You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance…
April 22, 2010, 8:50 PM
Through intense training and meditation, I have learned the secret… and here’s the result:
HADOUKEN!
Yes, I have mastered the Hadouken, and can now throw fireballs to defeat my foes.
Okay, not really, but that does look pretty cool, doesn’t it? Yeah, at the end of my day at the office yesterday, I took this picture with my work computer’s camera, and then digitally added the fireball when I got home. Not too shabby, if you ask me.
Though admittedly, it would be pretty neat to be able to concentrate all of our energies and be able to throw fireballs. I mean, imagine what one could do in life with that capability. In Street Fighter II, the Hadouken never caused things to actually catch fire (save for Ryu’s “Red Hadouken” in Super Street Fighter II). It was an energy wave which struck the opponent and threw them back or knocked them down. Imagine the uses for this. The thing that first came to mind is that a hadouken could be used to take out wasp’s nests. I remember one time back in the 1990s, my parents had a large wasp’s nest in a tree in the backyard. The man we hired to remove it used a gun to get it out of the tree. No need for that now. Just get a safe distance away, and, “HADOUKEN!” That takes care of that. Nip that in the bud, as that thing falls to the ground and is damaged. Then the same procedures apply in getting rid of it following its hitting the ground. If not mistaken, the guy then sprayed it with some sort of wasp killer, and then collected it up and hauled it away.
Meanwhile, did anyone else notice that Chun Li kind of got the short end of the stick when it came to fireballs? In Turbo, you had to do a full half-circle on the controller to make her fireball, rather than the quarter-circle that most fireballs required. Then in Super, Chun Li’s redesigned fireball became a charge move (where one had to charge for two seconds and then execute), and didn’t even cover the entire screen. Her fireball burned out after about half a screen. It definitely made the fireball a lot less useful. At least the original fireball traveled until it either hit the opponent or went off the screen. It’s almost as if Capcom’s designers didn’t really want to give Chun Li a fireball, but since everyone wanted her to have a fireball, they gave her one – a really crummy one.
And I think that this fireball graphic officially makes me nerdier than thou.
Web site: Sheng Long, a hoax character that eventually inspired Gouken in the real-life game.
Song: Street Fighter: The Later Years, which kind of lightly pokes fun at Street Fighter II by placing them in New York City ten years after the events in the game. Favorite line: "Every once in a while, I pull out the old SNES, and I beat the s--- out of myself."
Quote: And before anyone says I misappropriated "Sheng Long", I kinda did. The better translation is "You must defeat my Dragon Punch to stand a chance." But let's admit - Ryu was the fireball guy, and a fireball is easier to pose than a Dragon Punch.
Categories: Video games