Behind-the-Scenes: Rebalancing Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (part 6, Cammy)
February 28th, 2008 Seth Killian
This is part six 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 5 articles can be found here. This week’s article focuses on our beret-wearing sexpot, Cammy.
In a nutshell, this revised Cammy finally lets you do everything you always wanted to do–and you may even win a match now and again! The new Cammy is a ton of fun and will hooligan roll her way right into your heart. Read on for the changes:
Cammy
Cammy is considered one of the five worst characters in ST (Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo) along with Zangief, Blanka, Fei Long, and T.Hawk. It’s interesting how much better she is now with so few changes, and even one nerf.
Control Motions
Cammy’s Hooligan Throw motion is one of the most frustrating in the game in ST. Not only does it end in up/forward which results in accidental jumping sometimes, but it also closely overlaps the Spinning Backfist command.
New commands:
Hooligan Throw: quarter circle forward + punch
Spinning Backfist: quarter circle back + punch
Just the ability to do Cammy’s Hooligan Throw reliably makes her easier to win with. It’s a really good move (but not too good because most characters can just jab her out of it). Cancelling low forward into Hooligan Throw is now easy and pretty effective.
Spinning Backfist
Here’s some trivia about the Spinning Backfist. The very first change I made in the entire game was allowing Cammy’s Spinning Backfist to go through fireballs. All three versions can now do this and she even has lower body invulnerability during this, but her head is completely vulnerable the whole time, so you can smack her with high moves if you know she is going to Spinning Backfist. Her regular full body vulnerability returns, of course, by the time she can actually hit you.
The Spinning Backfist now has a much bigger hitbox on the second hit. After several experiments, this was the most effective way to make sure that the move no longer failed to get the built-in two hits. If you hit the opponent with the first hit of this move, it’s now extremely likely that the second hit will also hit and knock down.
Cannon Drill
Her other change is that her Cannon Drills are now much more safe on block. (Trivia: this is the second change I attempted to make in the game, only weeks later did I finally figure out how to do this one.) In ST, Cannon Drills could be safe on block only from a very particular distance. Now there is much more leeway so with a little knowledge of ranges and which strength to use, you can make this move safe on block every time. Note that as before, it’s very vulnerable at the top so jumping straight up and attacking as you come down is a counter.
The safe Cannon Drill opens up a new world to Cammy. She can now keep the pressure up and do block damage. If the opponent is a little scared, she can mix in a Hooligan Throw and if the opponent is antsy to attack, she can mix in a Cannon Spike (similar to a Dragon Punch.)
Safe Attack into Safe Attack
Cammy stayed in the state I described above for a long time. There has been no question that she’s good, it’s just been a question of whether she’s second tier or has creeped into the top. After playing her quite a bit, two things started to bother me, and they both had the same solution. One is that she’s just incredibly good against Zangief and T.Hawk. She can Cannon Spike anytime she’s within range and force them to block or get hit by her invulnerable move, then she’s completely safe afterwards. It’s abusive, and she doesn’t even need that against them considering her low forward alone is very good against them.
The other problem is that she started to feel a lot like ST Balrog in that she can keep up the pressure (in her case with safe-on-block Cannon Drills), then do a safe-on-block, invulnerable Cannon Spike at any time. That is the exact same sequence that was deemed “too good” for Balrog, but now she had it. I felt uncomfortable with this, so now the Cannon Spike is not completely safe on block. It still bounces her back, but if she does it from too close, T.Hawk is able to counter with an immediate stand roundhouse and Zangief is able to counter with low roundhouse. She can still currently get away with a safe Cannon Spike when she does it from a bit farther though, so we’ll have to keep an eye on this.
The invulnerable, always-safe-on-block Cannon Spike was nice with Cammy, but she’s a more versatile, fair character having a safe-on-block Cannon Drill instead. I think it’s a fair trade, and she’s *still* a strong character. (In the current version, it’s not even much of a trade since Cannon Spike is still safe from most distances.) Cammy can now go toe-to-toe in previously very difficult matches against Ken, Ryu, and Sagat (Spinning Backfist!) and her easier Hooligan Throw and safe Cannon Drill allow her to pressure and deal good block damage to the non-fireball characters, too.
–Sirlin
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Cammy already destroys Zangief & T.hawk just by forwards & low sweeps. you don’t even need to use her specials!
I notice you say Cannon Spike and Cannon Drill. Did the voices get blended between the JP and US versions? I always thought Thrust Keek was kinda stupid. Same for Slash vs. Max Out.
These changes aren’t something that I as a Cammy player is especially happy to see because from the way I see it it doesn’t make her a bit better at all.
