Match Analysis thread

Classic Fighting Games Street Fighter Alpha Anthology
1

Basically, a thread for things you notice in matches in the SFA games, or stuff you think other people might not be noticing. Or if you just get bored and wanna post something.

SFA3 stuff…

Ryu vs Sak

The basics of the matchup: Sakura has the better pokes, and the better VC midscreen. Ryu has a hurricane kick combo which does a lot of stun damage, but it requires the opponent to be standing, and must be done when close. Sakura has a crossup loop- hit confirm combo to Fierce DP (sho’o ken), crossup jumping Forward, repeat. Can be escaped with Ground Recovery (2K), but you can get punished for that if she guessed that’s what you’d do.

Theme: Ryu has trouble with Sakura’s normals- to beat them he has to either block (A3 has a guard bar, so that can lead to bad things) or counter. He can keep her outside of sweep distance and throw fireballs, but that requires balls of steel to some degree. Both are playing V- ISM, which means that whenever one of them jumps, it’s risky for the grounded one to commit to using an anti-air attack, since the jumper can activate V-ISM mid-air becoming invincible for a second and attack on the way down.

Advantage is with Sakura in this matchup, but it’s not SO bad.

Sakura’s weapons:
b+FP and s.RK are both really good pokes. The sweep is OK, but sets up a crossup. Jumping Short has a lot of horizontal range and good priority. Worth poniting out that Sakura’s hurricane kick isn’t really safe like in CvS2, so you don’t see it so often in A3 unless a specific player/Character is having trouble against it. Her VCs are really good, as she can do big damage from midscreen or in the corner, and as a little triva fact, if Sakura activates and does a Jab DP as soon as possible, the opponent will get hit if they weren’t blocking. VC can also be started with an overhead. Walkup->throw also sets up a crossup.

Ryu’s weapons-
S.Jab beats Sakura’s s.RK (and I think the b+FP also, though it’s wasted effort if it trades), and his fireballs are better, though are risky. Shoryuken beats most anything, of course, but likewise is a big risk. Sweep and other low attacks can also beat the s.RK, and the sweep sets up a crossup (though like Sak, he needs to be at the right distance). Hopkick (f+FK) goes over low attacks and can be canceled into any of his special attacks, though it is somewhat hard to confirm beforehand. Worth noting that the hurricane kick goes over fireballs with the right timing.

Ryu’s VCs allow him to push people into the corner (fireball, followed by a hopkick canceled into hurricane kick before he lands, low attack and repeat the process), and he can sneak a reset into his corner VC by throwing in an overhead, or pausing and doing a low attack. Ryu also has an infinite of course, but while 2P Ryu can still do some nice combos afterward, 1P Ryu is the one with the real version of it. He can do confusion VCs, the most simple of which is just to activate VC1 (Jab+Short) and do sweep, crossup jumping Forward, repeat. Works because the shadow of the jumping attack is gonna hit about the same time as your low attacks. Damage isn’t great, but you can link it to a corner VC if you’re close enough.

[media=youtube]k4760klni5Y[/media]
And now you’re ready to actually watch the match.

Round 1
10 seconds into the vid, just pointing out that Ryu does a Groud recovery to get close after the anti-air Jab to keep pressure applied, instead of getting pushed out and working his way in. Ryu looks like he gets the Roundhouse hurricane kick on accident; Ryu’s axe kick (b+RK) is a good move, but if you do it after a crouch or after passing by the down position on the stick, you of course get the hurricane kick.

@13 seconds in, Ryu tries to cover the whiffed hurricane by guessing a Fierce DP, and it goes…badly.

@20 seconds, Sakura’s got the lead now, and is in no particular hurry, and is being defensive. Ryu trying to guess a fireball or at least a whiffed poke, but is wrong and that leads to the end of the round. Ryu may have been trying to do a hurricane kick to get on the other side of Sak, but if that’s the case it didn’t come out.

Round 2
@41 seconds Ryu falls for a simple high-low game- Sakura’s jumping Short allows her to jump in really late and still be able to have it hit, and Ryu ends up guessing that’s what she’ll do. DP is risky for Ryu to do as anti-air, since he has to decide whether or not she’ll have already landed, and then aside from that, decide whether or not to gamble that she’ll actually attack and not activate V-ISM on the way down.

Combo to Fierce DP, Sak waits out the ground recovery and is right, combo again, but since Ryu is in the corner, he doesn’t bother to use it- she obviously won’t go for a crossup in the corner, so she’ll just waiting to hit him out of the roll again.

@50 seconds Ryu does a hurricane kick while jumping and floats over Sak and guess-activates against her poke. Combo to the corner, but he gets a SP DP instead of a fireball and Sak lands. Had he done a Fierce DP instead it looks like it would have connected…

@1:18 Ryu tries to do the rush elbow after his jumping Short, but Sak, either fearing the sucker throw or an overhead, attacks with one of her faster moves.

Looks like Ryu tries to cancel the overhead into a DP to counter Sak’s counter, but gets the fireball by mistake; When Ryu activates V-ISM it’s harder to get Shoryukens out than with Ken/Akuma.




Match 2
[media=youtube]Mpzl0_JHuhk[/media]


**Round 1**
7 seconds in,  Sak tries to combo to  the DP but because of negative edge  gets the Short hammer punch move.   Ryu tries to punish with c.SP into  RK hurricane, but is too far.

11 seconds, Ryu activates as anti- air, but since he can see Sakura's already landed in the freeze frame, so he decides to throw her to the corner.  Ryu's VCs from that range dont' do much damage anyway, so he may have been planning to wait and throw her even if she'd still been in the air.  Ryu basically has the advantage in that situation anyway, though it may still be a total waste of meter if he guessed wrong- If Sakura had activated in the air, Ryu would still be able to activate and Shoryuken her.  If she didn't activate, he still would have had the option.  The risk here was her landing and then activating on the ground, since if her timing is good, it means Ryu would have had to start doing the DP motion before she activated.  It would have probably been worth the risk to Sakura anyway, considering she gets to strip him of his meter, and he won't be doing much damage anyway.  As it was, the Sak player was planning on letting his meter run down after he activated, but got caught by the throw.

27 seconds, Ryu lands an early counter hit sweep.  Just pointing out that he could have gone for a crossup into the hurricane kick dizzy combo here, but he obviously didn't want to corner himself, not to mention the fact that Sakura's VC works as anti-crossup, and he's not looking to let her even up the match.

35 seconds, Sak lands a jumping Short after the crossup loop.  It looks like the Ryu player still thought he had room to get crossed up, but was wrong.  Jumping Short with Sak can also get you a stupid high-low game.  In the context of the match, you also might wanna look at the fact that the Sak player just did an empty jumpin (fakeout with j.FP) like 20 seconds ago, so the Ryu player may have been looking for a throw or something and just gotten caught sleeping.  

You'll notice after the second DP combo by Sak, he does a Ground Recovery (KK roll).  As I mentioned before, this is often a bad idea, but the Sak player outsmarts himself and Ryu's guess to get out of the corner works.  The Sak player was going for another jump, and on the way down could have done an attack, waited and activated V-ISM, land and poke, land and throw or activate or overhead.  The corner is a bad place to be.

39 seconds, look like Sak guessed an axe kick or other poke and was wrong.  Ryu has done the axe kick in particular  (back+Roundhouse) 4 or 5 times already in this round, always at about that range, and it's one of Ryu's better pokes.  For those of you who play 3S, or at least against the CPU, it's something like Gill's standing Roundhouse, only less insane.  Either way, he'd attacked twice in a row before the activation, so it was sorta like the old fireballx2 into DP trick.

Not only is it not worth the meter for Ryu to try and counter-activate- Sak was already low on health, for one thing- in A3 when you activate and get hit out of a VC, you lose 50% of your meter.  So if you can afford to wait someone out, it takes them longer to be able to VC again.  If Ryu would have attacked right away Sak still would have had like 40% of her meter (for those of you who don't play A3 enough, I'll remind you that you can activate at 50% and above).  As it was, by waiting 4 seconds, she ended up with 0%.  Doing that sort of thing can backfire, of course- Ryu cornered himself to get away, and had Sakura not had a fireball which disappeared after it travels the length of the screen, Ryu could have been pinned down while she approached.  But Sakura isn't a character who can do much if she activates wrong, at least midscreen and Ryu's air hurricane kick lets him get further away than most other characters can.


