SSF2T HD Remix, Part 5: Blanka
This article is reprinted with permission from Capcom Unity.
Blanka is considered bottom tier in ST, but even in that game he has a lot of potential and a lot of things going for him. The throw range on his bite is enormous. His crossup (jumping short) is excellent and easy. After the crossup, you can go for a combo, a bite, a blocked hit into a bite, another crossup, or a blocked hit into another crossup. Also, Blanka’s roll attack does really good damage. HD Remix Blanka retains all those good features, and gets some boosts.
Horizontal Rolling Attack
In ST, most characters can hit back Blanka’s roll after blocking or even being hit by it. In HD Remix, it recovers faster, but it’s still not completely safe. Dhalsim and Balrog are still able to hit it back easily (with standing fierce and jab rushing punch, respectively).
Bison can still hit it back with a well-timed Psycho Crusher. But Honda no longer gets a free hit after the roll, and Ryu no longer gets a free red fireball. Blanka actually lands fast enough from his roll to jump over a fireball if Ryu throws one right away. That’s quite an upgrade from getting hit back and knocked down every time.
Diagonal Rolling Attack
The so-called Beast Roll or Rainbow Roll was not at all useful in ST. It has long startup time as Blanka jumps back before rolling and it has long recovery, allowing almost every character to hit Blanka back, even if he hits with this move. In HD Remix, the initial hop back part is greatly sped up, and the recovery is drastically improved. Blanka actually recovers before the enemy if they block this move, allowing him to keep up his pressure. At mid screen, it’s now a realistic way to go over fireballs, but the hop back part of the move still leaves Blanka vulnerable to a solid fireball trap.
Hop
The hop is a pretty good move, allowing Blanka to move around quickly and hop into position to throw. The old command is press all three kicks while holding either away or toward on the joystick. This motion still works, but now you can use either jab+short, strong+forward, or fierce+roundhouse instead of three kicks, if you like. This is a great benefit to players who use a gamepad, but even I prefer the jab+short command on a joystick. I find it easier to hit those two buttons quickly than any other two because my thumb and index finger rest on these buttons. If your mileage varies, you can always use the original command, though.
The hop back has the same invulnerability from the ST, but it generates much less super meter now. The hop forward has an additional nine frames of foot invulnerability which theoretically allows him to hop over sweeps somewhat, but in practice this has not proven all that effective so far.
Vertical Ball
The vertical ball is unchanged, but I just want to point out that it’s one of the only moves in the game that can hit on the very first frame. This makes it incredibly good air defense and it’s impossible to “safe jump” against Blanka because of this (see the video tutorials on Capcom Classics Collection 2). The move is also vulnerable on the first frame which means Blanka often trades, but the trade usually does damage in his favor and leaves the enemy knocked down, allowing Blanka to go for his tricky crossup short.
Note that we did fix a bug with this move. In ST, moves that can hit on the first frame have an unintended property that if the opponent tries to block them on the very first frame, there is a 50% chance the move will hit anyway. These 1-frame semi-unblockables are fixed in HD Remix (but left unfixed in HD Classic Arcade).
Electricity
The properties of this move are unchanged, but fewer mashes on the punch buttons are required to activate electricity.
Super
Blanka’s super is one of the worst in the game in ST, so it’s improved in HD Remix. The startup is faster and the recovery is faster so it doesn’t get hit back all the time on block like it did before. You can actually use it just for the sake of getting close and going for crossups, if you like. If the move hits, it will now always knock down.
Blanka’s rolling attacks are the main upgrades here, allowing him to roll more safely against some of his biggest enemies, such as Ryu, Sagat, and Honda. His Diagonal Roll gives him a new pressure option that also doubles as a way around fireballs. That said, fireball characters can still keep Blanka in check (back away and sweep the Diagonal Roll as it ends or just Dragon Punch it), but the matches should be a lot closer.
–Sirlin
February 25th, 2008 at 8:59 am
Wooo first post!
