Street Fighter HD Remix: Vega

Vega is sometimes considered top tier in Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo (ST), or at least in the top of the 2nd tier. He’s fast, has many good pokes, a good slide, and his off-the-wall attack is versatile and powerful. In keeping with the design philosophy of HD Remix, Vega is only barely weaker now, and he has harder competition all around from other characters.

The Wall Dive

Vega’s wall dive no longer knocks down. In ST, after you get knocked down by the wall dive, Vega can do it again as you get up and force you do block a tricky cross-up. If you get hit again, he can do it again, and so on. Vega is actually perfectly capable of winning without this abusive, repeatable tactic, so losing it isn’t crippling.

Note that if Vega hits you out of the air with the wall dive, of course you will be knocked down (same as any air-to-air attack). And his izuna drop (throw) from his wall dive still knocks down, so if you get hit by either of those things, he can threaten one more wall dive as you get up, but even if that hits, you’ll be able to stop his next attempt much more easily.

While it is possible to combo a low strong after you hit with a wall dive now (because the dive doesn’t knock down), it’s position-dependent. You usually end up hitting a little to high with the wall dive to actually combo a followup, but with good timing, you can. I didn't specifically intend this combo to work, but adding more delay at the end of the wall dive would mean you could hit back Vega too often, even when he hits you. Overall, I think it's much preferable to fight against a Vega who sometimes gets an extra hit of low strong, rather than a Vega that traps you in a knockdown loop.

Flip Kick

In ST, Vega can “store” his flip kick command. First, charge down/back, then hold back. You can hold back as long as you like and you can still do the flip kick by taping forward+kick. It’s so hard for some characters to actually get close to Vega, that he really doesn’t need what amounts to a (Guile) flash kick anti-air while walking backwards. A couple Japanese top players as well as several Americans all requested that this be removed, so it is. The only command for Vega’s flip kick attack is now charge down/back, then forward + kick. I personally never even used this technique, and really don't think he needed it to win.

Fake Wall Dive

Vega does get one new toy to play with: the fake wall dive. First, execute the wall dive (charge down, up + kick), and after Vega touches the wall, press kick again. Vega will hang for a moment, then drop directly down. This is marginally useful in avoiding Ken’s fierce dragon punch or Blanka’s vertical roll.

An earlier version of the fake wall dive allowed Vega to slightly steer whether he dropped forward or away (rather than just straight down) and it dropped down something like three times as fast as it does now. After some players complained that it was too powerful in a playtest, I gave my usual response of asking for someone to beat me with it, or at least make me afraid of it. I chose Ryu and took on all comers, which included many well-known Evolution tournament players. No one beat me one single game with their Vega. In fact, no one beat me even a single round. I was not remotely afraid of the fake wall dive. I’m not telling you this as a form of bragging, I’m just letting you know how balancing happens.

Why was I not afraid? Because doing repeated fake wall dives left my opponents with no real advantage over just sitting there and doing nothing. Yes it’s tricky in that you never know which wall dive will have teeth and which will be fake, but I mostly ignored it and jump roundhoused (or air hurricane kicked) at them anyway.

And yet one thing they demonstrated was important. James Chen showed that in ST with Vega vs. Cammy, if Vega does blocked low jab, cancels into off-the-wall (opposite wall) then holds back to stay away, Cammy can still cannon spike him. In other words, he cannot use the wall dive to turn his low jab into a safe runaway tool in ST. But the same setup in HD Remix with the fake wall dive did allow him to be safe vs. the cannon spike. Even though no one demonstrated anything in real gameplay, the mere potential for more Vega runaway was enough to show that we needed to weaken the move.

It turns out, the move had to be slowed down significantly to prevent it from being completely safe in the sort of situation I explained above. Since then, I’ve seen no one able to run away with the fake wall dive, but it can occasional trick the opponent into attacking at the wrong time, so it seems about right.

Vega’s Competition

A few top players have wondered if Vega is too strong, even still. Time will tell of course, but he does seem about right to me. His most abusive tactic is weakened, and he has a (kind of slow) fake wall dive in return. But what’s much more relevant is the field of characters he must now face.

Zangief is more able to fight him than ever. Guile used to have no real answer to Vega repeatedly sliding. (I wonder if anyone has any tournament matches of me doing something like 12 slides in a row vs. Choi’s or Jeron’s Guile in tournaments.) But now Guile has 2 answers: roundhouse flash kick and the new overhead. Cammy, Fei Long, and T.Hawk all got huge boosts and are just more threatening overall to Vega and to everyone else.

