three kicks, if you like. This is a great benefit to players who use a gamepad, but even I prefer the jab+short command on a joystick. I find it easier to hit those two buttons quickly than any other two because my thumb and index finger rest on these buttons. If your mileage varies, you can always use the original command, though.

The hop back has the same invulnerability from the ST, but it generates much less super meter now. The hop forward has an additional nine frames of foot invulnerability which theoretically allows him to hop over sweeps somewhat, but in practice this has not proven all that effective so far.

Vertical Ball
The vertical ball is unchanged, but I just want to point out that it’s one of the only moves in the game that can hit on the very first frame. This makes it incredibly good air defense and it’s impossible to “safe jump” against Blanka because of this (see the video tutorials on Capcom Classics Collection 2). The move is also vulnerable on the first frame which means Blanka often trades, but the trade usually does damage in his favor and leaves the enemy knocked down, allowing Blanka to go for his tricky crossup short.

Note that we did fix a bug with this move. In ST, moves that can hit on the first frame have an unintended property that if the opponent tries to block them on the very first frame, there is a 50% chance the move will hit anyway. These 1-frame semi-unblockables are fixed in HD Remix (but left unfixed in HD Classic Arcade).

Electricity
The properties of this move are unchanged, but fewer mashes on the punch buttons are required to activate electricity.

Super
Blanka’s super is one of the worst in the game in ST, so it’s improved in HD Remix. The startup is faster and the recovery is faster so it doesn’t get hit back all the time on block like it did before. You can actually use it just for the sake of getting close and going for crossups, if you like. If the move hits, it will now always knock down.

Blanka’s rolling attacks are the main upgrades here, allowing him to roll more safely against some of his biggest enemies, such as Ryu, Sagat, and Honda. His Diagonal Roll gives him a new pressure option that also doubles as a way around fireballs. That said, fireball characters can still keep Blanka in check (back away and sweep the Diagonal Roll as it ends or just Dragon Punch it), but the matches should be a lot closer.

–Sirlin

Here’s a brief bio on our guest blogger:

David Sirlin has competed in Street Fighter tournaments for 16 years, and for 11 years he has helped organize and run the tournament series that started as B3 and has now become the international Evolution Championships. He represented the United States in SSF2T in Japan’s Super Battle Opera tournament, wrote the competitive gaming book Playing to Win, and provided narration for Bang the Machine, a documentary film about the Street Fighter community. He’s now overseeing the design and gameplay on Super Street Fighter 2: HD Remix.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 11th, 2008 at 6:22 pm and is filed under Behind-the-scenes, Feature, Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. 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.