Hi,
I’m here to ask a slightly different type of support, please excuse me if my request will appear strange, silly or not in topic.
I’m a Street Fighter and Capcom fan since 90s. I was a teenager during the rise of Street Fighter “mania” in the smokey arcades and I’ve seen with my eyes how the franchise became gradually part of the modern pop culture.
I really liked culture behind arcades in general (versus fighting, shmups etc.) and still I like reading articles and books about it, or seeing documentaries.
Unfortunately, I’ve also seen with my eyes how arcade culture died day by day during the last decade, at least here in Italy.
Today I’m almost 35, and during these years I collected some SF titles to “keep” this culture somehow alive in my house and in my heart.
Now I’d like to start enjoying what I have collected all these years more actively, as a “gamer”.
Actually I have an original CPS-1 of Hyper Street Fighter 2, Street Fighter Collection for PS1 (SSF2, SSF2X and SFZ2’) and Hyper SF2 Anniversary on PS2 (all Japanese versions).
Where I live there are no fighting communities, no friends with the same passion nearby and I don’t really like online for arcade classics. So, I’m on my own and it’s even OK for me.
Simply I’d like to ask what would be a good way (which port, difficulty settings, modes of play etc.) to enjoy SF2 in single player, e.g. simulating settings and challenges in real japanese game centers etc. and also what are best practices to improve my skills in single player.
The various versions of SF2 are notorious for not having an arcade perfect home port. Even the best versions out there have some differences to the arcade versions. E.g., Hyper SF2 Anniversary is decent, but it isn’t exactly ST. Most die hard fans are stuck with having to buy arcade hardware. That being said, a lot of people do use emulators to play online. Fightcade is probably the most popular platform, check it out. https://www.fightcade.com/
Single player is an awful way to improve your skills. If you want to get better, play with other people. If you have no one locally to play with and you don’t want to play online, you don’t really have any viable ways to improve.
Here is some homework for you. Go to your local Walmart and Gamestop. Do they sell fighting games? If the answer is yes then you have what you need to create a scene. The FGC is still very underground and not everyone who plays and buys these games knows that a FGC exists. In the Detroit area there has been a weekly casual event for more than 5 years and I have been running weekly tournament at it for over 2 years and there are still people who stumble arcoss us who live in the city, play fighting games and didn’t know we exist. Step one search facebook for a group in your area, if one does not exist then create it. Get out and go to the Gamestop, go on the discussion boards on Craigslist and search for gamers. Get a PS4 and SFV and play that too and message the players you play and see if anyone lives in your area. Pick a charity and throw a tournament to raise money for it and collect the contact info for everyone who shows up and start hosting a weekly. Find these new players and introduce them to the older games, they will thank you.
" I really liked the culture behind arcades in general" I like you already. A CPS-1 board of Hyper? Damn, nice! You got the board and a cab with that to? If not tech talk may be able to help, I need them on that subject myself.
I am not familiar with the fighting game scene in Italy so you may want to take to threads and social media for that. I totally get not being as fond of doing things online, but you can’t ignore the good it can do so I recommend trying Steam and Fightcade for the online aspect of things. Fightcade is very active and Steam being both the biggest digital distributor and recently gotten a number of fighting games would do that part of it nicely. As for the main social aspect I think one of the previous blokes said it better than me. Even if I am not sure if they didn’t read where you live or I read wrong and as they said single player while helpful in some cases is just not as helpful as playing with others because if you make friends and meet people of various skill levels that is really the best, even online to a lesser extent. This means you both learn from better players how to get better and why you lose each round you lose and on the otherside you do the same thing for people you are better at the game than. I do not know if I would recommend a PS4 or not, but then I am biased against it these days. As it stands of the three current consoles the Ps4 is the best choice for fighting games, but by no means your only choice. As far as the console side of fighting games the two things I would recommend the most are a Ps3 and a Dreamcast which to me have the strongest fighting game libraries at this point, but I see why some would say the PS4 over them because its more current. The Ps2 is great for fighting games to due to its massive library and while some Ps2 ports suffer(Arcana Heart, KOF XI) most its fighting games are solid as the Dreamcast.
Two things I would say try for the most though would be(if you have not already) finding a two player cab for that CPS-1 game, or a second one depending on how good money is to you, and trying for PC with due to Steam and GGPO and most fighting games on PC are not very demanding side a recent few like especially Street Fighter V.
Try Capcom-Unity, Dustloop, Dreamcancel, and other site forums to try and talk with more people from where you are from and fighting game folk in general who are able to help. I think Eventhubs has a track feature to find other players in your area if you trust that.
I hope any of this has been useful to you and I wish you good luck.
You’ll either need an emulator with cheats or a version of SSF2X with a training mode (eg PS3/PS2). It also depends on the character you play.
For example, with Ryu/Ken, you can practice your anti-air DP against Cammy or Fei-Long by just repeatedly doing cr.mk until they jump, then DP’ing on reaction. Something like this:
Against some characters (probably the easiest vs E. Honda) you can practice zoning techniques. For example, you after a knockdown, do a meaty slow fireball, followed by an HP fireball, then another one (experiment with the speeds). You’ll find that after certain sequences if the AI jumps you’re at perfect range for a tripguard AA. Using a different sequence, you’ll be at a range where DP or a normal is your best option. You’ll also figure out which sequences to avoid, and you’ll learn the effect of how neutral jumping affects zoning (eg. when the opponent neutral jumps a slow fireball, you have to wait longer to throw another than if they had jumped over a faster one).
Since the AI was modeled on human behaviour with the added cheapness of being able to read your inputs, you can also use it to get to grips with some common tactics (although you most certainly shouldn’t consider it a proper substitute for a human opponent). For example, the AI will often instantly try to whiff punish as soon as it reads a button press. Against T. Hawk, you can jab, take a step back then throw a fireball to punish this. This is a situation that comes up very often in real matches, so it’s worth trying it out against an opponent that will behave like a human. You can also try to whiff punish his whiffed normal with your own, but it’s virtually impossible to do on reaction because of how quickly the AI reacts. Again, this is no substitute for a human opponent.
I actually know an Italian fellow who is big into 3rd Strike and I think he ran some tourneys in Italy. I haven’t spoken to him in a while, but I’ll have to ask him about any fighting game scenes that he might know of and see if I can pass anything on to you.
