Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition ver. 2012 – The Hakan Project

Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition ver. 2012 – The Hakan Project
Redrapper by on October 3rd, 2012 at 4:00 pm

Fighting games are a constantly evolving platform whose tendencies to progress we seem to collectively ignore. Tier lists are constantly changing due to metagame and new discoveries (was it not less than a year ago that Dee Jay was promoted to near top tier status in ST?) which keep the games fresh and hotly debated year after year. There’s a reason many of us still see fit to play “Theory Fighter” when we aren’t around a setup.

Keeping in this line of thinking, Brugalkonsoda has been trying to shout out his support for Hakan as loud as he can by uploading match after match of highly skilled players using the character at his best. Hakan for the most part, and I’d not like to offend anyone with this comment, has gotten a somewhat negative reputation amongst SFIV players for being a “weak” or “joke” character. Traditionally most new characters in fighting games (at least in the beginning) skew lower on tier lists and popular opinion, due to an unfamiliar playstyle and lack of knowledge about how to approach them. While the concept is there, many have faced the idea that Hakan simply doesn’t have what it takes to compete effectively with derision. I think we’re getting to the point where we can put that ideology aside, as a lot of these videos show some solid fundamentals and creative strategies to taking on match-ups that are weighted heavily against the weary grappler.

Below you’ll find some slick replays from top players on PlayStation Network, and at the top we have a match from Infiltration taken just recently from Season’s Beatings Ascension. I’ve always been attracted to fighting games for that concept of infinite possibility, telling me “anything can happen in a match, and there’s always a way to throw it in your favor.” I think it’s time, if we haven’t already, to give Hakan the benefit of the doubt.

Source: Brugalkonsoda

  • OmNiExiZt

    While Hakan may be a “good character”. Not many players are willing to put in the amount of work that it takes to get a win with him. That’s what tiers are all about. A character with simple execution that leads to big damage.

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Brad-Hanasyk/100001126347234 Brad Hanasyk

       Tier lists have nothing to do with execution.

      • http://www.facebook.com/people/Art-Salmons/100001016539462 Art Salmons

        Of course they do. It’s ridiculous to think they don’t.

        • Louis Lam

          For the most part no. They are only to the extent that the TAS-ish stuff that’s in the impossibly humanly consistent range is taken out of consideration.

      • Rahavic

        Yeah the have mostly to do with whats easy and effective. Thats it.

      • heatEXTEND

        Actually tier lists have nothing to do with online play.

      • Peter Locke

        Tier lists are about how big your dick is.

    • http://www.facebook.com/rliberalquino Rafael Liberalquino

      Actually, that’s not the definition. Tier lists ideally do not take how easy is to play the character. Even if the execution difficulties always affects the tier list for some time time, people adapt and the “truth” comes out.

      For me, tier list are about risk/reward in the options you have…

      • http://twitter.com/TwitHatman TwitHatman

        Something that is excessively risky in terms of execution (multiple 1-frame links) will always lose in terms of effectiveness to something relatively simple for the same reward.

        It is something to consider, though not the be-all, end-all the OP seems ot make it out to be.

        • http://www.facebook.com/rliberalquino Rafael Liberalquino

          Yes, I agree that execution enters indirectly in all that. 

          But then Zangief should not be placed higher just because he is simple to play and C Viper should not go lower just because she is not. 

          I said about risk/reward and it sounds like the game could be reduced to analysis like that, but it can’t. It’s not a card game or any turn based game like chess. There’s always the reaction time into play, that has little to do with a “which moves beat which” as you can’t react to every option.Shenanigans are part of the game. Dumb moves are not dumb if they catch your opponent off-guard. Infiltration has a lot of these “dumb” setups with Akuma.

          • http://twitter.com/Darkforge Legion

            Execution has NOTHING to do with tier lists. You simply cannot take how hard it is to play the character as a factor opposed to it’s tool’s because good player’s will get around the execution barrier and tier’s only matter in general at the highest level of play.

            An example but maybe not a particularly good one is Kabal in Mk9. by far the hardest character to play in that game (I know not saying much) yet is easily the top tier character.

          • http://www.facebook.com/rliberalquino Rafael Liberalquino

            * Execution shouldn’t have anything to do with tier lists.

            Not even the highest level player is able to extract the full potencial of the character, because it’s often too risky to go for the unpractical stuff. Combos with 3 1-frame links, for example, are usually not for serious matches.

    • DRainn

      Tier lists are another way of organizing tier charts (AKA an array of matchups and the advantage/disadvantage of characters in it)            -The advantage per matchup can use results and/or player opinion.

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Daniel-K-Ryder/100002264706400 Daniel K. Ryder

      Exactly. Simple-minded pussies like you would rather play handicap characters like Ken. Don’t wanna work for a win? No skill? No imagination or intelligence? No problem! Just play Ken. Ride with your training wheels all the way into adulthood.

