Behind-the-Scenes: Rebalancing Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (Part 12, Guile)

May 1st, 2008 Seth Killian

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.

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Behind-the-Scenes: Rebalancing Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (Part 11, T. Hawk Revisited!)

April 21st, 2008 Seth Killian

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…

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Behind-the-Scenes: Rebalancing Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (The Story So Far / Updates on Character Changes)

April 11th, 2008 Seth Killian

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!)

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Behind-the-Scenes: Rebalancing Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (part 9, Fei Long)

April 4th, 2008 Seth Killian

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.

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Behind-the-Scenes: Rebalancing Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (part 8, Sagat)

March 20th, 2008 Seth Killian

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.

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Secret Camera Photos Aren’t Just For Shady Paysites Anymore

March 14th, 2008 Kraig Kujawa

It’s funny. I was reading my not-so-secret daily addiction, Kotaku, Wednesday morning when I found a “phone camera” shot of a community focus test for Plunder that myself, along with Max Hoberman and David Bowman(from dev-friends Certain Affinity) were running less than 24 hours ago. (That’s actually David pointing in the shot, probably using his low-key teacher voice to ‘suggest’ ways to crush the other team.) Now, I’m used to ‘crazy secret phone camera’ shots when they’re in Car and Driver or sites that you want to clear your web browser history after visiting. But focus groups?

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Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix: State of the Union

March 12th, 2008 Seth Killian

Here’s the straight story on the glorious highs, devastating lows, and delicious middles behind making Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, from the game’s producer, Rey Jimenez:


Long time, no see Street Fighter fans. Sorry for not writing in a few months, but hopefully David Sirlin’s articles have been keeping you in the loop on HD Remix news. The reason I haven’t posted in a while is that there has been a lot of changes in HD Remix and we really had to focus on what was going on with the game. But now, I think it’s time I give you guys the run down on what’s been going on the past few months.

First of all, creating HD Remix has turned out to be a much more difficult task than we could’ve anticipated. There have been many recent challenges ranging from developing rock-solid netcode from the ground up to creating super-polished art for that truly lives up to the name Street Fighter. If we had gone the “good enough” route, you probably would be playing the game right now, but that wasn’t the route we wanted to take here at Capcom.

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Behind-the-Scenes: Rebalancing Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (part 7, Balrog)

March 7th, 2008 Seth Killian

This is part seven 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 6 articles can be found here. This week’s article focuses Balrog “What’s a kick?” the Boxer.

With Balrog near the top of the original Super Turbo characters, remixing him was more about putting a collar on some of his most brutal tricks while still keeping him competitive, fun, and, well… like Balrog!

Balrog

Balrog is generally considered to be tied for the best character in Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo (ST). Pretty much everyone ranks Balrog and Dhalsim as top, with some Americans adding in Old Sagat, some Japanese adding in Vega, and a few people claiming Chun Li. But there’s not much debate about Balrog (or Dhalsim) being top.
The knee-jerk reaction is to nerf, nerf, nerf (that’s internet-speak for “reducing the power level” of something). I said in my first article that we would leave the top characters top, so it’s been quite a test of willpower to follow my own advice and avoid bringing down the hammer on Balrog.

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Epic Blog Post: Matsukawa-san’s Final Ace Attorney Dev Blog!

March 5th, 2008 Seth Killian

Matsukawa-san’s blog is back for the fourth and final entry of the Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney series. Matsukawa-san is so full of juicy Ace Attorney info that her developer blog posts are truly epic treatises that would make Proust blush. “The Birth of Apollo Justice” breaks down how the new guy got his name, the story behind each of the new cases, and ends with a very special announcement.

Check out all of her blog entries (her most recent entry is at the top) by heading over to the flash-tastic Ace Attorney site and clicking on the “Dev Blog” tab. Do it now!





State of Capcom’s Digital Union

March 3rd, 2008 Seth Killian


download arrow art

From Capcom’s Christian Svensson, Vice President of Strategic Planning & Business Development:

In the grand scheme of things, my hopes for Capcom’s “digital initiative” are still just getting started. There’s been a few fits and starts. Admittedly, some games are a bit later than we’d hoped (held back in the name of quality and feature improvement) but we’ve learned a ton about the space and we continue to learn more with every release. By and large, I’m really pleased with how we’re positioning ourselves, the quality of the content in our pipeline and our level of sales success to date. My fingers are crossed that it continues and thank you guys for your continued support. All of that said, I thought I’d call attention to a few major milestones that Capcom and our development partners have worked very hard to achieve (these guys really deserve a pat on the back):

–Highest Revenue Generating XBLA Title (still) - Street Fighter 2 Hyper Fighting

–First Cross-platform Simultaneous Digital Launch from Any Publisher (PSN/XBLA) - Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix

–First Third Party Published Game Content on the PSP PC Store – Harvey Birdman Demo

–First Third Party Published Content on the European PSN Store – SCEE tells us it will be Rocketmen

–First PS3 Title to Handle In-game Purchase/Conversion From Within a Demo - Rocketmen

–First Cross-platform Global Simultaneous Launch Maybe* (PSN/XBLA – Europe/NA/Asia) – Rocketmen

*We’re still trying to get a final date out of SCEE but Rocketmen was approved last week so we’re hoping it’ll go live with US and Asia on March 6th, failing that, I’m betting it’ll be the 13th.

While some of the above milestones have nominal impact to your experience as a consumer, the development and industry folks among you, I’m sure can recognize the importance and challenges inherent in reaching some of those achievements.

In a couple short weeks, you’re going to learn a good deal more about some new titles as well as updates on some of the titles you’ve been eagerly awaiting.

I honestly believe that Capcom is treating this space more seriously than any other third party publisher. The level of ambition in our titles as far as feature sets, target platforms and quality of execution (both from a product development and marketing standpoint) will continue to climb. You will see us giving ever increasing value to our fans as we move further and further out into our digital product roadmap.

I hope you’ll join us. :)

If you want to discuss our digital titles with Capcom folks and other fans, please participate in the Capcom Digital Downloads forum.