although this could be done with any of the street fighter engines, i would prefer hdr or maybe alpha 2 based on the characters and the overall look of the games.
anyway, they should experiment by changing the hit boxes and frames of the whole game in a few different ways. these aren’t new ideas by any means, just combinations of existing ideas from many different games and genres.
1- they should have critical hits. head and torso shots should not only do more damage, but add hit stun frames for larger combos. in fps games, head shots are pretty much kill shots. in bbcs, certain moves start your combos with a set amount of options to finish out your combo because each successive hit deals less hit stun frames. so in a situation when you jump and hit your opponent in a “critical point” like the head or stomach, he/she will be in a larger number of hit stun frames for you to combo with afterwards.
2- they should have certain frames within an attack animation deal more damage, knockdown, have larger hitboxes, and/or add hit stun frames. again, nothing new. deep srks deal hella damage depending on which frame your opponent is struck. tekken has “counter hit” moves. although this is utilized, it is done so very sparingly. your most damaging frame should be the last frame prior to retraction before going into your recovery frames. if dhalsim does his standing hp for example, hitting someone close will not deal as much damage as when he hits someone at the very end of his hitting frames of the standing hp.
another possibility is to have separate sets of high damage hitting frames within one animation. for example, a fierce srk will have high damage frames early right as he lifts off of the ground and again at the peak of the srk. honda’s super deals massive damage really close, but what if it also deals massive damage in later frames. obviously it won’t deal the most damage at max screen distance since most of his momentum is gone but possibly about 4 character lengths.
3- there should be more “counter hit” frames or hitboxes on opponents’ attacks. again i’ll use dhalsim as an example since he has some of the largest amounts of frames on his normal attacks. if he tries to do a standing hk and you are close, you can actually hit him at the early frames of his animation at certain points of his body to deal damage and/or begin hit stun animation. so if you hit a certain part of his leg early enough, you knock him back and deal damage. but if you’re able to hit him in the head while he’s in the first frames of his animation, you deal extensive damage and gain enough hit stun frames to continue with a combo.
again, none of this is anything new. it’s all already there, just not done to this extent. if ken does his fierce srk for example, cammy can deal more damage by jumping up and hitting him in the head with a jumping mk than if she waited until he was coming down and thrust kicking or throwing him when he’s almost on the ground. if she misses and kicks him in the legs, little damage is done and she wasted her opportunity.
another example would be ryu jumping in on sagat and perfectly spacing and timing a fierce punch to the head. with the high number of hit stun frames, ryu would be able to followup with a down fierce, two low mks into fireball (all 1 frame links) for hella damage. if he missed the critical hit, he can only follow up with a low mk into fireball for less damage. in a game like this, spacing and timing would be progressed exponentially.
yeah, this would change a lot of things, but fighting games are devolving in my opinion. i think something like this would really shake things up a bit without a big loss on anyone’s part. capcom used to use the alpha series to experiment with new ideas so why not revisit hdr and try something like this?