Then there are the storylines for the various characters in the game. Some are straightforward. Ken, Ryu, Guile, Chun Li, and Rose are after Shadaloo. M.Bison, Vega, Balrog, and Sagat are working for Shadaloo. Abel’s trying to find out who he is, and Sakura’s looking for Ryu. After that, it gets a little weird. Dhalsim is trying to get water for his village. Okay, not too weird. E.Honda wants to show the world how powerful Sumo is. A bit odder, but not bizarre. Zangief also has something to prove about professional wrestling, primarily to prove himself to a group of kids. At the end, he comes back with Seth’s head as a trophy to show the kids. Just a bit sick.

Then we’ve got Blanka, who left for the tournament out of concern that he was embarrassing his mama. At the end, she finds him in Hong Kong and tells him to come home to Brazil. Not exactly clear how that problem has been solved. And El Fuerte decides to travel the world collecting recipes. He’ll also fight in the tournament, fight the strongest fighters, and figure out what they eat – at the end, there’s a great scene where he disgusts E.Honda and Zangief with his cooking.

Here are some more instances of humor in the game’s various victory lines:

• Ken to Dhalsim: No matter how many times I see it, your limbs really freak me out, man!
• Dhalsim to Rufus: I am no alien!
• Zangief to Akuma: Once you get used to that face, you´re kinda cute. Like a pug. Or like me!
• Rufus to Honda: I hear that you sumo dudes eat nothing but sushi and stew and tofu and stuff like 24 hours a day, man. There´s this sushi place near my house, but there´s all these rumors goin´ around that they serve spoiled fish! One bite, an´ you´ll be on the toilet all day!
• Sakura to Dhalsim: I bet those arms come in handy when you run out of toilet paper in the washroom!
• Rufus to Vega: So, I finally found you, Ken Masters! How does it feel to lose to me, Masters? Are you filled with regret? Rage? How about rue? I bet you´re filled to the brim with rue, ain´t ya? What? You´re not Ken Masters? C´mon, man! It´ll take more than a mask to fool me!

…and my absolute favorite

• Blanka to Gen: You´re old, but you put up a fight. I hate you!

Lastly, I should mention my favorite cutscene in the game, where Rufus and Dhalsim meet up.

Rufus: What the-? Wha- wha- wha- wha-? Are you floating? How you doin’ that? What? ESP? Plasma? Magnets?
Dhalsim: This… is Yoga.
Rufus: What, are you an alien or somethin’? Because I’m not sure if you know this but there are all sorts of aliens, Martians for instance...

Ok, on a more serious note, this joystick rocks. It really has been a painful six months trying to play Street Fighter IV with the standard PS3 controller. I’m not as cool or lucky as Greg with his fancy SlikStick so I’ve been trudging along getting my ass kicked and slopping up a few wins the hard way. Somehow, a deal on the TE FightStick fell in my lap and I jumped at the opportunity. While I’m still getting my ass kicked online, I definitely feel that this finally what it should feel like to play Street Fighter IV.

As I’ve written before, I grew up in the arcades and learned how to play pretty much every genre of game with a joystick. I’ve never gotten completely comfortable tossing hadoukens or dragon punching with a joystick but I’ve been making due since the days of the SNES. I was really just getting by with copious amounts of cursing and blaming the computer for being “cheap”. Now that I can finally pull off the moves properly with this joystick I feel like I can tell you more about this fabulous piece of hardware.

The first thing to know about these joysticks is MadCatz really went all out and built a seriously high quality piece of hardware. The TE stick is built with authentic Sanwa parts (yeah I didn’t know squat about them either but apparently all good arcade cabinets are built with this stuff) and they have such a great feel.  The buttons are snappy and have that great arcade tap, while the joystick is tight, responsive and equally clicky to the touch. Everything feels like you’d expect from an arcade stick and doing all of the usual SF moves is super easy again. Even unboxing this thing is fun, they packaged it in a very reusable window box with magnetic panels that open to reveal the FightStick resting within. Super cool.

