I need some advice on how to teach the basics

Classic Fighting Games Capcom VS SNK 2
1

Hey, first off, I’m sorry if this is in the wrong place. I thought of putting it in the “New to CvS2” thread, but I wasn’t sure. If this is in the wrong place, just let me know and I’ll delete it and post it again elsewhere.

Edit This post is really long =l I started typing, trying to explain my situation, and it ended really long. If you would like to help me, but don’t have time to read the whole thing, skip this post and go to the second one. It doesn’t explain my situation well enough, but it gets to the point. I suppose I could have just edited thid one… oh well.

Anyway, on to my problem. I’ll explain my situation first, and then get to my question.

I’ve played a few fighting games before this (mainly to see if I wanted to buy CvS2), so I already know all the basics and how to play a bunch of characters. Not to mention I’ve spent the last week or so doing almost nothing but reading about this game (in my spare time anyway), to decide if it’s the game I really want. (On a side note, I’ve decided it is the game I want =) it looks awesome) So I know quite a bit about the game, even though I haven’t played it yet. I’m pretty quick at learning controls, so it shouldn’t take me long at all to get “good” at the game. (By good, I mean that I could do all my characters moves, and other extremely basic stuff.)

I don’t know anyone that plays fighting games at all, and I highly doubt anyone even goes to my local arcades, let alone anyone that’s good enough to compete in CvS2. So my only option is to get my brother to play, or else just play against the CPU. He’s cool, we like almost all the same games, he’s extremely strategical, and loves games that make him plan out strategies. All in all I know he will love this game, and will probably be able to compete with me.

My problem, however, is that he hates fighting games. At least, he thinks he hates them. He says he “played some fighting game 10 years ago, and he hated it because the moves were too complex and the game was a button masher”. He also says he played a Street Fighter game for quite awhile (10 hours or something) and it was just a button masher too. So I know he’s going to go into this game thinking he’ll hate it, just playing it to humor me.

I’ve played enough Capcom fighters (and read enough about this) to know that the only reason he didn’t like the old Street Fighter was because he didn’t know any of the character moves. And that the only reason he thought the moves were to hard was because he played a bad fighter to start with (Mortal Kombat I think, he was trying to do the fatalities…). Anyway, long story short, I know the moves aren’t anywhere near to complex for him (Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 is one of our favorite games ever, and these moves aren’t much harder than those). And I know that once he learns the moves for one character, he will start making strategies and will stop thinking that mashing buttons is a good way to play.

I decided to have him play the training mode from the start, before I play at all, and I will try to help him learn the basics and at least one character. I’m going to have him play the training mode for quite a while, until I think he could stand a chance against me (if I choose characters I don’t know the moves for). I know if I have him play against me from the start, I’ll blow him away and he will hate the game. If I have him play against the CPU, he’ll never learn his moves right. So the training mode is all I have to go on. My problem is that it’s going to be a race against the clock, I need him to learn the controls, a character, and a groove well enough that he can start forming strategies, before he decides 100% that he hates the game. I can’t start right off teaching him to pull of a Raging Demo or Zengiefs 720 special, or he’ll think the moves are too hard, yet I can’t just have him learn to punch and kick, or he’ll think it’s a button masher.

That’s where you guys come in. I need your help deciding the best way to teach him the game. I need to start off teaching him the basic stuff, like walking, jumping, and blocking. Then move my way up past normals, into specials, and then onto supers. Then I need to teach him to use the grooves well, and finally I need to teach him the entire move set of at least one character, and show him some basic strategies. But I need to teach him about anti-airs, throws, priority, invincibility, and everything else too. I need our first real match to actually be competitive, I can’t let him win, and I can’t beat him horribly either.

So, what do you guys think I should do? Which character should I have him use first? What normals should I teach, which specials should I teach him first? How about supers? When and what groove should I teach him? How deep should I explain strategies? Do I just teach him about anti-airs and throws, and bring up frame advantages much, much later?

At first I was planning on having him go into the training mode with a C-Guile. Guiles moves have to be the easiest to learn in the game, so I think he could get the hang of him pretty quick. But then I thought maybe I should use Ryu first, since he is a pretty generic character, once you learn him everyone else is easier to pick up. Maybe Chun Li, since she has some easy moves (charge down, then up and kick) and some harder ones (hcf-p), but teaching him that some character are played by mashing the kick button isn’t going to get him over the whole button mashing thing =)

Anyway, I would greatly appreciate any help you could give me. I know I’ll have loads of fun playing this game with my brother, and I know he’ll really like it, if he will just give it a chance. But the only way he can give it a chance is if I can teach him to play in a quick but easy to understand manner. I’m sure once he knows a full team well enough to compete against me, he’ll learn everything else on his own, and love the game while he does it. I’m just not sure on how to do that =l. I figured everyone here is good enough at the game to know what’s important to know right away, and what might be too scary to learn too soon.