That said, Vega is still Vega. His speed, range, and wall dive keep him in the game, but he should be less dominant than in ST due to his adversaries being more equipped to fight him than before.

--Sirlin

Street Fighter HD Remix: 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 want to leave the top characters top, so it’s been quite a test of willpower to avoid bringing down the hammer on Balrog.

Before you read the actual nerfs, I’d like you to consider what might have happened. By far the most common suggestion for Balrog was to reduce his overall damage by about 20%. Almost everyone who said anything about Balrog said this. But reducing the overall damage of a character by 20% is mostly just another way of making him 20% worse, and does nothing to remove the tactics we’d like to tone down. So the good news for Balrog players is that he still does a whole lot of damage and is not a 20% worse Balrog.

Throw Loops

After Balrog’s headbutt hold, he can do a mixup where he either walks under the opponent (to get on the other side) or not walk under and say on the same side. He can threaten to do a low roundhouse from either side, resulting in a knockdown. This part is fine. He can also do a low forward or low strong and then attempt another throw, resulting in a loop. This part is too abuseable.

As with Ken, it was a tough decision, but I think it’s more fun if Balrog gets to keep his mixup, yet loses the power of a repeatable loop. His low strong, throw, low strong, throw sequence could be done from literally so far away that some characters cannot counter throw. The change is that Balrog’s throw range is now shorter, and the first hit of the hold does less damage. The walk-under tricks still work, as do the throw tricks after whiffing a short dashing punch, but if you want to attempt a throw loop, you a) have to be close enough that your opponent might counterthrow and b) deal less damage when you successfully do it. Balrog’s relentless offense is so good that a slightly worse throw game should leave him plenty powerful.

Safe Attack, Safe Attack

Another problem with Balrog is this sequence: low rushing punch, then jab headbutt. The low rushing punch is fast, damaging, must be blocked low, and is safe on block. The command for the move leaves him charged to immediately do a Buffalo Headbutt. So not only can you not hit back the low rushing punch on block, but if you even try, you will probably get hit by the headbutt (it’s an invulnerable startup move, somewhat like a Dragon Punch). If you block the headbutt, it too is safe on block. And to make matters worse, he gets a huge amount of super meter for doing that sequence. And to make matters worse than that, he has the best super move in the game. Something has to give!

I thought for a very long time about removing the ability to charge for a headbutt right after a low rushing punch (or some method of making sure you couldn’t do those two moves right in a row). In the end, I have to say that the fun-factor of that sequence is good, and the problem is the safe-on-block jab headbutt. This feeling was corroborated when I asked multiple-time tournament champion and Balrog player Graham Wolfe what the most abuseable Balrog thing is. His answer, “Safe jab headbutt…and Daigo said so too.” (Note to Daigo: If you never really said that, I hold Graham Wolfe responsible!).

The jab headbutt now has more recovery and can sometimes be hit back on block. It actually ended up not that much different from ST though. To keep things in line, the strong headbutt also has worse recovery (and can now go through fireballs), but the fierce headbutt is not changed. All three headbutts also generate less super meter, and the first few levels of the turnaround punch also generate less super meter. Note that all the rushing punches generate just as much super meter as ever though. So when you do low rushes (Balrog’s bread and butter), you have the same priority, same speed, same damage, and same super meter gains as ever.

Super

Balrog’s super is probably the best in the game in ST. It’s high priority, full screen range, goes through fireballs, and is safe on block almost all the time (except notably against Zangief). In HD Remix, I tinkered with it several times to make it worse in various ways, but in the end I reverted all those changes except one: it now does about 50% damage rather than 60%, putting it in line with most other supers in the game in HD Remix.

Turn Around Punch

To be consistent with the rest of the game, this move can now be performed by pressing and releasing just two punches or two kicks, rather than three. I don’t want to allow Balrog to access fierce and roundhouse while he charges turn punches though, so here’s how that works. While you are holding two punches (or two kicks) to charge the turn around punch, you CAN press the third punch (or kick) and get it to work. But once you’ve held the buttons long enough that you’re actually charged for a turn around punch, pressing the third button will do nothing at all.