My biggest concern before the TE arrived was “Is this thing going to feel like a half ounce slab of plastic that’ll slide off my sweaty lap in the middle of competition?” I was pleasantly surprised by the weight, this thing is easily ten pounds and is big enough to straddle your legs with no slippage. It has some rubber nubs on the bottom if you actually need to place it on a table or something but I’ve only found it comfortable to use from my lap.  There’s even enough room to rest your forearms on the top surface so you don’t blow your wrists out trying to snap off Ultra Combos.

So far I’ve used the joystick with SFIV, Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and ol’ Marvel Super Heroes and it’s performed perfectly. I haven’t had a chance to try it with a 3D fighter but I’m hoping to pick up Soul Calibur IV someday to give this a shot. I’m not sure it’ll be any better than a controller with this type of game, but I paid a pretty decent chunk of cash for this thing and I’m gonna try it with every type of game short of Scrabble. And maybe even that too.

As much as I’d like to convince myself that this is the perfect solution to all my fighting game woes, unfortunately I do have a few (very small) issues with the joystick. The first is that it’s wired. Yes, I’ve been spoiled by this gaming generation’s love of wireless controllers and having to spool out a USB cable and plug it in ends up costing me about 27 seconds of inconvenience. Thankfully the cable is thirteen feet long so I can still sit on the couch across the room and play my games. Next is the inclusion of a turbo button. I’m sure this still serves some purpose here in the 21st century, but I haven’t used turbo on a controller since Contra on the NES. I tried it in a few matches but I think it only expedited my ass in getting kicked. Who knows, maybe Contra will hit PSN and I can fire up this feature once again. My last complaint is that the TE isn’t a full size cabinet. For the price, I feel like I could have purchased about half of a cabinet and stuck it in my basement. Of course this isn’t really a valid complaint but I figured I needed three items for this to feel complete.

Unfortunately the final chapter in my TE FightStick saga will have end at another time, when I take on the awesome task of customizing my joystick. The wizards at MadCatz, in their eternal wisdom, left the door open to modify all of the guts and some of the appearance of this joystick and I intend to take advantage of this with new buttons, joystick ball and custom artwork. My hope is to post another update or two covering my work in progress and the final results. In the meantime I recommend checking out this thread on the Shoryuken forums to see the magic other folks have been working with their FightSticks.

So to wrap up, if you have the cash and want to play fighting games the way they should be played, do yourself and your left thumb a favor and buy this joystick. You won’t find anything better and you might even win a match or two!

Gen can be really fun to play, because he’s got so damn many moves. But that also makes him really hard to play. A lot of his crane style moves border on useless because they’re so slow, do so little damage, and hit in such odd ways. Switching styles to quickly react to an attack is almost a non-option because it takes so long. I like Gen, but aside from Rufus, he’s probably the character in the game I’m worst with.

On the other hand, playing Fei Long again was like putting on an old comfortable pair of shoes. He plays pretty much just the same as he did in Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, except his fwd-fierce kick has changed, and he’s gotten that weird chicken wing kick. As soon as I unlocked him, I picked up the character and started playing without much of any practice. I heart Fei Long. The flip-over-your-enemy setup is cool; and by cool, I mean totally sweet.

Sakura has never been one of my favorites. Her special moves – especially the EX versions – make her a force to be reckoned with when played by a player who knows what he’s doing. But personally, I don’t love her.

Dan can be very fun to play. He’s the weakest character in the game. His fireball only goes a couple inches, and it’s pretty amazing how much slower some of his basic moves are as compared to Ken and Ryu. But he’s Dan. He’s supposed to be this way. If you’re used to playing Ken or Ryu and you’re playing against someone who’s not as skilled at the game as you, consider playing Dan. That’s what he’s there for.

Rose is another character that I absolutely love. She’s stronger than I remember from Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, and she’s got incredible range. I’m still finding reflecting fireballs to be very tricky, but some of her combos are very easy and her ultra does tons of damage. It’s safe to say that I’ll be using Rose quite a lot in online matches in the future.