Haha, and sorry for this being such a long post. I guess I could have explained it all much easier, but I thought it was important to explain why I can’t just hand him an instruction manual and tell him to play. Oh, and I’m sorry that this isn’t really about strategies, so it doesn’t really fit in this forum… but you guys are my best bet.

One last thing, I don’t own an arcade joystick yet, so I’ll be playing/teaching this game on the PS2 controller. Do you think that this would be too hard to learn/play on? If it will really make it too hard to learn (if you already expect to not like it) then I’ll go buy an arcade stick. But I’d like to wait and see if I like the game as much as I think I will, then buy one. So, how bad is the controller?

Thanks for any help, even something really simple, like a good strategy to try teaching him first, maybe a really simple combo or something. Anything that you think will make it easier to learn, more fun to play, or less frustrating to control, post it. =) Even if you have no input to help me, thanks for reading this excessively long pointless post.

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Lol, that was longer than I thought. Here’s the compact version of my question, if you don’t want to read my first post =P

I’m trying to teach my brother to play CvS2. He has a bad impression of fighting games, thinking they are too complex and button mashy (if that’s a word). I’ve played quite a few Street Fighter games, so I could completely destroy him in the game if we played right away. So if I want him to actually like this game, I need to teach him to play in a quick and easy to understand way. I need to get him good enough to start competing with me.

My question is, what character, groove, and so on should I have him start with? What moves should I teach him first? Any help would be great. I don’t want to scare him off, but I don’t want him to get bored either.

=) There we go, that was a much smaller post. Sorry about the first one, though it does explain everything much better, it was way too long…

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There is so much to learn, that the basics are a grey area.
I learnt fireballs and uppercuts in sf2. Then with A3 came tech hits, ground rolls, and supers.

I’d say find him a team he enjoys. That will be the team he uses to whoop you. He only needs 2 characters and a groove to start. Forget the 3rd character for now.

Teach him how to not fall into bad habits. rolling constantly, abusing jumps, random supers. By just teaching him how to combo a super, he will become a much more dangerous player.

For now, just battle and have fun. Teach him one or 2 things a day. If he’s still around a year form now, he’ll be a pro.

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Alright, I’ll take your advice and try to teach him not to fall into bad habits. I’ll try to let him go out on his own, and come up with any attack/defense patters he likes, and I won’t punish them right away. But if he starts using them too much, I’ll start punishing them. IE, if he jumps in to combo every time, I’ll let him do that for a few matches, to get used to jump in combos, but after that I’ll start AAing them every once in a while. Forcing him to either learn when is a good time to do it, or try other methods of attack (or both probably). I just have to watch make sure not to stop everything he tries, or it won’t be any fun for him. I’m sure it won’t be long until he starts tricking me and landing combos even when I go all out to stop it.

I had planned to start him on Ryu, but I guess pretty much anyone has the same move sets as him, so as long as I tell him not to play Zengief or someone like that to start with, he’ll be fine. I think I’ll let him pick one, and try it, then show him Guile and a few others to get used to charge attacks and other things like that. Plus, if there’s anything I learned from playing Alpha 3 for the first time, it’s that fighting games are only really fun if you play a character you like.

I wish I could make myself down to his skill level to start with, it would make this much easier. But I think you’re right anyway. As soon as he knows how to play his team (all the moves anyway), and can trigger them on command, I’ll start actually fighting back. Probably not full force to start with, but with some characters I don’t know, maybe even fall for some stuff that I wouldn’t normally. You are right though, he won’t ever like the game if he just beats up on the dummy in training mode. The real fun is playing other people. =) Hopefully I can play badly without him knowing it, until he can keep up with me full force.

That’s funny, I did it just the opposite =) I played the Street Fighter Online game (the non capcom made computer one, streetfighteronline.com), which really isn’t very good, but it got me into it =). From there I played Alpha 3, and learned most of how to play, then I played SF2 and learned throws and combos there. Anyway, I get what you mean though, he doesn’t need to know how to do everything right away, he can start playing and having fun once he knows a character’s moves.

Anyway, thanks for your advice =) I’ll try to keep it all in mind when I get the game. As much as I like to think I know about Street Fighter (which isn’t much…), I’m really bad at explaining things to people, so I’m glad I can get help from everyone here on how to teach my brother. I’m sure I’d just end up frustrating him or something, trying to teach him to roll cancel too soon or something =)

Oh yeah, I meant to ask this to start with. Can you set the training dummy to respond to the player 2 controller? I’d love to be able to fight him in a fixed setting like that, with no timer or health bars, charging stuff as he learns other things, and most of all, getting to see his button inputs (so I can tell him for sure what he needs to do differently).

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In training, 1p is always human.
2p can be set to stand, crouch, jump, CPU and HUMAN(2nd player) and there’s even a REC/PLAY function to get the dummy to repeat something over and over and over.

edit: You can set either player to auto-parry, auto-block, random of either. You cannot die, so life doesn’t matter, but it can be set to no damage and such. Supers can be set to recover, infinite, and plain.

So you can give him auto-parry and super recover. That’ll force you to think of good ways to attack.

