So I’ve played most Street Fighter games (SF2:HF, ST, SFA3, SFEX, SF3S) but only periodically or every now and then. But I’ve started playing SF4 sort of seriously. A couple characters I can play pretty decently (Balrog, Bison). However, I can never for the life of me perform what my friend likes to call the Pretzel motion ultra (i.e Guile & Vega’s Ultra 1). Does anybody know a good way to pull this off? It really pisses me off how I choose random and and get a character with this kind of ultra.
Well the way you’re supposed to do it as far as I know is Hold Down back move to down forward to down back to up forward all really quickly. There are other ways of doing it but I never really learned how
Those are a pain! Basically, holding DB (like charge characters) for the two seconds of course if the start of the motion, then you want to slide over to DF and back to DB, almost like a snapping motion. After that is the tricky part that I can pull of sometimes but I don’t really play charge chars too often. From DB, the second time around (after the initial charge and snap to DF and back), you’re required to move the stick to the complete opposite corner of the gate, UF. I have problems with the diagonals judgement and usually snap up to F or flat-out U. It takes a lot of practice and is pretty hard although I’ve seen people do it like it was a DF,DF motion.
Hopefully I helped, and hopefully there’s a shortcut for it that we can learn from!
Yeah it did help a little bit but this is gonna be a pain to learn
Practice enough and it won’t be a problem
It’s sorta easy, but the hard part is practicing BOTH directions as well. Everything is relatively simple until the upward motion. It’s just muscle memory to find that sweet spot in the corner.
This one isn’t actually the pretzel motion; Geese’s raging storm gets that dubious title:
:db:, :hcb:, :df: + :p:
But yeah, just give it some practice. It looks imposing but really isn’t that hard in practice. Try “rolling” the inputs if it helps.
It also works as: :hcb::hcb::df: (HCB, HCB, DF)
As I recall, there is a shortcut for this motion: charge DB, then DF, D, DB, B, UB + attack. So basically charge down-back, then do a tiger knee motion from down-front to up-back. Seems like I’ve been able to land that motion more consistently than the intended motion, but your mileage may vary.
Ah wait sorry didn’t read your first post properly.
You can do Guile and Claw’s supers/ultras as:
Charge :db:, then :hcb:, :u: or :ub: or :uf:
Years of Raging Storms/Moons made this motion easy as pie!
If I recall correctly this is the easiesy way:
hold:db: then 
:ub: :qcf:
I think of it as 3/4ths a circle
I call it a ‘triangle’ motion, but whatever floats your boat. Basically the motion involves hitting the corners of your stick in somewhat of a triangular motion. DB, to DF, to DB, to UF. It gets easier with practice.
I usually do :db:(charge), :qcf:, :hcb::ub:+:3p:/:3k:, there’s a lot of leeway in the inputs, but that works really well for Those Ultra’s that aren’t Vega’s since you can go up forward or up back. work’s pretty well for reaction ultra’s since you can just ride the gate the entire way and the motion is really fluid.
You can also do: :db:(charge),:uf:+:k::db:,:uf:+:k:, at least with Guile. just about the only way I get flash kick to cancel into his super. Very easy on a D-PAD, incredibly difficult on a joystick because of the distance you have to travel.
trying fadc it is whats really hard
Wait you can do a QC to a SF2TK and it would work? Oh that is awesome I gotta try that right now
well with FADCs you’ve got two ways to do it:
(1) Charge the FADC, maintaining back-charge, release, and once you recover and the opponents in crumple stun, do the remainder of the motion. The timing is only really tight for Balrog and Chun since they don’t get full animation if they hit in the airborne frames of the crumple stun.
(2) Charge the FADC, release, dash forward Ultra, this is possible with all charge motions, it’s just pretty difficult, you can do it backdashing or forward dashing, the timing is just really weird because the motions are buffered. Might help to wiggle the stick back and forward with the regular charge utlras.
(2) works for combos too, e.g. you do a combo and you’re FADCing into Ultra (like guile), you just have to charge a split second once you cancel the special and then dash forward into Ultra (like his flash kick, FADC, U2).