Cammy is another character I couldn’t care much less about. That cannon drill pisses me off when I’m fighting against her, but I have a lot of trouble using it well when I’m playing her. I guess I just don’t care enough to practice with Cammy. She seems largely geared towards adolescent males who enjoy crotch-angle bathing suit shots.

And that wraps up my reviews of the major characters in Street Fighter. Not sure if I’ll ever unlock Akuma, Gouken, or Seth, but if I do, you’ll hear about it here.

Abel isn’t a bad character, and he isn’t half as cheap as I’d first surmised. Sure – the computer loves to roll in and throw you, but once you realize that Abel can be thrown out of his roll, it becomes easy to win against a computer Abel by just moving back until he rolls forward and then moving in to throw him before his roll is complete. I really like the idea of a MMA fighter in Street Fighter who’s focused on grappling, but some of Abel’s moves come off a bit stupid. Grabbing you and swirling you around twice? Kind of lame. Instead, his special throw should take you down and have a 2-second animation of a ground move. The move isn’t cheap though – it’s very much like E.Honda’s buttslam throw. Not nearly as cheap as Zangief’s throws. I like Abel’s move that grabs opponents out of the air while he’s still on the ground, and I like his multistep rush attack that ends in a throw. It reminds me of Fei Long’s triple punch. I don’t use Abel often, but I would. He’s not a bad character.

Crimson Viper is the last character (besides Cammy) with whom I tried to beat the game. I was wise to wait, because as soon as I tried her, she officially became my least favorite character in Street Fighter 4. Not only did I have trouble beating the game with her, I had trouble even getting up to her rival character. Crimson Viper is a bad, bad character. Me no likey.

El Fuerte isn’t an overpowered character, but playing against an opponent who knows how to play El Fuerte well can be really frustrating. His dash can end in a (low attack) slide, a (high attack) jumping tackle, or a jumping throw. If the El Fuerte player is good at rock-paper-scissors, he can pull this move over and over and win using nothing else. Plus, his ultra is the easiest to execute of any character in the game, and it does a good bit of damage. if it weren’t for the fact that most of El Fuerte’s other attacks don’t do tons of damage, he might be a seriously overpowered character.

Lastly, Rufus. I hate Rufus. He looks stupid, he’s difficult to play, and when the computer plays him he can be very hard to beat. Finishing the game with Rufus was a serious challenge, because I didn’t find his special moves very useful. I mostly used his standing fierce punch, his leg sweep, and a throw. Rufus’s only real redeeming quality is that he’s humorously written. His cutscene with Dhalsim is hilarious, and his victory text after many battles has him mistaking just about everyone for Ken Masters. He thinks Guile is Ken, he thinks Ryu is Ken, and he even thinks that Cammy is Ken.

Next time, I’ll be looking at the unlockable characters, which will include my favorite two in the game.

I didn’t expect much before I’d played this flash game version of my old arcade favorite. But other than the fact that you’ve got to play with a keyboard, it’s a really perfect emulation of the original. Check it out!

Play Street Fighter 2 Championship Edition

Frank’s article about his days in the arcade really got me thinking about the time I spent at working at Skooters Family Entertainment Center in Bristol, Connecticut during my college years. I started off at the guy making pizzas in the back. Within a couple years, I was making employee schedules and running the LazerTron League. But most importantly, I got to play games for free.

I’ve certainly spoken enough recently about Street Fighter, and so I’ll be brief here, but it was by far the game I played most – both at Skooters, and in the arcade at Central Connecticut State University. I became fairly good friends with the 3-4 other guys in the area who were really good at the game, and I loved it when an out-of-towner with some real skill would show up to play. It was probably more than a dozen years ago, but I still remember the guy who showed up on a business trip and kicked my ass with Balrog. Good times.

It seems like a lot of the games I played most at Skooters were fighting games. Samurai Shodown 2 was another game I really enjoyed. I loved using Jubei’s parry/riposte attack, Sieger’s slide-punch-slam combo, and Haohmaru’s super-ultra attack, which I remember being very difficult to pull off.  Samurai Shodown let you fight the black-suited referee at times if you were doing very well at the game, which was neat. Too bad the ref always kicked my ass.