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Wow, I was unable to read your first post in it’s entirety it was hurting my eyes so much…

-I wouldn’t play on a pad… ever.

-Teach him to anti-air with Ryu first. If the opponent jumps in from far, use far s.HK. If they jump from midrange, hard Shoryuken. If they jump right on top of you or cross-up, use d.HP.

-Teach knockdown moves which Ryu can follow up afterwards. dp+LP (either psychically to hit a limb or done with reversal timing as a pop-up move), a d.HK done at max range, and throws into the corner will be a good start.

-Now that he knows how to get basic knockdowns, you can show him the most basic offensive mix-up of all. Get close to the other guy as he gets up. d.LK, now either throw or sweep. If the other guy thinks a throw is coming and tries to tech hit or hit a button, the sweep will knock them down. If they’re afraid of the sweep and just sit there, they will be thrown.

-How do you counter somebody just wanting to walk up and sweep you so he can mix you up as you get up? This is when you teach zoning and poking. Ryu can throw a hard Hadouken to hit the opponent before he gets into sweep range. Don’t throw the Hadouken from so far away (about half screen) so you leave yourself open to a jump-in attack, but throw it a couple steps closer so it’s pretty much impossible for the opponent to react to if they were trying something (like walking up and sweeping you).

-As an alternative for both a zoning tool and a mixup tool, Ryu’s far s.HP is a very good move. It will counter an opponent trying to walk up and sweep you, as well as being a good link after the d.LK up close.

I wouldn’t teach any combos or guard crush strings yet until your bro 100% understands the importance of what I’ve just outlined about. 50/50 mixup of throw or sweep after a d.LK is infinately more important than doing the most elaborate attack patterns or gimmicks you can think of. Once he realizes the Ryu sweep isn’t completely safe after being blocked up close for example, then he’ll see the importance of canceling into a hard Hadouken afterwards. Likewise with once he realizes that short, short xx super does more damage than just a simple sweep, he’ll start using that as the mixup to throw after a d.LK rather than just sweep all the time.

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Alright =) Thanks for the advice. I’ve never been very good at combo’s and stuff anyway (alright, so I’m not too good at pretty much any of that =P ), so it’ll work just fine to teach him the more basic stuff like different types of AA’s, knockdowns, and mix-ups then move on to combo’s and stuff. Though I’m guessing that, since I’m not too great at combo’s and that kind of thing, I’ll probably just have us both pick our teams and start fighting each other to figure those out. He’ll be able to hold his own against me by the time he’s ready for those, so I can just tell him all of what I know so far about it.

Anyway, I wasn’t too sure on what order to teach that kind of stuff, so thanks for the post =). After teaching him what all the buttons do, and how to do all his characters moves, I would have been lost as to what comes next. I’m guessing I should have him play Ryu for a little bit to start with, to teach the basic moves (qcf, hcf, dp, and that sort), then let him pick his own character to practice with. From there, after he gets the hang of moving around and triggering attacks, I’ll switch him to Guile and Chun to learn some of the other specials/supers, then back to Ryu for basic strategy training (the stuff you posted). After that I think he’ll be ready to start fighting me while we both learn.

Oh, and to Shin Ace, that is so cool =) The training mode sounds awesome. I think, since I can control the second character, I’ll do so. I can try specials as I’m teaching him, as an example (and to see for sure if it works like I think it does), and I can set up anything I want to teach him to counter. I think I’ll take your advice to give him some advantages for a little while as well. He’ll learn supers much quicker if he can use them more often. Though I don’t think I’ll do that for long, I wouldn’t want to get him used to doing supers all the time. (Then he’d have to play S-Groove =P)

Thanks for the help everyone =) If anyone else has anything else they would like to add, please post it. I probably won’t have the game this week, so there’s plenty of time for me to decide how to teach him.

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As a side note I wouldn’t recommened teaching him geese anytime soon,
or rock for that matter… :lol:

I dont know if anyone has stated this already, but you can teach him unpredictabliity, I also wouldnt recommened kyosuke, he would be a hard character to win with, if he draws intrest in him, let him know he wouldnt be a could character to start out with, yeah I think kyosukes cool, but his attributes are far from good or excellent.

teach him what is possible in each groove as far as alpha counter,
safefall ect…

Also like shin ace posted, bad habits, you could also include the proper use of a safe fall, depending on what groove he’s decides to use of course. You are vulnerbal for a brief second when you safe fall, so for instance if someone where to knock him down in the corner, it would not be advisable to safe fall if your opponent is going to end up right next to you (my friend does this way to much in K and its kinda funny:lol:).
Example kyo’s c.fk is a knockdown, if you safe fall he has just enough time to run and trip you again when you recover.

You could also teach him what is possible and what is not in each groove,
each grooves strenghts air block in C ect…

That way he can pick a groove that is best suited for his team and for himself (a groove he comfortable with), so letting him experiment until
he finds one he understands best and likes best.

Fight On:nunchuck: