Street Fighter elite, David Sirlin has posted the latest chapter in his series on the re-balancing of Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. This installment covers my favorite Street Fighter character, Cammy. Now, I never got to play “Super-Turbo” much myself back in the day, so most of my experience with Cammy comes from later games, in her Shadaloo attire. To me, the best interpretation of Cammy as a character and in execution was Street Fighter Alpha 3.

According to the Street Fighter community, Cammy is one of the absolute worst characters in Super-Turbo. It was no surprise (except from my perspective) that my denial of that swiftly dissolved when I’d recently gotten the opportunity to dive into Super-Turbo myself. Unlike her Alpha 3 counterpart, ST Cammy’s attacks are hardly effective at all. The best ones are troublesome to execute and the ones that are easy are also fatally impractical.

Mr. Sirlin has made great effort to correct these terrible design flaws. First, Cammy’s control motions have been simplified so that the Hooligan Throw can be performed with ease, without risk of accidentally jumping. The Spinning Backfist has been slimmed down to a quarter-circle motion, though I never saw a problem with it’s original half-circle, especially with the added benefit of the move, which I’ll explain below.

Cammy’s moves have been tweaked to make them more effective. Previously, if a character blocked her Cannon Drill, that then had plenty of time to retaliate. Now, her Cannon Drills are safer to perform, if you understand how their ranges work. Her Spinning Backfist now has a feature that I learned to appreciate in Alpha 3 in that Cammy can use them to move through fireballs, using some “2.5D” ideas. With that and the increased probability to connect the second hit and knock-down, this is why I felt that the extended half-circle joystick motion made the move a bit more balanced.

This news has provided me with a huge sigh of relief in looking forward to play as Cammy in the HD Remix. Now I focus my finger-crossing toward including Cammy in Street Fighter IV.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 2nd, 2008 at 9:52 am and is filed under Games, Street Fighter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.