It seems like these tendencies for manufactured combos grew as the popularity of CRT TV shrink.
With a CRT TV you got instant feedback as to whether you got the timing of the combo hits right or not.
However now that CRTs are no longer manufactured, you just can’t organically feel the combo.
Now you have to “lead the combo”. And to know where your moves were intended or not, you have to be given them, and then shown the results.
Now you have to be taught the system. It’s like Killer Instinct 1 where we had a very specific system and if you didn’t know it you were just giving off isolated hits.
another weird think about the tutorials is it gives you all the moves and shows you what it looks like when it’s done but doesn’t give you any timing cues of what you’re supposed to do when. You just told the moves and practice them until you get them right.
And I’ve also got issues about sloppiness of the joystick. It’s Street Fighter 2 when I had my right-handed fightstick I can pull off specials like nobody’s business. Left-handed I’m either predictable and telegraphing or I misfire when I go quicker. It makes combos too easy as far as the joystick is concerned.
I think the most interesting fighting game you would like Eternal Champions CD.
Eternal Champions CD (or Eternal Champions, the prequel for Genesis) is basically the anti-combo fighting game. I think literally every single move will not lock you into receiving a combo, you can actually do something about it Except for one character, Jetta, as one of her second level special powers.
It is good in other ways too.
First of all you can’t just Spam specials all day you will limited by a special meter called inner strength.
Second, taunting is actually practical move and not just teabagging. it leaves you open and exposed for hits but if you’re able to say your word in time you drain some of your opponent’s inner strength. But don’t abuse that, or else Your inner strength will deplete faster than your opponent’s with each of your taunts.
Thrid, the specials are really powerful and distinct and varied, like in Mortal Kombat, yet different characters have different speeds, attack speeds, attack power. endurance, jump patterns, etc more like Street Fighter.
But there’s one problem inEternal Champions one for the Genesis. It seems like about 90% of the matches have 20 seconds or less on a 99 second timer. and about 70% of matches end in time out victories going to whoever has more energy, especially against the CPU in quest mode.
Eternal Champions CD fixed that by slowing down the time, but user the same 99 seconds. Number of rounds that end in knockouts are significantly higher, but not ludicrously slow where Quailman tactics (stick and move, block and counter) becomes no longer useful, like Mortal Kombat, where the literally the only times I had time decisions were against bosses, where that was the only way I COULD win.
The beautiful thing (or ugly thing if you hate it) about Eternal Champions is you can always block after any hit, or you could sneak in the right counter and turn a defensive barrage block into an offensive barrage.
There are combos, but they’re not manually generated. It’s basically a special move that just looks like a combo. you don’t type additional buttons after that. It automatically goes.