You don’t really need to grasp that though. The point is that you can either do the move the same way as always with three buttons, or just use two, but no one can really exploit this by charging up a final-punch while doing fierces and roundhouses at the same time.

The New Move That Didn't Happen

Every character in the game got at least something in HD Remix. I gave Dhalsim a mostly-useless new upflame (and made the control motion easier to do) as way of giving him something, even though he is such a top character. For Balrog, at one point I planned a "cross-counter" move like Dudley's in Street Fighter 3. This would make him totally vulnerable to low attacks or throws, but if you hit him out of it any other way, he automatically attacks you. Another idea was to make the turn around punch with the kick buttons have different properies. I thought about making it so holding the kick buttons would immediately make it so Balrog did his (vulnerable) turn around pose, as opposed releaseing the buttons triggering that. So holding the kick buttons has the drawback of locking you in place, but has some advantage such as giving you a higher level turn around punch than you'd usually get for how long you charged.

Anyway, I didn't get a chance to implement these for schedule reasons. You might wonder how that's possible because the game was delayed so long because of the art, the programmer who would have been able to implement those things was put on another project, so I had no resources to make it happen. And even if I did have the resources, I'm not sure if it would have panned out anyway because those ideas are fairly powerful and Balrog is very good already. You'll have to settle for the top character being mostly the same as last time around.

Conclusion

In closing, Balrog remains incredibly powerful. His throw game is barely weaker, but his throw tricks are still intact. His ability to generate super is a little worse, but the power of his super is still intact. His general ability to rush you down is also intact, as is his high damage, so I expect him to remain near the top.

–Sirlin

Street Fighter HD Remix: T.Hawk

T.Hawk was one of the hardest characters to balance due to his all-or-nothing gameplay in Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo (ST). He usually loses really badly because he just can’t get in. If he does get in--and if you have amazing execution skills--then he can abuse a virtually guaranteed throw loop to win. My overall goals here were to make it easier to get in, but not a guaranteed win if you do. And of course, to make his gameplay accessible to everyone, not just to the two famous Japanese T.Hawk players got 3rd in a major tournament.

Greatest Hits: Normal Moves

Most T.hawk players (if they even exist) play Old T.Hawk in ST. 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 cross-up with his jumping splash (down + fierce in the air) and his jumping medium kick.

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, I fixed that, too. ;)

Greatest Hits: Dragon Punch, Now Knocks Down Properly

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 fierce dragon punch 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. I fixed this by making both hits knock down and the first hit juggles into the second.

360 Command Throw

More exciting than these normal moves and dragon punches, the 360 command has changed. 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. That means that when you’re doing a 360 motion in ST, as soon as you reach up/back, you have only 3 more 60ths of a second before T.Hawk will jump, and you have to complete the command throw before then. The new command eliminates that problem entirely. The emphasis is much more on should you do the throw, rather than can you do it.

Super

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 devastating, but remember that if the opponent has less than one third of his health, you could beat him anyway with the non-super throw. For the super 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.

Hawk Dive

And the biggest change: 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+fierce. The new command is for gamepad players, but the SAFE ON BLOCK property is a huge balance change that will strike terror into all our hearts for years to come.

After the hawk dive, T.Hawk falls mostly straight down rather than bouncing back. This is a great tool for getting in. 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 amazing 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.

More Hawk Dive

Early on in development, the hawk dive knocked down, just like it did in ST. This was one of the very few times during all of playtesting when someone really scared me enough with a move that it actually made me change it. This time, it was Campbell “Buktooth” Tran. His strategy was to mostly dive because it’s safe on block, and if he ever happened to hit, the knockdown let him go for cross-up splash, jabs or shorts, then 360 command throw. ST T.Hawk didn’t land close enough to get the cross-up splash, even though his dive knocked down.

Buktooth was able to do well against me with this strategy while he was on the phone, arranging travel logistics with his friends for later that night. This showed that the risk/rewards were so skewed here that the game barely required his attention. I made the dive not knock down.