**Round 2**
Sak has no meter anymore, which means Ryu can be more agressive.  He jumps right away, and she calls him on it, but he activates a bit early and avoids the b+FP which hits a little high.  He hits her her with two reps of the simple high/low VC and two things happen at 56 seconds:

Sakura wakes up with a hurricane kick.  Hurricane kicks and some other moves get you off of the ground instantly, so if someone crosses you up, you pop up into the air instead of them being able to combo you, at least in the normal way.

Also, if you notice, Ryu ends the third rep by doing a crouching Forward into a fireball to push Sak into the corner, as opposed to just going for more damage and having them both end up midscreen or cornering himself.

1:12, Ryu accidentally gets the RK hurricane instead of the axe kick, and gets punished with the combo to DP by Sak.  She tries to cross him up, but like Sak did earlier, Ryu cancels to a hurricane kick so the DP won't combo.  Sak calls it though, and he gets juggled by a b+FP.

At 1:20, Sak tries to activate and anti-air VC vs Ryu's jumping Forward, but only gets a standing Strong instead of a VC2 activation.  Ryu doesn't follow up, since he was expecting a block.

1:25, empty jump by Sak, Ryu blows his meter.  She activates when she lands this time.  Looks like Ryu had a botched throw attempt (b+FK+SP), though if Sak activated soon enough, it wouldn't have worked anyway.


**Round 3**
Starts out in the same situation as Round 2, Ryu has meter and Sak doesn't.  He corners her right away, this time, and she gets hit by an overhead to the corner VC, which he botches the ending of.  Sak proceeds to get hit with like 6 attacks in a row (all of them done earlier than Sakura's, btw, because they had to be to win), lands the VC but Ryu calls her on a jump and takes the round.
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Something I wrote like a year ago but never got around to posting. Will check for errors/update later…

Also A3.

[media=youtube]rhNr76SScsY[/media]
Ultimate Zero Direction vids, available at combovideos.com (login before you search for them, or they may not show up).

Match #10 (I think…will verify later): DARK (A-Gen) vs Tsubaru (A-Vega)

Gen using the roll move as a poke, because it has long rang and the priority isn’t bad. Gen gets a throw off at around 74 seconds left on the clock, tries to follow up with the jumping roundhouse from kick style, I’m guessing (seems especially likely seeing as how he keeps using that one), but gets the wrong one. They’re rather different. Gen chasing Vega down, but at 69 seconds on the clock in round 1, he get hits with the Level 3 as anti-air. Afterwards, as you can see, Gen uses the rising kick move (DP+K in punch style) Vega can flip away after the rush super, but didnt’…Gen has certain games he can play hitting that (you’ll se one aft the end of round 2), and the player, DARK, in particuar will rarely just go into the super, so Vega decides not to air recover, and loses the gamble.

Round 2: Vega spend the first round getting away from Gen, and now he’s going on offense, because Gen is reactively being more defensive and taking his time, so as not to run into 400 crouching Strongs. Vega is MUCH more offensive here. At about 84 seconds left on the clock in round 2, Gen does a corouching Short after the waterfall kick, because he was going to hit Vega if he decided to roll after being hit by it (Ground recovery). Gen does jumping Roundhouse -> crouching Strong -> handslap move to not only wear down Vega’s guard meter, but because it’s a series of rapid hits, and will help knock Vega’s claw off. Vega, after being slapped in the face and having to go get his claw back, is a bit more defensive now, like Gen was at the start of the round, trying to pick his spots (Gen, meanwhile, starts using crouching Strong to counter Vega’s). Vega does a good job of it, but he gets caught sleeping and forgets that Gen can delay the hits of the anti-air move, which is a knockdown. A-Vega has issues with anti-air if he isn’t going to burn a super, and even then, it’s sometimes not worth the damage. Crossups can be a harder issue to deal with.

BTW, # of times Gen switched styles in this match: about 25. So he was switching between movesets pretty frequently…not only his attacks/supers/Alpha Counters, but his jump distance is different between the two styles.

Match 2, same vid, Gen vs A-Guy

Round one, Guy zones the shit out of Gen with far standing Forward. Gen wants to get close, but not too close…Gen trying to poke Guy freely, which he really can’t do- Guy’s medium hurricane kick move will beat most pokes, sort of like shoto DP, only with wider range, which you actually don’t see, but I’m sure DARK knows. The whole first round, Dark seems to be feeling the match out…however, if you pay attention, you can see that he’s getting hit out of his punch style crouching Strong, which he can link the super from. He does start playing a bit differently after Guy burns his super, however. Guy doesn’t really want to jump at Gen, who has several good anti-air attacks, three of which can lead to big damage…not to mention the fact that Guy has a wide jump, so he has to distance himself to jump in anyway. Guy’s crouching Jab is good, and he can do crouching Jab, link to standing Strong into the kick super, if the Jab lands on a counter hit, but he’s not ready to risk that (yet).

Second round, Guy uses a lot of crouching Roundhouse to hit Gen out of the roll move, which he was doing to beat Guy’s standing Forward, which was beating Gen’s crouching Strong, which he actually used to beat Guy’s crouching Roundhouse at one point. Guy may have switched to the crouching Roundhouse because he saw a lot of the roll move in round one (he actually lost to it) or maybe because he was worried Gen was going to do the anti-air move to beat his standing Forward, though I’d bet on the former. DARK in general rarely stops attacking, which is a problem…so he ends up eating about 9 of Guy’s crouching Roundhouses, which cause a Major Counter, and push him towards the corner. But, anyway, Guy gets robbed, again.

Match 3, Gen vs A-Rolento (Bakyuu?)

Rolento doing superjump Jab after the Alpha Counter in case Gen does an air recovery. He also does a jumping Jab as anti-air to keep Gen from jumping at him, but nothing comes of it. Rolento generally trying to harass Gen with pokes, but first he wants to stop Gen from coming at him. So he uses Alpha Counters to interrupt Gen, so he can gain momentum. The thing about ACs in SFA3, though, is that after you use one, it makes your guard meter shorter for the rest of the round…so his plan sorta backfires, because DARK doesn’t even like to BLOCK, let alone get rushed down. You see Rolento whiff a few throws to build meter, btw…it doesn’t build much, but it’s something.

Round 2 goes better for Rolento…he gets hit with the stomp super, but he gets some offense going, off of the sweep. Counter hit standing Jab links to crouching Forward xx Patriot Circlex3, btw, the Rolento player just messed up the timing (around 69 seconds on the clock). At the end of the round, Gen is mashing on Fierce in punch style to get the handslap move (thus the jumping Fierce) so he can kill Rolento by block damage (he has no good reversal). He stops short of actually doing it, and Rolento whiffs the grenade super, which was probably just a way to do some damage on his way to losing the match, in this case.


Ultimate Zero Direction vid #8

(A-Gen vs V-Charlie)



This one pretty self-explanatory, there are some things you can tell just by watching the vid, even if you don't play A3 (Gen's roll move going under fireballs), but I'll try to expand on some stuff that's less apparent. Charlie stepkick (towards or away+Roundhouse) is high-priority. Also, it causes a major counter, which puts people in the air, and pushes them toward the corner. You see toward the start of the round, Charlie does crouching Short-> stepkick...Gen tries to attack in between, but gets hit; the blockstun from the Short keeps his attack from getting out quick enough to stop the stepkick. You'll see V-Sakura players do this sometimes, except it will be crouching Short, b+FP instead of RK. Charlie trying to push his way forward, and doing a good job. You'll notice about 89 seconds left on the clock, he does the savate kick, but gets hit out of it...that move goes over low attacks...he does it again at the end of the round.



The corner stuff pretty self-explanatory, but I will point out that Gen could have flipped in between the stepkick and the crouching Strong, but decided not to as it could be punished. Charlie calls him on it, and gets the hit. He also could have flipped after the Strong, but decides to do a ground recovery to try to get out of the corner, but Charlie calls him on it again.



Round 2, worth noting that Gen's roll move only goes under fireballs at a certain point (the middle part). Gen using it as a poke, but to go under Charlie's sonic booms requires him to change the timing a bit. Gen has his feet under him now, and Charlie is fireng off Sonic Booms to beat out pokes, and keep the pressure off. Gen isn't too concerned, as fireballs in general in A3 do little damage, compared to older games (he might actually be trying to hit him out of the sonic booms with the roll move, but I can't say if it's that or if he's just using it as a poke to demonstrate his range). He doesn't jump at Charlie, which is what Charlie was hoping for, so he could hit him with the anti-air VC and do about 50% damage, maybe more. Gen hits Charlie with the super, and can do a couple of different things afterward. Basically, he can go for various stuff to combo afterward, or he can wait for the opponent to air recover, and then continue attacking them (a good attack being kick-style crouching Roundhouse). He opts for the latter, getting himself out of the corner in the process, but Charlie doesn't air recover. 