Darkstalkers felt quite a lot like Street Fighter 2, so I slid into that one naturally as well. I was primarily a Morrigan player, but I used Bishamon the samurai and the Sasquatch quite a bit. I also got into Virtua Fighter 2 when Skooters obtained a copy of that game. I first got good with Shun, the drunken monkey kung fu guy, but later started using Kage the ninja and Pai, since Pai had a really neat move where she could catch your punches or kicks if you timed the counter perfectly. I believe that Akira had about a hundred such counters, but I never got a chance to try to master that difficult timing.

Skooters never had a Neo Geo, but I’d play Neo Geo titles all the time at college and in a local convenience store. Final Fight, King of Fighters, Fatal Fury. I guess they were all fighting games and beat-em-ups, but Neo Geo had some good ones.

One Neo Geo game that always fascinated me was Crossed Swords. I never got much of a chance to play it, but being able to separately control your sword and your shield placement seemed a very cool game mechanic. Years later, I was able to try out the game via MAME, and while it was indeed very cool, its time had passed. You can see the screenshot pictured above in the header.

Probably the game I’ve been most looking forward to talking about in this article is Dungeons and Dragons: Tower of Doom. The game was a side-scrolling 4-player beat-em-up in the style of the X-Men and Simpsons arcade games, but it had far more depth than either of these. The available characters were warrior, dwarf, elf, and cleric, and your characters would actually level up throughout the game. The elf and cleric would get access to more and better spells. Everyone but the elf had a shield with which they could block certain attacks. There were special dash attacks, jumping attacks, and slides accessible through Street Fighter-like joystick movements. You could collect money and treasure, and use it to buy healing potions, arrows, throwing daggers and flaming oil. There were arrow traps, pits, and spiked walls. There were secret doors, accessible only by shooting a lever or pushing against a suit of armor that had looked like part of the  background. The game had branching paths, and you could take different routes which would lead to you fighting different enemies. We all knew not to take the path where you’d fight the red dragon. That thing sucked up quarters like nothing I’ve ever seen. Anyway, if you ever get the chance to try the Dungeons and Dragons arcade game, give it a go. It’s probably my second favorite arcade game ever.

Dwarf using a lightning bolt ring

It wasn’t until my college days that I first discovered Point Blank in the arcade in the student center at CCSU in New Britain, Connecticut. My cousin Paul and I played the crap out of that game. Point Blank is the best light gun game series ever invented. Years later, I found a Point Blank cabinet at the Old Chicago in Colorado Springs near where I used to work. It was nice to play again.

While I first discovered Dance Dance Revolution at a camp in New Hampshire where someone had set up a Playstation, I later played it in the arcades quite a bit. And I got fairly good at it. There was a year or two where I was seriously obsessed with DDR – I got to the point where I could ace “Smoke on the Water” on maniac difficulty, which was no easy feat.

My daughter will likely never play games in an arcade. It’s a sad thing to see them go, really. Arcades were an integral part of many of our childhoods.

Overall, the characters in Street Fighter are balanced. If you’re having trouble beating a specific character, it’s likely either because you’re not familiar enough with that character’s moves and capabilities, or else because the other player is too good. Conversely, if you’re having trouble winning when playing a specific character, it’s likely because you’re not good enough with that character, or once again because the opponent you’re currently playing is too good. That being said, there are definitely characters in the game who are overpowered, and other characters who are underpowered.

After the original Starcraft was released, Blizzard released a number of required updates – without them, you were unable to play on Battle.net, which is the only way to play online. These patches made minor tweaks to the abilities of the various races in the game, eliminating loopholes in the game’s tactics so that all three races were balanced. I think that Street Fighter 4 needs a similar patch.

