The most revered moment in all of competitive Street Fighter comes from Third Strike for a reason: it tends to produce the hypest sequences. Why exactly this is is debatable, but there’s a magic that comes from the flow of the footsies, flow, animations, and the way the parry mechanic works.
The game may have dropped a quarter century ago, but it’s still cranking out edge of your seat action as exemplified by the Akuma vs. Ken showdown waiting for you after the jump.
Perhaps foreshadowing a match up we’ll be seeing a ton of in Street Fighter 6 in the coming months, Akuma takes on Ken in an explosive back and forth.
Koudai, who sits among the strongest Third Strike competitors on the planet, captured this round and added a little extra editing for dramatic effect. As soon as you think you see the momentum start to flow in one direction, the next interaction proves you wrong.
Akuma parries Ken’s jump in, so you’d expect him to respond with some kind of counter, but he winds up eating a whole combo into Super anyway. What does Ken do with his okizeme opportunity? Let’s just say it doesn’t go well for him.
Both characters find themselves with just a sliver of health, but the crazy interactions ensue right up to the very ned. We don’t want to give any more away, so we’ll let you just watch the rest here. Please let us know what you thought of the clip in the comments once you’ve had a chance to watch (a few times, if you’re anything like us).
きたねえ花火２０２４ pic.twitter.com/PWi9zqnW3T
— こーだい (@koudai3rd) April 1, 2024