February 25th, 2008 at 9:22 am
Does the diagonal roll still hit multiple times if it hits on the way up and is this useful at all with the new changes?
February 25th, 2008 at 9:43 am
It still does and is not usually useful, but once in a while you can get a diagonal roll 2-hit then bite or something. Hitting more than once is like a weird trick-shot thing though.
February 25th, 2008 at 11:57 am
Sirlin, would you have considered changing his super into the ball one? Or maybe add it in (like press Kick for that one instead of the stationary roll). I would’ve thought it would make a nice… um… *super* version of his standard special attack.
But this would would probably be considered as being too much of a change for this title. Which is fair enough.
February 25th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
Imagine that any small change you want to make is like fighting a Dragon in an epic 2-day battle.
February 25th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Lol! Ok, that answers that question :). Fair enough. I only asked since you managed to give Ryu a fake Fireball. I wasn’t aware of how hard it would be to add a new move, but from the impression I’m getting from you, I guess its pretty hard.
So, in that case, all the small changes that you are making in the game - are all these an epic 2 day Dragon battle too? Things like changing T Hawk’s dive recovery, Ken’s super reversalable, tiger knee 3 hits etc. If that’s the amount of work you’re doing, my respect for your work on the game and patience for this game just got even bigger than it already was ;).
<3
February 25th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Sirlin said:
——————-
Imagine that any small change you want to make is like fighting a Dragon in an epic 2-day battle.
——————-
… or like fighting a Balrog for 1 day, LotR-style, but without Gandalf’s cool staff:
“Go back to the shadow. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udun! You shall not… uh… uh oh!”
~ Sirlin, balancing SSF2T HD Remix
;)
- Bruce
February 25th, 2008 at 8:45 pm
Very nice changes, but with all of the improvements to the other characters (like the fake fireball for Ryu), what’s preventing Blanka for ending up as bottom tier in HD remix?
February 25th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
Sirlin, while the changes to Blanka sound nice, they also seem pretty small for what’s considered a low-tier character. Considering some of the changes we already know about, (like Ken), it seems like very little was done to raise Blanka’s power level.
Can you give us any idea of where you feel he ends up in HD remix in terms of power level?
February 25th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
I can understand why you didn’t make the horizontal ball knock down on hit, but it would’ve been nice to have a vertical ball that knocks down a standing opponent, not just a jumping one. Do you feel Blanka has enough knockdown potential with the bite/electricity mixup to not need another good way to get a knockdown up close?
February 26th, 2008 at 4:30 am
“Very nice changes, but with all of the improvements to the other characters (like the fake fireball for Ryu), what’s preventing Blanka for ending up as bottom tier in HD remix?”
Actually, not all the characters are getting upgrades. He has said in the original rebalancing HD article, he said that he was attempting to make every character as close to the original STs top-tiers as possible. The previous top-tier characters are being left pretty much exactly the same, about the only things being changed are getting rid of annoying repeatable and simple stuff, such as Dhalsim being able tick noogy grab you over and over again. The top tiers aren’t getting better, the low and mid tiers are getting upgraded as to attempt to make them just as good.
February 26th, 2008 at 5:31 am
The right question is what’s keeping Blanka from being top tier, not bottom tier. The answer is not much. Who beats Blanka, exactly? Hardly anyone anymore.
February 26th, 2008 at 5:46 am
The “who’s beating them” question is exactly the right one to ask, based on my experience with the One Must Fall series. There are a number of “low tier” characters in those games simply because they have bad matchups against the top tier, not because of anything intrinsically wrong about their design, and buffing them because of a perceived imbalance only makes things more chaotic.
Fun design story: In the early betas of OMF Battlegrounds, the 3 playable fighters had a rock-paper-scissors relationship, but one of them was way easier to use. Result: He was vastly popular, so he got nerfed, then the other two got nerfed to compensate, and when the rest of the cast arrived, they towered over the original three. So beware of making changes without a solid baseline. Fortunately, HD Remix doesn’t have this problem, as the baseline is a game that already exists!