Here’s a summary of the changes that followed:

• Hawk Dive no longer knocks down. The reward for hitting was simply too great for the low risk.
• Hawk Dive now falls slower after hit/block so that on block, T.Hawk does not recover before the opponent anymore.
• Hawk Dive now falls even slower after hit/block to prevent Hawk Dive -> low short or forward combo that was possible at a very certain height/distance. Difficult to perform, but too powerful.
• After command throw and super, T.Hawk now bounces farther away, and falls slower during the bounce. This prevents safe jump jab in the corner after a command throw, but still barely allows walk up low jab after a command throw (remember, the victim can hit your low jab with a reversal, but not the safe jump jab).
• Hawk Dive damage reduced.
• Hawk Dive startup time increased 4 frames.
• Alternate Hawk Dive added. New dive has incredibly fast startup, knocks down on hit, but is unsafe on block against many characters. Purpose is to allow T.Hawk to deal block damage to defensive characters such as Guile and also to give him back his knockdown dive if he’s willing to do the unsafe version.
• Both hits of low roundhouse given the ability to deal block damage (mostly to help vs. Honda).
• Change reverted: block damage removed on low roundhouse.
• Change reverted: Alternate Hawk Dive removed, the ultra fast startup wasn’t quite game-breaking in tests, but I can imagine it would be once released into the wild.
• Change reverted: Hawk Dive’s startup time reduced 4 frames, now matching original game.
• Change reverted: Hawk Dive’s damage set back to original game’s, entirely because block damage turns out to be linked to hit damage. Reducing the damage in an earlier change had the unintended effect of reducing the block damage also, so change reverted because he needs a way to deal some blocked damage.
• Throw whiff added when T.Hawk attempts the command throw, but fails to connect. Acts similarly to Zangief’s whiff throw.
• Change reverted: T.Hawk no longer bounces farther away after his 360 command throw, now that he has a throw whiff to weaken the safe-jump trap.

The Inescapable Throw Loop From ST

I’ll explain what was going on with the changes in that list for T.Hawk’s 360 command throw. In, ST, he could do this devastating sequence:

Safe jump jab -> low jab -> button-up command throw -> repeat.

That’s a lot of jargon, so let’s sort it out. I covered the concept of safe jumps in the advanced section of my SSF2T tutorial videos. The idea is that you jump at your knocked-down opponent as he gets up. You time your jump so that you land just a couple frames after the opponent is completely standing up. If the opponent chooses to do a reversal attack (such as Ryu’s dragon punch or Guile’s flash kick) then it actually won’t hit you. Those reversal attacks have a few frames at the beginning where you can’t hit them, but they can’t hit you either. So your jumping jab will pass through the opponent, then you’ll land (and block), then their reversal attack will start to hit—but you’ll be safe. Yes it’s hard to time this, but experts can do it.

If the opponent tries to do a reversal attack in this situation, you’ll just land, block it, and then be able to retaliate with a command throw. If the opponent decides to block, then your jab will touch him, forcing him to block. If blocks the jumping jab, he will be forced to block your subsequent ducking jab. At this point, you can perform the 360 on the joystick, then release a punch button. In Street Fighter, releasing a button (as opposed to pressing it) does count for doing a special move, but it does not cause you to do a normal move. So after the opponent blocks your low jab, if he does a move that makes him unthrowable (such as a dragon punch), then your throw will fail. In ST, T.Hawk does not have a throw whiff animation, so usually if you miss a throw, you get a normal punch instead. But if you tried to do the command throw by releasing a punch button (rather than pressing it) you don’t even get a punch if you fail to throw—you just get nothing, and you can block.

So after the opponent blocks your low jab, he will either get thrown or you will safely block his reversal attack (and then throw him anyway). At this point, you can safe jump jab to repeat the entire sequence if you are in the corner.

The bottom line is that although this loop is very difficult to execute properly, if you land it and you can execute it, you basically win. It also means there is a “perfect T.Hawk algorithm” once you get in the right situation. No real strategy is involved, it’s just a very difficult test of your ability to execute precisely. You could say that T.Hawk “needs” something this powerful, because even with it, he’s still bottom tier. But when we buff him up, it’s probably a bad idea to let him keep this. Because getting in is easier now (safe hawk dive), the reward should not be so great, and more importantly, the strategy should not be completely replaced by a dexterity test once you do get in.

Removing the Loop

My first attempt to fix this was to add bounce back after his 360 command throw, so that he could not safe jump afterwards. I could write a whole article on just that, because it was extremely difficult to make that actually work, but I eventually did. Much later, I finally got the time I needed from a programmer to implement a throw whiff for T.Hawk that operated just like Zangief’s. This means that if T.Hawk attempts the button-up method for his loop, the opponent can dragon punch him. (With the whiff, T.Hawk would safely block in this case, then throw you anyway).

