I can only speak for myself, so here’s my 2 cents…
First I want to clarify that it is primarily newb vs newb that I am talking about here. Newbie vs average or good and both games will provide a constant and endless massacre. When I talk about good players vs good players, I will mention. Fine, so allow me to go on.
I see two reasons why nowadays HF seems not so interesting to a number of people. One is the difference between online and offline play. The other is the natural appeal ST has to the newer generations.
I ain’t very good and I can’t play HF online. It is too strict to the mess latency does to games. It messes up with recognizing projectile speeds, it screws certain counters like tatsu to escape projectiles and it cuts frames from normal attacks, making certain moves hard to punish, and you would need to punish them. Because the game has projectiles with better recovery or equivalent recovery (with the exception of sonic boom), it is harder to punish them with jump ins. But characters have ways around them, which are often hard to employ. In ST, tatsu does not work against most projectiles, in HF it does. A Ryu vs Ryu in online HF is just a completely different game to me. I know I should do something but it does not work, then I gotta find another strategy that I shouldn’t even need in the first place. It is weird. If I was really good, then it would be much more different. If I knew I could sweep every Guile’s cr.fw done out of range and then I see it vanishing before I can react, shit, I would be pissed off. Also, people have two options nowadays, on PC: GGPO and Supercade. GGPO desyncs a lot, Supercade has less latency compensation and more frames cut. Those are better than non existent arcade HF competition, but not much else can be said about them.
ST is to HF what Marvel is to SF in general, just on a less intense way. A way less intense way, whatever. New players like more colors, ST has them. They find supers and explosions great, ST has them. They love combos, ST has characters that not only can perform them, but have moves which make it easier (Fei Long rekkas, shotos overheads, etc) and after you do them, you get a message saying how many hits you got with them. Of couse, it does not feature super jumps, easy target combos and air blocking, like Marvel Super Heroes or Marvel vs Capcom, but it seems better to them than staying on the ground so as not to get DPed, flash kicked or punched out of the air. At least, Ryu and Ken may use air tatsu to evade projectiles if they screw up, and Honda and Boxer have floating fierces. Not everyone sees value in staying on the ground and using normals.
If HF was to be revived, it would demand a lot of effort from local communities. Players from newer games would have to try it out, search for hard to obtain quality footage, get some boards and gather around some cab or at someone’s house and start training. I don’t see it happening, I don’t see that many people willing to try older games (it is either “HF and ST are too fast, I played CE” or “CE is too fucking slow, at best I will play ST”) and I don’t expect to see more quality sources being released. There is not “SF community” the community is split, there the CE people, the HF people, the ST people, and the masses who thing game whatever is good because it is newer and there are cool combos and bullshit.