February 26th, 2008 at 9:15 am
I had a question. Will these changes mentioned in these articles be final or is there still room for tweaking?
February 26th, 2008 at 10:11 am
Trickling sf2 remix news is too damn exciting! Hey, this is Part 5 - you might wanna fix that.
February 26th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Yeah, these articles remind me of Wizards of the Coast spoiling cards for their next release. So exciting!
February 27th, 2008 at 8:40 am
Sirlin I trust u fully I’ve read all ur post and I love what ur doing its great ur going 2 make SF2 so much better and fun cant wait. Anyway THEY NEED U DESPERATELY 2 HELP THEM WITH STREET FIGHTER 4 IT LOOKS LIKE JUNK those japs r smoking crack u could do it so much better I can tell ur the man 4 the job. 1st off what the hell happened to the udon comic anime look we’ve all grown 2 love over the years in 3d or a realistic 3d look like tekken would be cool. But no I hate the direction they’re taking SF4 the characers look like Ren & Stimpy on crack its turning out 2 be an uglyer version of SF2 this might be worse than SF3 with all those ugly goofy looking characters that were silly and had nothing to do with the SF2 game at all it was junk AND WITH OUT UR HELP DAVID SIRLIN SF4 WILL BE JUNK 2 im more excited about SF2HDR than SF4 those japs making SF4 r retards how could they miss the mark by so much r they even tryin 2 make the best SF game ever dont look like it 2 me I love SF Sirlin plz save SF4.
February 27th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Yes Sirlin, oh god of fighting games, Save street fighter 4! those crack smoking japs have NO IDEA what they’re ruining!
Just fly over to japan, burst into their office, and tell them to “cut the crap, because David Sirlin is here!”
I’m sure it will go over well.
February 27th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Sirlin should fly over there avously they need his help just wait and see SSF2HDR will be better than SF4 I promise you
February 27th, 2008 at 11:33 pm
C’s comments are painful to read.
Sorry for the repeat (possibly controversial) question, but is there any truth to the rumor that Capcom is concerned with the amount of time/resources Udon is spending on SSF2HDR’s art and is forcing them to outsource the rest of the job? If so, does this have any effect on your role in SSF2HDR’s creation?
March 1st, 2008 at 10:13 pm
I have a naggy, impatient question. Can we hope to see a change list for Fei Long anytime soon?
March 2nd, 2008 at 3:27 am
I have a naggy, impatient question too: can we expect a PC version at some point?
March 2nd, 2008 at 4:09 pm
SSF2T:HD should really, really be on STEAM
its small download size and huge legend would guarantee a lot of buyers
what do you think?
March 3rd, 2008 at 12:30 am
That’s exactly what I was thinking. :D
March 5th, 2008 at 9:58 am
Hey I just want to say this is an awesome job of balancing out Balanka — If HD Remix is a success you will be a big factor behind it.
I’m not exactly a pro or even a heavy ST player, though I have been it a few times on the hardest difficulty so I am a little familiar with it.
One thing I’m curious about is the point of his LP rolls?
Does anyone actually use them?
Maybe it would really open up Blanka’s guessing game and options if his LP rolls could go through jabs and maybe even fireballs.
Just an idea anyways.
Oh yeah I also wanted to thank you for beefing up Ken (I missed that post).
His uppercuts were really lame and I’m looking forward to seeing this new whirlwind kick too.
I just had a quick idea for Ken that I don’t think is too drastic but would be really nice for him to have to balance with Ryu:
A fake Shoryuken!
I know this sounds silly, but all you need to do is for him to do a quick ducking HP and play the sound “Shoryuken!”
I would have the input work the same as Ryu’s fire ball, basically being a Shoryuken with the start key.
What do you think?