For months, he had both of these penalties--more bounce back after the throw and a throw whiff when he missed. It just seemed like too much. Some players started asking why he really needed both penalties when either one prevented the inescapable loop. Eventually, I agreed and reverted the bounce back after the command throw to be the same as in ST, but kept the new whiff animation.

Other Problems

T.Hawk had so much trouble beating Honda and Guile I tried all sorts of things, like alternate versions of the hawk dive and block damage on his roundhouse, as you can see in the bullet point list above. I don’t think any of these things really worked out. Some had technical problems, some caused more balance problems in other areas, and some just felt strange. In the end, I reverted lots of that stuff. Instead, I just “tried harder” to win the matches against Guile and Honda and I was able to develop some techniques. These fights are hard, but I think they are winnable.

Conclusion

You might argue that T.Hawk is even worse now than the original game because the deadly throw loop has been removed (throw whiff means it’s escapable now). But the flipside is that T.Hawk doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing anymore. He can mostly get in with the new dive, so getting in doesn’t need to lead to instant checkmate. He does have trouble against defensive characters like Guile and Honda, but these matches are more winnable than before. In other matches, he’s more well-rounded. His gameplay is more “interactive” now and less based on perfectly executing a throw loop, so this makes fighting him more fun. And when all is said and done, I hope players will find him more effective than he was in ST, just not game-breakingly so.

--Sirlin

Street Fighter HD Remix: Fei Long

Fei Long is usually considered one of the five worst characters in the original Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo (ST), 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.

Fei Long, Version 1

In HD Remix, Fei Long, along with Akuma, have the notorious distinction of each being the best character in the game and the worst character in the game at various points throughout development. The changelist for HD Remix, version 1 was:

• Flying kick move changed to qcf+k (easy!)
• Flying kick with short button can go through fireballs during startup.

The control change immediately made him fun, and being able to do short flying kicks over fireballs easily seemed like just what he needed. Unfortunately, the rest of the cast was just too powerful relative to this. Fei Long seemed like the worst character, or close to it.

Fei Long, Version 2

Then came a ridiculous number of buffs. I was going to make Fei Long viable, damn it!

• All three version of Flying Kicks can go through fireballs at startup.
• All rekka punches (qcf+p) travel farther.
• Super travels much farther, which also makes it safer on block because last hit doesn’t whiff so much

And this ease of use stuff:

• Flame kick input window is bigger (easier) and not random.
• Medium and roundhouse flame kicks always knock down and can juggle.
• Input window for second and third rekka punches longer and not random.

Expert players who played this version said Fei Long was unquestionably #1. His flying kicks were too good at locking opponents down. Like in ST, they can combo in standing fierce, then all three rekka punches. Ouch! His super became the best in the game and you could even juggle with a flame kick afterwards for a total of 90% damage. (Oops!) Also, you could get about 3 supers per round if you tried. You could also juggle flame kicks after flying kicks due to something that seemed at the time like a consequence of putting a juggle property on a move that could catch the enemy on fire and one that couldn’t. It turned out that the ability to juggle with flame kicks after flying kicks wasn’t because of that at all. It was a straight-up bug, but I wouldn’t realize that until months later. Anyway, to top it all off, Fei Long could pretty much ignore fireballs and do the new qcf+k command to go through them on reaction, every time.

Incidentally, a lot of people requested that he be able to cancel his ducking medium kick into rekka punches, but that is really the last thing he needs, as I hope you can see by now. Giving him that would be similar to SF3:3rd Strike Chun Li’s ducking medium kick into super. She can stick it out constantly and if it happens to hit, bam, super. In Fei Long’s case, he wouldn’t even need super meter to deal huge damage off his 3-Rekka series. What we need to do at this point is turn the knobs DOWN on Fei Long. It was useful to see him this powered up state though, because it gave me a frame of reference for what a “too good” and “not good enough” Fei Long look like.

Fei Long, Version 3 (a.k.a version 20)

This is really more like Fei Long version 20 than version 3, but I’m compressing the story for readability. He’s now settled down into seemingly fair state.

