Combo expert Desk has been hard at work exploring the capabilities of Street Fighter 5‘s boss characters. These souped of versions of classic fighters such as Ryu, Chun-Li, and M. Bison have abilities that their playable versions don’t have access to, and they can pull off some pretty crazy things.
His latest video delves into what The Master Ryu boss can do, and on top of big damage, this version of the wandering warrior also has two supers at his disposal. While there’s a lot of crazy stuff going on in this video, some of the coolest has to be the Street Fighter 2-style combos that feel like a direct call back to the legendary fighting game series.
What makes Master Ryu so interesting is that he doesn’t really seem to have the longest and most intricate combos like fellow bosses Shadow Lady Chun-Li and Shadow Nash do. Instead, his combos utilize several light chains and links, and despite these buttons being weaker he still belts out the damage.
This version of Ryu can also hit his Solar Plexus forward + heavy punch attack in combo, and linking a standing medium punch into crouching medium kick and ending with a light kick Hurricane Kick allows him to juggle with his supers. We see Desk land this combo on Sagat in the corner and close out with a devastating Shin Shoryuken super.
If you’ve ever seen Street Fighter 2 combo videos, then you’ve probably witnessed sequences that use a string of light attacks and include instant jump normals during the combo to end things off with. Desk does quite a bit of this with Street Fighter 5’s Master Ryu, and some of these combos use air Hurricane Kicks, which is another standout feature of this boss fighter.
Desk also throws in some parry goodness for you to see, deflecting numerous attacks in impressive fashion and punishing the likes of E. Honda and Vega for their troubles. He sails through fireballs with instant air Hurricane Kicks, which take him all the way across the screen, and uses the Tatsu for several stylish set ups.
Unfortunately, these boss characters are only made playable by way of PC mods. But you can see what Master Ryu can do in Street Fighter 5 in Desk’s video below.