The Alpha Counter that Gen did at the end of the round is only available in the kick style. During the course of the match, Gen changes stances nearly two dozen times, so Morimoto, the Gen player, is clearly very aware of Gen's moveset (though you might be able to tell that from the vid without counting, hopefully). To have all moves available to you at all times is something you need to do when playing Gen, so it doesn't even appear that you're switching styles at all.



Round 3. Charlie more offensive now, to avoid getting pushed around like in the previous round. He wants to land the VC now, especially since he's doubting himself a bit now. You see him jumping- something Charlie isn't famous for, since his standing attacks are so good, and Gen is calling him on the jumps, even air throwing him out of it. To be fair, Gen is itching to do the air throw, as we see in a second.



73 seconds left on the clock, Gen does an air throw, and makes Charlie's anti-air VC whiff. I didn't even know that shit worked, honestly. I've seen DARK, another Japanese Gen player do it vs V-Sakuras, I might have seen it before, but I didn't know it worked with any consistency. It does not work with all characters, I''l say that much. I don't even know if Gen can do it against V-Sak...DARK might just be crazy. So, Charlie gets baited, and burns his meter.



Gen's kick style crouching Roundhouse is good anti-air, and if it lands on a counter hit (ie. if your opponent hits a button), there are various things you can do- if they air recover, you can walk underneath them and do the move again, so they fall on it, and again, etc. You can go for an air throw whether they flip or not, and if they don't flip, you can do the stomp super, or you can jump after them and combo, switch stances and combo into the rising kick move, etc. You see an example of Gen doing something different at the end of the round. Charlie guesses well, and gets out of a somewhat dangerous situation. Gen was maybe going for jumping SP, crouching SP xx stomp super, but I can't say, really. He may have just been trying to keep pressure on and get Charlie in the corner.





Match 2, same vid

(A-Gen vs V-Sodom)



Sodom goes for the 360+P right away, but gets hit out of it...he later lands a tick to the 360 from a crouching Short later. That's interruptable, but you have to be on your toes (and hope he didn't know you'd try to counter, so you don't get hit with a VC). Gen ends up in the corner early...worth pointing out that the Kouga, the wall super, doesn't normally combo...only did in this case because Sodom was close to the wall, and it was a counter hit. Sodom very offensive early on, but this calms him down...Sodom is also sitting on a full super guage, so he's got a lot to work with. At the end of the round, you'll notice that Sodom actually takes a step backward before he starts the VC, to make sure he doesn't get hit by Gen's super.



Round 2, Gen takes this opportunity to get some payback, as Sodom doesn't have a super, and so his defensive options aren't as strong...he still has a good anti-air (crouching Fierce), but it won't beat all of Gen's stuff, and Sodom is going to have issues with crossups, as Gen is demonstrating with his kick style jumping Forward. At 79 seconds on the clock, Gen hits him with the rising kick move...he tries to go for a second one, for Sodom to recover into, but he does it too early. 



Round 3, Gen crosses himself up by trying to go for the anti-air, which ends up with him in the corner, which costs him. Sodom zigs when Gen thinks he's gonna zag (Gen probably waiting for an Alpha Counter to get himself out of the corner), and loses about 50% of his health. 



Match 3

(X-Dhalsim vs V-Sodom)



Dhalsim does an RK drill and Sodom tries to punish, or assumes Dhalsim is going to do something afterwards...Dhalsim blocks, but loses most of his guard meter. Dhalsim hits the reversal super, and though he whiffs a fireball afterwards (though Sodom would air recover and have to block it), Sodom rolls behind him, but spaces out and doesn't do either of the 360 moves or make good use of it. Sodom is now without meter, and in the corner, and things don't go well. He can't capitalize on Dhalsim's missing a chunf of his guard bar, since he has to keep himself from getting owned. Dhalsim doing a deep Roundhouse drills, and Sodom not able to reverse them with anything...you'll notice toward the end of the round, Dhalsim does slide into Jab Yoga Flame...a bit harder than it looks. You could do it with Short instead, but Forward does more guard damage, has longer range, and causes longer blockstun.



For those who don't know, X-ISM Dhalsim can't control the range of his limbs...in A/V-ISM, and in other games in general (starting with SSF2T), Dhalsim can do close attacks by holding away and hitting the button, and long range ones, by just hittting the button. So you'll see Dhalsim distance himself with other pokes, so he doesn't get the (crappy) close crouching Forward instead of the (better) slide.



Round 2, 66 seconds on the clock...Sodom whiffing throws to build a little meter, since he wants to put Dhalsim away, since he's still a threat (full meter). Sodom, in getting away, corners himself...Sodom not confident in any of his normals, and so he ends up blocking, until he can decide what to do...guard meter is wearing down...Dhalsim does Yoga Flame and immediately commits to the super to break the guard...I want to say that the Dhalsim player (Take) KNEW the super would connect even if there was no counter hit, but...eh... Well, it all worked out in the end.





Match 4

(X-Dhalsim vs A-Guy)



This one pretty self-explanatory. Notice how Guy does the elbow drop during his jump, which keeps him from floating quite as far, as he has a long jump (something like Rolento's d+FK or Wolverine's divekick in the Marvel games, but not so severe). Guy immediately jumps behind Dhalsim to close the gap, and it pays off. At the end of Round 2, I think Guy was trying to do the Fierce Houzanto (qcb+P...the spinning shoulder move that passes through fireballs) to pass through both the fireball and an attack if Dhalsim would stick one out...didn't quite come out, maybe?



Round 3. Dhalsim gets himself out of the corner, but him messing up a simple FK drill (gets neutral jump Forward instead) is actually a bigger mistake than it looked like, IMO...lost a lot of momentum, there. At 71 seconds on the clock, Guy chains to the super...harder than it looks, he actual canceled the Fierce into the Roundhouse, but cancled the Roundhouse into the super before it fully animated. See: SRK article on proximity canceling. Guy screws up a free combo after the super, no telling which it was (I'd guess Strong xx Fierce -> hurricane kick move). Dhalsim has full meter now, so Guy gets away, since he can't afford to get hit by the super, and does a jumping Roundhouse just in case.





Match 5

(V-Ryu vs A-Guy)



Ryu activates V-ISM because Guy has him on edge, Guy decides to just block and maybe Alpha Counter, Ryu goes for the throw. Ryu can actually combo after the throw, but this player doesn't know that. Ryu tries to apply pressure, though...goes for jumping Short and tries to pin Guy down and do some guard damage, but Guy ACs out. 



I should take this time to explain about Guy's hurricane kick. The medium version will beat pretty much any ground-level attacks...Guy's lower half is invulnerable, and it has some pretty good range, too. You see this used later, though it loses to the overhead first, because of the angle. 



Ryu starts throwing fireballs, because he's regained his composure and notice that he gave up two free Shoryukens, maybe because Guy had him shaken. He wants Guy to jump, so he can regain control. Doesn't work. You might notice Guy doing a lot of crouching Jabs...he can link crouching Jabs into standing Strong and then cancel that into the super.
3

Thanks for your work/notes. Its really an enthusiasts that sfa3 needs now.
I would like to read something like that for a newer tourney vids since i dont understand match ups deep enough.

4

I just wanna ask, how does V-Mika stand against V-Sakura, V-Zangief and A-Vega (this Vega doing nothing but turtle hardcore and abusing crouching MPs) because I lost to these three in a tournament. Sorry to ask aobut V-Mika because she’s now my main and I gave up on V-Karin. Middlekick, got any wisdom?

5

this topic is a great idea

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I’m just trying to keep people from posting retarded scrub comments on YouTube (“lolz why is he jumpnig, he shoulda parried, I could parry that”), and help out my fellow scrubs. Speaking of scrubs, I gotta remember to make one of these threads for the Capcom BBS.

I don’t play Mika at all, but there’s a match of Chikyuu playing V-Mika on the B5 DVD, the A3 part of which is being hosted on Preppy’s site (http://zachd.com/mvc2 ).

