STREET FIGHTER II
Jan. 5th, 2021 02:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marchionessofmustacheNow that Street Fighter is over (good riddance -- but a sad farewell to daddy Eagle) we're ready to move onto Street Fighter II: The World Warrior. The apostrophe doesn't get added until the next game.
This is a direct sequel to Street Fighter and it has a little bit more story than the first game. A little bit. But the story is expanded on in future games as well. I know more of the story from other games and media and reading about it online, but we're gonna try to discover just how much story is actually in the game. I'm also using the instruction manual from the SNES version to see what was given along with that (though the version I'm playing is a port of the arcade version).
Basically the only story given in the SNES manual is that eight warriors enter a tournament to challenge the mysterious Grand Masters. That's it! That's the entire story we get! Well, more of the story is explained in the characters' backstories, and hopefully in the game as well (... though I'm not expecting much on that front... I can't remember what it was like when I beat this as a kid, but I'm hoping there's some amount of 'ending' to each character's tournament).
This game lets us select from one of the eight world warriors, with whom we will partake in the tournament and attempt to challenge the Grand Masters after traveling the world. We have Japanese martial artist Ryu, Ryu's American buddy Ken, sumo wrestler E. Honda, Brazilian jungle man Blanka, American Special Forces member Guile, Chinese martial artist Chun-Li, Russian bear-wrestler Zangief, and Indian yoga master Dhalsim. That makes two representatives from the USA and Japan each, and the rest from different respective countries. There's also the Grand Masters whom we have yet to meet.
Since the structure of this game is a little different from the first game, I'm not going to write about my battles with each opponent as I go, as I'm going to be playing the game eight times over. Instead, I'll write about each character's uniqueness, kind of going back and forth and filling out this post as I play the game.
You can re-select a new character after you continue from a failure, so technically it's possible to see all the endings by making a save state just before losing to Bison, then purposely losing the fight, selecting a different character, and winning with them to see their ending. But the original arcade machine of course would not have had save states (nor would the home versions, for that matter), and to see a character's ending, you'd have to play through the whole game again. Now, you could play through as your favorite/best character until you got to Bison again, then lose, then select another character to see their ending... so I guess I could abuse save states to "skip" that, but I want to play through the whole tournament with each character. There's only eight, and it's fun to learn and master the play style of each. Getting through the tournament and familiarizing myself with their moves will make it easier to face Bison with them anyway, instead of jumping into the fight with no experience at all.
First, let's talk about some stuff that's new to the game, as well as some stuff that's shared across all players:
Enemy AI - Before, the enemies just spammed stuff and seemed to be able to react to your movements instantaneously, making for cheap and broken battles. In this game, opponents only pull from their movepool as if they were playable characters, and they actually make decisions based on what you do, like fighting a real opponent.
GRAPPLING - A great new feature to the game is grappling, which is a way to punish players who play too defensively. Fighting games all have their ways to encourage players to play aggressively (... except the first Street Fighter which just encouraged you to button mash) and adding the concept of grappling was a great way to introduce this idea of not having your character just guard the whole game. If you're pushing up against an opponent who is guarding and press an attack button (at least I think that's how it works), you'll grapple the opponent. Depending on the button you press, this will do various things. Most of the time this is some kind of suplex or throw, but there's also a hold-and-beat option for a few characters (Dhalsim headlocks you and punches you in the head repeatedly!) ... I think the official term for this is "close attacks."
Stuns - Now after performing enough damage in a row without being hurt (at least, I think that's how it works), the opponent will become stunned, standing around dizzily with birds around their head. While stunned, you have to mash buttons to regain your composure, or else you're a sitting duck for attacks.
Interactive stages - There's not a ton of this in the game, but now there are objects in the stage that will interact with the fight. Knock someone into the barrels in Ken's stage and they will crash!
Victory poses and messages - When winning a round, characters will make one of two different poses. Pretty cool! At first I thought it was a separate pose for winning a round vs a whole match, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Also, after winning, the victor will have a small message displayed on the screen next to the KO face of the opponent. Sadly, there's not a different victory quote for each opponent, just the same one for every single match. I put each character's victory quote at the top of their little section. But it's still better than the same one thing for every fight like in SF1.
Speedup music - When one of the fighters gets below a certain hit point threshold, the music speeds up in the stage! I don't think I mentioned this in SF1's post, but it was true there too: all stages have unique theme music to them.
Minigames - There are a few minigames throughout the tournament that you get to play to boost up your score. I'm not really concerned about score, but I try to do my best in the minigames nonetheless. The first one has you beat up a car, the second one has you attack some wooden barrels that fall from the ceiling, and the last one has you beat up some oil tanks that randomly have flames on them that can hurt you. If you manage to completely destroy everything in the minigame, you'll get a "Perfect" and the time left over will be multiplied and added to your score.
Blood - At least I don't remember the first game having blood, but this one does. Certain attacks will cause a bit of blood to show, and there's blood in some defeat portraits as well. Zangief has blood on his face when defeated in battle. Stuff like that. What's strange is that I think there's also some kind of vomit or something...? Sometimes when you land a strong punch or something, an orange or skin-toned fluid will pour out of the mouth of the victim. Very strange looking.
And now, let's learn about the characters and their stories!
"You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance."
Ryu is probably the 'canonical' main character of the game, though I think according to later games there's no real single canon path in the game, as multiple of the main characters end up at the end of the story.
According to the SNES manual, he's the student of Master Sheng Long, and has given up everything in life for the pursuit of perfecting his fighting technique. With no friends, family, or home to call his own, he travels the world seeking out tougher opponents to improve himself. And from the first game, we know that he also is the winner of the first World Warrior tournament.
It's not explicitly stated how he got to be a member of the tournament, though he easily would have wanted to join on his own, but I think that he was specifically invited to participate in this second World Warriors tournament.
In Ryu's ending, the winners' podium is shown with Bison and Sagat standing in the 2nd and 3rd place positions, but there's no one on top. The fans chant Ryu's name, but he's nowhere to be found. We cut to him walking into the sunset; only the fight matters to Ryu, not the ceremony. He's already seeking his next challenge.
Ryu is an all-around fighter with decent strength, speed, and reach. He has access to three special moves, which carried over from the first Street Fighter: Hadouken, in which he blasts a fireball of spirit energy from his palms at the opponent; Shoryuken, a twisting dragon uppercut punch that launches him into the air, and Tatsumakisenpukyaku, a whirlwind kick that seems to defy the laws of physics.
Hadouken is ridiculously useful, though the AI responds to it pretty well if you're just spamming it. But it's great to catch someone in the middle of a slow move like Zangief's lariat or Chun-Li's spinning kick. Tatsumakisenpukyaku, like in the first game, has a cool name but is mostly useless. It's slow and leaves you vulnerable for a LONG time, and the chance of hitting with it is very low. It can also easily be countered just by being attacked, so you'd have to use it against a stunned opponent or something to actually land it, and in those situations, it'd be better to just use a throw or strong kick or something. It does have the ability to hit twice and frequently stuns the opponent, though. While it's hardly ever practical, there are situations where it comes in amazingly helpful for those reasons alone. And by that I mean I used it in the fight against the final boss, M. Bison.
I had to guess when he was going to move forward but not attack, and not jump as well... and then fire off the 'kyaku. The kick can hit twice, meaning good damage, and it's even likely to leave the opponent stunned, which means I can get another one in. With a few sweeps and jabs here and there, I was able to Tatsumaki my way to victory.
Ryu's regular attacks are annoyingly short range. His weak punch is more like an elbow, it barely even hits away from his body. His weak kick may as well be Luigi's taunt. The medium and strong kick mostly kick upward, giving it very little horizontal range, but it doesn't even work that great as an anti-air. And then the medium and strong punch are mediocre at best. The strong variations have pretty good damage, though. His jumping kicks have pretty good reach, as does his leg sweep.
Ryu is a smart fighter and quite hard to beat as an AI player. He'll move around trying to bait you into different positions -- importantly, if you're far enough away, he'll blast you with a Hadouken, and if you're in the air when you're close, you can count on getting your chin pounded in by a Shoryuken. Even the AI knows not to use Tatsumakisenpukyaku, as you don't see it getting used much. Ryu's power lies in his special abilities, and he'll mostly be spamming those based on your positioning, so knowing how to get around those are the key to victory. Learning how to time jumps over Hadoukens and remembering NOT to jump again into a Shoryuken is vital.
Ryu's fights take place in a temple surrounded by other temples; I would assume it's the one where he trained with Sheng Long. Despite being the primary protagonist of the game/series, his stage is fairly plain. There aren't people around cheering like most stages (which makes sense, but it still makes it feel empty). Nothing even really moves around, aside from the background being parallax kind of looking like movement. There are a couple of signboards that can be broken, at least, and I think they were thrown in solely to give the stage something of interest.
Ryu is the hero of the franchise (except in SF3) so you kinda have to like him. He's a good guy, and his moveset is particularly memorable. Almost every gamer (well, at least classic gamers -- idk what "kids these days" know about) what Hadouken is. Ryu is known as cool and calculating, and overall just seems like a serious guy that wants to fight fight fight and do what's right.
He was the first character I played through the game with and he was a ton of fun. The AI in this game is smart enough that you can't get away with just spamming Hadouken in the corner like you can on a noob player, so I really had to make use of his whole arsenal over the course of the playthrough.
