Back during Street Fighter II World Warrior, the boss character I used to hate most was Sagat. After having an okay time beating Balrog and suffering through the wall climbing madness that is fighting Vega, I surely expected that the giant from Thailand wouldn’t make things easy for me, but I wasn’t prepared for what Capcom had in stock for me, as I sat in the living room floor holding my Super Nintendo controller with my sweaty little 8-year old hands.
So when the time came to control that beast, I was ecstatic, and it was exactly what I had hoped. Surely, back when Tournament Edition rolled around, where the four final characters from the original were made available, kids were aiming to master the cheapest of moves in order to be at the top of the playground when it came to sleepovers and arcade visits. But out of all of them, Sagat proved to be the most technical, and in between all the yodeling and torpedoes, his Tiger moves served to teach that there was much more to Street Fighter II than we knew.
Since then, the series has continually evolved, but the core concepts remain the same. Ground control is paramount in all of them, as is air superiority, and Sagat is in fact great at maintaining both. Surely, his Street Fighter V iteration was a little iffy when it came to speed, but that has been pretty much remedied for the most recent game. Arriving as the opening number for Street Fighter 6 season three, our eyepatch brawler is as fun to play as he was in the 1992 original.
His catalog of moves is at full display here, with his famous fireballs being the bread and butter of ground superiority, coupled with the all-so-powerful uppercut that is the ultimate anti-air counter. Let’s not forget about the knee, which comes off faster this time around than I recall using in the past. Hence, let’s not try to sugarcoat it: I’m no SF master, a casual at very best, and even so, Sagat comes off as an eye in the past and the other – sorry for the guy for only having one – to what’s the current state of the most recent release.
In tournament play is where it’ll all be proved and I’m very anxious to see how the guy will perform at the hands of some of the most proficient players out there. The little that I’ve seen by being battered like butter James Chen style playing online has given me hope that the giant from Asia will be back to the top of the tier lists rather quickly, and with the upcoming release of Crimson Viper, Street Fighter 6 is looking to become a much welcome rethread of my favorite Street Fighter to date.
As it stands, I’ll be taking our boy along and trying to rekindle my latent muscle memory from my Ultra Street Fighter IV days, which grew, obviously, from what was developed in Champion Edition. That is to say, I’ve got my work cut out for me.
