This is part four (count em--4!) 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, the second detailed changes to Ryu, and part three was all about T. Hawk. This week focuses on the ladies' man behind everyone's favorite flaming fist, Ken Masters! Ken Ken is juiced up! Although there isn’t any single overwhelming change to him, all the small changes add up. Hurricane Kicks The most visible change to Ken is his new roundhouse Hurricane Kick. In the original ST it has almost no use, but now it travels much faster and goes much farther. Most people say, “Wow!” when they see it for the first time. It allows Ken to hit back various whiffed moves from far away, such as Cammy’s Spinning Backfist or Balrog’s Buffalo Headbutt, but it usually gets only one air hit in those cases. If you can hit a standing opponent with it, it has a lot of dizzy power. So far in testing, this moves *looks* a lot more dangerous than it actually is, but it’s definitely a fun toy. There are a few more small changes to Hurricane kicks, mostly because of the change mentioned above. The medium Hurricane kick goes just slightly farther, as does the aerial roundhouse Hurricane kick, but you probably won’t even really notice those changes. The short Hurricane kick stays in the air a shorter amount of time, making it a slightly better trick and a little bit better against Sagat’s low Tiger Shots. Dragon Punches Now Ken’s jab and strong Dragon Punches are invulnerable on the way up, exactly the like Old Ken’s from SSF2T. Ken’s fierce dragon punch is based on ST New Ken’s, so it still has fire effects and sets the enemy on fire on hit. Although it has no additional invulnerability, it has even more horizontal range than before, similar to the range it had in SF2: Champion Edition. You can think of his three Dragon Punches as a kind of Greatest Hits of Ken: the best properties of Old Ken (invulnerable jab and strong versions), as well as ST’s fire and CE’s arc on the fierce Dragon Punch. Another change to the Dragon Punches is that the strong and fierce versions always knock down on hit. In the original ST, it’s frustrating if you happen to hit with a Dragon Punch at just the wrong range where it won’t knock down and gets only one of the intended 2 or 3 hits (you’re going to get hit back!). Now the strong version knocks down even on the first hit and can air juggle for a second hit, and the fierce version always knocks down and can air juggle for two additional hits. Note that if you get a glancing hit with the fierce Dragon Punch, it will do very little damage, just like in ST. But if you land a very deep fierce Dragon Punch against a jump-in, it will now juggle for 3 hits and do high damage, even more than New Ken’s deep jab Dragon Punch. “Crazy Kicks” In ST, Ken has three different so-called Crazy Kicks, each with a different joystick motion. These three motions made the kicks generally confusing and they would come out when you didn’t want them. In HD Remix, the commands for these kicks have been changed to the commands in Capcom vs. SNK2. Quarter circle forward + either short, forward, or roundhouse gives you each of the three different kicks, and holding the kick button down makes any of the Crazy Kicks cancel into an overhead. The actual properties of the kicks (speed, hitboxes, damage, etc) are exactly the same as in ST. They’re just a little easier to keep straight in your head now. Note that, like before, you can easily combo a normal attack into the qcf+medium kick version and with good timing you can combo a sweep after the qcf+short version. Knee Bash Ken’s Knee Bash hold is very powerful. Afterwards, he can walk under most characters and end up on the other side. This means that he might do a low attack from one side or the other side, and then either try for another Knee Bash or maybe a jab Dragon Punch. Or, against many characters, he can jump jab right after the Knee Bash and the spacing is just right for him to “safe jump” (see the tutorials on Capcom Classics Collection 2), which lets him go for another Knee Bash. The Knee Bash is, in my opinion, the third most deadly repeated throw trap in ST. This is a close call, but I left it in. Ken is not considered a top tier character, and we’re trying not to nerf the power level of anything unless it’s absolutely necessary. Also, Ken gets so much gameplay out of this mixup that he’d lose a lot of fun-factor if this were removed. As a bit of a compromise, I reduced the damage on the first hit of the Knee Bash. I don’t mind the fun gameplay resulting from his mixups, but his ability to get as much as 25% damage off each one was just too much. Super In ST, there is a bug that prevents Ken from doing a reversal super. That means if he’s knocked down and the enemy makes him get up into a sweep (or any move), he can’t do a super on the first frame he stands up. This bug is fixed in HD Remix, but it remains unfixed in HD Classic Arcade. Ken was a viable, middle-tier character before and now he’s a bit better all around (except for the lower damage Knee Bash). The invulnerable Dragon Punches come in handy because it allows you beat out every other character’s Dragon Punch if done correctly. The big range on the fierce Dragon Punch also has several uses, such as stopping a pesky off-the-wall Vega even moreso than before. And the 3-hit anti-air fierce Dragon Punch, the simpler Crazy Kicks, and the long range roundhouse Hurricane Kick give him some fun new toys. 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.

