I still laughed at the people who cried that Ryu was somehow super nerfed now in SSF:IV then abandoned him, however failed to realize that Ryu is still one of the strongest characters in the game of SSF:IV losing almost none of his tools from SF:iV, along with the fact that footsies are now even more important then it was in SF:IV...something Ryu was arguably #1 at in SF:IV and is again arguably one of the top-3 best again in SSF:IV.
To me, I don't care too much, for the Legit SF Series, I've always been a purist Ryu player, w/ occassion playing Guile once in awhile, Chunli sometimes and Claw for kicks. Even back in my "prime" years playing SFII, I never once picked anyone else during a tournament besides Ryu from WW, CE, HF, and Super, ever.
I hear alot of people talking how there are alot of Ryu/Ken players today, but I can assure anyone that back in the II days, there was an even larger amount of Ryu/Ken players back then, however I will say this, that the average Ryu/Ken player back in that period were much, much, much better then the ones today.
Everywhere I went to play in SFII, almost everyone who was solid that I went up against had a fundamental value how to play against Ryu/Ken, so you had to be much better to set your Ryu from everyone else. I was at one point regarded as one of the "best" Ryu players locally at where I thrived, and yes, they may not mean a whole lot to what took place with the absolute Elite SFII players back then.
However I was only like 12-13 yrs old when I was at my prime playing in Hyper Fighting w/ Ryu, so I'm content with that. Yes, do not let that "age" fool you into thinking that I probably wasn't that good, hahaha, there were alot of very solid early teens players back then, and even the greatest Street Fighter player of all time Tomo Ohira demonstrated that age didn't matter, when he was not even 14 yrs of age and was schooling everyone in the game.
Sigh...talking about this makes me miss those times, well...besides that one time I got beat up by some adult who got pissed because he couldn't touch my Ryu footsies and zoning.
Trust me on this, if you thought ragers and people who'll cry to you online was bad, I've seen chairs being thrown, life threats, people getting jumped, and entire "click" on "click" wars due to the competitive nature of SFII back in those days. Personally, I was never a trash talker, mainly because I was only in my early teens back then, plus I never was inherently one. My brother on the other hand, rofl....WOW, he had a mouth, hahaha.