As for attractiveness, he's just OK. He's pretty plain looking, so I can't really say much about him.
"Attack me if you dare, I will crush you."
There's not a lot to say about Ken, as he's just a clone of Ryu. His 'backstory' is a bit different though -- he's the other disciple of master Sheng Long's, but he's a big gloat. He brags about himself and even let himself get weaker spending time hanging out with his girlfriend on the beach for an entire year instead of doing any training. It wasn't until he got a challenge from Ryu that he got his fighting spark back and entered the tournament.
In his ending, his girlfriend shows up and he makes a creepy face. Then suddenly they are married. IDK. Ken is stupid.
Ken has the exact same moveset and AI as Ryu, so playing as him or against him is the same. Depending on how late in the game one of the two shows up, it can feel like they're somewhat different, but it's just because the AI gets a little smarter as you clear more matches.
Ken's stage is a harbor with some boats in the background, perhaps on the beaches where he hangs out with the gf. On the right side of the stage are a couple of barrels (they look like oil barrels or something, but are actually empty) that can be destroyed as part of stage interactivity. On the closest boat there are some onlookers cheering on the fight.
I don't have a lot to say about Ken. He's one of my least favorite characters in the series -- being a clone he's not interesting as a fighter, and his entire story is he's an obnoxious braggart who thinks he's the best fighter. But Ryu is better so who cares about Ken???
Also he's not attractive at all hahaha. He's your generic cocky prettyboy, which is a total snoozefest.
"Can't you do better than that?"
Honda was trained from birth to be a sumo wrestler, and fought his way up to obtain the grand champion title of Yokozuna. Once reaching this peak, he learned that the world outside Japan doesn't respect sumo as a "real" sport, and he entered the World Warriors tournament to prove that sumo is the world's greatest fighting style.
After defeating Bison and winning the tournament, Honda goes back to training his disciples, showing them that anything is possible when the mind and body are in harmony. He tells them that he won't slack on his training and will continue to eat nabe (lol). Then he and his pupils have a good time eating and chatting together.
Honda has only two special moves: the Hundred Hand Slap, which lets out a flurry of palm strikes, and Sumo Head Butt, which flings Honda across the screen at surprising speed, head first toward his opponent.
Hundred Hand Slap is useful in a few of the weaker opponents' fights, as it still damages when guarded. But in order to do it, you must punch repeatedly first, so any smart opponent can just jump over you while you're trying to pull it off.
Sumo Head Butt requires you to hold backward for two seconds before pressing forward and punch. Unlike some later games (I'm not sure when this changed), getting hit and blocking resets your two seconds, and you can't buffer your two seconds from other attacks, either, so you really have to be able to just walk backward unhindered for two seconds to pull it off. Good for when the enemy is stunned and you're far away, but how often does that happen with Honda?
Honda has a knee bash grapple attack, where he headlocks the opponent and bashes in their face with his knee repeatedly. Definitely fun to pull off. But with his slow speed, it's rare you'll get a good grapple opportunity.
The nature of his two special moves, his slow movement, and his poor jumping abilities (though forward medium kick jumping is pretty good, it turns into a body slam that seems to have big reach and priority) make him very vulnerable to projectile attacks like Sonic Boom and TIGER TIGER TIGER.
Fighting against Honda is pretty scary, though. He has ridiculous reach -- despite being short and squatty -- and great anti-air capabilities with his standing strong punch. Jumping at him will most likely be punished. I can manage to get jumps in from just the right distance, or when he's in the middle of doing something else, but most of the time he's going to do a chop or kick that knocks you back and does decent damage as well.
His weak point seems to be his lack of variety of moves. But it's not something that can be taken advantage of by everyone -- you really need to be able to get at him from afar. His Hundred-Hand Slap is terrifying in a corner, but sometimes he'll use it in the middle of the arena. Since he has to punch three times to start it, it's pretty well telegraphed, and you can easily toss a ranged attack at him like a Hadouken. Sadly that makes fighting him with up-close fighters pretty tough, since he has amazing range for his size and shape, and can fight really well close-quarters.
Honda's stage is a Japanese bathhouse, presumably where the sumo wrestlers go to bathe after their matches. It's full of Japanese imagery, and the poster in the background lights up with the rising sun behind Mt Fuji after victory. It's a pretty simple little stage, just a big bath in the middle and some various accessories lying around.
Honda is pretty strong, and his strengths overcome his weaknesses pretty easily. Playing through his tournament was pretty fun, and went pretty fast. I did it in the morning before lunch, except for the final fight with Bison, which was ridiculously hard, of course. His forward air medium kick (the body slam) turned out to be pretty helpful, it would get priority over his scissor kick, so if he backed up a little bit, I knew I had a good opportunity to use it. Otherwise there was a lot of blocking and trying to throw in weak punches and kicks when I could. Landing a heavy kick was very satisfying but night impossible, so I ended up not using strong strikes much, despite them being so powerful for the rest of the game, where I used them heavily throughout each match.
Also, Edmond is a hottie. He's got big muscular arms and thighs to go along with his big belly, I love it hahaha. As a fighter, though, he's one of the harder ones to use so I don't play as him much. I'm better at agile characters that jump around the screen, and he's definitely the opposite of that.
When he gets knocked out, you can see his little red fundoshi :P IDK why it's red. I also don't know why his name is "Edmond" when he's meant to be all about Japanese tradition XD You think they'd name him like Yamato or something.
"Seeing you in action is a joke."
Blanka is a native to the Brazilian jungles who for some reason is green and can surge electricity through his body. This isn't explained whatsoever. I think in other materials, it's "explained" that he turned green from eating a lot of plants or something, which is probably the dumbest backstory I heard, besides Alolan Raichu gaining psychic powers from eating too many pancakes.
No one really knows much about this guy, other than he seems to be "half-beast, half-man," though that's just a description he gained from people who happened upon him and didn't know what else to think. Over the past year, he's been appearing in towns and challenging people to fights. I guess that's why he decided to enter the tournament...? To fight?
I guess it's good he did, because immediately after defeating Bison, a woman runs onto the screen asking if Blanka is her long lost son Jimmy, who was lost in a plane accident over Brazil many years ago. Blanka says no at first, but then the woman comments that she gave him the anklet he's wearing for his birthday. Blanka and his mom hug and he calls out, "Mommy!"
I just want to know how that anklet still fits him now when he was wearing it when he was a small boy. I mean the rest of him sure did grow! Or was he just huge when he was a baby? LOL
Blanka has two special moves, the first being Electricity where he hunches over and somehow makes his entire body pulse with electricity, shocking anyone who runs into him. The other is Rolling Attack, where he rolls into a ball and flings himself across the stage quickly.
Blanka's two special moves have the same inputs as Honda's, with Rolling Attack functioning almost exactly the same as Sumo Head Butt. Electricity, however, covers Blanka's entire body, making him basically immune to any attack that doesn't have priority over it. This is pretty much his one big boon.
Otherwise, his regular attacks have really weird hitboxes and are hard to use. They're a little counterintuitive in their direction, like strong punch being a weird swipe upward where he does a backflip. Again comparing to Honda, he overall seems like a weaker version of Honda overall. Lower reach and power with the same strengths and weaknesses from his special moves. He is slightly faster, I think, but it's not that helpful for him.
Blanka is not too hard to fight against, as he's overall not very strong. He doesn't seem to do Electricity very much, and much like Hundred Hand Slap, it's clearly telegraphed so you can avoid it. Even if he does hit you with Rolling Attack, it doesn't do too much damage. He's especially vulnerable to projectiles, but he was even fairly easy to take out with close-ranged fighters like Honda.
Jimmy is a weird character. Why can he electrify himself? Why is he green? Why doesn't he have a beard? And yeah, why did his anklet grow with him as he aged?
The idea of a feral wild man is attractive, but Blanka looks kinda silly. I can get into the wildman side of the whole thing, but his appearance doesn't do much for me.
Overall, though, he's a very memorable character, and his ending surprised me as I never really looked into Blanka's character before so I didn't know about the whole Jimmy thing lol.
"Are you man enough to fight with me?"
Guile used to be a member of an elite special forces team. Six months before the events of the game, he was captured in Thailand along with his co-pilot Charlie. After months of imprisonment, the two broke free and became overcome with the path of vengeance.
Thinking the Grand Masters, based in Thailand, are connected to his imprisonment, he entered the tournament to try to exact his revenge.
After winning the tournament, he holds Bison up and asks him if he remembers him, Charlie, and Cambodia. Bison tells him to kill him quickly, but Guile's wife Jane and daughter Amy run up and beg him not to, saying that killing Bison won't bring Charlie back; it will just make Guile a murderer like Bison.
They beg Guile to come back home, and Guile feels he doesn't deserve to since he abandoned them (?) but he goes back anyway. We see him sitting on the couch with Amy hugging him, Jane bringing him tea, and I guess they have a pet dog, too. I have to admit it's cute seeing Guile in little house slippers.
Guile is a heavy-hitting street brawler with two special moves. Sonic Boom sends a burst of energy out from his arms by holding back and then pressing forward+punch. Flash Kick does a backflip, kicking strongly into the air in front of him. It's done from a crouching position by crouching for two seconds then pressing up+kick.