While a Korean MMO game had to license Ken and Chunli to have Street Fighter characters appear in the game, WoW was able to show off its MMO dominance once again without even breaking a sweat, as evidenced by the screenshot below. Man, imagine what they can do as Blizzivison. Shoryuken indeed.

Behold! Tremble before the freshly reborn Street Fighter Devotion, quite possibly the greatest Street Fighter fan site ever made. Featuring interviews, exclusive art by UDON Street Fighter artists, and journalistic character profiles, the centerpiece of the site is an exhaustively researched and stunningly extensive Street Fighter museum:

As you can see, we've expanded our game catalog to include EVERY SINGLE [NTSC U/C] title that even shows an official Cameo by a Street Fighter character. Did you know that Ryu was in Crimson Tears and Varth? Well its right here in our museum!

Their intro flash movie even has a cameo from the voice of Ryu! The place is truly staggering, and even die-hard experts are guaranteed to come away with a pile of fun facts about their favorite titles. Anyone with any interest in anything Street Fighter owes it to themselves to check it out NOW.

This is part three 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, and the second one detailed the changes to Ryu. This time out we're looking at T. Hawk. Even apart from being a 7-foot Native American with a Dragon Punch and a Spinning Pile Driver, Hawk is an interesting topic because while he's among the very weakest characters in the original Super Turbo, he's also one of the most potentially deadly. Expert players of the other characters can keep him out and grind his life away before he can get inside, but once he does find an opening he can do a TON of damage and trap you with nearly inescapable pile driver tricks. It's this kind of explosive potential that makes changing him up a real pandora's box, so read on for the thinking that went into the changes... And as always, here's our standard disclaimer: remember, the changes to the rebalanced mode are OPTIONAL :) If you think our redesign team has messed with a masterpiece, the game's original mode is also included. Although "original" mode also features the HD art, original mode has NO changes to any of the characters. All of their move properties and hitboxes are exactly as they were, down to the pixel! This basically means you have two games in one, and if you don't like the new-fangled version, the old-school version is still there. SSF2T HD Remix Gameplay, Part 3: T.Hawk Last time we looked Ryu's short change list, so this time lets look at something more extensive. We'll have to dig deep into the abyss of Super Turbo tiers to find this character. Buried somewhere near the bottom, we find T.Hawk. Attention readers, a T.Hawk "megaton bomb" is coming. Most (both?) T.hawk players play Old T.Hawk in Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo. He's the version that can't soften throws and doesn't have a super, but his normal moves are better. The HD Remixed version is kind of a "greatest hits" of T.Hawk's moves, so he gets to keep his super and his ability to soften throws, and he also gets the better normal attacks from Old T.Hawk. That means his standing roundhouse and standing strong have better hitboxes and are good for poking, and his low roundhouse is faster than ST’s New T.Hawk. He can also crossup with either his jumping splash (down + fierce in the air) and his jumping medium kick. His Dragon Punch priority is also the (better) Old T.Hawk version, and the timing is more lenient (as it is for all Dragon Punches in the game). T.Hawk’s uppercut often did not knock down before as part of a game-wide problem where 2-hit moves are tagged to only knock down on the second hit. This has been corrected by making both hits able to knock down and the first hit juggles into the second. Don’t get too excited about T.Hawk juggles though, this is actually a small change that just makes the move function as it was meant to (if it actually hits you, you can’t hit it back). The Street Fighter trivia experts out there know that T.Hawk's low strong had a stray vulnerable box that allowed him to get hit from really far away during that move's recovery. Yes, we fixed that, too. ;) More exciting than these normal moves and Dragon Punches, the 360 command has changed. Well, you can still do the old 360 command if you like, but the special throw will also come out with the new motion that doesn't require holding up on the joystick/d-pad. The motion is half circle back, then forward + punch or half circle forward, then back + punch. It's even more lenient in that you can start from defensive or offensive crouch if you like, instead of straight left or right. And finally, you can even replace the final left or right input with any of the three up inputs if you really want. If all that sounds complicated, just remember this: half circle back, then forward + punch is the main way to do it and doesn't make you accidentally jump. This change alone breathes new life into T.Hawk. His 360 was