Media Rag

Blanka like most returning characters does not seem to have that many changes. His normals and specials are largely the same, their have been reports of his crouching fierce punch being closer to his SF2 version, his vertical Blanka Ball flying closer to the ground and his electricity apparently activates on 4 inputs instead of 5 now, overall not too much of a change to most seasoned Blanka players though the crouching fierce punch might be a good poke depending on how quick it is now.

His New Ultra, Shout of Earth, actually has two variations one ground and one anti-air and both look awesome. The move is activated similar to Guile's Flash Kick and you can change which version of it you want to use by the buttons you are going to press, so people will see you charging it up. One of Capcom's SF4 advisers Seth Killian mentioned that the ground version of the move could be used to hit projectile throwing characters out of their move if you have good reactions and while projectile throwing characters were never a problem for Blanka thanks to his EX Blanka Ball it will also hit them at full screen which the EX ball rarely could hit so Shout of Earth will definitely make your opponent bring the fight to you. The anti-air version of the move seems to activate very quickly so this may help with cross-ups, but again nobody in their right mind crosses up blanka as his electricity and some of his balls give him every opportunity to counter.

At the moment I'm not really sure how this new Ultra will help Blanka's game, it seems to have more practical uses than the original Ultra but it also seems to have a lot of uses that were never Blanka's weaknesses. Many people also like the 50/50 ultra on a fallen opponent, whether this move has enough advantages to give this up has yet to be seen.