Hadoken: Difference between revisions

Hadoken, also sometimes spelled as "Hadouken", and colloquially called a "fireball", is a special move available to several characters such as Ryu and Ken in the {{uv|Street Fighter}} series. It involves the user thrusting their palms forward to fire a blue surge of spirit energy, or Ki. It is most commonly performed by the player moving the joystick or D-pad a quarter circle forward towards the opponent from the down position, then pressing a punch button, with the projectile's speed and distance varying depending on the specific button pressed. The creator of ''Street Fighter'', Takashi Nishiyama, credits the 1970s anime ''{{s|wikipedia|Space Battleship Yamato}}'' as the inspiration of Hadoken, based off of a weapon called ''Hadōhō'' (波動砲, lit. ''Wave Motion Gun/Surge Cannon''). An oddity involving the Hadoken in early versions of ''Street Fighter II'' is that there was a 1/512 chance a regular input would perform a Hadoken instead. This was done to slowly introduce beginners to more advanced mechanics. However, it perplexed those that witnessed it, who believed it was a glitch for many years until dataminers discovered it was an intentional mechanic.

The Shakunetsu Hadoken was formally introduced in ''{{s|wikipedia|Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers}}'' as a new move for Ryu, a special red fireball that could burn the opponent. In the original ''{{s|wikipedia|Street Fighter II}}'' the regular Hadoken occasionally turns red as an {{iw|wikipedia|easter egg|media}} (originally thought to be a glitch). While the easter egg is purely an aesthetic change, rumors eventually circulated that this "red Hadoken" was stronger; [[Capcom]] thus decided to make the "red Hadoken" a separate move with actual differences in properties (such as knocking down up-close in the ''Street Fighter Alpha/Zero'' games). The main reason for this decision was to differentiate Ryu and Ken, who were functionally identical except for some minor moveset characteristics beforehand. In the ''{{s|wikipedia|Street Fighter III}}'' (excluding ''Street Fighter III: New Generation'') and ''{{s|wikipedia|Street Fighter IV}}'' games, Shakunetsu Hadoken serves as Ryu's EX version of the move; Akuma being one practitioner of this attack still keeps it as a separate normal special move to this day, as he performs his signature focus stance as a delay before unleashing the move (Akuma's also has always done multiple hits prior to the EX move version).

Like with many of Ryu's other moves/techniques, this is the arguably the most codifying example of a projectile attack in any fighting game. While most games would only allow one copy of a projectile to be on-screen at a time, later games allow multiple copies of them to be on-screen. This is played straight for Ryu's Hadoken in ''Marvel vs. Capcom 3'' with the latter case.

 

In particular however, the Hadoken's size in ''Smash Bros.'' is more likely based off of the ''Marvel vs. Capcom'' series' version, where starting with ''X-Men vs. Street Fighter'', several ''Street Fighter'' characters' moves were given radical changes in order to look less pale in comparison to the ''X-Men'' characters, with the Hadoken's size increase being one radical change out of many.