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

David Sirlin has competed in Street Fighter tournaments for 16 years, and for 11 years he has helped organize and run the tournament series that started as B3 and has now become the international Evolution Championships. He represented the United States in SSF2T in Japan‒s Super Battle Opera tournament, wrote the competitive gaming book Playing to Win, and provided narration for Bang the Machine, a documentary film about the Street Fighter community. He‒s now overseeing the design and gameplay on Super Street Fighter 2: HD Remix.