Ryu Strategy Guide and Moves: Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix

Guide last updated on
June 20, 2010 at 3:21 p.m. PDT

1

Character Overview

Ryu is arguably the most balanced character in HD Remix. He has the tools to deal with just about every situation, and he has no glaring weaknesses.

The addition of his Fake Fireball helps even out his match with Dhalsim tremendously, and now players have to be smarter when dealing with Ryu's excellent fireball traps.

While he's not regarded as a top tier character, there are still plenty of players who have won tournaments with him. He has one of the best projectiles in the game and he's still a great character in the right hands.

• Strengths •
+ Arguably the best fireball traps in the game.
+ Ryu is extremely well balanced, even his bad matches are winnable.
+ Fake Fireball is a great bait/fake out tool.
+ No major weaknesses.

• Weaknesses •
- Can have trouble dealing with some of the top tier characters.
- Everyone knows how to play against Ryu, as they've been doing it for years.

Special Moves

• Blue Fireball (Hadouken) •
One of the best projectiles in the game. Use Ryu's fireballs to control the position of your opponent.

The classic trick of throwing out fireballs to do chip (block) damage and baiting your opponent into jumping and nailing them with a Dragon Punch still works — and it's still very effective.

A good game plan is one that keeps your opponent in the areas where your Dragon Punch and Fireballs are most effective. So always try to be placing yourself with those moves in mind.

One trick with your opponent in the corner is to throw out a fireball that hits them close to the middle/back of their body as they're standing up. As soon as they block it, IMMEDIATELY throw out another projectile. If you time this correctly, your opponent will have a difficult time getting around the second projectile, being forced to block it or use an escape move.

Depending on how they reacted to this move, you may be able to continue to throw out projectiles to either force them to jump into a Shoryuken or slowly chip away their life.

Also the Light Punch version of Ryu's Fireball has the shortest recovery time, but only by a small margin. Medium Punch takes one additional frame of animation to recover and Hard Punch is another additional frame.

• Red Fireball (Fire Hadouken) •
Like Ryu's Blue Fireball except that if thrown from a bit further than 'sweep distance' or closer it will knock your opponent down.

• Fake Fireball (Feint Hadouken) •
Turning out to be an excellent move. Always mix this in with your normal fireball traps to put yourself in a great anti air or counter attack situation. And note that your recovery time after this move is VERY quick.

A common tactic over the years for Ryu players has been to do a Crouching Medium Kick and Cancel into a Fireball, but the Fake Fireball puts a twist on this.

Instead of a real projectile, do this fake after the Crouching Medium Kick and walk up and throw. It's amazing how many times opponents fall for this because they've trained themselves to block in this situation.

When they start trying to counter your Fake Fireball in this scenario, start hitting them with real ones.

• Dragon Punch Uppercut (Shoryuken) •

• Hurricane Kick (Tatsumaki Senpuu-Kyaku) •

Super Move

• Super Fireball (Shinkuu Hadoken) •

Video of Ryu pulling off some of his core and crazy combos. Watch ►

Movie by the Q80Warlock.

Combos

• Jumping Hard Kick, Crouching Medium Kick, Cancel into Hard Punch Fireball •
Ryu's Bread and Butter combo, does good damage and stun.

You can use most of Ryu's normal moves in place of the Jumping Hard Kick and Crouching Medium Kick in this sequence.

• Cross up with Jumping Hard Kick, Crouching Medium Punch, Link into Crouching Medium Kick, Cancel into Hard Punch Fireball •
Known in some circles as the 4-hitter quitter. This combo is a likely dizzy if you land it. Takes off roughly 55% of your opponent's life.

• Jumping Medium Punch, juggle with Jumping Medium Punch, juggle with Super •
Your Super will only hit a couple of times, but the extra damage is nice.

• Towards + Medium Punch, Link into Crouching Hard Kick •
3-hit combo, only works against crouching opponents.

• Cross up Jumping Hard Kick, Towards + Hard Punch, Crouching Hard Punch, Cancel into Fireball •
Only works against crouching opponents, 5 hit combo though and nasty when you land it.

• Towards + Hard Punch, Crouching Hard Punch, Cancel into Fireball •
For this to land properly, you need to time it so your Towards + Hard Punch hits as a Meaty (early) move.

• Crouching Light Kick 2x, Standing Light Kick, Standing Light Punch to Cancel into Super •
You need to Chain (Renda) Cancel to go into your Super with this combo. You won't see the last Standing Light Kick because you'll be Canceling it directly into your Super with Light Punch.

If you were to do this combo the full motion would look like this.

Normal Moves

This is not a complete list of Ryu's normal moves, just the ones we think are noteworthy.

• Dash Punch •

• Overhead Punch •
Ryu hops forward and hits twice with his fist. Must be blocked high.

(In the air)
• Air Uppercut •
This moves hits twice. You can also jump again and hit them a third time with this as they're falling back down.

A very effective anti air measure, because the damage is surprisingly good if you land all three hits. It even beats out a well placed Hard Punch Shoryuken.

Changes from Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo

* New move: Fake Fireball. Quarter circle forward plus Light Kick.

Contributions to this guide by David Sirlin, Yflow, Oldschool_BR.