This is part twelve 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.
This week’s article discusses America’s supersonic superstar, Colonel Guile. Already armed with the best haircut in fighting games, HD Remix Guile is powering up in a few new ways. Read all about it:
Part 12: Guile
Guile is a solid mid-tier character in Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo (ST), but it takes quite a bit of player-skill for him to fulfill that potential. As a mid-tier character, he’s eligible for a few upgrades, especially in his bad matchups. More than that, he’s eligible for some fun.
Crazy New Flash Kick
Guile’s roundhouse flash kick goes straight up very high in ST, and has no use I’m aware of. I’ve never seen a good US or Japanese Guile player use it in a real match, so it’s a ripe place for some new spice. Instead of traveling straight up, it now travels very far forward and diagonally up just a bit.
So we blew the secret Street Fighter dog-whistle this last weekend. Audible only to tournament champions (and, strangely, possums), the whistle attracted a slew of top Street Fighter players from across the country, with representatives flying in from across the east coast, midwest, west coast, and Texas (which is kind of its own thing) to help us test Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix to its limits.
Everyone was rabid for the game, and in addition to some intense and productive testing sessions, the guys (yes, they were all dudes) also made a stop at Northern California’s premier underground arcade. Names have been omitted to protect those lying to friends and family members about exactly what they were up to this weekend.
This is part eleven 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.
This week we revisit the enigma wrapped inside a mystery that is T. Hawk, the world’s biggest Native American (who is apparently from Mexico). Hawk has spent a lot of time in the rebalancing lab, and Sirlin walks you through the dizzying highs and devastating lows of trying to get him juuuust right.
Part 11: The T.Hawk Chronicles
T.Hawk has been one of the hardest characters to balance (along with Fei Long and Honda). On the one hand, he has an extremely damaging command throw, a great Dragon Punch-type move, and an aerial dive. These moves could conspire to make him terrifying, so I understand why the original SF2 developers were so careful to keep him check. Hit the jump to get the full story…
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!)
This is part nine 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. This week focuses on the character so cliched that he stands out even among a strong field of cliche contenders: Hitenryu kung-fu master Fei Long!
Balancing Fei has been a long and rocky road, so this is a long entry, but it’s also a ton of fun for Fei Long fans and game design nerds alike. Read on!
Part 9: Fei Long
Fei Long is usually considered one of the five worst characters in the original Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, but he’s still pretty deadly if he can get close to the opponent and get his offense going. The trouble is, it’s very hard for him to ever get close enough to most characters to get it going. Also, his Flying Kicks move (aka Dragon Kicks, aka “Chicken Wing”) is just too hard for most players (including myself) to physically execute. Unlike the other Tiger Knee-like moves, the Flying Kicks required you to start with *back* on the stick, then go down/back, down, down/forward, forward, up/forward + kick.
A dramatic battle of corporate strategy could be developing over at the MTV Multiplayer blog.
Or not? Read up for the full story, but it seems Jeff Karp, EA’s head of North American publishing, has some different ideas about product longevity than those recently voiced by Capcom’s Christian Svensson in his own recent interview on the Multiplayer blog (which he expanded on here).
Exciting snippets include:
“A good chunk of EA’s business is annualized franchises and expanded content.”
Cue the dramatic music! And this one:
“With Spore, EA already has plans internally to develop new content for at least 10 years.”
Maybe that’s a different strategy, or maybe a 10-year development time requires a 10-year recoupment plan? *Zing*!
Obviously EA are masters of successful franchising, and any way you slice it this is great reading for gamebiz nerds everywhere. Check it out.
A local news team went inside Vancouver’s A.C.R.O.N.Y.M. Studio, who developed Rocketmen: Axis of Evil! You can get a quick look around the studio, see some of their appropriately pasty faces, and get a bit of background on how the studio came to be.
**Warning: this clip is stinky with Canadians. I mean like almost every person in it is a Canadian, and is speaking Canadiese. There are no subtitles.
This is part eight 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. This week focuses on the world’s tallest Thai, the kickboxer Sagat.
Sagat
Sagat—well actually “Old Sagat”—is one of the best characters in ST. He’s even soft-banned in Japan, meaning there’s a tacit agreement not to play him, even though you are technically allowed. He might not be as strong of a character as Balrog or Dhalsim overall, but the problem is that there are several matches where he just dominates. His Tiger Shots (fireballs) are so powerful that many characters spend the entire game trying to get around them. I think everyone knows that this nerf is coming.
Last Friday, immediately after the weekly Play Against Capcom session, Capcom played with itself. Divided along the ancient tribal lines of Marketing and Product Development, the groups decided to settle their differences with a few rounds of Street Fighter IV.
The battle pitted the Marketing department’s “Pants-on-Fire-Liars” vs Product Development’s “Paying More than 10$ for a Haircut is for Suckers” squad. It was exactly like West Side Story if they worked office jobs and could not dance even a little bit.
In case you’ve had trouble sleeping, my golden pipes are back to explain the intricacies behind the recent round of Crimson Viper screenshots. The slideshow + audio breaks down her complete repertoire of special attacks and a few of the cheap things you can do with them.
Ipod-friendly version of this video is here, and the special move breakdown for Abel is here.
This is part twelve 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.
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