At first, Flash Kick seemed near useless, but as the opponents got tougher, I started to see the use in it. If you can manage to lure them into it, it's a powerful counter. For example, you can use it immediately following Tiger Uppercut from Sagat or Shoryuken from Ken.
One thing that's really cool about Guile is that he has an aerial grapple attack -- he can actually grab people in the air and do a piledriver-like thing to the ground. It's a lot of fun when you can pull it off.
Guile was a bit unwieldy and the first character I really struggled with. Defeating Ken was a nightmare until I learned the perfect timing for countering his jump kicks with Flash Kick. Then I could usually trick him into a pattern of trying them over and over, flash kicking him to death.
Balrog was a funny fight; I basically just guarded and waited for him to jump or move back far enough, then sent a Sonic Boom. After a jump backward, he would use a rush attack that would always leave him vulnerable. After moving backward without jumping, he'd usually block, but like all special attacks, even when guarded, Sonic Boom still does a little bit of damage.
Vega was hard to hit with anything, so I resorted to countering his moves. If he hopped off the wall (which he likes to do a lot), I could jump straight up and medium kick in the air and it would hit him as he approached. Even though he was approaching from the perfect height to use Flash Kick, Vega's kicks seemed to have priority. He was also way too speedy and jumpy to get any Sonic Booms in (though when he jumped off the wall, I could send a slow one and he'd land on it, but it did less damage than the jump kick and was harder to time).
Balrog was just a matter of luring him into Tiger Uppercut then countering with Flash Kick, or jumping over a Tiger fireball thing and medium kicking him in the air.
Bison could actually be countered with some well-timed Flash Kicks, though it was really hard to time them properly. Sometimes I feel like I had to do them at the moment he acted and hope he decided to jump so I hit him before he could kick me. Jumping backward against the edge of the screen and medium kicking as I fell could get a little bit of damage in if he was in the right place. I got decent at timing it properly, knowing when to just stand and guard and when to jump. I still got punished plenty, though.
Guile's fight takes place at an air force hangar, with military guys and gals cheering on. There's a boom box on the ground, too, lol. I don't know why I decided to have a whole section for stages when there's not too much to say about them, hahaha. The most memorable thing here is the theme music, which has become a meme.
Guile is a character I never had much affinity for -- American army musclehead doesn't really do it for me. But his little family life ending made him a little more endearing. He's got The Build that other characters do that make it so he's not unattractive, but like said, just... his overall archetype is not my thing.
But he got a nice body lmfao. It's funny because with IRL peeps I'm not into muscley guys at all (though rasslin' started to change that) but with 2D characters I like it quite a bit...? XD
"I am the strongest woman in the world."
While it's not explicitly stated in the manual I'm reading, Chun-Li seems to be some kind of private detective or something. She's investigating a smuggling operation known as Shadoloo, and the trail brought her to the tournament. She believes one of the Grand Masters is responsible for the murder of her father, so she enters the tournament seeking answers.
Her ending has her praying over her father's grave, saying that he's now avenged. And she says that Bison's drug is stopped (????) so he can rest peacefully now or whatever. Then she turns into a regular single girl, taking off her fighting outfit and wearing street clothes with her hair down.
Playing as Chun-Li is fun since she's nimble and bouncy. Sadly her two specials are awful. Lightning Kick is done by mashing a kick button. It takes forever to pull off and everything has priority over it (I think the game is just rigged so that everything has priority over the player or something though X_x) so you'll never hit with it unless the enemy just walks into you while you're doing it. So basically you'll only get hits in with it against the weakest AI and dumb 2Ps. Spinning Bird Kick (which is a Chinese girl yelling out English with a Japanese accent lol) not only requires you to duck for 2 entire seconds before you're able to pull it off, but even after inputting the command, there's a HUGE lag time before she actually gets her self flipped around into the air and turns herself into a weird leg helicopter. So you're basically never going to get this one off, either.
Chun-Li does have one really cool unique fighting feature, though -- she can jump wall jump off the edge of the screen! If you're jumping up against the edge of the screen, you can jump again in the air in the opposite direction. Technically, Vega can do this, too, but Chun-Li is the only one of the eight player characters who can do it. The AI doesn't seem to be able to react to it very well, meaning it's pretty easy to get in hits against a lot of the computer opponents. Some of them counter it, though, like Sagat with his Tiger Uppercut or Ken and Ryu with their Shoryukens.
When the AI counters Chun-Li, though, they counter HARD. I don't know if it's my imagination or if Chun-Li just takes massive damage from everything; I'm guessing the latter since she's supposed to be all about agility and not defenses. Overall I had fun playing as Chun-Li, but also had the worst times out of the whole playthrough (well, I haven't played Zangief or Dhalsim as of writing this section) getting stuck and frustrated with her.
Fortunately VS Bison all I had to do was jump at the left side of the screen and kick as I was coming down and he would either block it or run into it. Won very easily that way. Not sure why this worked as Chun-Li and not as anyone else, though.
Chun-Li as an opponent is a fun fight. You really have to stay on your toes. She's nimble, so you can't just charge in and expect to be safe. It's best to play it safe and bait her into attacking you first, then blocking and countering when you get a change. None of her attacks do much breakthrough damage when you're blocking, so you don't have to worry about getting hurt from blocking too much. She also likes to attack from the air, so the chance of her getting a grapple on you is pretty low, since you can usually get out of your guard and start attacking before she's in a position to be able to grab you.
Chun-Li fights in a little Chinese market, where they're selling like chickens and stuff lol. Of course everyone is standing around cheering on.
Chun-Li was the character I always played as a kid because I found the game easiest with her. Plus she's just really cool. Basically whenever I was given the chance to play as a female character, I did. You know I was rocking the Princess in Super Mario Bros 2 as soon as I got that game. Perhaps I was best with Chun-Li because I played with her so much so I got more familiar with her. She's also the only character I ever cleared the game with before writing this.
I actually don't like her twin buns hairstyle (I'm not a fan of twin pigtails, either XD), and I'm not a fan of her weird underboob-showing cut outfit (I don't think it looked like this in the console versions in NA XD), but in her ending when she changes back into 'normal' clothes and takes her hair down she is actually quite cute!
"My strength is much greater than yours."
Zangief really likes fighting people. That's his story. Well, he also loves Russia, and wants to represent it in the tournament, but... his real reason for entering is solely so he can bash some skulls.
When he wins, the "president" of Russia appears from a helicopter and everyone dances. That's it. They do that... dance where you squat and kick your legs out. Zangief compliments the president on his good dancing, and he says it helps keep him in shape. The end!! Instead of a "GAME OVER" image like the other characters, Zangief and the president (and the bodyguards) just keep dancing until the credits start rolling.
Zangief is very slow and can't jump too far or too high. So mostly when fighting as him you have to concentrate on ground combat, where Zangief excels. The game seems to favor ground combat as there's no such thing as guarding while in air. Zangief can land devastating attacks with his strong punch and kick, both which have surprising range. His weak punch is very fast and has high priority.
His two special moves are abysmal. Firstly, he has a spinning lariat that is activated by pressing all three punch buttons simultaneously, which is difficult to pull off on the DualShock3, and it seems to have no priority or range. I was never able to hit anyone with it even once, and I was trying pretty hard even in the early fights where the AI is dumb enough to walk into it. His other move is a spinning piledriver. The SNES manual says that you need to rotate the control pad 360 degrees (?!) and then press punch, while the in-game special move list looked like a half turn backward with a punch at the end. Whatever you were supposed to do, I wasn't able to pull it off. You have to do it when you're close and before I can get the command in, I'd get hit. But I couldn't even pull it off when the enemy was stunned. I've seen the AI Zangief do it
The hardest fight was against Vega, who was so fast it was nearly impossible to hit him with laggy Zangief. I eventually learned he had an opening after jumping in which I could sometimes land a crouching strong kick, which would stagger him enough that I could also jump toward him and land an air strong kick before he recovered. Doing that and trying my best to dodge everything else got me through the fight.
Bison was kind of stupid, he'd easily destroy me and I eventually figured out an exploit. Figuring out exploits seems to be the way to go in this game lol. I started the fight with a jumping strong kick which almost always did some damage, then crouched and spammed weak punch as quickly as I could. While mashing the button, Bison would just duck and guard. I did this until the timer ran out, and since I was the only one who did any damage, I would win. It didn't always work; depending on what he decided to do after I did the jump kick, he'd either get stuck in the loop or just completely destroy me doing other stuff. But after a few tries I was able to get it and clear the game.
Fighting against Zangief is stupidly easy, because he seems to be very exploitable. Basically I just jumped toward the left and did a medium kick as any character and he'd continue to walk right into it.
Zangief's stage is some kind of factory in Russia. I don't really understand what is going on here, but there are people crammed into this little area on the left cheering on, one guy chugging on a bottle of something.
Zangief is a fun character, both in design and gameplay. He's popularly headcanon'd (?) as gay because he fits the Japanese stereotypes, showing off his muscles and not shaving his body hair. Of course it's a headcanon I enjoy as well, and to be honest, it's hard to imagine this guy with a girlfriend anyway.
He's not exactly my type but he's still hot enough for me that I enjoy looking at him. I don't go out of my way to look for fanart of him or anything though, hahaha.
