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I really hate Street Fighter 2. That’s right, you heard me correctly. I hate Street Fighter 2 with a passion. I don’t think there’s a single video game I’ve ever played that has managed to piss me off so much in such a short period of time. It’s fucking ridiculous. First of all, let’s get some things straight. I’m a huge fan of fighting games, both 2D and 3D, and while I prefer 3D fighters to those 2D’s of old, I still hold a special place in my heart for the old school fighting games and those companies who made them. Except of course for Street Fighter 2 and Crapcom. Sorry, I mean to say Capcom. An analogy, if you will. Capcom is to Street Fighter 2 as Adolf Hitler is to Mein Kampf. I think you get the picture. Let’s get to the characters, shall we?
M. BISON
Sometimes I don’t really know what to think of Bison. At first glance, he seems to be nothing more than a Nazi crossing guard. But he supposedly has psychic powers. Right, I almost believe that. Psychic powers my ass. That’s just Capcom’s way of telling us that M. Bison is a cheap ass bastard and capable of fighting moves that even Ryu and Ken can’t do. But then again, maybe he really is a psychic Nazi crossing guard. Either way, if he has psychic powers, then why the hell does he have to fight? Can’t he just use his psychic powers and make all the fighters lose control of their bowels or lobotomize them, or hypnotize them and make them think
they’re dead? If he’s half as powerful as he says, then he should have taken over the world by now. And he should have mad bitches by his side (courtesy of his psychic powers). But none of that has happened. Instead, Bison uses his powers in less subtle ways.
Like the Psycho Crusher, for example. He just spins around and flies across the screen while surrounded by some kind of weird energy. What the hell is that supposed to be? What good are manifestations of psychic powers if Bison’s opponent can just jump to avoid it? And worse yet, if timed correctly, he can be hit out of it by just about any move in the game. His Scissor Kick is just as useless. And of course, who could forget the greatest of all his psychic abilities, the ability to pounce on your head? I hate that damn move. It’s so cheap, because it always hits when you’re playing against him, yet when playing as him, it never works.RYU
Ryu is easily the most unbalanced character I’ve ever seen in a fighting game, bar none. His moves kick total ass, he’s quick as hell, and for whatever reason, when you fight against the computer controlled Ryu, he’s able to pull off these fucking impossible moves that, in a normal fighting environment, would require a fighter to wipe his ass with the laws of physics. Launching a Dragon Punch and then doing it again before he even lands, hitting you when you’re about 6 feet away from him, you name it. If it’s physically impossible in real life, Capcom programmed computer controlled Ryu to be able to do it. He’s not impossible, but he’s fucking annoying. The strategy of computer Ryu is to stand in the corner and throw fireballs until time runs out, and if you try to move in and hit him at all, he’ll unleash ungodly combos that are impossible for even the greatest human players to perform. That, and he seems to have the ability to induce dizziness with just about every move he has. He’s pretty much a really cheap bitch. And from what I can gather, he’s supposed to be Japanese, but I have a lot of trouble believing that. He looks pretty damn Caucasian to me.
KEN
Ken is pretty much the same as Ryu. They have the exact same moves, and aside from the fact that Ken is a blonde man in a red karate thing (as opposed to the Oriental brunette in a white karate thing that doesn’t look anything like an Oriental man) and the fact that Ken is slower, they are the same. But computer Ken somehow manages to be even more of a cheap bitch than Ryu. Ken can perform Ryu’s physics-defying moves, but to a much greater degree of cheapness. But thankfully, he’s slower than Ryu, and thus he’s not nearly as difficult, at least for me.
GUILE
Guile, for lack of a better term, is a huge asswipe. He only has 2 moves. His Flash Kick is completely worthless. Unless controlled by the computer, it’s impossible to time it right to hit an opponent who’s jumping at you. Naturally, the computer is able to perform this task with no trouble at all. And of course, there’s the Sonic Boom. For starters, it gets pretty damn annoying hearing a guy yell "sonic boom!" every time he throws the damn thing. Secondly, if he were actually able to create a true sonic boom, Guile would not only totally kick his opponent’s ass, but also manage to destroy everything within close proximity, killing himself and everyone else around him in the process. If that would actually happen in the game, it might justify actually playing as the poor son of a bitch. Almost, but not quite. And aren’t guys in the military supposed to have crew cuts? Was Guile an exception to this? Imagine for a moment that you’re in the middle of a military raid and you, as Guile, are trying to hide behind a wall or pillar or something like that. Guile’s hair stands up about 3 feet off his head, so it would be pretty easy to spot him just about anywhere. And since it would be impossible to wear a helmet with that hair, he’s more or less just begging to be shot in the head. Luckily enough, none of the street fighters are smart enough to just bring a gun to the fights and shoot everyone. I never saw anything that said guns were illegal.