incredibly hard to do in ST because T.Hawk, unlike Zangief, jumps in only 3 frames. You had very little leeway in getting that up input before you accidentally jumped, but now doing the command throw is breeze. The emphasis is much more on *should* you do it, rather than *can* you do it. The 720 motion is also much easier. It's either half circle back x 2, then forward + punch, or half circle forward x 2, then back + punch. Yes, that means you can walk up and do a super throw without jumping. This is potentially very dangerous, but so far I don't see a problem. T.Hawk's non-super throw does about third of your life, so if the opponent is down to that much life, it doesn't matter much if you land a super on him as opposed to a non-super throw. For this to really matter, you have to have full super meter and the opponent has to have more than 1/3rd of his life, and you have to get into a situation where you can do a command throw, have time to do it, and you have to successfully pull off the super. It's on my watchlist definitely, but it has not yet let him beat characters he otherwise couldn’t. If it does prove to be a problem, we could lower the damage of the super throw. And now for the megaton bomb: T.Hawk's aerial dive is now SAFE on block. Incidentally, it can also be done with jab + short or strong + forward or fierce + roundhouse, in addition to the original command of jab+strong+roundhouse. The new command is for gamepad players, but the SAFE ON BLOCK is a huge balance change that will strike terror into all your hearts. After the hawk dive, T.Hawk falls mostly straight down rather than bouncing back. This is a great tool for getting in. You're probably thinking it's an insanely overpowered tool, so let's take a look at that. When I first implemented this move, it immediately seemed too good, but I tried it for a while anyway. Note that the bounce still puts him too far away to get a command throw, so you're not literally "in" yet, you're just "almost in." You end up at a distance where you're close enough to Dragon Punch if the opponent sticks something out, but he could block and punish you if he guesses that. You could also walk up and try for a command throw, but you're really too far to just walk up, so the opponent can counter that with sweeps pretty easily. Specifically, Guile can block the dive, then low forward kick. If T.Hawk decides to walk up, he will always get hit by low forward. If T.Hawk decides to Dragon Punch when he lands, it will whiff vs the low forward (because of angles of the hitboxes) and Guile can punish him afterwards. If T.Hawk jumps in after the dive or jumps and dives again, Guile has time to retract his low forward and flash kick on reaction. Guile has plenty of answers here. I first thought Dhalsim would have no chance against this megaton dive, because he always relied on hitting it back with standing roundhouse. I soon realized Dhalsim can jump back, then drill the dive. He can standing jab to hit the dive cleanly every time. He can medium slide under the dive to make it miss then hit back with far standing strong. That's three answers right there, it's just that he no longer has the universal answer of always block, then stand roundhouse. Blanka is also able to beat this dive without too much trouble. His jumping straight up roundhouse has a good angle to either hit the dive, or even come down and do a combo if the spacing is right. He can use electricity (which is easier to do now) to hit the dive cleanly, too. Bison can use similar techniques with jump straight up roundhouse or jump towards strong punch. T.Hawk still hangs in the air just a bit before diving, and it's often just the right height for Bison to do his juggling jump strongs. T.Hawk still has a lot of trouble—maybe too much trouble—against Cammy. It’s hard for T.Hawk to hit her ducking medium kick and it’s even harder to deal with her unpunishable Thrust Kick (aka Dragon Punch). The list goes on, but I think you get the point. The new safe dive is a very dangerous weapon that lets T.Hawk get in (almost), but there are a lot of countermeasures already in place. T.Hawk is now lots of fun to play with none of the frustrations of trying to do a 360 with only 2 frames of leeway. His safe dive and the ability to do his 360 throw reliably now (remember, it was harder than Zangief’s before) actually make T.Hawk feel like a new character to me. --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.

I've always wondered, if you dress up for Halloween, is it still considered cosplay? Why or why not? Regardless, pictured above is our very own Marketing Intern, Lily, who dressed up as Cammy for Halloween. She had this to say about her pictures:

"My pictures from Halloween. I took them on my webcam before I went out. And just to be silly I did a few Cammy poses as well. Hehehe"

As a result, we are now considering a policy requiring all interns to cosplay as a Capcom character of our choice when they come to work in order to ensure their continued employment. Click on the image above to see the whole Flickr set.