March 7th, 2008 at 5:47 am
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March 7th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
Sirlin, I’m a huge fan of video games in general, and I think it’s exciting that the industry has gotten as big as it has and continues to grow fast. Street fighter 2 has been my favorite game for a long time. I’ve often dreamt of playing the game professionally, but that’s not much of a dream based on how competitive tournaments are and how little they pay. I see how things work in south korea and japan and wonder why it wouldn’t work here. Why shouldn’t the top professionals, competing at something at the forefront of one of the biggest industries in the world, be able to make a living? I know they broadcast matches in korea on television, and I used to sympathize with people who would say no one would watch that stuff in the U.S. until I realized that I don’t watch any television at all but do download pro video game matches to watch online. Anyway, I wanted your thoughts/advice on professional gaming/becoming a pro, also I had one idea that I wanted to throw out. I used to play poker on the internet, until I realized it wasn’t worth it since I just didn’t find it anywhere near as satisfying as video games. I’ve heard of gamers (hevad khan) switching to poker for money and I think it’s a shame. I wonder if it wouldn’t work to set up money matches online for street fighter. Like, a combination of xbox live street fighter and full tilt pokers setup. you could have different stakes for different skill levels, and rules to keep people from doing dumb stuff, like you can’t move up in stakes til your bankroll is a certain size and perhaps deposit restrictions though if some dummy wants to blow his bankroll that’s probably his choice. I was really excited about the idea when I first had it, I just had one big doubt a little later. Poker works largely because the huge swings in luck keep losers from realizing whats going on for a long, long time. It feels like they can bit the winners, and they keep coming back for more, kind of like with a slot machine. there’s certainly luck, and a fair amount, in street fighter, but there might not be enough, and maybe people just wouldn’t play against each other enough as the winners and losers would get sorted out quickly. I’m not certain this is a valid doubt though just because there is quite a bit of luck and man would I love to play money matches online instead of working. Anyway, your thoughts on that idea would be appreciated.
March 10th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
Will Blanka has his throw damage nerfed as the other characters with holds (Ken and Boxer)?
Also, since they both got to keep there throw loops wouldnt it be resanable to give Blanka a better mixup after his bite? Now he has to workhis way in again.
Perhaps make the opponent (or Blanka) move futher away, making his LP roll wiff. That would make it possible to mixup between
1. LP roll - bite
or MP
2.
March 10th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
Damn buttons..
1. Wiff LP roll to bite or MP
2. Meaty HP roll
March 10th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
I would also make me e happy if his far MP would have a slightly better hitbox against opponents on the ground. Now when doing jumpins into close MP or close F+MP and you are to far away to get the close attacks his far MP will wiff, even on standing opponents due to its retarded hitbox.
Another solution could be to change inputs on his different MP verisions to back+MP, neutral+MP and forward+MP, sort of like Dhalsim has his normals remapped in ST.
His jab and close jab is quite rediculus to, his close jab acctually has better range than his far jab! Whats up with that?
His close MK and HK are pretty useless, his far verisions are way better, but you cant really use them (except at tip range) since the close versions are unsafe. It isnt possible to combo inte them either.
Will it be possible to drum out the mash attacks as in CvS?
For example,
LP ~ MP ~ HP ~ MP ~ MP
would give MP electricity
March 12th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
how would you preform throws here?? please dont tell me the same old way (b/f any hard punch or kick)??
This has been and always will be lame. have it the same as in Alpha or SF3
March 15th, 2008 at 1:47 am
@Forty: This is Capcom’s version of the truth–http://blog.capcom.com/archives/998. Sirlin’s probably not allowed to give you the real truth. Like, do you relly believe anyone at Capcom said out loud “This art isn’t good enough for fans, and you know we all about quality”? No one but Sirlin ever dares to say things like “Quality is the only reason you have fans, idiots, don’t ship this product until you get it right.” Sirlin’s the only one who keeps Capcom from making stupid decision, and we all know he can only do so much (*coughggpocoughsf4cough*).
