If you weren’t playing Street Fighter 4 circa 2011 (or if you’re one of the many whose brains blocked out the memories as a defense mechanism) then you didn’t get to experience the absolute horror of facing off with Arcade Edition Yun.
This character had just about everything you could ask for in Street Fighter 4, and trying to keep him from opening you up was almost always a vain effort. While we’ll never be able to return to the days of tournaments filled with AE Yun competitors, we can share this clip from USF4 Remix (a mod that gives ridiculous abilities to every character) which recreates the exact feelings we recall from back in the early 2010’s.
The community widely knew that Yun was a candidate for best character in the game even before he and his brother Yang made it to the roster as some of his frame data and general abilities were shared before their release. Yun was designed to be overpowered to “build community and competitive spirit,” according to producer Yoshinori Ono.
What made Yun so oppressive was the ease in which he could get up close to opponents paired with a wealth of extremely effective options to open opponents up. Once this happened Yun was ready to apply wake up pressure that could be enhanced with option selects, and at this point in SF4’s life you could not delay your wake up, so opponents didn’t have to worry much about timing their set ups.
The EX (OD in Street Fighter 6 terms) version of Yun’s lunge punch left him +1 on block, meaning he could simply pull this maneuver out from almost anywhere on screen and either dole out damage or be at advantage in your face.
From once there, Yun could apply standard block string pressure or go for his command grab, either of which would result in good damage and follow up okizeme pressure should they land. As if this weren’t enough, his dive kicks had almost no height restriction to speak of.
This meant Yun could leap and instantly kick, which would blow up any and all attempts to tech throws, but he could also go right above your head and then dive kick for a nigh impossible to see left/right mix up.
There’s a good bit more Yun could do here in terms of pressure, but you get the idea (check out this full breakdown from Bafael for all the details). Once he’d built up his Super meter (and he’d do this almost every round because of the nearly constant block string pressure) he could activate his Genejin, which caused all of his attacks to hit twice.
A single successful hit while in Genejin meant Yun was then combo carrying you to the corner where things were even worse (if you survived the trip) as he could combo his Ultra 1 there for incredible amounts of extra damage.
Developers would roll out Arcade Edition 2012 within the year as something of an emergency patch to ensure people would keep playing SF4 competitively, and even then Yun was an absolute beast.
This footage of USF4 Remix Yun is silly, but we’d be lying if we said it didn’t capture the essence of what fighting AE Yun was like.
Ima block this wackass mixup
The mixup: pic.twitter.com/Ld3tmOKExb
— Gott Junta (@GodHunta) December 13, 2023