gilroy is in norcal.
bay area to be exact.
cvs2 is D-E-A-D everywhere else in the states.
im glad i went to school in norcal. i went from cvs2 scrub to competent cvs2 scrub in two years.
the best way to get better without playing people is youtube imo. watching videos will give you an idea of what most characters can do and how most characters are generally played.
heres a dope channel ran by one of srk’s best: http://www.youtube.com/user/Rollcancel
from there, console practice mode is what you want to do next to work on execution. stuff like consistently hitting anti-airs, doing clutch dragon punches, and landing whatever groove super combo. if you are playing k-groove, it would be beneficial to try out JD’ing some super fireballs and what not just to learn the intricacies of the timing, distance and recovery of the JD.
and if you got time and want to read some stuff about cvs2, jchensor wrote an excellent system/combo guide that has some really good and informative stuff in there.
http://www.gamefaqs.com/coinop/arcade/file/562704/15064
since you said you are new to fighters, it might be a good idea to read up on frame data as well. basically, its how fast everything is and how much recovery everything has.
buktooth’s guide to frames - http://www.gamefaqs.com/coinop/arcade/file/562704/28665
(frames apply to every fighting game.)
a stock t5 stick is decent and pretty cheap if you look around. i got like 5 of them in varying states of modification. cvs2 for ps2 is kinda expensive, like 40 bucks used at the gamestop in my area, but there are some workarounds… ill leave it at that.
I suck at fighting games, but I think the Deuce is still one of the best games to learn the fundamentals on. (It’s also one of my favorite games because it’s so blissfully slow compared to other games I get destroyed in.) The links are generally very forgiving, the screen doesn’t scroll too rapidly or get rapidly flooded with shittons of hitboxes (important for people with snail-ass reflexes like me!), and there’s a lot of nice screen space to practice footsies and spacing in relative safety. The three-character factor is also rather nice because it guarantees at least three rounds even if you get OCVed, during which you have a bit more time to process what you did wrong and what the other guy did right before GGPO. (Of course, in this day and age you’re not going to have to worry about a huge queue at the CvS2 cabinet to begin with.) On top of all that, you have a variety of grooves to cater to people coming from all kinds of backgrounds in other games, and most of the cast is at least decent in at least one groove (although not many in more than one). It’s very easy in this game to have a team that is fun, unique, and reasonably potent all in the same go.
As for how to just get STARTED at the game (perhaps the only part of this game I’m qualified to give advice on), I’d say this: after running through practice mode and working with the dummy on auto-block and the like to learn basic blockstrings and 2-in-1s/short-short combos, when you first get in live combat with somebody who knows how to play the game, your primary focus should be to get a feel for spacing and footsies. If you’re sure you’re going to get stomped, don’t even worry about trying anything fancy on offense. Hell, depending on what characters you’ve picked, don’t even bother with offense at all. Just pick a spot on-screen outside of the corner where you can comfortably walk-jiggle in and out of your maximum poke range (say MK range for Sagat, HK range for Cammy) and do your damnedest to stay right there. Just keep kind of a gentle, loose grip on the stick, jiggle back and forward, throw out something that whiffs really fast like a Sagat jab every now and then, and see if they’ll attempt a jump into something like a Sagat standing fierce or a Cammy walk-back HK. Just devote all your energy to anti-airing any jump you see with the best thing that leaps to mind (be it a standing HK or a jab or whatever), waiting out any blockstrings, and watching like a hawk to see what they do after pushback/gaining enough frame advantage for a tick throw.
If you’re in a run groove, practice running under high jumps and hitting them with an anti-air normal or a Shoryuken-type move like Cannon Spike/Tiger Uppercut. Don’t even bother rushing them – just let them get up into a blocked poke or something, hang back and see how they decide to come to you so that you can work on your defense. Start slow, start turtle-y, and try to “call out” your own moves in your head so that you can stop yourself from getting predictable. You get a lot of time to react defensively in this game relative to many other games (particularly throw escapes and jump-ins, which are the #1 chokepoints for developing spazzes like yours truly), so just concentrate on getting yourself into a relaxed mode where you can stake your claim on your characters’ favorite spots on screen (i.e. their comfort zones where they can poke, sweep, anti-air, rush and/or pressure with minimal effort) and never give them up. The idea is to get more adventurous from there once you’ve gotten a good grasp on your characters’ fallback points, allowing you more leisure time to develop and modify your strategy.
I think Vega’s a good character to learn the game on in this regard; he has a glass jaw but his normals are all good, his jumps are fairly safe, and his walk speed is excellent. He’s got a good array of anti-airs from a variety of positions (walk-up s. HK, walk-back c. HP/MP, flipkick from db charge), good throw range, and he doesn’t really have a lot he can do with meter, so he’s a good battery and a fairly decent character for feeling out unknown opponents. Throw him out first and see what happens. He’s a very easy character to react with, and his toolset is both solid and large enough that he’s easier to get creative with as a starting player than characters like, say, Cammy. (Cammy has a few godlike tools like close HP and s. HK that lead to much greater rewards [easy mixup/combos and level 3 super respectively], but most of her other moves are kinda spotty [Hooligan -> divekick, standalone divekick, LK Spiral Arrow, her floaty-ass low jump] and she generally requires much more specific ranges/intense psychological warfare to be effective than Vega does [fast super jump punishment and his slide open a lot of doors for him there…conversely if you can’t safely/consistently get into close fierce/d + MK range with Cammy, there’s not a whole lot she can do besides s. HK/anti-air.]. Basically, you have a lot more stuff you can throw out semi-randomly with Vega if you get stuck for an idea compared to characters like Cammy.)
His only real downsides are the fact that (a) his glass jaw means that guessing wrong and blundering into reversals and the like means his life can quickly evaporate with low comeback potential (he can’t bludgeon his way back to the life lead with any kind of safe-ish hard-hitting fierces/reversals a la Sagat), and (b) he tends to get fucked in the corner because he can’t punch his way out of pressure with aforementioned reversals. Personally, I look at (a)and (b) as more blessings than curses, because I believe his risk factor encourages good habits; namely impulse control when it comes to poking/offense so as not to blunder into punishment by getting too greedy, and good reading/reflexes so as to avoid getting cornered altogether. (An ounce of prevention…)
It’s a goddamn shame this game is as dead as it is on this side of the Pacific. I feel like I’ve finally found my game and I’m only most of a decade late.
if you want to improve in ANY fighting game practice. buy home version of cvs2 and stick. spend time in training mode practicing combos/jd/parrys/etc. try to play every character a little. you should have only like three really strong characters,but you want to be at least capable with all the others.
^ ok YOU dont give out tips. never ever give out tips. :wasted:
me too…
well mainly because there is no one to play with. I did go to CF twice recently and played bunch of people. sci showed up last week and VERY first match he lost to sancho and started his gay “rematch” whining 
I moved to Vegas so GGPO cvs2. 
Enough people play it here but its like they just started. Still fun though.
and damn yo, I would love to see Sancho get mad and pull out like crisp 100 dollar bills and play his hands uncrossed. Whenever he uncrosses his hands while playing, he’s pissed. haha I’ve seen a few, but its rare, he doesn’t get mad too much.