BALROG
Balrog is arguably the worst character in Street Fighter 2 (maybe even worse than Zangief). Balrog, you see, is a boxer. Balrog can’t kick. He just punches. Couple that with the fact that his special moves are essentially useless, and you’ve got the makings of a character whose ending cinema should show someone putting a bullet in his head and putting him out of his misery. Unless you’re really good at Street Fighter 2, winning with Balrog is about as likely as the populations of Israel and Palestine getting together and singing "We Are the World."
E. HONDA
Sumo wrestlers do not make good fighters in a street brawl. Don’t believe me? Take E. Honda, for example. First things first, Honda is a huge target. He’s a sumo wrestler. He’s very fat and very slow. It’s like taking target practice with a high-powered sniper rifle. What about his special moves, you might ask? Well, there’s the Hundred Hand Slap move, which would actually be useful if it weren’t for the fact that it’s so damn obvious when he’s about to do it. The same goes for his flying headbutt, or whatever the hell it’s called. Since the move requires you to duck for 2 seconds, it becomes pretty obvious what Honda is trying to do when he’s standing on the other side of the screen and crouching for no apparent reason. And the move is extremely slow, as Honda, being a huge fat man, isn’t very aerodynamic, and thus, he doesn’t really fly through the air with the greatest of ease. And since the computer can pull off cheap hits with alarming regularity, playing with E. Honda makes for about as much fun as trying to shove a catheter up your own ass.
ZANGIEF
"This is Zangief's second Gold Medal attempt here in the figure skating competition at the Winter Olympics, and it looks as though his "spinning asshole" move isn't scoring points with the judges."
Words cannot effectively describe how much of an ass clown Zangief is. But let’s try to put it in perspective. Imagine, for a moment, that Mr. T is white, doing massive amounts of steroids, hairier than most animals, dumber than a rock, a communist, and so slow that he is able to move backwards in time. That’s Zangief in a nutshell. I think Zangief takes the cake for the worst special moves in the game. He has his jumping spinning piledriver thing, which does craploads of damage, but is nearly impossible to perform, unless of course, you’re a soulless machine that doesn’t have to use a controller to do special moves. Then we have the spinning-in-place-with-arms-flailing move, which speaks for itself, and of course, the ace up Zangief’s sleeve, the spinning-really-fast-in-place-with-arms-flailing-move. His moves just scream "Please kick my ass!" Because Zangief almost never blocks, unloading projectiles on his communist ass works quite well. Of course, laughing at him works just as well. Maybe if you make fun of him enough and refuse to fight, he’ll get confused and start throwing his own feces at spectators. Hey, he may beat the shit out of bears for fun, but no one ever said he was smarter than the bear. For whatever reason, he seems to have an awful lot of pride. So much, in fact, that he feels that by standing there and getting pummeled by projectiles he’s doing something good for the mother land. Whatever. A child with decent aim and a Nerf gun can kick Zangief’s ass. The only strategy I can think of that works when playing as Zangief is to close your eyes, pound the controller, and pray. Best of luck to you.
BLANKA
According to the good old instruction manual, some kid got lost in a plane crash in the Brazilian rainforests. This same kid somehow managed to become a horribly mutated green abomination of God that can channel electricity through his skin. Am I supposed to buy this crap? Little boys don’t just mutate into huge green creatures by their own willpower and develop the ability to shock the hell out of things whenever they damn well please. But Blanka did. Little does Blanka realize that every time he shocks something, he’s in turn slowly killing himself. I mean, hell, the first time he shocked something he probably set his own pants on fire. Now he wears rubber pants. Yikes. And wouldn’t all of Blanka’s hair get singed and burned of if he channeled electricity through his skin? The instruction booklet says that Blanka picked up his electrocution technique from eels, but theoretically, since Blanka is huge, shouldn’t he be able to produce enough electricity to incinerate another human being. That makes 2 characters that have special moves that should kill their opponents as well as themselves (and in Guile’s case, everything within a 50 foot radius). Anyway, the point that I want to make above all else is that Blanka sucks ass. His electricity move requires you to press the punch button repeatedly, which makes it all too predictable, and his spinning body hurl attack thing is just useless. If Resident Evil was developed around the same time as Street Fighter 2, then there might have been a logical use for Blanka, but as it stands, the only purpose Blanka serves in Street Fighter 2 is punching bag for the characters that don’t suck. It’s so bad that no one in Brazil (Blanka’s land of origin, or so the mighty instruction book says) will acknowledge the existence of Blanka. And why should they? I’d be embarrassed if the representative in a fighting tournament from my country was hulking green mistake of God.