Take the spinning backfist to begin with, in ST the lp spinning backfist goes through fireballs. The move doesn’t really have that much of a use except to escape chip damage and also to punish people that use fireballs/ryu’s super up close and maybe use it to chip 2 pixels on wakeup to finish someone off if they don’t have good reversals. The backfist however is completley useless during a fireball lockdown, changing the range on it wouldn’t change this fact either because Ryu recovers faster than she can hit him and will always punish her with a sweep, changing it to lower invul only changes the move Ryu will use to punish her.
The cannon drill change doesn’t change much either since if you can allready use her cannon drills to poke with and keep them safe then we still have the same situation. The only thing I could see chaning really is that it gives her cr.forward more damage since you -might- be able to poke with it into cannon drill and it will be safe. All in all this doesn’t help Cammy much as her big weakness is against fireballs, and Cannon Drill only goes under Sagat’s high tiger shot (she can hit him from fullscreen with the rh version if he does it).
Cammy’s strength right now is her footsies, if she gets close to you she can outpoke you with cr.forward and cr.strong, she also has normals with good range to punish whiffed moves, like her firce which combo’s into cannon drill.
Her other strength is her corner game pressure which consists of getting a knockdown from either a SRK, hooligan jump, tick throw or a ranged lk cannon drill (which becomes safe from a blockstring setup).
She uses blockstrings and cancels into these moves in a way so that her opponent won’t read what her next move will be, she has really good blockstring’s to with her j.lk, she’s also a fast walker so she can easily bait reversal attempt on wakeup.
She’s pretty beastly in the corner against most characters if the player knows what he’s doing.
However, making her srk unsafe pretty much removes it from the formula since there’s no way you’re going to let yourself get knocked down and lose that pressure situation you had to work for to get, so it’s only tick throw, hooligan or cannon drill (still from that certain range) so the corner game becomes worse.
Removing the safety from her SRK just gives her even less options on forcing a situation on someone.
Cammy is a good character as long as she is within range, but as soon as fireballs come into play she struggles. Changing her backfist might seem like the most logical thing, but I don’t see it changing anything at all. What I would like to see is either make her hooligan jump cancelable early on so that it only becomes a very short jump that goes abover fireballs.
The move is allready cancelable but it goes through with the entire animation first, and even if you cancel it you can’t do SRK from that because the recovery is too long and they will hit you.
Or, you could give her a lk cannon drill that goes through fireballs to get out of fireball traps, her biggest weakness.
What changes to be made to Cammy to let her become stronger against fireballs without making her too strong are hard to figure out, but I see the fireball invul lk cannon drill as the best option.
Hi Skatan,
All I can say is that in practice, your concerns mostly disappear. The backfist DOES work like it is supposed to–if you correctly predict (or react to, from some distances) a fireball, you will get through it and hit Ryu.
The cannon drill also really does work well. Although it is not invulnerable, you can throw them out and be safe on block, so even if they do try and fireball you, you will often trade and knock them down, as well as doing more damage.
Overall Cammy has become a fun “rush-down” character that basically doesn’t have to work SO hard to get past traps. Fireballs are still an issue for her, she just has some helpful additional tools to reply to them, instead of having “just fireball in her face” work 85% of the time.
best,
Seth
Whee! Very great decisions! It’s truly ultimate that Cammy will finally be able to compete with the best! Yup she really needed a move that lets her pass through fireballs. hopefully the timing is not as strict to pass through fireballs like its tough with Chun Li’s startup Spinning Bird Kick and Balrog’s Turning Punch to get it just right to pass through them, hopefully it has more frames of invunerability against fireballs like H.Honda’s sumo splash.
Is her Cannon Spike gonna be invincible to fireballs just like the other dragon punches? that would help. Wouldn’t want it to get nerfed like Hyper Fighting Sagat’s tiger uppercut.
And AWESOME better inputs for the hooligan and spinning back fist. the up/forward command back then was TOO game breaking and too far beyond anyone’s complete control. the quarter circle commands are definitely doable even on today’s pads and thumbsticks, just like fireballs, so these things will greatly help Cammy in a fair and fun way! ^_^
Thanks for the news and this game will definitely be the ultimate fighting game for many players! ^_^
Hell, yeah with some Cammy! She’s a character I was happy to see develop in the later games (my favorite being Alpha 3). The Hooligan has always been a pain in the ass and that’s the first improvement that makes me smile. The Spinning Knuckle around fireballs is also awesome.
Sirlin I like this one great job this is why we love u man why didn’t the japs think of this a long time ago I always thought Cammy looked cool and like using her but could only perform 2 of her moves CS & CD now u made them all useful thx god & don’t listen 2 Skatan Milla he’s a fool. Fire balls R a problem 4 every character its part of the game but now Cammy has trick 4 them this is great.