Street Fighter IV Character Guide Part 1: The Original Player Characters

Street Fighter IV is the latest addition to the most successful fighting game series ever made. Capcom have included a total of 25 characters in the game. There are the original 8 heroes from Street Fighter II, the 4 bad guys, 9 additional characters from the various other releases in the series and 4 entirely new characters. In this series of 4 articles we are going to take a look at each of the characters in the game starting with the 8 original heroes.

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Ryu is a versatile choice and capable of speed and strength which makes him ideal as an all rounder. He can fire a Hadouken fireball, pull off the Shoryuken uppercut punch and the Tatsumaki Senpukyaku kick. When it comes to the new Super and Ultra combos, both of Ryu’s moves are variations on the Hadouken so can be used at range. He has a string of possibilities when it comes to chaining attacks and he is fairly easy to pick up and play for beginners.

The American brat also trained by Gouken, Ken is the angry undisciplined version of Ryu and the two are like surrogate brothers. Dressed in red with a mop of blond surfer like hair Ken is every bit as dangerous as Ryu and fights with a very similar range of attacks. He doesn’t have a special enemy although he tends to lose to his training partner and so Ryu could be considered his nemesis.

Ken is also strong and fast and well suited to fighting most other characters. He can fire a Hadouken fireball, unleash the Shoryuken uppercut and of course the spinning roundhouse kick Tatsumaki Senpukyaku. His Super and Ultra combos are variations on the Shoryuken uppercut punch which are devastating at close range. He too has a wide array of choices when it comes to stringing attacks together for destructive combinations. He is also fairly easy for novice players to pick up but he does need to get much closer to his opponent than Ryu in order to be truly effective.