Swagman here, a relatively veteran Street Fighter player (circa 2003ish). I figured with such an influx of casuals on these websites, with a multitude of them being young, or those who played SF back in its glory days in 94, I could at least help write a guide for Ryu, the main character almost everyone will pick up. All the stuff I can really think of right off the back (some ripped off of the SRK Wiki,sorry guys):
* Ryu is the all around character, fifth or sixth best overall character, has great normals, and great spacing moves, his Hadouken is great for zoning, Shoryuken is a great anti-air, and Tatsu(hurricane kick) has invincibility against projectiles, but they have lenghty recovery periods
* His ST counterpart has an excellent Super, Shinku Hadouken, its great for reversals, and can hit confirm off of a lot of normals, but for some reason, cr. lp x2 to super won't combo half the time, even with correct timing, but most supers beat it at mid to close range
* Much like Ken and a few others, but only in WW and CE & Turbo', he has cr lk chains, i.e. cr lk x 3 link st.mp, cancel to hadou. It isn't really known as to why this was in the CPS1 games, but this was fixed for vanilla Super and Super Turbo
* Mostly great matchups, biggest serious disadvantages are Dhalsim, and O. Sagat, against Vega(Claw) is slighly in Vegas favor, matchup is 4-6 Vegas favor, Balrog (Boxer) is slightly in bigger favor, 4-6 matchup,
* All I can think of atm
   Is there anything else you'd like to add? Want to post matches of great Ryus? Want to just call me out for not knowing a single thing about SF2 at all? Post in this thread if you like to, of course be nice. And most importantly, no casuals.