Is Rushdown the only core strategy in KOF?

Current Fighting Games King of Fighters
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Don’t get me wrong i’m more of a KOF guy than an SF or Tekken guy (though i play all three, neither good nor bad at them), but based on the KOF tutorial and people in search engines saying KOF was more about offense makes me wonder if i’m playing KOF the “wrong way”

Granted Dandy J’s Tutorials was awesome and it hits the mark it also got me thinking…

Is that the standard on how KOF’s should be played?

mixups to keep them guessing then hyper hop to be countered by a standing a, sweep if they miscalculate or in that instance you’ll get hyper hopped if you miscalculate a sweep…

and of course jump-ins lead to a combo, this kind of mentality kinda makes one think KOF is one dimensional that if the character doesn’t have a good tool to support a hyper hop game he’s screwed??

I mean i know how to hyper hop but i use it sparingly… my entire game doesn’t revolve around it I guess i’m using the best of what i learned (and what’s applicable) from SF and vice versa. but i kinda hate to think that just because some characters who are less inclined to have a vicious hyper jump in game would automatically suck…

I never Play Joe Higashi, or Yamazaki, Billy Kane, or even 98 UM rugal that way but i don’t get owned either. most of these chars doesn;t have a good jump-in game as say a Kyo or Benimaru but i’d rather use other tools like normals that can be used for zoning.

For example one reason why i prefer 98’ UM over original 98 was because as good as OG 98 was, offense is the key… My Rugal gets rushed like sh** and i don’t habve the specific rushdown tools to reciprocate. in 98 UM Rugal for example may still not have the best rushdown tools, but his normals have gotten significantly better… and i still don’t have to jump-in all the time. so basically he’s just become a variant of my Yamazaki with an anti-air and i can use kaiser wave to zone/space to control the distance i want my foe to be in. Rushdowns are of course possible in 98 UM but other types of gameplay like turling/poking/zoning have a better showing IMO. i just used that game as an example, disagree if you like of course.

One thing I can say about the quick hop vs standing a and other mixup centic game is that it nullifies the purpose of anti-airs considerably, i would have prefered to have a match where i can make the opponent guess if now is the right time to jump and make that a HUGE deal rather than “oh now’s one of the 1000000x best time to hyper hop attempt”. i’ve also normals like sweeps and some pokes are generally (not all) slower than their sf counterparts… hmmm perhaps to encourage other methods of offense… like hyper hop jump-ins… ack…

don’t get me wrong Hyper hops are here to say and either we love or ‘not love’ it’s monotomy it’s something we have to deal with but i refuse to be;ieve that’s the only way to “truly” play KOF… it makes KOF look one dimensional

let Hyper hops be as much a factor as defense, spacing/zoning, pokes and traps as far as centering a game around.

again feel free to disagree but i jst wanna know if others feel like this as well.

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From what I have heard and read ffrom different forums ; there are 2 different styles of playing KOF. Japanese and Latin America.

They say that Japanese play a more conservative game while the Latino players play with a full on offensive game.

I’m probably not even answering your question with the expected answer, but I believe every game can be played with any style you wish.

Even though 3s is a more “offensive” game compared to ssf4 I still see crazy offense and mixuo game on ssf4 and real conservative gameplay styles on 3s. I haven’t watched enough KOF videos or know enough players to show you a good example of what I’m trying to say so I hope you kinda get where I’m going.

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Just because Rugal’s a bad character in OG 98 doesn’t mean rtsd isn’t The Final Option. Look at what Goro, O Yashiro, Kensou, Benimaru and Takuma (All good or at least decent-ish characters) can do defense/spacing wise. Also Yamazaki does have good jump-ins lol.

Watch vids of top players, and you’ll often see one who has the advantage play it very safe, even with characters like Chris.

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Latinos play a more offensive game because their metagame is underdeveloped and there isn’t much of a respect for defense…but when you play against people that always anti-air hops on reaction, the metagame will change to be more conversative.

Anyway in Japanese play you will generally see a lot of the players rushdown when they get the opportunity to do so, but until they do they will play a more conservative game. This is different than the lower level players that chase you from the beginning of the match as if every match starts with 10 seconds left on the clock.

Watching duelling the kof is the best source for kof98 matches, you will see a lot of footsies to establish positioning to begin pressuring.

[media=youtube]1XNeEcYIkSg[/media]

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Heh, I’m not agreeing or disagreeing with your overall point, but just sayin: I didnt see much “always anti air hops on reaction” in that video you linked. :wink:

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Oh dude are you serious? How ignorant is that.

I grew up in Panama, where the KoF games are the main fighting games. Arcades usually have like 3 different KoF and places like Laundromats or internet cafe usually carry KoF games.

It depends on the person. Plain and simple.

So people play defensively, some play offensively. And for your information most people play defensively with punishment. We call those poeple “Keshones”.

So you are 100% wrong there buddy. Most “Latinos” play defensively rather than offensively.

but yeah it must be their underdeveloped metagame. I must have been on drugs when I was on all those tournaments.

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Lol…

Really didn’t want to bump this, but I must say wow dude.

Thats fucked up.

I doubt every Latino plays has aggressive playstyle. Just straight tossing all latinos in a group and calling them all to offensive lmfao.

Thats almost like vice versa of saying all white people know how to do is shoot from the Three Point Line & there metagame is underdeveloped to go in the paint. Lmfao.

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A better question is why people take things so literally…obviously I wasn’t talking about every latino in existence.

And in any case, I misused the term latino when I was more referring to players from Mexico. I know that Brazil and Peru’s gameplay isn’t quite like that.

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just stop Emil. ignore them… there is no point. its not like they will try to learn about kof outside of north and south of america. they behave like a frog at the bottom of a well,just let them be.

and there is no point in theory-crafting who is the better player when east and west kof scene never met each other at the highest level like others FG like SF4 etc…

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I hear the Uzbeks play a mean turtle game with ralf and goro.

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Usual criticism’s I Get with KOF though

  1. Short hyper hop attacks can indeed be monotonous since there’s lesser time for you to react. and because of that
  2. a footsies game outside of a flurry of low B’s into a block string are almost nonexistent since hyper hop attacks pretty much replace footies as pokes with even longer range and can actually lead into a combo. outside of extreme mastery of frames… why use a long reached a or b if a hyper hop attack mostly accomplishes similar tasks… and another thing because of hyper hops…
  3. KOF receives some criticism from non players that it just looks ike 2 guys endlessly jumping around finding out which one lands a combo first. and because of that…
  4. an anti-air game is generally less rewarding since the game mechanics make jump-ins almost too easy… as opposed to other games where two people have to continously pace back and forth keeping distance from the others core game/strat/zone or poking distance while waiting for the perfect opportunity for a jump in thus giving Jump-ins and anti-airs more value since you have to find out the right moment to do it less often than an engine which although not risk free is a lot more lenient in jumping.

I don’t agree with half of these but i do see some of their points.

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Well you can easily argue that the use of fast anti-air normals that pre-emptively stop hyperhops, is part of the footsie game itself…jumpins would generally only work if you’ve scared the opponent from hitting buttons at close range or from buffering dps and you’d do this through some mixture of frametrap strings, dash in lows and good range sweeps .

Do you play on GGPO?

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only strategy No, Core strategy Yes