From: mhen@nodisk.webo.dg.com (Mat Hen)
Subject: Re: Balrog!
Date: 19 Nov 92 18:05:31
Organization: NSDD, Data General Corp.

>>>>> On Friday, 13 Nov 1992 10:21:31 CST, <U58505@uicvm.uic.edu> said:

> Well I must say, that Balrog has now become one of my real favorites.
> I've been playing him more than Ryu lately, but that's only because my
> school has tons of Blanka players.  Blech.  Just me and this one other
> guy play Balrog frequently, two Balrogs in a sea of Blankas - it's
> streetfighter heaven.  Anyways, the only reason I learned Balrog was
> because my anti-Blanka tactics for Ryu didn't seem to be improving at
> all; perhaps my skill with Ryu when it comes to fighting Blanka has
> plateaued.  Maybe this is as good as I'm gonna get and I'm not gonna
> get any better.  God, I hope not.  Well I just want to share the joys
> and sorrows of being a Balrog player with other Balrog players.

> Fighting against Blanka using Ken sucks.  Period.  For Ryu, you have
> to play so patiently; it's almost difficult for me because I like to
> initiate kick or punch attacks instead of missile attacks.  There are
> Blankas here that will do absolutely nothing until you do something
> first, we're talking terminal brain death.  I'm not kidding, I really
> believe they'd crouch for the whole damn round if you let them.  Well
> o.k., that's not %100 true - they'll walk up to you a bit and crouch
> back down again.  What really annoyed me the most was that these guys
> thought they were skilled.  Shhhhhyeah, right.  For me, the solution
> to fighting mindless, "zombie" Blankas was to learn Balrog.  I thought
> I'd have to concentrate more on my Honda, but some friends of mine
> kept insisting that Balrog was the real Blanka killer.  So after I
> ignored their comments for about $20.00 worth of Blanka matches I
> decided to give Balrog a try.

> My first tries were ugly to say the least.  I discovered just how
> useless Balrog's sliding straight punch and sliding uppercut really
> were as attacks.  I got foot swept most of the time.  Granted they're
> not totally useless and I've developed better judgment on when to use
> them and when not to use them.  They're great when you can catch your
> opponents just when they are about to missile attack, especially with
> Ken.  I mostly use the sliding punch as a means of fast travel, you
> can get closer to your opponent with a sliding punch faster than if
> you just walked up to him.  I usually use a strong slide when I want
> to get my opponent within range of my attacks but I'll be just out of
> range for HIS attacks.  One of my favorite tactics is a strong slide
> followed by a turnaround punch, a fierce slide brings you in too
> close and can get your ass foot swept.  My Balrog has developed to
> the point were most Blankas have resolved themselves to losing even
> before the match begins.  Some of them even scatter and go play
> Mortal Kombat or classic.  Really pisses me off since I feel that I
> haven't crushed enough Blanka players to make up for all the beatings
> I got when I was a Ken player.  They don't even realize that all they
> have to do is learn how to perform a fireball trap with Ryu and Balrog
> is basically Ryu fodder.  Well they probably realize it (Blanka players
> can't be that mindless, despite the general consensus); they just
> don't want to invest the time or money to learn Ryu.  I can handle
> that.



Some Blanka players think they're hot sh*t when they trash people with
Blanka's high priority attacks.  That really annoys me.  Blanka has a
lot of advantages: 3 high priority jumping attacks(fierce, roundhouse,
forward), high priority standing attacks(fierce, roundhouse), fast and long
range ground attacks(crouching roundhouse), fast ball which blanka can
do many times in a round without worrying getting hit(he doesn't take
massive damage like he does in Classic).  It takes considerable short
amount of time to learn how to play blanka when compared to the time
you need to play Ken/Ryu/Guile/Dhalsim/Zangief well.  When these
average blankas are trashed by decent players, they just give up and
won't even dare to try other characters.  One time a Blanka was
jumping around and trashing people.  So I joined with by Guile and
every time he jumped, I razor-kicked him.  IMO, he didn't know how to play
Blanka at all.  He looked at me as if I was playing cheap(just
razorkicked him when he jumped).  He finally gave up and left the
machine.  HaHa!

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Mat Hen		


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