"Overpowered Sagat" and others levelled off for SSFIV, says Ono

Super Street Fighter IV producer Yoshinori Ono has claimed that character balancing in the upcoming game should spell the end to any notion that Sagat is overpowered.

Ono was reticent to admit, however, that there was a balancing issue among serious players.

"I know there is the legend of overpowered Sagat and supposedly weak Vega and Guile, but these tierings really depend on the reviewer and their favourite characters," he said, talking to Gamespot.

"Although everyone talks about Sagat being too strong, I don't know any major tournament champion who uses Sagat. But I do admit the unique elements of characters are exploited at mid-level matches, and this has been readjusted in SSFIV."

Super-Sagat's final demise is the result of endless testing, Ono said.

"We have carried out tuning for all characters. It has been a year and a half since the arcade release and almost a year since the console release. In this time span an unbelievable amount of research and study has been done on characters and tactics.

"We are very surprised to the extensiveness of this, and many things we were not expecting were discovered as a result. However, for SSFIV I don't think anyone is too strong or too weak."

Super Street Fighter IV releases for PS3 and 360 on April 30.