Balrog inspiration and stories

Classic Fighting Games Ultra Street Fighter IV
1

I know some of you might lose hope in this character or get bored at times. I briefly gave rog a chance when I first played this game. After going around through 15 characters it was my brother that got me to stick to rog. He just began this game a month ago and he started with sim, his character in st (mine is rog in st) and he quickly disliked sf4 sim and asked for a suggestion and I said rog cause his footsies are like st. So alex started using rog and he’d come over and we’d rotate rounds every game and use rog.

After a couple weeks I realized that rog had way more depth than I saw current players using because my brother is old school he just plays, doesn’t watch vids, figures things out on his own. So I started seeing stuff so basic yet effective that he would do to win against 20k plus players and tourney players. It was what I needed to get inspired, a practice partner but not in the traditional sense, we have played no games vs each other, we just do sessions vs high ranked and endless opponents.

This teamwork works well because he coaches me and I coach him as well as being able to watch and study each other every other round.

Graham Wolfe

2

SF2 I always had a soft-spot for Guile. Alpha series (including EX+A), Charlie/Nash/Guile (Basically because they were the equivelant of Guile’s playstyle), XMen v SF, Charlie/Nash again and basically any SF game I played would be based on those characters until I stopped at XMvSF and quit most fighting games when I lost my Playstation.

Queue several years later and I start seeing YouTube videos of an up-and-coming StreetFighter 4 and my curiosity gets piqued, eventually stumbling randomly onto SF4 tournament matches held at Arcade Infinity starring the usual suspects such as Gootecks, Keno, Ronstoppable and several others.

I found that I spent so much time watching SF4 vids that the urge to get it just increased until I saw it in the GAME store here in Ireland for the PC and snapped it up in a hearbeat.

Happily installed it then realised I forgot to buy a keypad or stick so was stuck with a Keyboard and that my PC really REALLY wasn’t geared well towards gaming so I had to play on medium/low settings - After hours of tweaking this to a playable level it was off to the Training Room & Character select screen!

I picked Guile and found him just plain awkward, probably because of Keyboard issues - It was impossible to even do a Sonic Boom consistantly and so the next one I wanted to try out (after having seen so many awesome Balrog players in AI Ranbats on YouTube) I grabbed Balrog, donned the gloves and just fell for the playstyle instantly.

It suited me perfectly - I loved his sounds, his animations, his moveset and general image, the fact he’s actually a BAD GUY (Gotta love being a baddy, even if Balrog is a big cliche) and most importantly, I could perform 99% of his moves on Keyboard.

Off I went to Championship Mode and fell in love with random headbutts and laughing along with Balrogs demented giggle anytime he connected one with that meaty SPTHUD sound… Then I started comparing my garbage playstyle to how I saw the up and coming SF4 professionals play it and I started on my crusade to improve - I recorded every match, started uploading movies from day 1, made an account here on SRK to become part of this very Forum and get all the information I needed (maybe try to help a few people along the way) and after nearly 2 years I still haven’t gotten even the slightest bit bored with this character despite his reputation of being boring/linear and having low mixup potential.

I love knowing all that and still trying my best to adopt an aggressive/fun playstyle that actually focusses on being flashy and suprising and getting tricky with people who expect you to turtle or hang back.

Even though I’ve been playing SF4 for a long time and have a 97% Balrog Played record after thousands of matches, I’m still a proud mediocre player who still only really does basic BnB’s with no concept of footsies or spacing, and yet I’m still having fun despite those restrictions.

My YouTube channel has about 680 movies and I can safely say under half of those are purely SF4 movies beit combo movies, plain fun movies or actual matches, all 100% Balrog and I loved every moment I played in those movies, love re-watching them for nostalgia and just love the fact I enjoy Balrog so much that I’ve not even considered dropping him.

This, however, is easy for me as I’m still in Vanilla whereas those who’ve moved to SUPER or AE will have more to consider than I will.

Here’s just some of the midlevel fun shinanigans I get up to whenever I opt to play SF4 (Which is usually 2-3hrs a week at most).

Some may look like I’m taking the total piss but ultimately I’ll do whatever it takes to come out of a fight and think “That was good fun!”.

Typical Playstyle against a sparring partner quite a long time ago:
[media=youtube]NlldXVgFyVY]YouTube - SSF4 Costume In SF4 - Balrog v Bison [Rishek[/media]

Combo Vids / Training Room Experiments:
(Most recent)
[media=youtube]DKqMiCKPooQ[/media]

(First ever combo vid)
[media=youtube]C28YfIGvCPI[/media]

General Fun Moments:
[media=youtube]PeqWTyGtFec]YouTube - SF4 RopeDrink [Balrog[/media]
[media=youtube]NFxBdNICOm8]YouTube - SF4 RopeDrink [Balrog[/media]
[media=youtube]jxIFunzB4UA]YouTube - SF4 RopeDrink [Balrog[/media]

Balrog may not be the most complex and mixed character but by gum that doesn’t stop me having a blast with him.

3

For me, my history is pretty small. For one, I never even became an actual fighting game player til SFIV came out. I mean before that, sure I’ve been to the arcades, played all the vs. games (my definition of playing was inserting a quarter, picking people I thought were cool, doing circles and mashing buttons while getting worked by people who knew the games), but I only got serious with the rebirth of the Street Fighter series. In that game, I went through a few characters like Ryu and Guile; I don’t know when or why but somewhere along those lines I began using Rog. I was shit with him (I was shit at fighters in general) but I think it was with the help of my good friend (PKSkyler) who began learning how to play the game with his Dan. He in turn also helped me by showing me the techniques with Rog such as holding down back for my charges, how to do a headbutt and maintain charge for an ultra, and other things. This all sounds basic, but I had no legitimate background in fighters prior to this.

I saw myself gradually improving, playing a lot of Championship mode and winning a good amount. When the announcement for Super Street Fighter IV came out, I remember the first videos featuring DeeJay and T. Hawk. I made a decision that I’d main DeeJay for sure and when the game first came out I did. I started to do fairly well, I gained like 3k bp in the first week or so playing him. But I grew impatient with this game. The large cast of characters had me indecisive (I literally have had a phase with each character). Somewhere along my searching, I found Rog again, and I realized how much fun I’ve had with him. I found my general love for Rog, I loved that he’s a villain (I’ve used villains in just about every game you could think of; Smash, Tekken, etc.), his stereotypical lifestyle, his horrible ‘black guy’ voice actor, and just everything he says and does. With my rekindled Rog love and PKSkyler’s growth with Dan, we began taking the game as seriously as we could. I don’t know about with him, but I began learning advanced (or to me atm they were) techniques such as zoning, footsies, mixups, and all of that. I started actually learning how to play this game strategically. I progressed as an ‘online warrior’ and was having some fun. But through the long, treacherous journey of fighting through horrible online gameplay, I realized I wouldn’t progress as a player until I entered the offline tournament scene.

Back in November I went to my first tournament (went 2-2) and knew I needed to get better. Since then I’ve been to about 5-6 tournaments and I know that just like everyone else, I’ve got a ton to learn.

I guess as an additional note, I should mention that at a tournament last month, after an 0-2 result I felt I needed a switch, or at least a second character. I went with Rose because I felt she was the fireball version of Rog. Very easy to use at an average level with great pokes, spacing game, and easy to pull off combos, but can be devastating at a high level. So now I’m going back and forth between these two characters in recent tournaments.

Hm. I guess that was more of a fighting game autobiography than inspiration for using Rog, but oh well. : )

4

for me, i was using bison in vanilla and i was such a scrub. using full screen devil reverses and head stomps. but i have never played boxer before.i always thought he sucked. in sf2, i was a guile type of guy. havent really played alpha that much. but yea, i would always get beat so i decided to pick someone else. i chose boxer and went thru his trials and loved it. got my first te stick and learned my combos and matchups and everything and im glad i made the change.