If you’ve been keeping up with Street Fighter 5 news, you know that Yoshinori Ono (SF5‘s executive producer) is currently in Dubai for Dubai Games 15 to show off some SF5 news. A few days ago, he posted this image of Ryu blocking some kind of projectile. Initially, I had thought this to be something akin to a hadoken due to its color and size; however, this new image shows that it is, in fact, a tornado particle. Besides that, this tweet by SFIV player BigBird claims that according to Ono, the character responsible for creating this particle is a returning fighter.
Thus far, there are only two characters who create tornadoes (or at least strong wind effects) that come to mind: Cody and Balrog (I am not counting Gen or Abel due to the fact that those wind effects are tied to throws, and hence cannot be what we’re seeing here).
This begs the question: why are they not visible in the frame then? The attacks that can create these particles from both fighters are extremely short range, and create the particle right next to if not directly onto the fighter’s fist. What could this mean for these characters?
Are they being reworked to involve some ranged options? Or is some other older fighter returning with new abilities? Or is this someone new entirely?
Stay tuned and hopefully all will be revealed Friday.