Sagat is the character who first comes to mind. Sagat combines normal attacks that have range second only to Dhalsim with quickness and high damage output. His two different fireballs, his very fast Tiger Knee, and that killer Tiger Uppercut make for one badass mofo. It’s very easy for sagat players to sit in the corner and spam fireballs. They come off quickly enough that it’s very hard to jump in over them without catching a Tiger Uppercut. Back in Street Fighter 2 days, Sagat was a poor man’s Ryu/Ken. Now, he’s better than either of them. Capcom needs to slow down his recovery after Tiger Shot fireballs just a bit and perhaps lessen the priority on his Tiger Uppercut. He’d still be badass, but not quite as ridiculous as he is now.

Zangief is difficult to gauge. Overpowered? Maybe. From my current perspective, his game is all about setting up throws. From my arcade experience with Street Fighter 2, this wasn’t always the case. But now that I’ve gone through the Zangief training and completed the game with him, I’ve decided that I no longer like to play Zangief as much as I used to in Street Fighter 2. At first, I’d have added Abel to the “overpowered” list along with Zangief, but after having played as Abel, I understand the character better. Most of my complaints have more to do with the computer’s nanosecond timing than anything else. His roll-throw pattern seemed nearly invincible until I realized that Abel can be thrown while rolling. And his Sky Fall air grab is very cool – grabbing a foe out of the air while Abel’s on the ground. Abel needs no changes.

Balrog, on the other hand, needs to be fixed. I’ve never been a good Balrog player, but even I can tell that Balrog is overpowered. When a good player unleashes a Balrog barrage, it sometimes seems like the entire game is one big long combo. He seriously needs some recovery time added to a few of his moves so that they become somewhat punishable if blocked.

Gen is another mixed bag. Hard to analyze. He’s the only two-in-one character in the game. He’s got two complete sets of moves in his crane style/mantis style. He’s even got two super combos and two ultra combos. For such a difficult character to play, I’d like to have seen him a bit higher in the character rankings. His slow crane attacks should do more damage, and his mantis attacks should have a bit higher priority. I wouldn’t want to see Gen be stronger than Ryu or even Guile, but seeing such a difficult-to-play character at the bottom of the rankings just feels wrong.

Vega should be a force to be reckoned with. He’s super-fast, and he’s got a great reach. The problem is that he can’t take a hit, and when he loses his mask, he takes even more damage. He does a bit more damage when his mask is off, but he also takes 25% more damage. The special move that makes him drop his claw is just stupid, as there is absolutely no benefit to dropping it, as he loses both range and damage. If they wanted to handicap Vega by making him lose his mask or claw after having taken some hits, he shouldn’t be so weak to start with. His claw should do more damage. Getting his claw off him and keeping him away from it should become a priority for his foes.

Lastly, Dan. Dan is the weakest character, and I’m okay with that. Dan is intended to be a joke. He’s an intentionally handicapped character, and he is hilarious. His animation for a throw has him stumbling, and his ex-Haduken attack has him screaming with exaggerated effort as his fireball travels less than halfway across the screen. Dan needs no adjustment, despite being obviously underpowered.

I have no expectations of a balance-adjusting update from Capcom, but I can always dream.

Firstly, Balrog. Balrog is rated very highly in character rankings, and people who know how to play him well are very hard to beat. But he’s one of two or three characters in the game that I find myself unable to play. I’m just terrible with Balrog. I hate holding the three buttons to charge his punches, I have trouble pulling off his headbut while continuing to charge backwards, and I have a hard time getting him within punching range of anyone throwing fireballs. Still, I know he’s a good character because even though I suck with him, I nearly beat Seth the first time I fought him. Completing the game with Balrog was nearly as easy as completing the game with Sagat.

Also, an interesting bit of trivia about Balrog that you may or may not already know: originally, the Japanese boxer character was going to be called “M.Bison”, while the dictator was going to be “Vega”, and the narcissist was going to be “Balrog”. But when they realized that they stood to be sued for naming a Mike Tyson-looking character “M.Bison”, they played musical names and the boxer ended up being called “Balrog”.

