Hadoken - The classic power of video games

There is a large number of powers in different fighting video games that are very famous, each one of them makes the imagination of all its players fly, some are very fantastic, others are very realistic, the truth is that some have left a huge footprint in the memories of gamers, such as the ice ball of sub-zero or the great fist of Paul Phoenix, but this time we will talk about one that may be the most emblematic when talking about a fighting video game, the Hadōken.

The first appearance of this fabulous power was in the first installment of the Street Fighter video game, released in 1987 mainly for arcade machines. Despite being a novel move, it was not given much importance in the history of video games, since this release did not have many innovations and did not attract the attention of the Japanese and Western public.

However, things would change considerably in the second installment called Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, released for arcades in 1991. The design of the characters changed completely, as well as their special powers, attracting the attention of the players, although the section that had the greatest impact was the gameplay (being the first game where combos could be performed), it is in that installment where we can appreciate one of the powers that marked that generation, the famous Hadoken.

At the beginning only two characters could use this power, Ryu and Ken, which were considered the same character, but with a different appearance, however, as time went by and in the different installments of the saga, each of them was given their own strength within their powers, Ryu being the one who dominated the Hadoken and Ken the Shoryuken. As a curious fact, the fire Hadoken at first appeared as a programming error in the game, however it was later added officially adding a burning effect when it hits the enemy.

In later releases this power was given a more powerful addition, these were called "Super Combos" special moves, introduced for the first time in the video game Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Shinku Hadoken was the power that gave Ryu able to remove a very good amount of life to the opponent, becoming an enhanced version of the classic Hadoken.

The impact of this classic power is that it was taken as a reference for many video games in the future, although small variants have been observed to give a touch of originality in these games, among them we can mention Art of Fighting or the super well-known The King of Fighters.

The Hadoken (like other powers of the Street Fighter saga) has also appeared in other games that do not belong to this franchise, one of the rarest is in the title Disney's Magical Mirror Starring Mickey Mouse, where you can see a kind of tribute to the bonus stage of the barrels and Mickey destroying them with the powerful power, as well as in the credits where we can freely handle the main character and make the different powers of the character Ryu.

Another well-known game where you can see the Hadoken is Megaman X, being this a special power that the main character can do, however, it is not easy to get it, since you must do certain things in the game to use it. When finally X has the secret power you can clearly hear how he says the word Hadoken when he executes it.

There are many outstanding powers or special moves in video games that we can highlight, but we'll leave that for a future occasion, for now you can tell me in the comments section which other powers catch your attention in the fighting genre video games.