      Ryu, Guile, Akuma, Cammy, Yun = also characters for dumbass faggots. Fuck you people.

  • tiki.92

    There is no “Deep End” in a shallow pool.

  • kn3ll

    Hakan has a few problems that make him a really poor character. He has no proper reversal, making him very vulnerable on wakeup. To exacerbate this problem, he has the largest width-to-height ratio of any character, making him extremely easy to cross up. When oiled, he doesn’t suffer quite as much since he has access to an excellent dash and a command grab with decent range, but if he is ever knocked down while unoiled, it’s almost guarantees that Hakan loses the round. That being said, he has the unique options of a moving focus attack and crisco cancelling as well as arguably the best set of grounded normals in the game. He’s not a top tier character,or even a high tier character, but he is seriously underrated.

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Daniel-K-Ryder/100002264706400 Daniel K. Ryder

       The only weakness of Hakan is the Oil Shower. That’s it.

      • kn3ll

        That’s simply untrue. Even the best characters have more than one weakness.

  • JasinWalraven

    I’ve gotten blown up by quite a few Hakans,.

  • Andrey Carvalho

    To think pros will always circumvent execution barriers is a mistake. That’s why, IMO, theoretical tier lists that disregard execution are pointless, and to a certain extent impossible. If you only take into account “options” and such things, you’re assuming pro players will always do the best thing, no matter how complicated or inconsistent in terms of executions it is, which is completely not true. Top players also take into account execution vs. reward factors.

    For example, let’s take Guile. As demonstrated by some tool assisted combos and Desk, who is almost the human equivalent of tool assist, Guile can combo a lot of sonic booms into one another by a succession of tight 1-frame links, if you manage to charge them and release them at the exact frame the charge is ready. If you’re a pro player, you can choose to invest your time on mastering such a tactic, that no one can deny is beneficial to certain extent if mastered, or you can settle for less execution heavy stuff, that is not too far behind in terms of damage than a stupidly scaled and hard as hell to do combo, and focus instead on your matchup knowledge, mixups etc. If you invest your time on other things, you’ll always evolve faster than players that are going for impractical, absurd stuff execution-wise.

    I always remind myself of something Sirlin used to say: using something that is ten times easier for you to do than for your opponent to avoid is usually a good tactic.

    SF2 has been played for decades. Until this day, top players still use piano inputs for reversals. If execution was a non-issue, they would only try the version they believe is the best one (say, a strong SRK for the damage), and do so by mastering the tighter input window by using just one input instead of gambling with three. What they do, instead. is like throwing choice away to a certain extent just for getting a better chance at actually getting any reversal at all.

    There are always human limitations for execution. Top level players are not machines who can do anything they please without worries about execution. And they never will be, no matter how many centuries people play that same game.

    Imagine the following: Yun on SSFIV pre-AE. He was undoubtely the best character in the game. Now imagine if EVERY combo he had, even the most simple one, consisted only of one frame links. Imagine that even his Ultra was a just-frame command with 1 frame of input window. Imagine even jumping with him required extreme precision execution-wise. Do you really think he would still deserve to keep his place as “top tier” character in the game, even though no one would possibly ever win a match by using him, let alone winning a tournament? That’s insane. It’s almost impossible to determine the options each character has without taking execution into account. Unless you do a Tool Assisted AI championship, that kind of data is almost impossible to retrieve.

    TLDR: Not even in the highest level of the game will players EVER discard execution-barrier as something to take into account when choosing characters and tactics. 

    • Johnson Nguyen

      You know, people get better execution with time and quality practise. And you’re arguing that it is CURRENTLY more beneficial to focus on the easier things now, and I agree, but once that’s mastered, then what? That’s when we get into the harder-execution stuff. The game will change drastically once we get to that point.

      • Andrey Carvalho

        When I say “easier execution”, I’m not referring to things anyone can do. I’m talking about things that are very hard, but humanly doable, like most combos you see on pro player matches. Those combos are not always the hardest or optimum possible for the game in terms of damage, but they’re the most stable version that is worth aiming for when you take into account difficulty-damage. Doing anything more difficult than that will only be slightly better, with the downside of being less practical.

        There are some semi-infinites in SSFIV, but why don’t they EVER appear on pro matches? Because they’re hard as hell to execute AND they’re situational. If they were not that hard to do, maybe people would focus on learning them, just in case. But they’re so hard to do they’re impractical, and scaling makes it so that they’re not worth it if you can’t do it til the clock runs out, so it’s not worth it.

        I’m sure Desk has a much better execution than most pro players around. But they don’t need that level of execution. They already have their execution up to a sufficient level of efficiency, which is not “perfection”. Only machines have perfect execution and see no difference in viability between 1-frame links and chains.

    • eunsun

      Guile being able to combo Sonic Booms repeatedly is a bad counter point. Then you are using a very extreme example of Yun having one frame links required everywhere. This is a ridiculous comparison.