"I will meditate and then destroy you."
Dhalsim is a practitioner of Yoga, honing his body, mind, and soul through this practice. He entered the tournament to test his abilities and achieve a higher state of consciousness.
In his ending, Dhalsim is seen riding an elephant home, saying he can finally see his family again. We see a child asking his dad (which I assume is Dhalsim) what the picture on the wall is. The picture seems to be the victory podium from the tournament. Dhalsim says that it's just "your dad in a past life." Strangely, and similarly to Zangief's ending, the screen never says "GAME OVER," but rather sits on the picture of Dhalsim and son for a while and eventually just goes to credits.
Dhalsim is... very difficult to use. He has stretchy limbs which sounds great because he should be able to attack from afar, but instead, it just turns him into a giant targetable hitbox since everything has priority over him. He's also a little laggy, making it hard to get hits in overall.
He has two specials, both which are fire-based. Yoga Fire shoots out a tiny fireball that upon contact lights the entire body of the enemy into flames. Yoga Flame puffs out a large flame in front of his face. Both come from his mouth. Yoga Fire is done by doing a quarter circle forward then punch, while Yoga Flame is done by doing a half circle forward then punch. This means a lot of times if you're dodging and then want to go straight into Yoga Fire, you're probably going to accidentally do Yoga Flame.
He also has these weird moves where if you punch or kick in the air (I don't know if it's timing or what, because it only activates sometimes for me) he'll float slowly across the stage while spinning toward the opponent. Basically this is a great way to make yourself an easy target. It does hardly any damage, to boot, so I'm not really sure what the purpose of it is supposed to be.
Most of the fights with Dhalsim were me exploiting some little thing. Like with Guile I did a sweep kick, which would cause him to sweep kick twice, and no damage would get done. So at the start of the match I'd do strong punch and sometimes it would hit him, then we'd sweep kick back and forth until time ran out and I won. With Ryu, strong punching from afar would cause him to do Shoryuken, and then if I strong punched again right as he landed he'd get hit. If I messed up the timing, I was doomed, as he'd Shoryuken again and Shoryuken has priority over strong punch so he can hit Dhalsim with it across the screen because Dhalsim becomes a giant long hitbox ripe for the uppercutting.
Because of his crazy reach (and the computer seeming to have priority), fighting against Dhalsim is wild. Nowhere on the screen is really safe. Fortunately, his low damage means you can usually just brute force your way through the fight. But I feel Dhalsim would be a really powerful character in the hands of a competitive player because of all his versatility, making up for his low power output.
Dhalsim's fights take place inside a hindu temple (is that... really an appropriate place to fight?) with a big mural of Ganesha in the background. Along each side are three elephants, which constantly make noise during the fight. It sure is annoying!
I thought Dhalsim was going to be one of my favorite characters to use, but he ended up being more frustrating than anything. His ending with the weird lips was kind of dumb, too. So overall my taste for Dhalsim kinda dwindled over this playthrough.
There's something to be appreciated in his face paint, and his elastic limbs are at least a unique and interesting feature, so he's not a bad character design. He's actually one of the more stand-out characters.
The Grand Masters aren't given any story in the manual or anything, so we're only able to learn about them from the very little info we're given here in the game. Which is next to nothing.
"My fists have your blood of them."
Probably supposed to say "on them" :P
Balrog (originally named Mike Bison, but changed to avoid personality infringement or whatever) is a boxer from the USA. His stage takes place in Las Vegas, with lots of shiny lights and stuff in the background. Upon victory, the man in the middle of the stage throws red confetti. The first time it happened, he was standing just behind Balrog, so I thought it was supposed to be blood shooting out of his eyeball and I was very confused. Also some bikini-clad ladies make some doves fly out of hats, too. The other guys standing around change their poses for victory, as well. I think one of them even starts crying...?
Balrog is big and hits hard, but he's a little slow, which includes lagging a bit after his attacks. Hopping in seemed to work pretty well, too, as he doesn't seem to have a good anti-air. He hits hard so you have to hit hard back; using strong attacks when you get the chance seems to be the way to go, as little jabs here and there don't do much to him.
Balrog is a good-looking dude, though probably the most plain out of the four Grand Masters. He's always the most forgettable to me. Not to say he's not attractive, though. Just kinda in a general way that doesn't stand out hahaha.
"Handsome fighters never lose battles."
Vega was originally named Balrog, but the names were swapped around because of the Mike Bison thing, and now he became Vega. He's a masked fighter from Spain armed with some big claw things on his fists, making him the only weapon-user in this edition of the game. His stage takes place inside a big cage with a cheering audience enjoying the fight in the background.
Vega's fight is unique in that he can use a move where he climbs on the cage in the background and then dives down at you, invulnerable while climbing since he's "behind" the action. It's not particularly dangerous since he climbs forever, telegraphing what he's going to do, but it can be a little annoying when he decides to spam it over and over leaving you with no real option but to wait for him to stop.
He's very fast and aggressive, but to a fault. He hardly ever dodges. This leaves him easily open to attack, and raining down the strongest punches and kicks takes him out without too much effort.
Vega is surprisingly hot -- maybe part of it is the long hair. Though he's not so hot when he's shouting out his like WOO WOO COO COO crap that he does during the fight. And climbing the wall. The annoyances kinda knock him down a peg. Oh, also he's wearing a mask so he has no face. And I don't know why, but masks and no faces are hot lol.
"You are not a warrior, you're a beginner."
Sagat was the boss from the first Street Fighter, the guy who organized the first World Warriors tournament. This time, however, he seems to be in second place, being the third of the four Grand Masters we face.
Sagat has a fire projectile thing (I think he's yelling out "Tiger" when he shoots it??) that he can shoot not only at Hadouken level, but also low, as well! It even does a lot of damage if you guard against it. This makes fighting him from a distance quite difficult, as he'll just spam the hell out of it and destroy you. So from the start of the fight you have to make sure you don't get too far away. He also has a Tiger (?) Uppercut that works as a strong anti-air, so you can't just approach him from the sky...
Unless he's in the middle of using his Tiger fireball thing. And this is his greatest weakness -- I was able to exploit his AI with Ryu and simply stand just far enough away that he shot a fireball, then hop over it and strong punch him and combo into a strong sweep kick. Back up a little and repeat and you can easily Perfect Victory this fight.
Sagat is a total hottie; I don't know what it is about him, but he's just shaped right. I'm not into the typical bara guy which seems to be a little... round? for my taste, but Sagat is TALL and chiseled in all the right ways. I mean, those thighs... and his collarbones HOLY MOLY. I actually preferred his little purple shorts from the first game to what he wears in this one. I will admit when his knocked out body was on the ground in the first game I had very naughty thoughts. This time, not so many. But still a few.
He also laughs at you again when he wins in this one, but it's a little more exaggerated.
"Get lose, you can't compare with my powers."
Pretty sure it's supposed to say "Get lost," lol.
And here we have the big finale, Master Bison! He was my biggest Street Fighter crush for a long time, especially before I knew Eagle, and with how much more story he gets, might still be my favorite.
Fighting him is outright insanity. He's ridiculously fast, and has moves that allow him to zip across the screen in a flash. You're pretty much never safe and there's very little room to attack. He's a little vulnerable to Hadouken and other projectiles since he's constantly on the attack and generally will be mid-attack when you fire it, but a lot of the time he's going to catch up to you from the other side of the screen in the middle of your attack animation. Yes, he's THAT fast.
In addition to ridiculous speed, he has very little lag after his attacks, and most of his attacks also bounce him backward so you have very little opportunity to counter. Only his weaker punches seem to be very counterable, otherwise you have to look for openings when he's attacking from afar and hit him in just the right space with the right priority.
It's hard.
Speaking of hard, let's talk about how HOT this guy is. Sorta like Sagat, he's just... built... in such a nice way? And he's eeeeeevil. Plus he even has spaulders (why am I attracted to spaulders lmfao) which is nice nice nice. I like big massive dominating evil dudes, especially ones that almost seem like berserkers with their powers (though Bison is actually in full control of his Psycho Power, I like to believe that he has little mad fits of POWERRR). His outfit is great, his poses are great, just everything about him is great. I want him to destroy me with a Psycho Crusher~~
But yeah there's something about his intimidating chin, and of course he has a long face, which I love. His little hat isn't a turn-off either :) The only thing that could make him hotter is if they gave him a little mustache. It worked for Rugal Bernstein!
Phew, this game was... quite a trip. I was hoping that through the character endings, we would learn more about the overall story of the game (Why did Bison host the tournament? What is the significance of the Grand Masters?), but we learned very little.
I actually don't have a lot to write here. Most of my thoughts are scattered throughout this journal.
Overall I had a lot of fun but also a lot of frustration as I played through the game. I'm hoping that this was the worst of it and that it just gets easier from here on out. I'm also curious as to what ALL exactly was added with the subsequent versions of Street Fighter II. I know which characters get added in, but that's about it. IDK if the old characters get new moves or endings or whatever (I'm not going to play through all the characters AGAIN, but I will look up information to see what has changed with them).
This is a direct sequel to Street Fighter and it has a little bit more story than the first game. A little bit. But the story is expanded on in future games as well. I know more of the story from other games and media and reading about it online, but we're gonna try to discover just how much story is actually in the game. I'm also using the instruction manual from the SNES version to see what was given along with that (though the version I'm playing is a port of the arcade version).