Sagat is a monster. He’s come a long way from that guy in Street Fighter 2 who’d spend all day throwing tiger shots, yelling “Tiger!” in a wimpy-sounding high-pitched voice, just waiting for you to jump over them and deliver a boot to the head. Sagat’s speed and reach, along with his high damage output, make him arguably the best character in the game. The first time I played him in arcade mode, I beat the game without continuing and got the “Save Your Quarters” achievement. I don’t play Sagat much anymore.

Vega is a difficult character to play well. He’s got great mobility and reach, but El Fuerte could throw a plastic spatula at him and knock him out cold. I really like his back handspring dodge maneuvers and his new flip (flash) kick, but I have a lot of trouble timing his dive-bomb moves, and the moves that make him intentionally drop his claw and mask are just stupid. I might try to start playing him more, because I really like the underdogs, but I doubt I’ll do well.

Lastly, M.Bison. Bison is actually a really good character. His scissor kick goes right over a lot of low attacks, and is especially good for thwarting Crimson Viper’s Seismic Hammer. Like Vega’s dive bomb moves, I’m still having trouble aiming Bison’s. I also still have a big mental aversion to M.Bison because he was originally a final boss, and therefore was a bit overpowered when he made his first appearance back in Street Fighter 2: Championship Edition. As it stands though, I wouldn’t fault anyone for making him their main character.

I’ve been trying to limit my posts about Street Fighter to one per week, but I’ve been playing the crap out of the game, so it occupies a good bit of the video game namespace in my mind. And although I’ve been having a lot of fun with it, I do have some complaints I feel obliged to voice.

Firstly, since my post full of complaints about Games For Windows Live, I’ve come up with another complaint – a big one. Suddenly, every time I log in, I’m required to manually sign in and enter my password. And the “save my password” checkbox is disabled. Incredibly annoying.

Street Fighter also has the ability to accept challenges from online players while playing in Arcade Mode against the computer. I’ve done it on occasion. But the option can only be set from the game’s menu, not from within an actual battle. The other day, when I started playing against the computer, I found that I’d accidentally left that setting on. I was interrupted mid-game by an online challenger. My mistake. No big deal. But the thing that really pissed me off is that there’s no way to change your status and make your game private without totally exiting that game, which means that I had to start the game all over after having beat some fairly difficult opponents. That’s just bad design.

My remaining complaints are about the actual mechanics of the game. As a long-time Street Fighter 2 arcade junkie, the game mechanics of Street Fighter are in me bone-deep. You can’t block while in mid-air. You can only attack once during a jump. You block high attacks standing and low attacks crouching. The basic physics of the Street Fighter universe.

Some have changed.

For starters, they now allow limited juggling. While juggling was one of the things I hated most about Mortal Kombat, I can mostly tolerate the way it’s handled in Street Fighter 4. Aside from the “crumpling” effects provided by level 2 or 3 focus attacks, juggling can only be done with an ultra combo. This isn’t too bad, and doesn’t break the game. No problem.

The thing that really pisses me off is the change to throwing. It used to be canon that anyone in the process of standing up after having been knocked down was immune to throws for a split second. This meant that you’d never stand right next to someone as they were standing up, cause you’d always be thrown by a player who knew what he was doing. This was a big equalizer to help someone who was totally getting his ass handed to him. This has changed – the immunity is gone. You can now be thrown the instant you stand up. What this leads to, especially when playing against the computer (which has perfect split-second timing) is being thrown as you’re standing up before you have a chance to do anything. This can be repeated infinitely. This actually looks like you’re being picked up off the ground and thrown. It’s ridiculously cheap, and I’m a bit upset at Capcom for removing the throw immunity. When you’re fighting a computer-controlled Abel or Zangief, it’s ridiculous.

Lastly, the change to the Dragon Punch motion. It’s been made “easier”, which I imagine will piss off all veteran Street Fighter players who’ve had the forward-down-downforward motion ingrained into long term muscle memory. I have no issue with other players being able to execute the motion more easily – my issue is with the fact that the newly created shortcut motion is downforward-downforward. How many times do you move the joystick in that direction twice when you’re not looking to do a dragon punch? The net result of the newly created shortcut is that dragon punches come off all the time when you’re trying to do something else. It sucks.