      You’re using very specific examples to talk about an extremely broad topic. I understand how you feel on the issue, but if that’s all the supporting evidence you have, you’re not going to convince anyone that tier lists take execution into account.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001493633230 Rkrdo Mj

    The low tier characters  alweys be the most funniest for use.

    • Moribund Cadaver

      There’s a point here. It’s an ironic fact of game design that more unusual characters tend to end up lower tier precisely because they differ from the vanilla baseline of the game. It can be harder to tweak and balance them without breaking half the game. And unusual characters can be more fun to play because they are based on creative ideas.

      Street Fighter’s only limitation is that there aren’t enough universal systems to act as mitigation for balance – certain other games have very fine balance with wildly different characters because there’s tons of shared systems that allow characters to evade, defend, break, burst, and reverse equally. In SF, it mostly comes down purely to each individual character’s unique move sets.

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Daniel-K-Ryder/100002264706400 Daniel K. Ryder

       Once I heard about how unpopular Hakan was, and how he’s considered the worst character in the game, I made it a personal mission to learn him, and get good with him. It started out as a deliberate counter-measure motivated by my contempt for the tier list, and for those kind of mindless faggots that play by it, and as it turned out, I found out just how fun Hakan was to actually play; and it is a huge importance to me to play a character that is fun as opposed to a character that is strong. It is my greatest pleasure to make Ryu and Ken players lose to a pink Hakan. (trollface)

  • http://twitter.com/dukemagus Rafael Ourique

    the fact it is  a goddamn oiled red man with blue soaps for hair must discourage some players…

    let’s be fair… he may be funny, but i don’t know many people that say “i like how this guy is/looks”

    • eunsun

       I think he looks like Satan. That’s pretty cool.

    • pootnannies

       i actually think he looks really cool and is the only character that truly fits sf4′s aesthetic style. they definitely put more time into making him compared to ryu or ken but it’s all wasted by making him shitty on purpose.

  • http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.vitalis.31 Master Jonathan

    Hakan will eventually be considered viable when players start to use him as a counter pick for certain match ups like Blanka and Honda

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Timothy-Ian-McMillan/100003757326579 Timothy Ian McMillan

    A handful of videos showing Hakan winning does not a good character make.

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Daniel-K-Ryder/100002264706400 Daniel K. Ryder

       Try harder.

  • Vector_C

    Anyone who thinks Hakan is any kind of trash after that 2012 update is simply insane. I’ll never say he’s the best, sure. But now he holds his own juuuuuust fine.

    • http://www.facebook.com/jtjolsen Jacob Tjolsen

      He’s likely the best of the “grapplers”, at least.

      • Peter Locke

        You really think Zangief is worse than Hakan?

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Timothy-Ian-McMillan/100003757326579 Timothy Ian McMillan

      He’s better than he was, granted.

      But yes, he is still trash.

      • http://www.facebook.com/people/Daniel-K-Ryder/100002264706400 Daniel K. Ryder

        You don’t even have the slightest fucking idea what you’re even talking about.

        Do shut the fuck up.

  • http://www.facebook.com/Dark.Reaper.and.Galactimus.Zero Marvin Choi

    Yeah, people sleep on Hakan a LOT, which is just insane to me. His offensive momentum when he gets going is just ridiculous. I mean, how many grapplers do you know actually do BETTER against zoners than normal? 

    I would play him if I weren’t such ass with 720s.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Wade-Sikander/100000730065236 Wade Sikander

    That last video (FT3) is part of the UYG League Circuit Series.  

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001493633230 Rkrdo Mj

    That Blanka player will be crying untill now whith that end.

  • RunningWild1984

    Hakan is only bad because he’s in a bad game.

    • Moribund Cadaver

      It’s true, SFIV is pretty bad ass. But Hakan is cool. He’d still be bad ass no matter what game he was in.

      • eunsun

        Do you know what “bad ass” means?

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Serhend-Adil-Sirkecioglu/507639427 Serhend Adil Sirkecioglu

    Taking notes…sure i only play Hakan because I’m Turkish(hallf) but I generally bottom tier character tutorial and high level play. its sort of the avant garde of the FGC

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Daniel-K-Ryder/100002264706400 Daniel K. Ryder

      Guy from Greece told me he doesn’t play Hakan because he hates Turkish people lol.

  • http://twitter.com/Coronel_Mustard DTS

    idk about tier list of sf4, but dj in ST wasnt just promoted near top tier last year… dj has been considered more than good for at least 5 years.

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Daniel-K-Ryder/100002264706400 Daniel K. Ryder

      “dj has been considered more than good for at least 5 years.”

      What. The fuck? Please explain that statement considering Dee Jay has been introduced to the series in 1994, and SF4 first appeared three years ago. Someone does not know how to count?

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