Basically the only story given in the SNES manual is that eight warriors enter a tournament to challenge the mysterious Grand Masters. That's it! That's the entire story we get! Well, more of the story is explained in the characters' backstories, and hopefully in the game as well (... though I'm not expecting much on that front... I can't remember what it was like when I beat this as a kid, but I'm hoping there's some amount of 'ending' to each character's tournament).
This game lets us select from one of the eight world warriors, with whom we will partake in the tournament and attempt to challenge the Grand Masters after traveling the world. We have Japanese martial artist Ryu, Ryu's American buddy Ken, sumo wrestler E. Honda, Brazilian jungle man Blanka, American Special Forces member Guile, Chinese martial artist Chun-Li, Russian bear-wrestler Zangief, and Indian yoga master Dhalsim. That makes two representatives from the USA and Japan each, and the rest from different respective countries. There's also the Grand Masters whom we have yet to meet.
Since the structure of this game is a little different from the first game, I'm not going to write about my battles with each opponent as I go, as I'm going to be playing the game eight times over. Instead, I'll write about each character's uniqueness, kind of going back and forth and filling out this post as I play the game.
You can re-select a new character after you continue from a failure, so technically it's possible to see all the endings by making a save state just before losing to Bison, then purposely losing the fight, selecting a different character, and winning with them to see their ending. But the original arcade machine of course would not have had save states (nor would the home versions, for that matter), and to see a character's ending, you'd have to play through the whole game again. Now, you could play through as your favorite/best character until you got to Bison again, then lose, then select another character to see their ending... so I guess I could abuse save states to "skip" that, but I want to play through the whole tournament with each character. There's only eight, and it's fun to learn and master the play style of each. Getting through the tournament and familiarizing myself with their moves will make it easier to face Bison with them anyway, instead of jumping into the fight with no experience at all.
First, let's talk about some stuff that's new to the game, as well as some stuff that's shared across all players:
Enemy AI - Before, the enemies just spammed stuff and seemed to be able to react to your movements instantaneously, making for cheap and broken battles. In this game, opponents only pull from their movepool as if they were playable characters, and they actually make decisions based on what you do, like fighting a real opponent.
GRAPPLING - A great new feature to the game is grappling, which is a way to punish players who play too defensively. Fighting games all have their ways to encourage players to play aggressively (... except the first Street Fighter which just encouraged you to button mash) and adding the concept of grappling was a great way to introduce this idea of not having your character just guard the whole game. If you're pushing up against an opponent who is guarding and press an attack button (at least I think that's how it works), you'll grapple the opponent. Depending on the button you press, this will do various things. Most of the time this is some kind of suplex or throw, but there's also a hold-and-beat option for a few characters (Dhalsim headlocks you and punches you in the head repeatedly!) ... I think the official term for this is "close attacks."
Stuns - Now after performing enough damage in a row without being hurt (at least, I think that's how it works), the opponent will become stunned, standing around dizzily with birds around their head. While stunned, you have to mash buttons to regain your composure, or else you're a sitting duck for attacks.
Interactive stages - There's not a ton of this in the game, but now there are objects in the stage that will interact with the fight. Knock someone into the barrels in Ken's stage and they will crash!
Victory poses and messages - When winning a round, characters will make one of two different poses. Pretty cool! At first I thought it was a separate pose for winning a round vs a whole match, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Also, after winning, the victor will have a small message displayed on the screen next to the KO face of the opponent. Sadly, there's not a different victory quote for each opponent, just the same one for every single match. I put each character's victory quote at the top of their little section. But it's still better than the same one thing for every fight like in SF1.
Speedup music - When one of the fighters gets below a certain hit point threshold, the music speeds up in the stage! I don't think I mentioned this in SF1's post, but it was true there too: all stages have unique theme music to them.
Minigames - There are a few minigames throughout the tournament that you get to play to boost up your score. I'm not really concerned about score, but I try to do my best in the minigames nonetheless. The first one has you beat up a car, the second one has you attack some wooden barrels that fall from the ceiling, and the last one has you beat up some oil tanks that randomly have flames on them that can hurt you. If you manage to completely destroy everything in the minigame, you'll get a "Perfect" and the time left over will be multiplied and added to your score.
Blood - At least I don't remember the first game having blood, but this one does. Certain attacks will cause a bit of blood to show, and there's blood in some defeat portraits as well. Zangief has blood on his face when defeated in battle. Stuff like that. What's strange is that I think there's also some kind of vomit or something...? Sometimes when you land a strong punch or something, an orange or skin-toned fluid will pour out of the mouth of the victim. Very strange looking.
And now, let's learn about the characters and their stories!
RYU
"You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance."
Story
Ryu is probably the 'canonical' main character of the game, though I think according to later games there's no real single canon path in the game, as multiple of the main characters end up at the end of the story.
According to the SNES manual, he's the student of Master Sheng Long, and has given up everything in life for the pursuit of perfecting his fighting technique. With no friends, family, or home to call his own, he travels the world seeking out tougher opponents to improve himself. And from the first game, we know that he also is the winner of the first World Warrior tournament.
It's not explicitly stated how he got to be a member of the tournament, though he easily would have wanted to join on his own, but I think that he was specifically invited to participate in this second World Warriors tournament.
In Ryu's ending, the winners' podium is shown with Bison and Sagat standing in the 2nd and 3rd place positions, but there's no one on top. The fans chant Ryu's name, but he's nowhere to be found. We cut to him walking into the sunset; only the fight matters to Ryu, not the ceremony. He's already seeking his next challenge.
Fighting Style
Ryu is an all-around fighter with decent strength, speed, and reach. He has access to three special moves, which carried over from the first Street Fighter: Hadouken, in which he blasts a fireball of spirit energy from his palms at the opponent; Shoryuken, a twisting dragon uppercut punch that launches him into the air, and Tatsumakisenpukyaku, a whirlwind kick that seems to defy the laws of physics.
Hadouken is ridiculously useful, though the AI responds to it pretty well if you're just spamming it. But it's great to catch someone in the middle of a slow move like Zangief's lariat or Chun-Li's spinning kick. Tatsumakisenpukyaku, like in the first game, has a cool name but is mostly useless. It's slow and leaves you vulnerable for a LONG time, and the chance of hitting with it is very low. It can also easily be countered just by being attacked, so you'd have to use it against a stunned opponent or something to actually land it, and in those situations, it'd be better to just use a throw or strong kick or something. It does have the ability to hit twice and frequently stuns the opponent, though. While it's hardly ever practical, there are situations where it comes in amazingly helpful for those reasons alone. And by that I mean I used it in the fight against the final boss, M. Bison.
I had to guess when he was going to move forward but not attack, and not jump as well... and then fire off the 'kyaku. The kick can hit twice, meaning good damage, and it's even likely to leave the opponent stunned, which means I can get another one in. With a few sweeps and jabs here and there, I was able to Tatsumaki my way to victory.
Ryu's regular attacks are annoyingly short range. His weak punch is more like an elbow, it barely even hits away from his body. His weak kick may as well be Luigi's taunt. The medium and strong kick mostly kick upward, giving it very little horizontal range, but it doesn't even work that great as an anti-air. And then the medium and strong punch are mediocre at best. The strong variations have pretty good damage, though. His jumping kicks have pretty good reach, as does his leg sweep.
Ryu is a smart fighter and quite hard to beat as an AI player. He'll move around trying to bait you into different positions -- importantly, if you're far enough away, he'll blast you with a Hadouken, and if you're in the air when you're close, you can count on getting your chin pounded in by a Shoryuken. Even the AI knows not to use Tatsumakisenpukyaku, as you don't see it getting used much. Ryu's power lies in his special abilities, and he'll mostly be spamming those based on your positioning, so knowing how to get around those are the key to victory. Learning how to time jumps over Hadoukens and remembering NOT to jump again into a Shoryuken is vital.
Stage
Ryu's fights take place in a temple surrounded by other temples; I would assume it's the one where he trained with Sheng Long. Despite being the primary protagonist of the game/series, his stage is fairly plain. There aren't people around cheering like most stages (which makes sense, but it still makes it feel empty). Nothing even really moves around, aside from the background being parallax kind of looking like movement. There are a couple of signboards that can be broken, at least, and I think they were thrown in solely to give the stage something of interest.
Thoughts
Ryu is the hero of the franchise (except in SF3) so you kinda have to like him. He's a good guy, and his moveset is particularly memorable. Almost every gamer (well, at least classic gamers -- idk what "kids these days" know about) what Hadouken is. Ryu is known as cool and calculating, and overall just seems like a serious guy that wants to fight fight fight and do what's right.
He was the first character I played through the game with and he was a ton of fun. The AI in this game is smart enough that you can't get away with just spamming Hadouken in the corner like you can on a noob player, so I really had to make use of his whole arsenal over the course of the playthrough.
As for attractiveness, he's just OK. He's pretty plain looking, so I can't really say much about him.
KEN
"Attack me if you dare, I will crush you."
Story
There's not a lot to say about Ken, as he's just a clone of Ryu. His 'backstory' is a bit different though -- he's the other disciple of master Sheng Long's, but he's a big gloat. He brags about himself and even let himself get weaker spending time hanging out with his girlfriend on the beach for an entire year instead of doing any training. It wasn't until he got a challenge from Ryu that he got his fighting spark back and entered the tournament.
In his ending, his girlfriend shows up and he makes a creepy face. Then suddenly they are married. IDK. Ken is stupid.
Fighting Style
Ken has the exact same moveset and AI as Ryu, so playing as him or against him is the same. Depending on how late in the game one of the two shows up, it can feel like they're somewhat different, but it's just because the AI gets a little smarter as you clear more matches.
Stage
Ken's stage is a harbor with some boats in the background, perhaps on the beaches where he hangs out with the gf. On the right side of the stage are a couple of barrels (they look like oil barrels or something, but are actually empty) that can be destroyed as part of stage interactivity. On the closest boat there are some onlookers cheering on the fight.
Thoughts
I don't have a lot to say about Ken. He's one of my least favorite characters in the series -- being a clone he's not interesting as a fighter, and his entire story is he's an obnoxious braggart who thinks he's the best fighter. But Ryu is better so who cares about Ken???
Also he's not attractive at all hahaha. He's your generic cocky prettyboy, which is a total snoozefest.
EDMOND HONDA
"Can't you do better than that?"
Story
Honda was trained from birth to be a sumo wrestler, and fought his way up to obtain the grand champion title of Yokozuna. Once reaching this peak, he learned that the world outside Japan doesn't respect sumo as a "real" sport, and he entered the World Warriors tournament to prove that sumo is the world's greatest fighting style.
After defeating Bison and winning the tournament, Honda goes back to training his disciples, showing them that anything is possible when the mind and body are in harmony. He tells them that he won't slack on his training and will continue to eat nabe (lol). Then he and his pupils have a good time eating and chatting together.
Fighting Style
Honda has only two special moves: the Hundred Hand Slap, which lets out a flurry of palm strikes, and Sumo Head Butt, which flings Honda across the screen at surprising speed, head first toward his opponent.
Hundred Hand Slap is useful in a few of the weaker opponents' fights, as it still damages when guarded. But in order to do it, you must punch repeatedly first, so any smart opponent can just jump over you while you're trying to pull it off.
Sumo Head Butt requires you to hold backward for two seconds before pressing forward and punch. Unlike some later games (I'm not sure when this changed), getting hit and blocking resets your two seconds, and you can't buffer your two seconds from other attacks, either, so you really have to be able to just walk backward unhindered for two seconds to pull it off. Good for when the enemy is stunned and you're far away, but how often does that happen with Honda?
Honda has a knee bash grapple attack, where he headlocks the opponent and bashes in their face with his knee repeatedly. Definitely fun to pull off. But with his slow speed, it's rare you'll get a good grapple opportunity.
The nature of his two special moves, his slow movement, and his poor jumping abilities (though forward medium kick jumping is pretty good, it turns into a body slam that seems to have big reach and priority) make him very vulnerable to projectile attacks like Sonic Boom and TIGER TIGER TIGER.
Fighting against Honda is pretty scary, though. He has ridiculous reach -- despite being short and squatty -- and great anti-air capabilities with his standing strong punch. Jumping at him will most likely be punished. I can manage to get jumps in from just the right distance, or when he's in the middle of doing something else, but most of the time he's going to do a chop or kick that knocks you back and does decent damage as well.
His weak point seems to be his lack of variety of moves. But it's not something that can be taken advantage of by everyone -- you really need to be able to get at him from afar. His Hundred-Hand Slap is terrifying in a corner, but sometimes he'll use it in the middle of the arena. Since he has to punch three times to start it, it's pretty well telegraphed, and you can easily toss a ranged attack at him like a Hadouken. Sadly that makes fighting him with up-close fighters pretty tough, since he has amazing range for his size and shape, and can fight really well close-quarters.
Stage
Honda's stage is a Japanese bathhouse, presumably where the sumo wrestlers go to bathe after their matches. It's full of Japanese imagery, and the poster in the background lights up with the rising sun behind Mt Fuji after victory. It's a pretty simple little stage, just a big bath in the middle and some various accessories lying around.
Thoughts
Honda is pretty strong, and his strengths overcome his weaknesses pretty easily. Playing through his tournament was pretty fun, and went pretty fast. I did it in the morning before lunch, except for the final fight with Bison, which was ridiculously hard, of course. His forward air medium kick (the body slam) turned out to be pretty helpful, it would get priority over his scissor kick, so if he backed up a little bit, I knew I had a good opportunity to use it. Otherwise there was a lot of blocking and trying to throw in weak punches and kicks when I could. Landing a heavy kick was very satisfying but night impossible, so I ended up not using strong strikes much, despite them being so powerful for the rest of the game, where I used them heavily throughout each match.
Also, Edmond is a hottie. He's got big muscular arms and thighs to go along with his big belly, I love it hahaha. As a fighter, though, he's one of the harder ones to use so I don't play as him much. I'm better at agile characters that jump around the screen, and he's definitely the opposite of that.
When he gets knocked out, you can see his little red fundoshi :P IDK why it's red. I also don't know why his name is "Edmond" when he's meant to be all about Japanese tradition XD You think they'd name him like Yamato or something.
BLANKA
"Seeing you in action is a joke."
Story
Blanka is a native to the Brazilian jungles who for some reason is green and can surge electricity through his body. This isn't explained whatsoever. I think in other materials, it's "explained" that he turned green from eating a lot of plants or something, which is probably the dumbest backstory I heard, besides Alolan Raichu gaining psychic powers from eating too many pancakes.
No one really knows much about this guy, other than he seems to be "half-beast, half-man," though that's just a description he gained from people who happened upon him and didn't know what else to think. Over the past year, he's been appearing in towns and challenging people to fights. I guess that's why he decided to enter the tournament...? To fight?
I guess it's good he did, because immediately after defeating Bison, a woman runs onto the screen asking if Blanka is her long lost son Jimmy, who was lost in a plane accident over Brazil many years ago. Blanka says no at first, but then the woman comments that she gave him the anklet he's wearing for his birthday. Blanka and his mom hug and he calls out, "Mommy!"
I just want to know how that anklet still fits him now when he was wearing it when he was a small boy. I mean the rest of him sure did grow! Or was he just huge when he was a baby? LOL
Fighting Style
Blanka has two special moves, the first being Electricity where he hunches over and somehow makes his entire body pulse with electricity, shocking anyone who runs into him. The other is Rolling Attack, where he rolls into a ball and flings himself across the stage quickly.
Blanka's two special moves have the same inputs as Honda's, with Rolling Attack functioning almost exactly the same as Sumo Head Butt. Electricity, however, covers Blanka's entire body, making him basically immune to any attack that doesn't have priority over it. This is pretty much his one big boon.
Otherwise, his regular attacks have really weird hitboxes and are hard to use. They're a little counterintuitive in their direction, like strong punch being a weird swipe upward where he does a backflip. Again comparing to Honda, he overall seems like a weaker version of Honda overall. Lower reach and power with the same strengths and weaknesses from his special moves. He is slightly faster, I think, but it's not that helpful for him.
Blanka is not too hard to fight against, as he's overall not very strong. He doesn't seem to do Electricity very much, and much like Hundred Hand Slap, it's clearly telegraphed so you can avoid it. Even if he does hit you with Rolling Attack, it doesn't do too much damage. He's especially vulnerable to projectiles, but he was even fairly easy to take out with close-ranged fighters like Honda.
Stage
Thoughts
Jimmy is a weird character. Why can he electrify himself? Why is he green? Why doesn't he have a beard? And yeah, why did his anklet grow with him as he aged?
The idea of a feral wild man is attractive, but Blanka looks kinda silly. I can get into the wildman side of the whole thing, but his appearance doesn't do much for me.
Overall, though, he's a very memorable character, and his ending surprised me as I never really looked into Blanka's character before so I didn't know about the whole Jimmy thing lol.
GUILE
"Are you man enough to fight with me?"
Story
Guile used to be a member of an elite special forces team. Six months before the events of the game, he was captured in Thailand along with his co-pilot Charlie. After months of imprisonment, the two broke free and became overcome with the path of vengeance.
Thinking the Grand Masters, based in Thailand, are connected to his imprisonment, he entered the tournament to try to exact his revenge.
After winning the tournament, he holds Bison up and asks him if he remembers him, Charlie, and Cambodia. Bison tells him to kill him quickly, but Guile's wife Jane and daughter Amy run up and beg him not to, saying that killing Bison won't bring Charlie back; it will just make Guile a murderer like Bison.
They beg Guile to come back home, and Guile feels he doesn't deserve to since he abandoned them (?) but he goes back anyway. We see him sitting on the couch with Amy hugging him, Jane bringing him tea, and I guess they have a pet dog, too. I have to admit it's cute seeing Guile in little house slippers.
Fighting Style
Guile is a heavy-hitting street brawler with two special moves. Sonic Boom sends a burst of energy out from his arms by holding back and then pressing forward+punch. Flash Kick does a backflip, kicking strongly into the air in front of him. It's done from a crouching position by crouching for two seconds then pressing up+kick.
At first, Flash Kick seemed near useless, but as the opponents got tougher, I started to see the use in it. If you can manage to lure them into it, it's a powerful counter. For example, you can use it immediately following Tiger Uppercut from Sagat or Shoryuken from Ken.
One thing that's really cool about Guile is that he has an aerial grapple attack -- he can actually grab people in the air and do a piledriver-like thing to the ground. It's a lot of fun when you can pull it off.
Guile was a bit unwieldy and the first character I really struggled with. Defeating Ken was a nightmare until I learned the perfect timing for countering his jump kicks with Flash Kick. Then I could usually trick him into a pattern of trying them over and over, flash kicking him to death.
Balrog was a funny fight; I basically just guarded and waited for him to jump or move back far enough, then sent a Sonic Boom. After a jump backward, he would use a rush attack that would always leave him vulnerable. After moving backward without jumping, he'd usually block, but like all special attacks, even when guarded, Sonic Boom still does a little bit of damage.
Vega was hard to hit with anything, so I resorted to countering his moves. If he hopped off the wall (which he likes to do a lot), I could jump straight up and medium kick in the air and it would hit him as he approached. Even though he was approaching from the perfect height to use Flash Kick, Vega's kicks seemed to have priority. He was also way too speedy and jumpy to get any Sonic Booms in (though when he jumped off the wall, I could send a slow one and he'd land on it, but it did less damage than the jump kick and was harder to time).
Balrog was just a matter of luring him into Tiger Uppercut then countering with Flash Kick, or jumping over a Tiger fireball thing and medium kicking him in the air.
Bison could actually be countered with some well-timed Flash Kicks, though it was really hard to time them properly. Sometimes I feel like I had to do them at the moment he acted and hope he decided to jump so I hit him before he could kick me. Jumping backward against the edge of the screen and medium kicking as I fell could get a little bit of damage in if he was in the right place. I got decent at timing it properly, knowing when to just stand and guard and when to jump. I still got punished plenty, though.
Stage
Guile's fight takes place at an air force hangar, with military guys and gals cheering on. There's a boom box on the ground, too, lol. I don't know why I decided to have a whole section for stages when there's not too much to say about them, hahaha. The most memorable thing here is the theme music, which has become a meme.
Thoughts
Guile is a character I never had much affinity for -- American army musclehead doesn't really do it for me. But his little family life ending made him a little more endearing. He's got The Build that other characters do that make it so he's not unattractive, but like said, just... his overall archetype is not my thing.
But he got a nice body lmfao. It's funny because with IRL peeps I'm not into muscley guys at all (though rasslin' started to change that) but with 2D characters I like it quite a bit...? XD
CHUN-LI
"I am the strongest woman in the world."
Story
While it's not explicitly stated in the manual I'm reading, Chun-Li seems to be some kind of private detective or something. She's investigating a smuggling operation known as Shadoloo, and the trail brought her to the tournament. She believes one of the Grand Masters is responsible for the murder of her father, so she enters the tournament seeking answers.
Her ending has her praying over her father's grave, saying that he's now avenged. And she says that Bison's drug is stopped (????) so he can rest peacefully now or whatever. Then she turns into a regular single girl, taking off her fighting outfit and wearing street clothes with her hair down.
Fighting Style
Playing as Chun-Li is fun since she's nimble and bouncy. Sadly her two specials are awful. Lightning Kick is done by mashing a kick button. It takes forever to pull off and everything has priority over it (I think the game is just rigged so that everything has priority over the player or something though X_x) so you'll never hit with it unless the enemy just walks into you while you're doing it. So basically you'll only get hits in with it against the weakest AI and dumb 2Ps. Spinning Bird Kick (which is a Chinese girl yelling out English with a Japanese accent lol) not only requires you to duck for 2 entire seconds before you're able to pull it off, but even after inputting the command, there's a HUGE lag time before she actually gets her self flipped around into the air and turns herself into a weird leg helicopter. So you're basically never going to get this one off, either.
Chun-Li does have one really cool unique fighting feature, though -- she can jump wall jump off the edge of the screen! If you're jumping up against the edge of the screen, you can jump again in the air in the opposite direction. Technically, Vega can do this, too, but Chun-Li is the only one of the eight player characters who can do it. The AI doesn't seem to be able to react to it very well, meaning it's pretty easy to get in hits against a lot of the computer opponents. Some of them counter it, though, like Sagat with his Tiger Uppercut or Ken and Ryu with their Shoryukens.
When the AI counters Chun-Li, though, they counter HARD. I don't know if it's my imagination or if Chun-Li just takes massive damage from everything; I'm guessing the latter since she's supposed to be all about agility and not defenses. Overall I had fun playing as Chun-Li, but also had the worst times out of the whole playthrough (well, I haven't played Zangief or Dhalsim as of writing this section) getting stuck and frustrated with her.
Fortunately VS Bison all I had to do was jump at the left side of the screen and kick as I was coming down and he would either block it or run into it. Won very easily that way. Not sure why this worked as Chun-Li and not as anyone else, though.
Chun-Li as an opponent is a fun fight. You really have to stay on your toes. She's nimble, so you can't just charge in and expect to be safe. It's best to play it safe and bait her into attacking you first, then blocking and countering when you get a change. None of her attacks do much breakthrough damage when you're blocking, so you don't have to worry about getting hurt from blocking too much. She also likes to attack from the air, so the chance of her getting a grapple on you is pretty low, since you can usually get out of your guard and start attacking before she's in a position to be able to grab you.
Stage
Chun-Li fights in a little Chinese market, where they're selling like chickens and stuff lol. Of course everyone is standing around cheering on.
Thoughts
Chun-Li was the character I always played as a kid because I found the game easiest with her. Plus she's just really cool. Basically whenever I was given the chance to play as a female character, I did. You know I was rocking the Princess in Super Mario Bros 2 as soon as I got that game. Perhaps I was best with Chun-Li because I played with her so much so I got more familiar with her. She's also the only character I ever cleared the game with before writing this.
I actually don't like her twin buns hairstyle (I'm not a fan of twin pigtails, either XD), and I'm not a fan of her weird underboob-showing cut outfit (I don't think it looked like this in the console versions in NA XD), but in her ending when she changes back into 'normal' clothes and takes her hair down she is actually quite cute!
ZANGIEF
"My strength is much greater than yours."
Story
Zangief really likes fighting people. That's his story. Well, he also loves Russia, and wants to represent it in the tournament, but... his real reason for entering is solely so he can bash some skulls.
When he wins, the "president" of Russia appears from a helicopter and everyone dances. That's it. They do that... dance where you squat and kick your legs out. Zangief compliments the president on his good dancing, and he says it helps keep him in shape. The end!! Instead of a "GAME OVER" image like the other characters, Zangief and the president (and the bodyguards) just keep dancing until the credits start rolling.
Fighting Style
Zangief is very slow and can't jump too far or too high. So mostly when fighting as him you have to concentrate on ground combat, where Zangief excels. The game seems to favor ground combat as there's no such thing as guarding while in air. Zangief can land devastating attacks with his strong punch and kick, both which have surprising range. His weak punch is very fast and has high priority.
His two special moves are abysmal. Firstly, he has a spinning lariat that is activated by pressing all three punch buttons simultaneously, which is difficult to pull off on the DualShock3, and it seems to have no priority or range. I was never able to hit anyone with it even once, and I was trying pretty hard even in the early fights where the AI is dumb enough to walk into it. His other move is a spinning piledriver. The SNES manual says that you need to rotate the control pad 360 degrees (?!) and then press punch, while the in-game special move list looked like a half turn backward with a punch at the end. Whatever you were supposed to do, I wasn't able to pull it off. You have to do it when you're close and before I can get the command in, I'd get hit. But I couldn't even pull it off when the enemy was stunned. I've seen the AI Zangief do it
The hardest fight was against Vega, who was so fast it was nearly impossible to hit him with laggy Zangief. I eventually learned he had an opening after jumping in which I could sometimes land a crouching strong kick, which would stagger him enough that I could also jump toward him and land an air strong kick before he recovered. Doing that and trying my best to dodge everything else got me through the fight.
Bison was kind of stupid, he'd easily destroy me and I eventually figured out an exploit. Figuring out exploits seems to be the way to go in this game lol. I started the fight with a jumping strong kick which almost always did some damage, then crouched and spammed weak punch as quickly as I could. While mashing the button, Bison would just duck and guard. I did this until the timer ran out, and since I was the only one who did any damage, I would win. It didn't always work; depending on what he decided to do after I did the jump kick, he'd either get stuck in the loop or just completely destroy me doing other stuff. But after a few tries I was able to get it and clear the game.
Fighting against Zangief is stupidly easy, because he seems to be very exploitable. Basically I just jumped toward the left and did a medium kick as any character and he'd continue to walk right into it.
Stage
Zangief's stage is some kind of factory in Russia. I don't really understand what is going on here, but there are people crammed into this little area on the left cheering on, one guy chugging on a bottle of something.
Thoughts
Zangief is a fun character, both in design and gameplay. He's popularly headcanon'd (?) as gay because he fits the Japanese stereotypes, showing off his muscles and not shaving his body hair. Of course it's a headcanon I enjoy as well, and to be honest, it's hard to imagine this guy with a girlfriend anyway.
He's not exactly my type but he's still hot enough for me that I enjoy looking at him. I don't go out of my way to look for fanart of him or anything though, hahaha.
DHALSIM
"I will meditate and then destroy you."
Story
Dhalsim is a practitioner of Yoga, honing his body, mind, and soul through this practice. He entered the tournament to test his abilities and achieve a higher state of consciousness.
In his ending, Dhalsim is seen riding an elephant home, saying he can finally see his family again. We see a child asking his dad (which I assume is Dhalsim) what the picture on the wall is. The picture seems to be the victory podium from the tournament. Dhalsim says that it's just "your dad in a past life." Strangely, and similarly to Zangief's ending, the screen never says "GAME OVER," but rather sits on the picture of Dhalsim and son for a while and eventually just goes to credits.
Fighting Style
Dhalsim is... very difficult to use. He has stretchy limbs which sounds great because he should be able to attack from afar, but instead, it just turns him into a giant targetable hitbox since everything has priority over him. He's also a little laggy, making it hard to get hits in overall.
He has two specials, both which are fire-based. Yoga Fire shoots out a tiny fireball that upon contact lights the entire body of the enemy into flames. Yoga Flame puffs out a large flame in front of his face. Both come from his mouth. Yoga Fire is done by doing a quarter circle forward then punch, while Yoga Flame is done by doing a half circle forward then punch. This means a lot of times if you're dodging and then want to go straight into Yoga Fire, you're probably going to accidentally do Yoga Flame.
He also has these weird moves where if you punch or kick in the air (I don't know if it's timing or what, because it only activates sometimes for me) he'll float slowly across the stage while spinning toward the opponent. Basically this is a great way to make yourself an easy target. It does hardly any damage, to boot, so I'm not really sure what the purpose of it is supposed to be.
Most of the fights with Dhalsim were me exploiting some little thing. Like with Guile I did a sweep kick, which would cause him to sweep kick twice, and no damage would get done. So at the start of the match I'd do strong punch and sometimes it would hit him, then we'd sweep kick back and forth until time ran out and I won. With Ryu, strong punching from afar would cause him to do Shoryuken, and then if I strong punched again right as he landed he'd get hit. If I messed up the timing, I was doomed, as he'd Shoryuken again and Shoryuken has priority over strong punch so he can hit Dhalsim with it across the screen because Dhalsim becomes a giant long hitbox ripe for the uppercutting.
Because of his crazy reach (and the computer seeming to have priority), fighting against Dhalsim is wild. Nowhere on the screen is really safe. Fortunately, his low damage means you can usually just brute force your way through the fight. But I feel Dhalsim would be a really powerful character in the hands of a competitive player because of all his versatility, making up for his low power output.
Stage
Dhalsim's fights take place inside a hindu temple (is that... really an appropriate place to fight?) with a big mural of Ganesha in the background. Along each side are three elephants, which constantly make noise during the fight. It sure is annoying!
Thoughts
I thought Dhalsim was going to be one of my favorite characters to use, but he ended up being more frustrating than anything. His ending with the weird lips was kind of dumb, too. So overall my taste for Dhalsim kinda dwindled over this playthrough.
There's something to be appreciated in his face paint, and his elastic limbs are at least a unique and interesting feature, so he's not a bad character design. He's actually one of the more stand-out characters.
THE GRAND MASTERS
The Grand Masters aren't given any story in the manual or anything, so we're only able to learn about them from the very little info we're given here in the game. Which is next to nothing.
Balrog
"My fists have your blood of them."
Probably supposed to say "on them" :P
Balrog (originally named Mike Bison, but changed to avoid personality infringement or whatever) is a boxer from the USA. His stage takes place in Las Vegas, with lots of shiny lights and stuff in the background. Upon victory, the man in the middle of the stage throws red confetti. The first time it happened, he was standing just behind Balrog, so I thought it was supposed to be blood shooting out of his eyeball and I was very confused. Also some bikini-clad ladies make some doves fly out of hats, too. The other guys standing around change their poses for victory, as well. I think one of them even starts crying...?
Balrog is big and hits hard, but he's a little slow, which includes lagging a bit after his attacks. Hopping in seemed to work pretty well, too, as he doesn't seem to have a good anti-air. He hits hard so you have to hit hard back; using strong attacks when you get the chance seems to be the way to go, as little jabs here and there don't do much to him.
Balrog is a good-looking dude, though probably the most plain out of the four Grand Masters. He's always the most forgettable to me. Not to say he's not attractive, though. Just kinda in a general way that doesn't stand out hahaha.
Vega
"Handsome fighters never lose battles."
Vega was originally named Balrog, but the names were swapped around because of the Mike Bison thing, and now he became Vega. He's a masked fighter from Spain armed with some big claw things on his fists, making him the only weapon-user in this edition of the game. His stage takes place inside a big cage with a cheering audience enjoying the fight in the background.
Vega's fight is unique in that he can use a move where he climbs on the cage in the background and then dives down at you, invulnerable while climbing since he's "behind" the action. It's not particularly dangerous since he climbs forever, telegraphing what he's going to do, but it can be a little annoying when he decides to spam it over and over leaving you with no real option but to wait for him to stop.
He's very fast and aggressive, but to a fault. He hardly ever dodges. This leaves him easily open to attack, and raining down the strongest punches and kicks takes him out without too much effort.
Vega is surprisingly hot -- maybe part of it is the long hair. Though he's not so hot when he's shouting out his like WOO WOO COO COO crap that he does during the fight. And climbing the wall. The annoyances kinda knock him down a peg. Oh, also he's wearing a mask so he has no face. And I don't know why, but masks and no faces are hot lol.
Sagat
"You are not a warrior, you're a beginner."
Sagat was the boss from the first Street Fighter, the guy who organized the first World Warriors tournament. This time, however, he seems to be in second place, being the third of the four Grand Masters we face.
Sagat has a fire projectile thing (I think he's yelling out "Tiger" when he shoots it??) that he can shoot not only at Hadouken level, but also low, as well! It even does a lot of damage if you guard against it. This makes fighting him from a distance quite difficult, as he'll just spam the hell out of it and destroy you. So from the start of the fight you have to make sure you don't get too far away. He also has a Tiger (?) Uppercut that works as a strong anti-air, so you can't just approach him from the sky...
Unless he's in the middle of using his Tiger fireball thing. And this is his greatest weakness -- I was able to exploit his AI with Ryu and simply stand just far enough away that he shot a fireball, then hop over it and strong punch him and combo into a strong sweep kick. Back up a little and repeat and you can easily Perfect Victory this fight.
Sagat is a total hottie; I don't know what it is about him, but he's just shaped right. I'm not into the typical bara guy which seems to be a little... round? for my taste, but Sagat is TALL and chiseled in all the right ways. I mean, those thighs... and his collarbones HOLY MOLY. I actually preferred his little purple shorts from the first game to what he wears in this one. I will admit when his knocked out body was on the ground in the first game I had very naughty thoughts. This time, not so many. But still a few.
He also laughs at you again when he wins in this one, but it's a little more exaggerated.
M. Bison
"Get lose, you can't compare with my powers."
Pretty sure it's supposed to say "Get lost," lol.
And here we have the big finale, Master Bison! He was my biggest Street Fighter crush for a long time, especially before I knew Eagle, and with how much more story he gets, might still be my favorite.
Fighting him is outright insanity. He's ridiculously fast, and has moves that allow him to zip across the screen in a flash. You're pretty much never safe and there's very little room to attack. He's a little vulnerable to Hadouken and other projectiles since he's constantly on the attack and generally will be mid-attack when you fire it, but a lot of the time he's going to catch up to you from the other side of the screen in the middle of your attack animation. Yes, he's THAT fast.
In addition to ridiculous speed, he has very little lag after his attacks, and most of his attacks also bounce him backward so you have very little opportunity to counter. Only his weaker punches seem to be very counterable, otherwise you have to look for openings when he's attacking from afar and hit him in just the right space with the right priority.
It's hard.
Speaking of hard, let's talk about how HOT this guy is. Sorta like Sagat, he's just... built... in such a nice way? And he's eeeeeevil. Plus he even has spaulders (why am I attracted to spaulders lmfao) which is nice nice nice. I like big massive dominating evil dudes, especially ones that almost seem like berserkers with their powers (though Bison is actually in full control of his Psycho Power, I like to believe that he has little mad fits of POWERRR). His outfit is great, his poses are great, just everything about him is great. I want him to destroy me with a Psycho Crusher~~
But yeah there's something about his intimidating chin, and of course he has a long face, which I love. His little hat isn't a turn-off either :) The only thing that could make him hotter is if they gave him a little mustache. It worked for Rugal Bernstein!
In Conclusion
Phew, this game was... quite a trip. I was hoping that through the character endings, we would learn more about the overall story of the game (Why did Bison host the tournament? What is the significance of the Grand Masters?), but we learned very little.
I actually don't have a lot to write here. Most of my thoughts are scattered throughout this journal.
Overall I had a lot of fun but also a lot of frustration as I played through the game. I'm hoping that this was the worst of it and that it just gets easier from here on out. I'm also curious as to what ALL exactly was added with the subsequent versions of Street Fighter II. I know which characters get added in, but that's about it. IDK if the old characters get new moves or endings or whatever (I'm not going to play through all the characters AGAIN, but I will look up information to see what has changed with them).