Despite these complaints, I’ll likely continue to play Street Fighter far too often over the coming weeks and months. I’ll just bitch about it a lot.

When I speak of the “original eight” characters, I’m talking about Ken, Ryu, E.Honda, Chun Li, Blanka, Guile, Zangief, and Dhalsim. In the original Street Fighter 2 game, they were the only playable characters. I still remember visiting Riverside Park in Agawam, Massachusetts where I first saw a Street Fighter 2: Championship Edition machine. “You can play as Sagat? Whoa!”

I think I’ve made my opinions on Ken and Ryu known by now. They were my go-to guys for years in the game when I couldn’t beat someone, but I’ve begun playing them less and less, mostly as a reaction to how many people play those damn characters. Mainstream equals uncool. I will say that whereas I used to think Ryu was cooler, it now seems that Ken is a more fun character to play.

Guile is probably overall my favorite character in the game, despite the fact that he talks like a robot in Street Fighter 4 and has serious posture problems. I just feel very comfortable playing Guile for some reason. And it seems that he’s kept his air throw. I really need to use that more.

I’ve just started to get better with Chun Li. I’m having a much harder time using her head stomp than I used to – maybe that’s because the people I’m fighting now have gotten better at anti-air. But Chun Li has gotten a lot of really fun new attacks. She has a double punch that she can use in the air or on the ground, she’s got a fairly easy single-button kick combo that ends with her vertical anti-air kick from Super Street Fighter 2. You can’t really use it as anti-air anymore, but fans of Chun Li should recognise the animation. She also has a forward-flipping split kick attack that’s very fast and has good range. They’ve taken out the split-second immunity she used to have when starting a spinning bird kick, but I think the other new moves make up for that.

Blanka is insane. I think I’d forgotten that until I started playing him recently. He rolls into a ball and flies all over the screen like a superball on crack. He has a move that lets him jump through you and attack from behind, he can duck or slide under fireballs, and you can change up the timing on his super and ultra attacks. Blanka is rated surprisingly high on the eventhubs character ranking page. I’m surprised that I don’t see more Blankas out there. Back in my arcade days, Blanka was considered “cheap”, and I made a habit of never playing him. But at least in my own mind, that characterization has faded. The dragon punch characters are the cheap ones now.

Zangief is ranked way higher than I’d have guessed, but he’s also the only one of the original eight characters I haven’t used at all yet. One of my favorite things about him back in Street Fighter 2 was that he had at least seven or eight throws – I’m not sure whether he still does. I’d love it if they left in the chest grab move. That one was hilarious when used against Chun Li.

Honda is another character I’ve found to be far more badass than in Street Fighter 2. His flying headbutt is amazingly effective, and his new buttslam throw does a lot of damage. He’s easy to trap with fireballs, but you don’t want to let Honda get you cornered. I beat the game with Honda practically on one virtual quarter.

I saved Dhalsim for last because I’ve had so much fun playing him. Dhalsim is slow and can be really difficult to play well. To me, the key to playing Dhalsim is knowing exactly where each of his punches and kicks go, and using them. His jumping fierce punch and medium kick go at a downward angle, and are very useful when used just before he lands, when most players think themselves safe. His standing hard kick has really good range and can knock characters out of the air when they’re still very far away. And his standing fierce punch has amazing range and does tons of damage. His jab fireballs move slowly enough so that you can throw one and then do other things, like walk up behind them. And his two-hit headbut is great for comboing into a yoga flame. The new Yoga Pillar move is awesome for avoiding low attacks, but I don’t use it nearly enough. That combined with his slides can get you past any fireball in the game. And for mobility, there’s nothing like his teleport. The fact that Dhalsim can now teleport from mid-air makes it a fantastic move for escape or surprise attack.

If you’re still reading, you’re likely a Street Fighter fan. If you’re playing Street Fighter 4 on the PC, look me up. My GFW Gamertag is ghowley.