I r newb. How do I get better at fighting games?

Current Fighting Games Fighting Game Discussion
1

  1. What should game(s), either on Xbox 360 or PS2 (both American bought), should I buy to practice my general fighting game skills, and hopefully get me more used to Street Fighter IV? I downloaded SF2 Hyper Fighting on the Arcade, but it’s lack of any system comparable to the Focus/Saving System, as well as me only having a standard Xbox 360 controller, I feel like it hasn’t helped at all.

  2. I want to get more experience with the arcade style controls. Do people generally play with arcade style controllers at home? If so, what can you recommend for me?

Thanks!

(I have no real interest in non-Capcom style fighting games — MK, VF, DoA, and Tekken, all bore the hell out of me).

2

gets an arcade stick and practice

3

go play other ppl in person that are better than you. you shall improve from there

4

Get whatever controller you prefer and practice.

Use Practice Modes for execution and try to only player against other people. You won’t learn a lot from fighting against the CPU.

5

Buy the Gamepro SF2 Turbo Strategy guide from 1993 and start from there!

6

as far as controllers go avoid a normal 360 controller if possible, stick with an arcade stick or a PS2 controller (their d-pads are awesome), or even a keyboard can help.

As far as games to help you at fighting games.

Third Strike (PS2,arcades,compy)
Guilty Gear AC (PS2)
King of Fighters series (PS2,arcades) get the 2D ones.
Basically any other 2D fighter can help (even smash and SWR), for mind games.

From what I get you don’t like 3Ds or MK(don’t blame you), very much. 2Ds tend to be faster and less poke poke poke, block block block(repeat until someone hits). And more both of you jumping around trying to get in a better position, or have bigger blockstrings.

and yes try to play only against humans cause computers are stupid and have always been stupid.

7

http://www.sirlin.net/ptw/ (Very good read to get you into a more realistic fighting game mentality)
http://www.sirlin.net/archive/my-street-fighter-tutorial-videos-from-ccc2/ (Tutorial video for Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo also known as ST for short)
http://sonichurricane.com/articles/sfterms.html (A list of fighting game terms widely used)

Buy a stick, practice at home. Getting an expensive stick is not really important right now, you just want one that can hold you over for a while, so you can really get the hang of things.

The most important thing to not do when your starting out is to NOT go into practice mode without a reason. You want to get straight to the point in practice mode to not waste time doing anything else. If your going to practice a certain combo, make you hit 100% of the time. A good way to do this is:

Hit it ten times in a row from the left. If not, start over.
Hit it ten times in a row from the right. If not start over.
Go into the arcade mode and do it at least five times.

Find a sparing partner to help you, someone with as much drive as you, or a mentor. Without this, it is considerably harder to become better. It is very important for your questions to get answered not only online, but with someone else. It also helps when there is a team tourney, so you can already have a partner. Also, the most detrimental thing that stops people from becoming better or playing more is location. If your in a area with a strong scene, take full advantage. Fighting other players is going to be the only thing you can do to get better once you reach a certain point.

http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=159716

That thread has a list of interviews from several extremely good Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike players. Even if 3rd Strike (3S) isn’t the game you want to get good at, its pretty much the main game of the fighting game community right now, and it wouldn’t hurt to try an learn it. I mostly play Guilty Gear, and these Podcasts are extremely helpful to me., and I’m currently playing 3S now because of these podcasts.

And as for a game that can help you get better in fighting games in general, it is definitely ST. If you can, try to get it for GGPO or 2DF, and you’ll start getting the basic jist of things. SF4 plays extremely similar to it, and if you have very strong ST fundamentals, you don’t need to know all the Focus/Saving Attack mechanics.

8

Get the SF Anniversary disc (either ps2 or xbox[its backwards compatible.]) Play the hell out of both games on the disc. I think if you want to get the best feel for SF4, you gotta play ST and 3S. Get comfortable using whatever controllers you have first just to get a feel for execution. If you never or rarely use stick, it will feel foreign at first, but eventually execution becomes much more precise imo

Edit-links to the game
Xbox

PS2

9

Man, this forum is great, thanks for not being dicks or anything (rare for the internetz these days).

I live in Japan now, and SF4 has got me addicted to fighting games, but I really lack fundamental grounding in the genre. I’ve dropped $100 easily into SF4 over the past two weeks, and I’ve lost most of those matches against other players. My problem just comes from not knowing basic stuff like the best attacks for what situations, how to react that fast, and so on. Stuff that I’d rather learn with a stick at home, rather than a rate of 100 yen per 2-3 minutes of experimenting, lol.

