Despite being portrayed as the class clown, Dan Hibiki had an infinite move that was impossible to counter in Street Fighter V. This situation has now been rectified by the developers at Capcom.
In fighting games, infinite moves are combos that players can repeat over and over again without giving the opposition any time to counter them. They are often made very difficult to pull off because they generally spell the end of a match or, at the very least, give one side an enormous advantage.
The idea is not a new concept for fighting games like Street Fighter that has been around for a long time since the original version was released in 1987. Since then, the developers have learned plenty of lessons while the franchise became one of the most popular fighting game series on earth. In addition to the five main numbered games, there have also been 10 additional sequel titles released and 12 spinoff and crossover games.
Its influence stretches beyond the gaming industry, too, with eight films and two television series created based on the game. There is even a popular online slots title called Street Fighter II: The World Warrior available on NetEnt, and we haven’t even touched on the books, manga and music soundtracks inspired by the series.
The point being, Capcom’s developers, have been around the block with Street Fighter, and they know what they are doing when it comes to a fun and competitive fighting game. Dan ending up with an infinite combo was not an accident, and they wanted him to have a powerful move to re-announce him to the series that he has not been the main character in since Street Fighter Alpha 3.
The combo involves repeatedly casting Dan’s signature fireball move Gadoken, which is his poor attempt at replicating Ryu’s world-famous Hadoken technique, against an opponent trapped up against the side of the stage. Make no mistake; this is tough to pull off in practice, let alone in a competitive environment against a skilled opponent.
However, this is precisely what happened in an official Street Fighter V tournament in May 2021 when Fu-pin “RB” Kao – who is well known for pulling off high-risk, high skill ceiling moves – absolutely dominated Li-Wei “Oil King” Lin with Dan’s infinite combo live and on air. The phrase Danfinite was quickly coined by an enthusiastic fanbase.
The big issue for Capcom and many of its long time fans, though, was that this kind of powerful execution is a bit out of character for Dan, a character created explicitly as a bumbling buffoon and the butt of most Street Figher-related jokes. Quite simply, it didn’t make sense for a bad version of Hadoken to have the power to completely win a match on its own.
At the same time, Capcom weren’t keen to remove it altogether because Dan stumbling his way to a win via the innovative and surprising use of a bad move fits his character perfectly. Their solution is an elegant one that makes matchups with and against the character way more fun.
What they decided to do was add a random outcome to the skill combo in which one Gadoken every so often would be slightly stronger, change colour to red, do a bit more damage and, most importantly, knock the opposing player off his feet, thus ending the opportunity for the combo to continue. Best of all, adding a random element to Dan’s kit fits perfectly with his character.
“This adjustment is intended to suppress looped combos at the edge of the screen. The combo made it impossible for the opponent player to control their character for a period of time and was stressful to deal with. In light of these issues, we made adjustments to prevent looping, and have made the solution consistent with Dan’s history of random move enhancement,” Capcom said in its patch notes to accompany the change.
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