VEGA
Ah, Vega, the Spaniard of the group. I don’t really like the Spanish very much at all, but I’ll try to be fair with Vega. At first glance, Vega seems like a kick ass character. He’s got sweet claws, he’s faster than all hell, and he can leap insane distances off of walls. But despite all of that, I have trouble believing that Vega is really Spanish. First of all, he’s blonde. I don’t know any blonde Spanish people, and secondly, he’s as white as you can get without being an albino. And he yodels. What the fuck is up with that? Since when do Spaniards yodel? And what’s with his girly Tarzan scream every time he leaps off of walls? Chun Li has a deeper voice than Vega. And for a guy that can leap across the damn screen from walls, he can’t jump more than 2 feet straight up in the air. Sure, his leaping moves (the suplex thing and a helicopter-like motion with his arms) do a good deal of damage, but the skill level required to avoid these moves allows for a retarded kindergartener to avoid getting hit by them. And worse yet, the cheap ass bastard brothers Ryu and Ken can Dragon Punch him out of it, even if you’re a centimeter away from hitting them. Because of all of that, Vega’s insane speed just serves to get his ass handed to him faster than the average fighter. And his obsession with beauty is pretty scary. It is said that he wears the mask so as not to damage his "pretty face," but I think he wears the mask so that no one can identify what he really looks like, that way, if he’s walking down the street without his mask, people won’t recognize him and beat the crap out of him for being such a huge fag. But then again, a blonde and nearly albino man in Spain stands out a lot, so I doubt that he’s really safe. But the Spanish are stupid and drunk most of the time. If it weren’t for that, Vega would probably have been burned at the stake by now.
CHUN LI
Think about how bad it would be to get castrated. Well, Chun Li is worse than that. It’s just painful to watch Chun Li try to fight. Chun Li has the cool ability to leap off of walls, much like the more womanly Vega, but she’s too stupid to use it right. All she ever does is try to launch herself off the wall at you. That, or she’ll just jump at you. And that’s it. That’s all she does. Never mind the fact that she has a fireball, the kicking counterpart to the Hundred Hand Slap, or the weird ass upside down hurricane kick thing. She just tries to jump at you over and over again. Hell, Balrog and Zangief could beat the crap out of her with that kind of strategy. Fighting Chun Li is comparable to fighting a severely retarded and wheelchair-bound toddler. Scratch that. Fighting the retard would be more difficult, as one would need to take the time to weigh the moral correctness of beating a cripple, whereas with Chun Li, no one really gives a shit, and thus, despite her best efforts, Chun Li gets her ass handed right back to her on a shiny silver platter. And I’ve noticed that she has ungodly large thighs as well. If Chun Li were somehow able to be represented by a real person, with body proportions in perfect ratio to the video game counterpart, the real Chun Li’s thighs would be about twice the size of mine (and my thighs are bigger than most people’s heads!). That’s just downright frightening, and all the more reason to stay the hell away from Chun Li at all costs.
SAGAT
Sagat, as the story goes, was the original champion of the street fighters, until Ryu came and beat the piss out of him, leaving him scarred and ashamed. Sagat now seeks to reclaim his title as the best fighter in the world. At first glance, Sagat is a huge bad ass. He’s fucking huge. HUGE. And he has an eye patch. Would you fuck with a guy who only has one eye? And he’s supposed to be a practitioner of muay thai, the kick ass form of kickboxing used in Thailand. But there’s a problem. Everything else about him sucks. He’s slow, and his moves leave him open for a thrashing for an obscene amount of time. And because of his height and build, he’s just a big target (but at least he’s not a raging and useless fat ass like E. Honda). But for all that muscle, apparently his brain went a little underdeveloped. Borrowing a few tricks from "Chun Li’s Guide to Getting Beaten Half to Death in a Street Fight," Sagat simply resorts to standing in the corner and throwing Tiger Shots, all while screaming "Tiger!" And he never stops. He just keeps going and going until you either die or get so pissed off that you turn the damn game off. And don’t jump at him. He’ll Tiger Uppercut your ass right out of the air in a manner similar to the way Ryu and Ken can hit you out of the air.