• Flying kick move changed to qcf+k (easy!)
• Flying kick with short button can go through fireballs during startup.
• Flying kicks have 5 additional frames of recovery. This prevents you from comboing if you hit, and it also prevents you from trapping people by doing the move repeatedly.
• Flying kicks have worse priority air-to-air during the first hit, so it’s easier to counter them with a jumping attack if you predict them.
• All version of flame kicks always knock down and can juggle. They can still juggle after you juggle with flying kicks, so have fun, combo-maniacs.
• Flame kick input window is bigger (easier) and not random
• Rekka punch input window is bigger (easier) and not random
• Rekka punches travel a little farther, but not as far as in Version 2
• Super travels farther and faster (by a lot) but not as much as Version 2
• Super is now vulnerable at Fei Long’s head during 4th and 5th hits
• Super meter gains reduced on flame kicks and flying kicks
• Super knocks the opponent down too quickly for a flame kick to combo after

The farther reach on Rekka punches allows Fei Long to actually deal some block damage vs a defensive Honda. It also makes it a little easier to pressure a defensive Guile who mostly just sits there and does low forward and the occasional sonic boom. (Both of those matches are still hard for Fei Long though).

The flying kicks are easy to perform now, and still have many uses, but they cannot really be abused like they could in some situations before. The recovery time at the end prevents you from constantly looping flying kicks -> fierce -> flying kicks, etc. I don’t want to give the impression this move is weak though. It still has 14 frames of invulnerable startup, it still juggles and travels in a useful arc, and it’s still an overhead attack (must be blocked high).

The addition of these 5 frames of recovery was very controversial on the forums throughout development, but I never figured out why anyone complained about this. Fei Long is still safe after this move, except if he’s too close versus Zangief or T.Hawk (but you can beat Zangief with just the fierce button anyway, so who cares?). It’s practical to do the flying kicks many times in a round. If you ever hit a jumping opponent, you can juggle with flame kicks. On hit or block against a grounded opponent, you can usually do a flame kick right after and they can’t really do anything about it. The biggest mystery of the entire balancing process was why people saw the new flying kicks as worse, rather than better. They are better overall, despite being worse in some ways.

Going Through Fireballs With Short Flying Kicks

The short flying kick going through fireballs is a help, but not a total solution for getting close. The opponent can still back up and sweep you if he predicts this move. But it’s at least one option to get around fireballs, rather than practically no option, as he had before. At a certain range, you can threaten to go through fireballs on reaction and hit the opponent. There’s little they can do in that situation other than try to fight Fei Long at a different range.

I think it was a real mistake when I let all three versions of this move go through fireballs on startup, because even if it were somehow fair, it goes too far in negating the power of projectiles in Super Turbo. It just felt wrong.

Super

The super move is very useful and a key move for Fei Long now. Its new range helps tremendously. To balance that out, he can no longer get so many per round and if the opponent does predict it and jump over you, he has at least some hope of hitting you back (for example, with Ken’s new longer-reaching Hurricane Kick from behind!).

Version 4 (aka version 25)

Doing a blocked flying kick, then immediately flame kicking was so good (as opposed to worthless, as the forums believed) that it started to feel like a problem. It’s a mindless situation that came up constantly in Fei Long matches. After a flying kick, if he does a short flame kick, it will beat pretty much everything you do, and Fei Long will be safe if you block, so there’s no reason he shouldn’t do it every time.

This just highlighted the problem with any move being invulnerable on startup and safe block. That’s generally a bad idea, and that’s why Cammy’s cannon spike has worse recovery now (but still safe a lot of the time), Balrog’s jab buffalo headbutt has more recovery (but is still safe most of the time), and Ken’s jab dragon punch still has the same vulnerable box on his head that he had in ST (but is still mostly invulnerable). If anything, I gave too light of a touch in trying to remove invulnerable and safe-on-block moves. The touch was also very light on Fei Long, and his short flame kick has more recovery now. At point blank it’s not safe on block, but in most cases it still is.

Toward the end of development, something threatened to ruin Fei Long. We discovered a bug in HD Remix’s juggling system that affected several characters and let them do combos larger than they should be able to. This affected Fei Long the most because fixing it removed his ability to juggle flame kicks after flying kicks. Remember that the all-powerful version 2 Fei Long could do this juggle, and I chose to keep it and tone down everything else because the juggle was fun and he needed something like that to get to the right power level. But now other characters badly needed this bug fixed. What to do?