From the little I know about Mika, I think she has a rough time in all of those matches. After checking the matchup chart at VER’s page, the Sakura players seem to think she beats Mika like 8-2, and the A-Vega player says 8.5-1.5. From the B5 vid, it looked like Mika had to do a lot of guessing vs Sak, and she was obviously at a disadvantage when she didn’t have meter. Good luck…

7

Thanks for the advice. I found it pretty good if V-Mika has meter against V-Sakura and V-Zangief because a command normal saw from close, instant activate and beach away. It’s just the A-Vega that pisses me off, nothing but turtle hardcore.

How about A-Blanka, A-Charlie and A-Dhalsim. This was the same tournament except these are the characters that I beat. I only lost to the above characters with facing V-Sakura having the most chance to win believe it or not.

8

I love reading threads like this :tup:

9

i just saw the length of TS’s posts and knew i was gonna orgasm. good thing i’m into that tantric shit.

subscribed… good stuff.

10

I’m developing a new approach to tournaments. First off…

Top-tier IMO is:

V-Akuma
V-Sakura
V-Gief
A-Dhalsim

Now…

From what I can tell:

V-Akuma > all
V-Sakura > V-Gief
V-Gief > A-Dhalsim

What I’m looking for is a set of characters that can HARD counter (ideally) or beat (realistically) anything and everything thrown at them. I don’t care if they’re top-tier or not.

Thoughts?

PS. I’m pretty sure I don’t NEED to mention this, but I will just in case. I don’t want counters for mediocre characters/players/tactics/strategies. I know, for example, that Zangief splash abuse owns average players, but fails against pros. I’m talking about high level ONLY here.

11

Forgot to mention that I YouTubed the Vid I was talking about with Gen/Charlie/Sodom/X-Dhalsim/Guy/Ryu: [media=youtube]tgTs2J3w8Ow[/media]

BTW other people feel free to comment on stuff you see in A1/A2/A3/HSFA matches. I actually should have named this the match VIDEO analysis thread, really.

Like if you play Balrog and wanna break down what he should have been doing in [media=youtube]9WNWoxALYWA[/media], etc.

I’d like to disect the Choi vs Valle A2 vid from B3, but I don’t really play much A2, and frankly most of the stuff in that video goes over my head. There’s not much quality A2 stuff on YouTube, but [media=youtube]GgSUjZDn-G8[/media] is up, which I guess is enough.

I don’t know of any good A1 vids that acutally even exist, let alone are online.

So you’re looking for the best character in the game? I don’t understand the question. If you were asking for counter matches, that would be one thing (ie. Gen does well against Zangief), but you seem to be asking for a character who beats everyone for free…?

12

Yes and no. The best characters don’t always counter each other the hardest, but I will def be using the top-tier, too. The Gen vs Gief match up is exactly the sort of stuff I need. Because he does do very well against Gief, I would use him as the Gief counter, so he’s part of my A3 character set. I guess the best way to go about this is:

  1. Find the best counters for the top-tier.
  2. Find any other obvious hard counters.
  3. Find counters for the rest.

Obviously, I’d like to keep this list to a minimum, but that’s definitely not a requirement. Conventional wisdom may state that I should just use the top-tier because they beat pretty much everyone else, but like you said, Gen > Gief, although Gen isn’t top-tier.

Another guiding principle when coming up with this idea is ease of use, which ties in with the ability of a character to hard counter another. I heard that Gen beats V-Gief with basically c. fierce, so while V-Sak beats him, too, Gen does it better/easier. Sorry if I’m confusing.

PS. This is basically just a counter character mentality (as opposed to one character/learn all the matchups), where I want to focus on learning the one match up to take out a specific character. Logically, this approach is probably less work than learning all the match ups for one specific character, and IMO the more creative/efficient approach, although no doubt one character advocates would disagree with me (it IS the norm after all…to master just one character that is).

13

SVB A3 vids are up:

http://www.neoempire.com/svb2k7a3.htm

Might do a run-through for a couple of matches.

14

Mihai-
Most hard counters don’t really matter as much in A3, since V-ISM has evened things out. One random guess nets you 50% damage if your VCs are any good, so a lot of characters can win matches they didn’t use to.

To answer your question from elsewhere, there aren’t really any matchup charts for A3, though there’s sorta one here:
http://www.geocities.jp/vegascup07/daiyapage.htm

Names are in this post, below the url part
http://forums.shoryuken.com/showpost.php?p=3527639&postcount=3187

The different players have different opnions, so for example you’ll see one Ryu player say he loses 4-6 vs V-Sagat, and another say he wins 5.5 to 4.5.

Some counters, though many are much less relevant than they once were, if they’re even the same:

Charlie over shotos, moerso Ryu/Ken
Dhalsim over basically everybody, especially non-V
Zangief over…a lot of people, basically anyone who isn’t top tier
Gen over Zangief
Rolento over/even with Dhalsim
Chun over/even with Dhalsim
V-Sakura over Charlie
V-Sodom over/even with Gief

But like I said, as A3 has changed…

15

TS, thanks a ton for that info. It’s EXACTLY what I needed. You really helped me out with this stuff cause I haven’t kept in touch with the A3 scene, and it’s much easier for me to see a matchup chart and get a good feel for how the game progressed since I last played it seriously, even if some of the matchups may be biased or a bit out of date. Thanks again. :wgrin:

16

VER (V-Dhalsim) vs Kayaman (X- Blanka)
[media=youtube]Y4YkJol_l3c[/media]
Here’s the basic breakdown of the match:

Dhalsim can retaliate on reaction to Blanka’s blocked rolling attack on reaction. And for those of you who play CvS2 or something and don’t know A3 well, Dhalsim is much better than Blanka in A3.

Kayaman, the Blanka player, chose X -ISM to basically maximize damage. Blanka is interesting in that his moves are pretty much all the same between ISMs except for the supers, which is quasi-rare. You’ll sometimes see him use V-Blanka against other V-ISM players just to be able to counter-activate for the most part, A-ISM offers multi-level supers and a somewhat-decent Alpha Counter, so you don’t have to worry about getting worn down by a lot of guard damage VCs and have a shot at stopping things like Akuma’s unblockable. But being able to counter-activate doesn’t isn’t really worth the damage loss as X- ISM does more damage hit-for-hit than A or V, and Blanka’s best VC starts with a counter-hit air-to-air jumping attack, but that combo doesn’t work on A/V-Dhalsim at all. Because of the similarities between the versions of Blanka, A-Blanka would just end up being the same as X in this matchup, but just donig less damage.

Other differences:

-Blanka’s c.FP isn’t as good, and only works situationally.

-No low jumps or running (duh)

-No roll canceling (duh)

-Blanka can’t do RC electricity, but it does about twice as much guard damage. Also, the shortcut to get electricity doesn’t work in the arcade version of A3.

-Essentially all of Dhalsim’s attacks are faster and/or have better recovery.

-Blanka has the old super but not the shock ball one.

Round 1-
Blanka starts out with Electric Thunder to counter a poke by Dhalsim. Some of Blanka’s jumping attacks haev really good priority, so he reacts to Dhalsim’s head spear with a jumping fierce, but misses.

Sim figures he’d catch Blanka trying to attack at 5 seconds in, and does a guess activation. It looks like he thought he’d be on the other side of Blanka after the drill and wanted to push him into the corner, but I’ll give him more credit than that.
If you notice at 9 seconds Blanka does a Jab rolling attack- more likely he was trying to get close to Dhalsim (my guess would be that he thought the Dhalsim player was going to move/jump backwards to get some distance), since it’s pretty common knowledge that Dhalsim can counter after blocking a rolling attack, or even after being hit by one in many situations. Dhalsim counters and sets Blanka up to be baited by the far jumping Strong at 11 seconds.

When Dhalsim lands he does the Forward slide into Yoga Fire, which is harder to time than it looks- it works something like doing the hopkick xx special with Ryu or Akuma in A3, where there’s only a certain window of time where it will cancel. This also keeps Blanka from doing an air recovery (PP flip) as well as puts a fireball on screen.

Dhalsim moves forward, I assume looking for the VC, but doesn’t try to counter the jumping attack since he’s not sure about the distance or is maybe scared of Blanka’s air priority and doesn’t know which attack of Dhalsim’s to use as anti- air.