I was just starting to give up, but then I started getting the hang of things, and today I had several victories — that’s when I saw the light of the fighting genre. Winning was soooo satisfying, especially when you make your final move an Ultra or Super and it plays your victory hit in super slow motion. So gratifying, lol.

Based on what you guys have said, I’m going to be purchasing (unless anyone has any other suggestions or modifications):

Xbox 360 arcade stick (kinda wish the buttons were straight like SF4 and not arched, but oh well):

SF Anniversary Collection:

Capcom vs. SNK EO2:

Guilty Gear X2:

EDIT: Grr, just realized SNK isn’t backwards compatible with the 360…so annoying.

10

Well, honestly, there should be more topics like these. I too was like you and had a realization of how good fighting games are about 2 months ago. Since then I could say I’ve made considerable progress.

About the games you chose…I would say not to get Capcom vs. SNK 2 (CVS2) for the Xbox simply because the tournament standard of that game is the PS2 version, and while I’m not totally enlightened on this, I’m pretty sure the Xbox version has many different things, and many of the fans look down upon it, but don’t take my word for it. Not only that, but the game is getting less and less play every year…

Also, Guilty Gear (GG). Right now, the lastest Guilty Gear game is called Guilty Gear Accent Core, which is the 4th revision of the game. The game you chose from amazon is Guilty Gear X2 #Reload, the second revision, which nobody touches these days. Guilty Gear Accent Core isn’t for the 360 however, but for the Wii and PS2 only.

Right now I would say to just get the Anniversary Collection, only IF, you cannot play these games on your computer. The emulated version of these games run much smoother and are more accurate than their console counterparts and can be played online with other players, and the Hori EX2 Stick for the Xbox 360 is compatible with Windows XP, and I’m pretty sure Windows Vista also. Not only that, but there are other fighting games classics you can play such as Alpha 2 and Alpha 3 which were very famous in the fighting game genre, and set the precedent for many big fighting game tournaments. It also had solidified many of the big fighting game names now such as Daigo Umehara, Alex Valle, OhNuki, Mike Watson, and many others.

Any other questions feel free to ask, and if you want to talk over a instant messaging program for more advice, I’ll gladly give it to you.

11

play good ppl and realize why you suck and how you can get better

if you arent bright enough to do that you can ask your opponent questions and thatll help just the same

unless you know theyre total fagbags

12

Well, if you live in Japan, this is a hell of a lot easier for you than the rest of us. Just go to an arcade as often as possible.

13

Wow…I’ve been living under a rock I guess, because I just got GGPO and tried 3S online…flawless! Too bad all I have is a keyboard! I got iced in about 20 seconds, lol. Definitely gonna have to upgrade to a stick…This pretty much negates all reason to buy any console games, except maybe Anniversary Collection.

Found an excellent thread on peoples’ controller setups and whatnot:
http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=149518&page=1

So many good choices, but I’ll probably just be going for the cheaper Xbox 360 Fighting Stick EX 2 for starters…then if this turns out to be as amazing as I’m thinking, I’ll upgrade down the road to one of those fancier types.

14

did he just say ps2 d-pad is awsome

15

Yeah, you should be fine now. Unfortunately I play on keyboard too. = P

16

If you’re playing SFIV now, then play a helluva lot of ST. Gets your execution up there in no time and just play against people everyday. And just take notes on shit you see and don’t do that helps your game.

17

This is a really helpful thread. I think this is def worth a sticky. People can gather some tips from some of the elite players on this site.

18

While I do think something like this is required, I don’t think this thread is formal enough. I’m definitely making a more formal topic…I’ll elaborate more on certain subjects that were are presented in other topics at the time, like having goals as a player and why intermediate players do bad against newbies at times. I’ll definitely need help with creating the topic and providing many helpful tips to newbies from many respected players on the site. We could also gather all of the tutorials for popular fighting games and have a huge list.

I feel that there way too many topics like these popping up at least once a month and having a “The Huge Topic of Newbie Help and Getting Started” will help considerably.

19

I do think this is a great thread cause I just got into fighting games over the summer and I’m planning to buy ST hd remix and SF4 for the PS3. I have a sparring partner thats better than me but he’s a dick :rolleyes:

And he negged repped me here so many times just cause he was mad lol

20

GGPO tip: Set smoothing to “0”, up to about 110 ping you wont notice anything and the feeling will be perfect. And yeah, playing GGPO for a month in ST with Chun, she has improved a LOT. Now I really need to sit down in practice and learn better execution for Fei Long since he looks fun too :wgrin: