Kicking Your Ass: Character Leaks

Hello and welcome back to part two of Fighting February. Last week, we spoke of changes to two of my favorite fighters, BlazBlue: Continuum Shift and Super Street Fighter 4. This week, we'll be discussing something of a controversy that happened recently when Arcade Infinity managed to unlock two characters to Arcade Edition that weren't meant to be unlocked yet: Evil Ryu and Oni.

The producer of Street Fighter 4, Yoshitori Ono stated that the reason for this unlocking was because of a hack to the Arcade Edition cabinets that allowed the characters to be unlocked. Word of the characters spread quickly with videos abound online for a weekend. However, Capcom issued copyright infringements on these videos and as a result, some youtube accounts got banned.

Whether or not this was Capcom's intention is unclear, but I think they wanted the videos, not the accounts, taken down. Ono himself supposedly took some heat for the incident as well with disheartened responses from his twitter account, with rumors that he might be getting fired for the incident. Overall, it doesn't seem like too much damage was done to the company. And why should there be? It's not like fans who were following the game weren't aware that the characters were coming. They're in the release trailer! If it's because the 'surprise' is ruined, then it's not a very big one. Now, if it was something like two characters we've never heard of beforehand were suddenly uncovered and available, then that would be a problem. That isn't the case there and while I can understand Capcom's response, I don't think the rumors of anyone getting fired have any real footing. If anything, it makes people want to play the game more.

Well, I spoke so long about the incident behind the characters' temporary access, I guess I should try and explain the characters themselves and thoughts about them. First off is a character we've seen before: Evil Ryu. Originating back in the Street Fighter Alpha series, Evil Ryu is something of a non-canon character playing with the idea of if Ryu gave into the dark powers of the Satsui no Hado built up inside of him and how his fighting style would change. The answer? He would play like Akuma. Whoopdey doo. Still, the character was something of a fan favorite, if only for the fact that he provided the idea of a evil version of the main character and give Akuma's signature Raging Demon to another character. In Super Street Fighter 4: Arcade Edition, this concept carries over almost exactly with a few differences.

E. Ryu has basic combos that are very akin to Akuma's own combos, resulting in comboning into a light tatsumaki and then juggling with a follow-up shoryuken or whatever else the player can think about. For a super, he has the Raging Demon, which seems as useful as Akuma's own super, but then we get to ultras and while his first ultra is simply just a 'darker' version of regular Ryu's own ultra, his second ultra is one of Akuma's supers from the Street Fighter 3, a triple shoryuken and it looks effective, considering that you can probably light tatsumaki juggling into it. Another difference is that E. Ryu has his own unique special move, a foot stomp, which I got to say looks pretty useless from a original look at least. Firstly, only the light version can be combo'd into. Secondly, despite how the animation look, only the EX version of the move is considered an overhead. Thirdly, even if the move was a overhead, you can't combo from it. Maybe the move might be better as a counter hit, but right now, I don't think there's a lot of point to this particular move.

How do I feel about E. Ryu? Frankly, he doesn't look very impressive. His animations and visual look is very cool, but as far as gameplay itself goes, E. Ryu doesn't seem very impressive. From a initial view of the character, it just seems like if you play him, you're going to be playing a slightly stronger, but less health Ryu or a gimped Akuma, with the lack of mix that is the core of the dark hadou master's game.

Moving on to Oni: Oh man, where do I start with this guy? First off, off the bat, he just looks beastly, like well... a oni from japanese mythology and just pulsating with power. He looks like he'd just gaze down at you and you're head would explode if your will wasn't strong enough. But enough about that: how does the character play? Despite being based on what seems to be a mix of Akuma and Gouken, to call the character a clone seems uninformed or biased. Personally, he's probably one of the more unique shotos along with Gouken. Oh sure, he has a hadouken and a shoryuken move, but in addition, he has a cross up dash-and-slash move, the ex version of which can be combo'd in his ultras. Furthermore, he has a very quick death-from-above type move where the character quickly rises and strikes down at his opponent. If that weren't enough, the character has something that seems unheard of in a Street Fighter core game – an air dash. To be fair, though, it isn't a typical air dash, but a special command type of air dash that can go forwards, backwards, or straight up (confusing early views as an double jump).

Oni's supers and ultras are also something fairly unheard of as well in a street fighter game, with his super being the infamous Raging Demon done in the air. The effectiveness of the move has yet to be determined, but the fact he can do it blows my mind. His first ultras takes the super hadouken can gives it so many twists that you'd think the creators were doing a dance while coming up with this character. While it's a basic ultra hadouken, if he directly hits the opponent, Oni goes into a animation that does more damage as he blasts his opponent to oblivion. The ultra can also be done in the air at a diagonal angle and even aimed straight overhead to hit opponents attempting to cross him up. Never have I seen so many variation for a single super move. His second ultra is a throw back to Street Fighter 3, with the devil being focusing his dark energy and slamming the ground, shooting energy around him. It's powerful and effective with juggling capabilities. If Oni gets a direct hit, then he will goes into an animation where he'll follow up the blast with a shoryuken and the slam his opponent to the ground. That is just plain awesome.

My thoughts on Oni are ones of excitement cause he brings so many new things to the table. Perhaps maybe too many new things. While it's great that Capcom is wanting to give a lot of interesting options with this character, I just have to wonder what are some of the drawbacks for the character. Well, one drawback could be that the character has relatively low health, but that seems to be the only flaw of the character initially. I have to worry if the character is going to be so powerful that he'll be the majority of who players choose or if the character will be tourney-legal at all. Time will tell. That said, Oni would be a character I'd be interested in learning.