Dhalsim’s slide can’t be used as anti-air because of tripguard, but Dhalsim does it anyway since the Short version is a good poke. It looks like Dhalsim tries to do the whiff close standing Forward into a close crouching Fierce as a bait tactic, but gets the far crouching Fierce by mistake and gets countered. Or maybe he doesn’t play Dhalsim enough and thought it would connect?

Anyway, you see Blanka do roll- >electricity at 16 seconds, which is a a way to close the gap and do some sexy, sexy guard damage. He even follows up with a sweep, but Dhalsim calls him on it and activates on him. Dhalsim messes up the VC at 20 seconds, but because X-ISM characters can’t air block Dhalsim could have just done another Yoga Fire and Blanka wouldn’t have had a way around it. At that range (before the slide at 21 seconds) Yoga Fire ->standing Roundhouse would be difficult for anyone to get around if they can’t counter- activate with V-ISM, since you can’t air-block normal moves.

When Blanka comes down with the Jumping Fierce at 21 seconds, even if he were charged comboing to the crouching Roundhouse would be smarter than to the ball, since even if it hit Dhalsim, Blanka would have bounced back afterwards and been easy to counter attack. The closer to the corner Blanka is, the easier it is to counter his rolling attack.

So anyway, ball to electricity again at 22 seconds, and Blanka goes for the sweep again afterwards, and here’s where you start to think that VER (the Dhalsim player) has experience vs Kayaman (the Blanka player), since he’s now countered the sweep after the Electric Thunder twice in a row- once with the VC activation at 19 seconds, and now at 23 it looks like he used the drill (Roundhouse one?) to dodge it. Since the drill may not have been a good idea if Blanka had decided to do another rolling attack instead, it looks like anticipation.

Dhalsim being fairly agressive in the first round and just like he tried to follow Blanka into the corner at the start of the round, he moves in on him, but gets rewarded with a super after trying to throw.

The rolling attack at 32 seconds and the next at 36 looked like Blanka trying to hit Dhalsim out of an attack, but he guessed wrong, thinking Sim would want to keep pressure on with his guard bar and health both so low. Blanka has zero health at 44 seconds, so he gets baited into jumping the last Yoga Fire, which costs him the round. He jumps with Fierce to counter a poke attempt, but Dhalsim activates instead. He would have had a shot had he jumped over one of the previous Yoga Fires, but that would put him right next to a loaded Dhalsim and still would have been out of range for his jumping attack to connect. As it was he was too far to trade with any attacks or slide under fireballs with the d/f+FP.

At the start of Round 2 Blanka does the d/f+FP slide to start, which isn’t a bad move- if you consider that Sim started Round 1 with a Yoga Fire, it looks like the smart thing to do, but it also works if he tries to start off with a standing poke. Unfortunately, Sim does a Yoga Flame, and they trade.

Blanka tries roll to electricity again but is slightly too far for Sim to have to block it, so he stops and tries to poke with crouching Short, but Dhalsim waits out the electricity and does close crouching Strong (good move) to Yoga Fire, which knocks Blanka far away, which is bad. But Dhalsim again follows him into the corner to press the advantage, instead of trying to keep him out.

After Dhalsim activates at 1:02 he does a far standing Forward, probably by mistake. It whiffs, and Blanka had landed anyway, and does the ball, since he’s constantly charging. Blanka tried to counter out because he didn’t want to eat the block/guard damage from Dhalsim doing slide xx yoga fire, or just yoga fire when close over and over in the corner.

Dhalsim slides as anti-air at 1:07, since it’s fairly safe- it dodges a lot of stuff, and the opponent has to block as soon as they land. And in this case, you don’t have to worry about losing a chunk of damage if you gess the wrong anti-air.

I’m not sure if Blanka guessed the jump at 1:20 or if he was trying to counter a poke like at 1:12, but Dhalsim lands on electricity and his guard bar disappears. Dhalsim ends up letting Blanka out of the corner just before that, and I wonder if part of it was him being shaken by the far standing Strong getting countered at 1:12. When Dhalsim walks backwards at 1:18, it looks to me like he was looking for the rolling attack so he could counter it.

After the electric thunder at 1:20, Blanka keeps doing it, to keep Dhalsim from air recovering. However, the rules that govern when you can and can’t air recover don’t apply to the Yoga Escape, A/V-ISM Dhalsim’s recovery move. It ends up not mattering, but every time Blanka can knock Dhalsim down, he gets free guard damage, since Dhalsim has fairly poor reversals when he has no meter, so he’s vulnerable to jumpins when standing up after a knockdown.

However, in A3 once you do a series of rapid attacks, each one does less guard damage- like damage scaling with combos. So Blanka’s jumping Fierce into c.SK ends up doing no guard damage, since Dhalsim just blocked six hits in a row before the Yoga Escape. Had Dhalsim not done that and just taken the knockdown, he probably would have taken normal guard damage, since the guard damage scaling deactivates after two seconds of not blocking anything.

Dhalsim counters Blanka’s post-c.SK pokes twice in a row, once at 1:24 with close crouching Strong, and again at 1:26 with Jab. Looks like he was trying to do c.SKx2 to c.FP like he did earlier at 8 seconds in and at 1:04.

Blanka jumps at 1:28 but Sim does a slow fireball he he gets caught by it and pushed out like the end of the previous round. Sim does the Yoga Fire to jump far standing Strong like at the 11 seconds, 1:11 and 1:14.

Blanka doesn’t slide under the Yoga fire at 1:34 when he’s in range to hit, but gets under the one at 1:36. As Blanka is blocking these he’s running out of health, so he jumps the last one, and we get a repeat of the end of round 1. I think Blanka outsmarted himself by not doing another slide under the last Yoga Fire he blocked, and was waiting for something else.

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[media=youtube]co4gVBDyCJ0[/media]
Kayaman vs CR (Karin)
Not sure about the ball at the start of the round, though I would guess Blanka didn’t see the jump coming and it was a lucky coincidence. At 8 seconds Karin activates into a sweep to punish the rolling attack, but the player wasn’t thinking or something goes wrong and there’s no follow-up. She could have done the tiger knee overhead move into an OTG throw, but nothing happens. In A3 you can legitimately combo and tick into command throws when V-ISM is activated, so if Blanka had blocked the jumping Short at 9 seconds, he would have been grabbed with Karin’s 360+K throw and combo’d afterwards.

After the reversal super, Blanka hits Karin out of the ground recovery with another rolling attack at 12 seconds. Even if she hadn’t done the ground recovery it would have put him close enough to her to go for Electric Thunder to wear down her guard meter.

At 17 seconds, after the air throw, Karin tries to poke with standing Jab- I’m pointing this out because certain characters (ie. Dhalsim) have to block most characters’ standing Jab’s even if crouching, whereas vs most characters they’ll whiff. They whiffed.

I think both of Blanka’s crouching Jabs at 14 and 18 seconds were both ment to be electricity, but didn’t come out. It works at 20 seconds, and I think he lets it end early so Karin can flip , since he tries to do roll into electricity again; if she’d done an air recovery, she would have landed on the Electric Thunder and had her guard broken. Though at that speed, it looks like he would have caught her standing, anyway. Karin expects another ball and starts whiffing jabs, but ends up geting caught by the sweep, since this is the same Blanka player from the last vid who was doing electricity into c.RK.

Karin whiffs a jumping Roundhouse to try to hit Blanka out of a rolling attack, but he does a fakeout, whiffs some elctricity, and takes the round a bit later.

Round 2, Karin a little nervous now, and after whiffing a jumping backwards Strong at 38 seconds, does a standing Strong to counter any rolls. Blanka just uses the ball to get close and build meter, though. He sees the jump coming at 41 seconds, but is too late to react with an air throw.

He’s trying to bait out reversal V- ISM activation at 48 seconds, which is why he stopped it and jumped away instead of letting Karin wake up into it. It works later at 56 seconds, and Karin blows her meter. To her credit, Karin goes for an air throw, since she can OTG 360 throw afterwards and combo for nice damage, but she does the throw too early.

17

Rose vs Sakura/Zangief
[media=youtube]nrldUALYU28[/media]
(video quality is crazy bad, skip this post as necessary)

The basics of Rose vs Sak- Rose’s c.SP beats Sak’s b+FP and s.RK (Sak’s 2 best pokes) pretty reliably so long as Rose can actually get the move out and not be interrupted. This alone screws with Sakura players right off the bat, since they sometimes blank out and forget Sak’s other options.

