In modern Street Fighter games developers have been careful to design character move kits to function in a relatively holistic manner where most every maneuver has fairly clear contextual purpose, but things were very much not always this way.
Blast back to Street Fighter 3 and devs were still designing attacks within vacuums of what looked cool or made basic sense for the character, and this meant a good deal of over and under-tuning. At Evo 2024, however, one particular player was so familiar with his character that he was able to use one of SF3’s most under-tuned moves to pull off what would become an instant fighting game hall of fame moment.
The player is PGW|Hayao who somehow brought Hugo (one of Street Fighter 3’s lowest-tier options) into the finals of the single largest SF3 tournament of all time. Hayao has spent the last quarter century refining his SF3 abilities thanks to perhaps the one motivator that even has a chance at lasting so long in the fighting game space: fun.
As Korean BF digs deeper into in his recounting of Hayao’s instantly iconic Evo 2024 finals run, the competitor’s immense passion for playing manifests in his on-stage showmanship as much as it does his in-game skill.
It’s that passion that drove Hayao to become so intimately familiar with his character that he knew exactly how Hugo’s standing heavy kick would move his hurtboxes and help him survive an otherwise certain death.
The reason this particular move is regarded as so conspicuously ineffective is because it’s got terrible frame data. It takes a long 21 frames to start up, leaves him a dangerous -18 when the slow maneuver is blocked, and even leaves him at a disadvantageous -2 on hit.
In other words this move comes with immense risk and very little reward, though does make enough visual sense as the hulking character pulls off a dropkick that you very well might expect a wrestling type like Hugo to perform.
Go on a ride as Korean BF tells the story of how Hayao used a low tier character and move to put on a top tier display on the grandest of fighting game stages.
