A-Groove Ken

Classic Fighting Games Capcom VS SNK 2
1

I’m trying to get into A-Groove and Ken has always been an old stand by of mine. I’ve got a few of his basic customs down, at least in training or if an opponent is dizzy.

I was messing around last night trying to find a decent guard crush and/or block damage custom but I didn’t come up with anything worthwhile. Are there any popular ones that don’t take a robot to do correctly? :slight_smile:

Also I have trouble comboing into activating and keeping the combo going. I’ve seen the transcriptions/videos on Gunter’s site and I can usually get all the setup links, but if I try to activate after that it’s always too late. Any tips on activating faster? (I even tried cheating and binding a button to hp+hk for a 1 button activate and tried pressing it at various timings, but I’m always activated too late).

2

This is going to sound hella scrubby but bear with me!!! Against tiers Sagat and blanka especially, that like to throw out the old c.hp alot, roll and activate. U wont pull this off on anyone thats good but u will be surprised how much this works. Then after that work up to predicting what ur opponent does and active.

Also start the custom with a C.MK and ur custom will never fuk up, plus its faster and u wont accidentally throw.

Also if anyone jumps against u and attacks, u get a free custom if u have bar. Anyother time Deep DP that shit!!:evil: Also Kens HK hurricane kicks own alot of small jumps for free, so if u fin ur self in the corner gettin Small Jumped to death, knock dem bitches outa de air!!!

Peace

3

i dunno if this is helpful, but i’m playing around with A ken right now, and if they’re in the corner, there’s a pretty cool trick you can do while comboing. if you simply jump in while activated, and land a few j. lp’s, then go into a FP shoryuken, but before it leaves the ground, hit fierce, it will knock them into the air. continue juggling with fierce and end it however you want (shinryuken works well here)

in training on a r2 person it just did about 5200 points of damage…dunno if this is useful but i thought the shoryuken cancel thing was pretty rad

hell you don’t have to use fierce, i’m experimenting with some HP shoryukens and it’s working pretty well too. also a cool thing, if you do a fierce shoryuken and go up with them, you can cancel into a hurricane kick in midair.

edit: alright i found a more damaging one. check it out:

with opponent in corner

activate CC
jump-in RH, d. RH xx LP shoryuken, LP shoryuken, MP shoryuken, MP shoryuken, shinryuken. just did about 6600 damage on a ratio 2. let’s just say he started with full heath, and ended in the red.

final edit: just one more

ok, best i’ve found so far.
jump in RH, d. RH xx LP shoryuken x 3, MP shoryuken, LP shoryuken, shinryuken. if you do it right you should be doing the shinryuken motion in the air and JUST have enough time to hit the button for it. it just net me 7240 damage. hope this helps SOMEONE. and i mean this is pretty easy so for all you A groovers who needs something damaging…

4

Durring the custom the depth of the shoryuken matters. Kens AA Custom is activate [deep LP.SRKxxLP.Command roll] get to corner LP SRK a couple of times end with Shinryuken super. The LP SRK are the best to use with ken, also u have to cancel the lp.srk while in the ground still. The motion will look like this and should be done as one motion.

f,df,f,LP,df,d,db,b,LP as I said all as one motion. I find this to be his best custom, although it will take some practice. Just remember the lp.srk have to be very deep!!!:evil:

5

u can always resort to the easy one [f+s.hk]x alot, d.hk, qcb+hk, (corner) shinryuken.

6

Roll-in activations aren’t scrubby at all, and you can catch pros with it even. I do it all the time. Just make sure you know what you are doing, and I generally feel safest when I activate on their recovery (when they attack me). I usually stick to Ken’s ground CC:

twd.roundhouse x 12, cr.roundhouse, qcb + roundhouse, qcf x 2 + kick

If you can practice using twd.rounhouse only when you need the distance, you can get a little more damage, otherwise this generally lands you about 7500 or so.

As for a guard crush CC… your search will be to no avail, for Ken has no good way of GC during the CC time. If you try to use the ground CC and they block, switch the combo around to something like this:

twd.roundhouse x 2, cr.forward, s.roundhouse, twd.forward, s.roundhouse x 10, cr.roundhouse, qcb + roundhouse, qcf x 2 + kick

The idea is to catch them blocking in the wrong place. Unfotunately, there’s no safe way to do this, because oftentimes they will see the overhead (twd.forward) and retaliate in the break. If you catch them with the cr.forward, then 1) consider yourself lucky, 2) take advantage and start roundhouse chain again!

If you do use Ken’s DP-cancel anti-air CCs, then once you get them to the corner, start juggling them with [hcf + forward, qcf + fierce] x n, qcf x 2 + kick. This takes a little practice, as does DP cancelling in the first place, but it’s very worth it. Using this will greatly increase the hit count of your CC, and depending on where on the screen you started it from, you’ll usually land somewhere between 8000-9000 damage.

One thing about A-Ken is that he has a lot of ways of building meter, most of those ways double as efficient baits. The best overall meter building bait is qcb + short. Make sure to use his dash and incoprerate qcf + jab into your strategies, especially as a safety measure to prevent your opponents from performing those bastardized wake-up attacks. I’ll post more later.