Sak can counter poke with sweeps or c.FK (if not done too early/late) or of course fireballs from a step or two back to try and get momentum back and if Rose decides to sit from too close she can grab Rose and get a free crossup after the punch throw.

Anti-air wise, Sak is in the better position. Rose can anti-air VC and crouching Fierce works if Sak is directly above her, but from further out Rose runs into problems, especially vs long range jumping Short and to some degree the jumping Roundhouse. Rose can use the d/f+FK slide to dodge jumping attacks altogether though, and she can try to hit her on the way up from a jump with either b+RK or f+RK.

Sak has issues with jumpins when she has no meter because she has no invulnerable reversal, so she’s got problems with wakeup in general. C.FP is a good anti-air for her though and she can do early b+FP also, but both of those are VC bait, since she can’t really cancel into anything that’ll save her if someone activates on her.

Both can do air throws as anti-air if they guess a jump, but it really is a guess, and Sak’s is better than Rose’s, since Rose’s air throw has more startup than most other characters’.

Air-to-air Sak’s priority is a little better, though it sorta depends on the attack and timing, and Rose can still do neutral jump Jab/Forward/Roundhouse and beat a lot of stuff.

Sak can go into a crossup loop after either a fierce DP, a sweep, a throw etc. Rose can crossup after a sweep or crouch canceled jump series (ie. counter hit jumping Jab, jumping Forward, walk forward -> crossup jumping FK, something like that), and has a crossup loop vs medium- sized and smaller characters after a close SK Soul Spiral (qcf+k drill move)- crossup j.FK, c.SP, SK Spiral, repeat. However, Sak is a bit smaller than most characters when she crouches, so crossups vs Sak can be a bit harder with some characters.

I’d say the match is like 6-4 in Sakura’s favor, but considering Sak is top 3 and Rose is 3rd tier, Rose can come off looking pretty good.

OK, so the vid. Sorry for the low quality, it has that stupid black line in it.

So the Rose scrub starts off with the slide as a cheap surprise tactic and just mashes random kick buttons.

Jump up and down early with Forward to feel safe and establish space. Sak moves back and Rose uses the slide to chase after her at 10 seconds in, since the slide is hard to punish unless you watch for it, especially when it whiffs you completely.

Rose is looking for Sak to throw a fireball for some reaso so she moves back to bait it and then does a jump SK, which gets blocked and turns into a weak poke string- there was s upposed to be a crouching Forward after the Jab at 13 seconds, but the timing was off. Sak got hit by the Jab because she tried to interrupt the poke string with her own c.JP, btw.

Rose being pretty agressive, does another slide to close the gap. Sak misses an opportunity to come down with a j.RK, though she tries to sweep when she lands because she misjudges the recovery time after the slide.

Rose messes up another poke string at 14 seconds because the Rose player is borderline retarded. Just a note to Rose players (both of you who exist in the universe), had a crouching Strong or Forward come out after the Jab, Sak wouldn’t have been able to punish after the blocked Spiral since Rose would have been pushed back too far. Rose could then look to punish the whiffed attack with a sweep or far standing Roundhouse, etc.

After scrubbing it up some more, the Rose player gets hit out of a c.SP by Sak’s b+FP because Rose was a) too close and b) too slow (see here). From further out it would have worked better, and by the time Rose’s c.SP was fully extended, Sak was already punching her in the face.

At 30 seconds Rose tries to punish Sak’s whiffed sweep with jumping Forward into a sweep, but Sak was slightly too far back and the jump whiffs. Rose does the sweep anyway, and gets kicked in the face. The Sak player tries a sweep after the air recovery at 31 seconds and Rose beats it with a c.FK, but doesn’t follow up, I guess because the Rose player is a scrub. True to form, he messes up the anti-air VC and loses the round because of it.

The sweep was a big move for Sak because it represents control. It’s a free crossup attempt, which lets you feel like you’re in the driver’s seat, since you can’t quite hammer on b+FP or s.RK the normal way.

Round 2, at 1:03 Rose was looking for Sak to air recover so she could Soul Throw her, but this Sak player is hip to that trick of Rose’s.

On wakeup at 1:04, Rose not really scared of anything Sak can do since Sak has no meter so Rose does meaty c.SP, c.SP xx SK Soul Spiral, and then punishes the whiffed sweep that didn’t happen in the first round at 14 seconds. Rose uses the slide to punish, which isn’t a great move to use since you’re at a disadvantage even if it connects, but it works OK if it’s unexpected/lands on a counter hit, and doubles as a dodge in case the Sak player decided to jump.

At 1:09 when the Sak player messes up and has a Fierce DP blocked, Rose does c.FP xx RK Spiral. Rose could also do c.FP xx Soul Throw before Sak lands, but the Rose scrub has a quasi-good idea and is trying to get Sak back towards the corner. The Soul Throw combo does a bit more damage but also you and the opponent both recover at about the same time, whereas the Spiral gives you some time. Most importantly, it’s easier. Seeing as how Rose walks forward afterwards, one might wonder if the scrub was looking for a Ground Recovery (KK roll), but the match is so old the guy probably wouldn’t remember if you asked him. But he’s a scrub, so I’d assume not.

Just another Rose note, a better combo would have been to do the FK Spiral istead. FK and RK Spiral both do about the same damage, but FK SPiral has better recovery and gives you more time- you can empty jump afterwards and land before they counter attack, you can do a regular jump in or just walk forward, etc.

Anyway, Rose does a f+RK at 1:11 to hit Sak out of a jump, or maybe pass under one. Rose gets pushed out and is looking to slide under a jump, and finds it. The anti-air options from that range were bad, but it looked like Sak wanted to jump.

Round 3, at 1:24 the Rose scrub actually gets that poke string into the Soul Spark (fireball) out that he was meaning to do earlier. Rose’s fireball actually pushes people back, even before the projectile comes out. As far as I know, it’s the only move in the game, or any SF, which has that pushback property prior to blockstun. The heavier the version of the fireball, the slower it comes out, but the further back the opponent is pushed- IIRC FP Soul Spark pushes someone back about halfway across the screen. Anyway, looks like that was a Jab Soul Spark, so you can’t really see the difference.

Sak throws a fireball to stop Rose’s momentum. If you’ll notice, Rose actually flinches at 1:26 because the player wanted to use a Soul Reflect vs the fireball, but realizes that it’s too late and they’d get hit by it. Rose falls back to look for another fireball and Sak whiffs a crouching Fierce, which I can only assume was intended to be one.

Rose does yet another slide at 1:28 because it doubles as a dodge for jumping attacks as well as closes space and is a poke, keeping the Rose player from using is feeble scrub brain. Rose starts to counter-poke with s.FK vs sweeps at 1:29, but is a step behind, as Sak jumps. Rose guesses a jump and catches Sak mid-air and starts poking. Rose looks for and finds another slide vs jump, but ends up in the corner. Luckily enough, Sak screws up and gets another fierce DP blocked.

Rose ends the midscreen VC with a Soul Spark because it nets a crossup, but jumps early and Sak activates on nothing. A complete accident from the Rose scrub.

Sak goes into the d.FK xx SK hurricane kick block damage/guard crush VC, Rose tries to poke her way out of it but ends up losing.

Rose looking for c.SP to shut down some of Sak’s pokes but guesses a jump, so she uses the f+RK as anti- air again.

At 1:50 Sak unfortunately puts herself at the perfect crossup distance and eats one. Rose crosses up again and does what looks like a guessed activation and catches Sak during a c.JP.

The Rose scrub does a pretty VC that does much less damage, because he’s very stupid, and messes up the b+SP xx Soul Throw at the end.

Rose does a slide at 2:02 as a poke to get random damage, since Sak is so low on life. Rose tries to anti -air with Jab at 2:04, but that doesn’t work out well.

Rose tries to counter poke with Jabs at 2:05, but Sak does jumpin -> crossup and connects with the DP combo. Sak tries to jump into the VC activation with a crossup, but the Rose player just holds right and Sak’s DP loses to scrubby mashing the Jab button.

I don’t really play Sakura, but I think some of the mistakes the Sak player made was not using a wide enough array of attacks.

Jumping attacks are sort of a double-edged sword since you might get hit with an anti-air VC, but when Sak has meter she can do it a lot more often (and even look to counter-activate and attack on the way down if Rose activates as anti- air). Rose can dodge jumpins with the slide, but odds are this scrub playing her wouldn’t do that consistently, so at the least you get free guard damage. Rose can use jumping attacks as anti-air, but Sak can counter with attacks of her own, so it’s sort of a push, depending on the angle and which attack you’re talking about. Rose being on the defensive can screw herself and whiff a jumping attack and land on a VC, though.

Rose can obviously use the Soul Reflect vs fireballs, but they’re still good for pretty much that same reason; it’s sorta like trying to parry or jump vs fireballs: the further away you are, the easier it is to do on reaction. Conversely, fireballs get good when you’re close (like at sweep range) because they’re hard to react to unless you’re looking for them. And when you’re looking for them, that’s when the opponent is doing something else. Moreover, the Rose player here probably would have been looking to use the Reflect instead of a jump, because he’s a dumb ass.

So, while Sak can’t use her Fierces and Roundhouses quite so freely, she can use fireballs from the same range and a little further back. You can’t do it too much, but you’ll sometimes see Ryu players do the same thing, throwing fireballs vs Sak so she won’t poke as much, making her overthink using some of her best attacks.

Though, Rose can VC through fireballs when she has meter, sorta like Sagat can start his VC with the Tiger Knee and pass though fireballs. Rose can do [SK Spiral, b+RK xx slide]xn, though I don’t think the doofus playing Rose in this vid knew that at the time, and considering the timing is SLIGHTLY strict, I think that put such a combo out of his depth, if it could even be called depth.

Also, activations vs pokes are easier for Sak to get away with than Rose. And while Rose was out of range for a lot of the match, there were a couple of times where she had it coming. Hindsight is 20/20, so it’s always easy to point out where someone could have activated/done super/done something else after the fact, though.

Rose did an OK job.

Too many poke strings maybe, you can see the Rose player fall apart and scrub out because of being predictable with them, you can watch the match vs A-Guy ([media=youtube]GEUA0GjWD9M[/media]).

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Rose vs Gief summary- let me explain

Worth pointing out that Gief’s SPDs and supers are instant here like in A2 and the SF2 games. Max range SPD here is about shoto c.FK’s distance.

Gief has a bunch of different anti- air options- he can use standing Jab or crouching Strong and then look to land the Level 3 ARS (A-ISM Gief) afterwards. Lariat has invincible startup, and of course there’s the anti-air VC.

Because SPD is instant, that means Gief has an eaiser time using sac- SPD as anti-air. Sac throws (short for sacrifice throw) is when you get hit or block a shallow jumping attack and throw the person a soon as they land. You’ve probably had the CPU do this to you, if nothing else. It’s more common in the SF2 games. Because SPD has no startup time, if you jump in early with FK and then try to attack when you land, Gief can throw you if there is any gap at all in hitstun/blockstun (meaning, 1 frame or more) and you’re on the ground.

Zangief can also dodge some jumping attacks when he’s crouching by whiffing his crouching Short. Attacks that reach further across than they do downward (shoto jumping Forward/Roundhouse) will whiff, whereas attacks that are angled downards (ie. shoto jumping Fierce) will still hit. Zangief can SPD/Final Atomic Buster as soon as the opponent lands.

A more common anti-air is the 3K lariat. Crouching while doing the lariat works better, since the later you get to start the lariat, the better.

Zangief’s jump is shorther than most anyone else’s (except Birdie?), but he also has a smaller hit area, so if Zangief jumps and does nothing a lot of anti-air attacks will whiff past him completely. Zangief can then SPD as soon as he lands, etc.

Also the body splash (j. d+FP is like, the most ridiculous move ever.
Rose doesn’t really have anything that’ll consistently beat the splash other than jumping at him or straight up with an attack, Jab working the best (for example, f+RK works but it depends on the timing and distance). However, this can backfire in horrible ways if Gief decides to not jump, particularly if Rose jumps forward.

Just a note on Gief in general, for stuff that beats the splash cleanly (all 6 non-invincible attacks that do so) he can use the knee drop (jumping d+FK) as a mixup. And of course he can jump in and do nothing, which means you may or may not eat an SPD as soon as he lands, depending on the attack.

The kattobi cancel- some characters get weird side effects when they do a normal move and then activate a custom combo immediately afterwards. Like kara throws in 3S, but weirder. There’s also a CvS2 version (here and here).

Zangief has probably the most useful one in the game since it a) doesn’t cause any glitches, and is thus OK to actually use, and b) allows him to fly through fireballs/pokes etc from all the way across the screen and combo into SPD when he lands- when V-ISM is activated Gief can combo SPD even during hit/blockstun

And that is Zangief in a nutshell.

This entire match is basically just Rose trying to take away the splash and to some degree the lariat from Gief, since they cause so much trouble (moreso the splash).

Right at the start of the round almosts loses half of his guard meter, though it’s hard to pay attention to those sorts of things with a giant black bar on the screen.

Gief’s lariat is invincible at startup, but for most of the lariat, even though it has good priority and will pass through fireballs, Gief’s head is vulnerable. It’s hard to hit Gief in the head and not have the rest of your body get hit by his arms and get yourself hit first, but that’s what all the 1,000 jumps in this match are about from Rose’s end. The more he’s distracted with other things, the less he’s gonna be doing the jumping splash. Most of them are just ballsy jumps to try and be on the offensive (see: most non-crossup uses of jumping FK), but the jumping Jab at 24 seconds, for example, was trying to hit Gief out of the lariat.

This would be a lot tougher if this Zangief player used the c.SK as anti-air trick, but he didn’t know it. He hesisates to do lariat as anti-air partly because lariat can be air blocked. Also, because jumping at V-Gief with full meter is a bad idea, it stands to reason that he thinks I’m going to jump in and do nothing and counter him if he tries to anti-air VC.

At 26 seconds that could have been a sac-SPD from Gief, but more likely was just intended as a counter-poke like he was trying to do with Sak in the last match. Moreover, c.JP to SPD is a tick Gief can use whether it’s blocked or not, and also sorta clears the way for a body splash. The jumping backwards afterwards was being jumpy- you can’t get SPDd if you’re not on the ground- but was also an attempt to hit Gief if he were standing up or did a lariat or got a 360 out.

At 2:31 Rose jumps at Gief empty because the player feels like they’re due a lariat or anti-air activation, but gets a Jab instead. The Gief player also outsmarting himself, since he’s now worried about Rose either jumping in empty or counter-activating. It’s followed by another jump after a whiffed backhand by Gief, into a messed up poke string (c.JP didn’t come out after the c.SP), and then yet another jump at 2:34 (an early jumping Forward that beat a semi- late FP splash by Gief) which leads to a crouch cancel combo which is messed up. There was supposed to be a crouching Fierce after the cc jumping Fierce, but it was canceled way too early. Gief tries a wakeup SPD but no luck, and the Rose scrub, yet again, gets lucky.

It looks like Rose tried to catch Gief out of a ground recovery (KK roll) and turned it into some ghetto high-low mixup. Or maybe he just screwed up, hard to say. I’d go with the latter- a b+Roundhouse into qcb+Jab that didn’t work out (see 1:01).

Gief finally activates at 2:43, but alas, the Rose player doesn’t get hit in the face with the combo they’ve been begging for. Rose does a ground recovery and Gief gets out a sweep, but it gets beat by random mashing. Rose then jumps for the 800th time, since the player is pretty confident Gief won’t lariat, and he’s just spent most of his meter. He does still aim for the head though, just in case, hitting high with the Jab. I don’t even remember if the Jab beats/trades with the lariat, actually.

At 2:54, Rose messes up like, the most simple combo ever by mistiming the c.SP. For his part, it looks like Gief tried to counter with a sac SPD, but it doesn’t work, again.

Gief gets hit out of a sweep at the end of the round.

At the start of Round 2, Rose guesses with s.SP and is right, though hesitates to jump because Gief might be ready to counter now, having just been jumped in on 97 times the previous round. But the scrub impulses is too strong, and Rose redoes the poke string from the last round, and half of Gief’s guard meter is gone. Rose jumps straight up with Forward and then Jab at 3:13 and :14, because she’s scared of the splash.

At 3:38 Rose misses not one, but two attempts to activate V-ISM in a row.

Wow.

At 3:40 Rose is anxious to activate because of what just happened and does so after the first jump Gief makes. The Rose player usese SP Soul Reflect instead of JP because it has wider range. Gief counter activates, but doesn’t attack on the way down, and waits until he lands, which costs him. Rose does the Soul Throw to get her off the ground so she couldn’t be grabbed with an SPD, but it turns out the Reflect hits, so it was for nothing.