March 25th, 2008 at 4:14 am
I know I am writing this a little late in the day but I would like to ask a few things behind the ideas of Blanka’s changes. The change on the horizontal ball is completely understood. It seems like you have given him his old WW or CE version which flies across the screen and recovers quick enough to jump over a retaliatory fireball. Vertical ball hasn’t changed but doesn’t need any changes in my opinion, I think the positives you have expressed were well explained enough. Blanka’s super being changed was required I think, it was a terrible super previously and required some changes. I assume what you have done is to make sure the first hit always launches so that the following 4 hits always connect similar to the Alpha series, also what happens on block to Blanka? Is he at an advantage letting him carry on pressure? Is he at a disadvantage and so the opponent has a free throw attempt? Some clarification would be great. The alterations on the parabolic (rainbow or diagonal) roll are a lot better but what I would like to know is why the parabolic has been changed and what were the ideas behind it?
Yes the parabolic was almost completely useless, but even now it has been sped up the back flip part will still be a clear indicator that the parabolic is coming and will get dragoned on reaction. It may serve a better purpose against charge characters but if you have time to charge the parabolic they definitely have time to charge an anti-air. More information on this move would be greatly appreciated, whether it be frame data, video footage or just a better explanation as right now I am not convinced and it sounds like you are trying to talk up a move that will make little to no difference to Blanka’s game play.
The last thing I wanted to ask about is the things not changed. Blanka’s slide can still be dragoned on reaction, could it not be sped up a little? Will Blank’s close medium punch still wiff some crouching characters? Also Blanka will still have terrible match-ups against Dhalsim and a hard time against other fireball character despite the horizontal roll changes. Couldn’t his jumping hit box get changed so he could vertical jump a fireball? Also Boxer will still bruise Blanka terribly, what has been done to Blanka’s pokes to give him a fighting chance? Rolls can still be punished by dash punch AND super, Boxers pokes will still beat Blanka’s cleanly and Blanka’s has zero options against dash punches unless Boxer tries to get creative and doesn’t go for a low dash punch.
I really would like some insight here, please could you shed a little more light on things because right now the changes that have been made seem some where between sensible (horizontal roll and super) and silly (parabolic and lack of changes). Thanks for at least taking the time and effort.
April 1st, 2008 at 4:29 pm
I think the parabolic ball should be used to jump over fireballs and hit them before they recover, which should be possible with the speed up. Guile and DeeJay might be able to block, but they wont have a flash kick charged. Sim doesnt have any reversals, so it should be really good against him, as long as back+LP doesnt hit it cleanly.
My hope is that on block, Blanka will recover close eneough to throw the opponent, that would really make this move great, especally when other characters has there throw ranges nerfed.
I do agree about the matchup aginst boxer, Blanka has gotten a little better, boxer can no longer punish the ball on hit, so you can a least use it in combos or against full screen dash punshes on reaction. The nerf on boxers throw range should also mean that blanka can tick throw boxer better.
Other than those few small changed, there are not really anything Blanka can do against Boxer now, it will still be a very hard match up for him. A few upgrades to some of the pokes would be nice to deal with the dash punshes better.
April 24th, 2008 at 1:34 am
Thanks for the article, twofitty. I’m sure you’re right in that there is too much political red tape surrounding the situation to see the full picture, so I guess all we have is rumors and PR spin.
September 7th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
So, regarding the electricity:
I really like the way these moves work in CvS2. You still have to input punch, or kick 5 times for your lightning legs, hand slaps or electricity to come out, but instead of just having to mash the one button really fast, you can use any, pianoing the key inputs to make it come out faster. The strength of the attack is determined by the last key struck before the special begins (the fifth button input). This mechanic is part of the reason Blanka is so good in that game, as his RC electricity is extremely simple to execute. Piano punches, roll (jab+short), fierce.
Also, to continue the attack, one can again just piano the inputs. It seems to make things easier for me at any rate.