Three weeks have come and gone since the long-awaited release of Super Street Fighter IV. Fourteen videos and hundreds of research hours later, we have a fairly sound idea of what the new characters and spare ultras are capable of. Obviously most of them will continue developing further, but the foundation is set.
Looking forward, the most dynamic characters appear to be Rose, Ibuki, and Juri. Although several dedicated specialists have begun experimenting with Rose’s unconventional Soul Satellite ultra, i feel we’ve only scratched the surface of its advanced combo potential. Sooner or later, someone will figure out the right combination of setup, spacing, and dummy selection to control how and when each orb connects.
Ibuki has access to a disproportionately large pool of combo tools: chains, jump-cancels, ground loops, air trajectory control, etc. She’s still a relatively straightforward character underneath, but none of her known combos seem fully optimized yet. In fact it’s pretty amazing how she doesn’t have an infinite considering all the infinite-prone tools she possesses. You have to admit, Capcom has done a commendable job of balancing her.
Juri’s Feng Shui Engine ultra is essentially a Custom Combo, which always require many months to explore and optimize. She also happens to be of the best dizzy characters in the game, in the sense that you can use all her super meter to knock someone dizzy and then still have something special for the post-dizzy combo, because you get to restore her Fuhajin fireballs. It’ll take ages to wade through this many possibilities.