It looks like Gief tried to do 360+K but got s.RK right before he got hit by the tail end of the Soul Reflect.

Gief tries to OTG with kattobi SPD but it doesn’t work, but he ends up getting damage anyway. And the end of the match at 4:16, Gief tries to counter a poke with another kattobi activation so he can combo to an SPD and win the round, but Rose activates on him in the air and Gief gets his lariat countered by a high jumping Forward, on what had to be the first or so possible frame (see here).

Edit: links fixed. To lighten my karmic load (HEE HEE) an earlier match with the same players/characters with a different outcome is [media=youtube]cACBs7tqBNQ[/media].

18

Since there were some questions about tiers, here’s the tier list from VER’s site, opinions may vary.

http://www.geocities.jp/vegascup07/kousatu.htm

19

Haha, nice read, and very good breakdown of the matches. I can totally relate to what you’ve been through with Rose in those. I agree with Sak-Rose being 6-4, and Gief is an even harder matchup for her.

20

A quicker one, relatively. I like this match.

TOMA (Charlie) vs Makoto (Zangief), from a Game Inn Sakura tournament-
[media=youtube]-wGkzAc9OZM[/media]
Match starts at 4:12

Basically, what you’re going to see is Charlie trying to discourage Zangief from jumping, the same way you might see shotos trying Shoryuken Vega’s longer-ranged attacks or Dhalsim’s limbs- not just to avoid being pressured or as a reaction to pressure, but psychologically it discourages the opponent from using what is actually their biggest advantage.

Charlie has sort of a hard time vs Gief, though V-Charlie gets more leeway just because he can use the VC as anti-air, which is his biggest problem.

Basically, Zangief has too many options in the air, so he can get away with a lot of jumping vs Charlie, which leads to guard bar problems and/or being cornered for backing up, and/or getting hit with SPDs, etc. Even just doing the d+FP body splash over and over can be a problem.

Somersault is OK but not with the damage- it trades with the body splash too often- and moreover it’s a charge move, so you’re limited in how you can move while keeping it as an anti-air option. If you’re just sitting down waiting to hit the somersault, you now have to deal with blocking Gief’s crouching Fierce or walk-up SPDs etc. Even so, Charlie’s flash kick can be air blocked unless super-deep, so you have to worry about Gief even if he jumps in and does nothing. And, of course, you have to stand up to block jumping attacks, so you lose your charge.

Charlie has regular attacks which do okay like his far standing Roundhouse (neutral in V-ISM), but there are auto-range issues in X/A-ISM, and even in V when you can do it on demand, it only really works at certain ranges, and is vulnerable to empty jumps because of Gief’s small hitbox in the air.

At 4:31 in you see Charlie do a jumping Roundhouse- IIRC that move is safe when done deep enough- if they counter attack you are able to land and block, and if they do nothing they still have to block it.

At 4:34 Charlie is jumping backward because of the anti-air issue. He does the spinning backfist as a poke, I’m guessing trying to hit Gief on the way up from a jump, but Gief jumps too early for it to work.

The VC at 4:39 I’d never seen before, and is a big factor in this match, and to some degree Charlie vs Zangief in general. Charlie has issues with landing his standard anti-air VC (crouching Strong/Fierce xx Short flash kick, [standing Roundhouse xx whiffed dashing knee, Short flash kick] to the corner), because if you’re not close enough your attacks will whiff. So you have to be right next to them, or under them, in the case of using it as anti-air.

The knee bazooka usually whiffs in the combo, but instead of doing it the normal way, TOMA (the Charlie player) skips the first standing Roundhouse and hits with the knee, giving it more range. The normal way does more damage, but this way has more utility, as it simply hits at ranges the regular version won’t.

He also uses Forward flash kicks instead of Short, because it does more damage. A minor issue with the Forward version is that it’s slower, so you worry about getting fewer reps in, or if you wanted to set something up after the VC in the corner.

At 4:50 after the crouch cancel combo, he does a Short flash kick to hit Gief out of a ground recovery (KK roll) if he’d done it. It also has the benefit of building meter, and puts Charlie back at nearly 50% already. He jumps back with Fierce to avoid having to worry about SPD, and I’m guesssing also to hit Gief out of a lariat or if he’d done a VC. After getting too close for comfort, Charlie tries to poke at 4:53 to build some distance, but gets grabbed with an SPD.

Charlie builds some meter up and takes the first round. That VC is somewhat counter-activation safe, btw; if they VC through the crouching Fierce, they still have to worry about the flash kick. See also: [media=youtube]aN-hsadAxAA[/media] (2nd round)

I’m guessing Gief is doing crouching Short/Forward to counter Charlie’s crouching Forward/Roundhouse at the start of both rounds.

Charlie a lot more defensive because he doesn’t have meter, and Gief taking advantage. At 5:24 Charlie did a backfist to hit Gief on the way up from a jump and got it, I think to discourage him from jumping so much, but it doesn’t work too well and Charlie gets pushed into the corner. He jumps at 5:33 just out of desperation, I think; it beats staying in the corner, and he guessed right and caught Gief in the air, though his attack whiffed. I wonder somewhat if that was supposed to be an air throw, but I’d guess Jab.

Charlie is still stuck in the corner and jumps backwards to avoid worrying about a tick SPD at 5:35, but gets splashed on because Gief was waiting him out. Charlie gets guard broken while re-jumping for the same reason, and Gief sweeps him. But because of the neutral state rules in A3, Charlie can do an air recovery (PP flip) afterwards because Gief’s close sweep ends so quickly. That’s why Gief jumps up with a Jab, but Charlie doesn’t flip.

Charlie getting a little desperate now and does a reversal flash kick at 5:38, but was baited and gets shut down a few more times, before finally chaining into a Sonic Boom at 5:44 which pushes Gief back far enough to give him a shot out of the corner. Charlie jumps with Fierce to catch Gief in the air, and it works. It looks like he figures Gief is too far for the anti-air VC, so he tries to catch him in the air with Fierce and crouch cancels. Or maybe he wants to do more damage so the VC will win him the match, or maybe he just wants to mix it up some more, who knows. I wonder somewhat if the crouching Strong at 5:52 was meant to be an activation, but I’m guessing he would have activated with Fierce and Roundhouse. I do wonder if the whiffed Jab at 6:04 (apparently a Sonic Boom attempt) was really trying to bait a jump, but it could be either.

Charlie gets control back somewhat, and wears down Gief’s guard meter. Gief actually jumps at 6:06 but gets hit in the face with a backfist, which, handsight vision being 20/20, TOMA probably wished he didn’t do.

Given the pressure Charlie has been putting on, Gief makes a pretty good guess about a poke coming as he lands from a jump (did the same in the first round at 5:05), and is right, and combos an OTG SPD for the win.

A lot of blows exchanged in the third round. In general a lot of good jumps by Zangief. Charlie trying to counter the way Gief was playing in the second round, but Kisaku (the Zangief player) has changed things up a bit; Gief builds meter pretty quickly here and at 6:30, as a result of all of his jumping from the previous round, Charlie waits for Gief to try a body splash after the crouching Jab (to catch someone trying to avoid a tick). I’m guessing Charlie is waiting to land his VC, but get hits with the good old SPD tick instead.

Charlie hits the VC a bit later at 6:34, but misses the dashing knee. Charlie more worried about jumps now, so you see like 6 different anti-air attempts in a short period of time, many of which hit (mostly the backfists, which double as pokes an are done to make Zangief get more defensive so Charlie can poke him more and get control). Zangief just keeps coming though, and uses the lariat to psychic DP at 7:05, like how he knew to activate at the end of the last round because Charlie was waiting for him when coming down from a jump.

The lariat sets up an empty jump to Fierce SPD. Jab SPD has more range, but given how low on life Charlie was, Fierce was a better idea. SPD has zero startup, so Gief can just activate and SPD, and unless Charlie had done something (ie. started jumping) before the activation, he’d get grabbed, which is what happened.

And that’s the end of that tournament. Good matches, always nice to see TOMA play, and Kisaku did a great job, as do basically all of the players in the Game-sakura/a-cho/Vegascup/Imakichannel etc vids.

As you could probably guess, the bit at the end says that Kisaku (Gief) was the winner, TOMA (Charlie) was the runner-up, and Morikawa (Ryu) got 3rd place.