- Street Fighter Little Zangief Man
- Zangief Costumes
- Street Fighter Little Zangief Pictures
- Street Fighter Little Zangief Song
- Zangief Street Fighter Movie
It's a scary sight to see a G opposite you regardless of who you play in Street Fighter 5: Champion Edition, but few and far between are the instances where we see a fight as difficult as Zangief vs. G appears to be here in Season 5.
Zangief is the quintessential grappler character. His damage is enough to make any character prefer to keep him away, but understanding his normal attacks is necessary to prevent the opponent from.
Recently uploaded footage from Afii gives us one example of how impossibly hard it can be for Gief to get anything going thanks to the pairing of the President of the World's new and old tools.
The story for Zangief is almost always one of spending health to try to get close and then taking massive advantage of the one time wherein he's able to do so. Thanks to his V-Skill 2, G can make Gief's go-to risk/reward game incredibly lopsided.
A successful use of V-Skill 2, 'G Protection,' makes it so that G does not lose his Presidentiality buffs upon being knocked down. It also reduces the damage G takes by 10% and can stack up to three times for a total of a 30% damage reduction (the buff goes away if G is knocked down, and he can lose Presidentiality levels if he's knocked down again after that).
How does this translate to the Gief matchup? G can give the Russian wrestler a hard time advancing as his fireball and anti-airs already make for some decent zoning abilities. Once G buffs his fireballs by gaining even just one level of Presidentiality, it gets even harder for Zangief.
If G throws a projectile at max range and then follow up with a V-Skill 2 he'll be -11 on block. From this distance, there really isn't anything Gief can do. The zoning game can quickly become filled with upgraded fireballs and a G that's taking 30% less damage than usual. Pile on all of G's other incredible strengths and you can start to see just how much Gief's work is cut out for him.
While it's just one example, we can see how hellacious this can be via Afii's clip. Be sure to take note of how little damage G takes when Gief eventually does find the hit:
Click image for animated version
Street Fighter Little Zangief Man
This is not the only time we've seen Gief struggle in this setting. 801_Strider and AZ|Kichipa-mu, the strongest Zangief in the world right now, locked horns at Red Bull Kumite a few weeks back and it really felt like an incredibly uphill battle even at the highest of levels. (Skip to 4:23:15 if the embed doesn't auto jump to that point.)
We'll have to see if Gief players can't come up with some new strategy that helps give them a fighting chance here. For now, this has to be one of the most difficult matchups we've seen in Street Fighter 5.
SF5 screen captures via NSFWCopatography.
page four
Surely the most famous April Fool's joke in the history of videogames is Electronic Gaming Monthly's 1992 ruse that told readers about a hidden opponent who would challenge the player instead of M. Bison if a series of near-impossible conditions were met in World Warrior. The opponent was named Sheng Long after Ryu's arcade win quote, 'You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance!', acknowledging speculation from fans that Sheng Long was Ryu and Ken's master. In fact, 'Sheng Long' stems from the translation of the Japanese 'shō ryū' (meaning 'rising dragon') into Pinyin Chinese 'shēng lóng' and left in the game when localised for English-speaking countries. The win quote should have read, 'If you cannot overcome the Rising Dragon Punch you cannot win!' but the mistranslation gave the impression that Sheng Long was a person, thus sowing the seed for EGM's joke. The quote was fixed for the SNES port of World Warrior but the mystery was furthered by the English instruction manual referring to 'Master Sheng Long' as Ryu and Ken's teacher....
Zangief Costumes
But the legacy of the April Fool's joke doesn't end there. The publicity and interest generated from the story created huge demand from fans for just such a character. Their wishes were granted with the release of Super Street Fighter II: Turbo in which the murderous Akuma, killer of Gouken, his own brother and master to Ryu and Ken, makes his entrance by destroying M. Bison and challenging the player in his stead (provided the player reached Bison on one credit and with at least three 'Perfect' rounds, no mean feat....) His introduction to the series is remarkably similar to that described by EGM and was surely inspired by it. Capcom extended the fan-service even further in Street Fighter IV when Gouken himself made his debut as a playable character, necessitating some horrible ret-conning about how he wasn't actually killed at all (groan).
Street Fighter Little Zangief Pictures
Via a bug in the code it is actually possible to play a Ryu versus Ryu game in arcade World Warrior despite this feature not being included in the game. Even stranger, both characters wear white gi due to there being no alternate colours available. This is a unique situation in the Street Fighter series. To make it happen, select any character other than Ryu and get to Ryu's stage. Lose to Ryu. On the win/lose splash screen hit start on player 2 and select Ryu. You will now face a CPU controlled Ryu identical in appearance to you.
Capcom are well known for having their characters make cameo appearances in other games. This is typified in Ken's Street Fighter Alpha 2 stage where many of the guests at Eliza's birthday party are dressed as Capcom characters, old and new. From left to right the characters are: Lord Raptor, Hsien-Ko and Mei-Ling from Darkstalkers, the two Unknown Soldiers from Forgotten Worlds, Morrigan Aensland (Darkstalkers), Jumbo Flapjack and Biff Slamkovich (Saturday Night Slam Masters), Eliza (Ken's wife), Ginzu and Captain Commando from Captain Commando, Michelle Heart (Legendary Wings), Strider Hiryu (Strider), Linn Kurosawa (Aliens Vs. Predator), Felicia (Darkstalkers) and Pure the Mage from Capcom World 2. The person dressed as Strider throws and catches the bear he is holding whenever a super move is performed! The butler on the extreme right is none other than Kenzo Tsujimoto, Capcom CEO and chairman.
Street Fighter Little Zangief Song
The Russian text on the sign in the background of Zangief's Street Fighter II stage reads: 'Запрещается смотретв детям' which means 'It is forbidden for children to watch'. The last character is obscured by the men on the gantry but there is no word 'детя' and 'детям' (children) makes the most sense. The red sign, Выход means 'Exit' and the yellow sign, Внимание reads 'Attention' or 'Warning!'
Capcom's Final Fight is very much the sister series to Street Fighter, with which it occupies the same universe. Just how spiritually close the two series are is revealed by the fact that the original Final Fight arcade game existed under the working title Street Fighter '89 and is even advertised as such in early promotional flyers. There is debate over why the name was changed, the two most cited views are that, at the time, Street Fighter had a poor reputation so Capcom wanted to distance this new title from the old. Alternativey, being a side-scrolling beat 'em up and not a fighting game, during play testing it was felt that the new game was too different to Street Fighter to use the name. With the decline of side-scrolling beat-'em-ups many Final Fight characters resurfaced in Street Fighter games, either as playable characters (Guy, Sodom, Rolento, Cody, Hugo Andore, Maki, Poison) or in cameos (see entry below, for instance).
Zangief Street Fighter Movie
Second only to Ken's Alpha 2 stage in sheer number of cameos is Guy's Alpha 2 stage containing a wealth of characters from Final Fight. From left to right they are: Hugo Andore, Cody, Jessica, Simons, Bill Bull, Abigail and Two. P. After Shiro the dog the characters are: Edi. E, Haggar, J, Damnd, Poison, El Gado and Axl. A humorous easter-egg on this stage has Jessica sulk with jealousy and slap Cody whenever female fighters are on-screen! The SNES port of the game removed the word 'KILL' (graffitied on the wall by Poison) at the behest of censors.