My solution was to fix the bug for the sake of the other characters, then implement a special case for Fei Long to let him keep those juggles that we balanced him around for months. Most characters have a juggle limit of 3, which is reset if they hit with a super. Fei Long’s juggle limit is now 4. You can do a total of 4 hits, mixing flame kick and flying kick hits however you like. At that point, hitting with the super is still allowed and resets the count as usual, but the last hit of Fei Long’s super triggers a special knock down that ends your combo. Believe me, you want that last clause because things got really out of hand without it.

Conclusion

It was a long road to take Fei Long fro the bottom to...wherever he ended up in HD Remix. He is much more fun now, partly because executing all his moves is easier, and partly because he’s generally juiced up. Longer reaching rekka punches and a longer reaching super give him even more offense, while the new short flying kick gives him a mild new way to get in. Although he lost one difficult combo (flying kicks into fierce into rekkas), he gained a very practical new combo (flying kick juggle into flame kick juggle), giving him good damage dealing potential.

Street Fighter HD Remix: Dee Jay

In the early years of Super Street Fighter 2 Turobo (ST),  most people rated Dee Jay bottom tier, or close to that. Over the years though, both the US and Japanese players discovered that Dee Jay wasn't so bad after all, and that he's perhaps around the middle of the pack. His cross-up medium kick is deadly. His ducking medium kick has extremely high priority and it knocks down. His "max out" projectile is solid, his slide is useful, and his up kicks are decent at anti-air and are pretty damaging.

Only two moves are different for HD Remix Dee Jay: his machine gun upper (charge down, up + punch, then mash punches) and his dread kicks (charge back, forward + kick).

Machine Gun Upper

In ST, this move requires a very precise timing of mashing punches to get all the hits: fast, but not too fast or it won’t work! Two or possibly three people in the United States can actually do this, so I figured it was time to bring machine gun uppers to the people. Now it’s very easy to mash out all the hits on this.

To compensate, the machine gun upper does much less dizzy and damage overall. Cross-up medium kick, low jab x 2, MGU is an easy, good combo though. It does a bit less damage than the slightly harder crossup medium kick, low jab x 2, stand strong, dread kicks combo.

The machine gun upper has a new property, too: it can destroy fireballs! Dee Jay’s best matches are against characters without fireballs, so this is a clever way to help him in matches where he needs help, but not affect matches where he’s already good. Some things you should know about this are that startup of the move cannot destroy fireballs (only the parts that can actually hit) and that every single hit of the move can destroy fireballs.

Most importantly though, you can charge down/back, then go to up/back + punch to perform the MGU while still retaining your charge for a max out projectile. That means when the opponent throws a fireball, you can cancel it with the MGU, then throw back your own projectile faster than you otherwise could have. On paper, this sounds strong, but in practice it’s actually quite a bit of work Dee Jay’s part to eke out a small advantage.

Also, it matters a lot which part of the MGU destroys the fireball. If you see the fireball coming, then destroy it with the MGU, you’re still going to have to go through with the rest of the MGU before you can throw your own max out. It’s a lot more effective if you guess the fireball and do your MGU early so that the very end of it destroys the fireball. That way, you can throw your max out immediately after. But if you’re doing the MGU that early, the opponent can counter by doing nothing or jumping in or throwing a delayed fireball. It’s an interesting guessing game, but during playtest, it was never really dominating.

Dread Kicks

In ST, the time between the two hits of this move is so big that even if you hit with the first hit, the second one hardly ever connects. You can even get dragon punched between these two kicks. In HD Remix, the second kick comes out faster so that it almost always combos. To compensate, each hit does less damage. You can think of it somewhat like Bison’s scissor kick in that it’s a pressure move that does two ticks of block damage.

In ST, the short version of the dread kicks (which hits only once) can go over low attacks. In HD Remix, the medium and roundhouse dread kicks have this same property. This is probably Dee Jay’s biggest upgrade as it makes it pretty scary to try to sweep him or slide at him. Dee Jay already had good pokes, so adding an anti-sweep move is nothing to scoff at. Note to the curious: the medium and roundhouse Dread Kicks do not go over Sagat’s low fireballs, sorry.

Conclusion

Dee Jay gained a few tricks, but stayed close to his roots. For 14 years, he was secretly a very solid character and these upgrades should keep him secretly solid in HD Remix.

--Sirlin