Street Fighter 2 re-balanced after 17 years via mod; check out patch notes and footage to see if Akuma is finally fair now
Not counting HD Remix...
Street Fighter 2 holds a special place in the history of fighting games as the genre's single most influential title, but the nearly 30 year old game is nowhere near balanced by modern competitive standards.
That's all good and fine as we still have tons of fun playing the classic to this day, but a dedicated fan and modder who goes by the handle "Born2SPD" has spent over five years developing a new version of Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo that seeks to balance the roster as well as add a handful of quality of life updates. Read on to experience Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo: New Legacy.
New Legacy is a hack-rom that smooths over some of ST's rougher edges. Akuma and a random select spot are added to the character select screen, the entire cast gets a whole bunch of new alternate colors, and both old and new versions of all characters (including Akuma) get either nerfed or buffed.
You can check out the New Legacy page for all the details of this massive ST alteration. Patch notes and the reasons for them, character colors, and links/instructions to download it for yourself can all be found there. As always, do be careful when downloading this kind of content from the internet.
Fighting game content creator JMCrofts recently posted some footage of himself exploring the potential of New Legacy, and in his video (embedded below) he goes over some of the changes made to Akuma, Old Sagat, Chun-Li, Vega, and Blanka (who gets a brand new move along with a handful of cool buffs.)
Street Fighter 2 Akuma is known as one of the most busted characters in all the genre, and has been hard banned from most Super Turbo tournaments over the last three decades. New Legacy nerfs the demonic fighter's teleport so that he can be hit out of it, takes away the invincibility of his Tatsu, and heavily alters many of his hitboxes so they're not so overwhelmingly better than other shotos'.
You can see a handful of these in action along with changes to the other aforementioned fighters in the video below. Let us know in the comments what you think of this bold and exciting venture into re-balancing a classic, and be sure to give JMCrofts a sub on YouTube if you haven't already.
