Street Fighter Beginner: Need some help on technique before SFIV comes out >_<

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EDIT: just realized there’s a thread pretty similar to mine below but oh well lol, I think I’m much worse in terms of knowledge than what he knew

Hey guys, I’m getting really excited about SFIV however I have a problem.
I’ve always been a noob that plays SF maybe once a year whenever I happen to be in an arcade or whatever, however I’ve always loved the game.

I recently got my hands on some PC SF games and have been improving a bit however theres some thing I need help with:

What I know:

-I can do combos fine, however charge skills are a little hard to pull off for me.
Ex. Vegas hold down, up, punch skill
Are you supposed to punch while pressing up, or do you punch a millisecond after pressing up? Only like 30% of my attempts actually work

What I need to know:

-COMBOS! I have no idea how to do combos well. The only combos I’ve ever done is like an aerial attack followed by a jab or something on the ground which chained. Or something like a tiger uppercut. However how do you chain like punches and kicks together to form a combo before they fall down etc.?

-Attack priority, all I know is that (I think) LP will override other stuff if you hit at the same time like against a MP or HP person.

-How to play charge characters well. Are you supposed to play defensive and wait for the right moment to use your skill? Or are you supposed to run in and attack aggressively with your punches and kicks while utilizing your charges at the same time? It seems like they don’t have many skills so I always just sit in the corner blocking and trying to hit them when they come close lol

-The secrets that button mashing noobs like me don’t know about!
I heard that for example, a HP hadouken is harder to jump over than say a LP one.
I thought the only special things about LP and HP specials were that you either recover faster and do less dmg or vice versa

-What characteristics separates a pro from a noob really? I just need to know so I can improve these things
Like what are the skills I should practice on?

Here’s what I think it’d be based on:

-blocking (which I have slow reflexes on)
-not spamming specials but using them at the right time
-chaining together attacks to form combos
-knowing the differences between LP, MP, HP and when to use. (do you ever use LP really? I always spam MP/MK and use heavy when I think I can hit)

I don’t know a damn thing about kara’s or whatever it’s called, and all that advanced stuff. In general, all I know is how to do the moves, throw, block etc. (however my blocking seems to fail alot, not sure why), the basics.
I’m having a problem just trying to use the tools I have now, because at the moment all I do is spam the moves but don’t know how to use them wisely to form big combos etc.
I also tend to get knocked down everytime I jump, and have a hard time getting first hits in when I’m next to someone (however I’m guessing that will just come with time? or is there something I’m missing?). I’m fine jumping over fireballs and stuff, but I’ve NEVER BEEN ABLE TO BEAT CHARACTERS LIKE CAMMY, I don’t understand priority and I get wtfpwned every time I try and touch her

Thanks guys

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Firstly, what game are you currently playing the most? It would help to know this so I can give specific examples.

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Here, I’ll teach you how to play sagat:

TIGER TIGER TIGER TIGER TIGER TIGER UPPERCUT TIGER TIGER TIGER TIGER UPPERCUT TIGER DESTRUCTION.

And there you go, a winner is you!

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yeah, sometimes if things get hairy you might have to do one of sagat’s normals. its ok though theyre all good so just pick one! standing roundhouse is a good place to start

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“I can do combos fine” “COMBOS! I have no idea how to do combos well.”

ahhahah

For charging ive always just hit direction + button at roughly the same time. Think about your button timing when you do non-charge specials. Obviously you dont want to jump so just do up+button. Remember that its kind of ddr timing… ie, you can press punch a second after the direction or at the same time but whatever you do dont press it before you press the directional.

Since you don’t know where to start with combos I will suggest learning how to 2in1 which is the act of cancelling a normal move(a punch or kick) into a special. So with sagat try crouching middle kick -> crouching fireball. After you get it down try starting it with a jump in to make it 3 hits instead of 2. After that you can learn the rest. It really just takes practice and a little bit of muscle memory to pull them off in matches. Expect to fuck up for a while

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LOL sorry about that, my terminology is really bad.

Basically, I can do “special” moves like hadoukens and all that easily, even super-specials (except for holds like vega’s etc.). Sorry, I have no clue what is called what, when I think combo I think of a chain of attacks grouped together before they fall down, but I guess that’s also a word for doing hadoukens etc.

what I CAN’T do well (in terms of having a knowledge base of)

LP, LP, LK, Shoryuken to form a chain
or tempukyaku (or whatever its called) x 2, followed by a shoryuken

I can do them technically, but I don’t know any other then those 2 combos. The light attacks and tuepukyaku’s are the only things I know that can be followed up with another attack quickly, if I medium punch or anything it doesn’t do anything. It’d be even more hard to link something with anyone other than a shoto too lol, like how the heck would you combo with dhalsim or a hold character like vega

However, red_venom you did understand what I meant haha, I’ll start with doing what you said and see if I kinda understand cancelling
Also, yeah I might be pressing the direction and button at the exact same time, hadoukens are simple, it feels like there’s alot of leniency in it for timing, but something like (hold) down, up+ punch i just realized seems a bit harder because you have to punch RIGHT after pressing up I guess or else your character jumps in the air and the whole thing is blown.

As for the games I mostly play, 90% of the time I’m playing either Alpha 3, or Super Street Fighter 2
I realize they’re both kind of different games though, but I don’t think it’d affect how to play (ex. getting first hits etc.), it’s just that you die way faster in SF2 compared to Alpha 3 lol

Yeah I couldn’t figure out what else to do with that guy, he’s got like that knee attack, the uppercut, and the 2 fireballs, besides spamming those I had no clue what to do with his normal attacks. I guess the usual strategy is just to spam tiger punches until they get close enough for tiger uppercuts?

So far Sagat has been a pain in the ass for me to play against though because if I jump over his punches he just uppercuts me, same with Ryu and the hadouken/shoryuken thing

HOW DO YOU BEAT THAT? lol
Only time I can ever get hits in are if I jump over the fireballs a distance away and land just short of where they can uppercut me, so I can get a hit in before they’ve recovered

At least with dhalsim I can slide under hadoukens or heavy punch them from far away, but with every other character it’s kinda hard

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jordo, yea the different versions of SF kind of play differently, so let us know which version of SF you play, and maybe there will be more help.

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Street Fighter 2 is a good game to learn basics such as blocking, zoning, priority, frames, range/hitboxes, invincibility, throws, etc. There are so many things to learn, it’s best to ask one question at a time and work on that.

SF2 was easy for me to teach people how to charge. It’s usually about two seconds, but what I tell people is hold back and look at Guile’s feet and when he does two hops back instantly press forward and a punch button at the same time. Remember the timing usually, if you do it too early then I recommend charging longer than normal because the game checks if you charged for at least a certain number of seconds so more than required is still good. For Guile, instead of charging back and pressing forward and a punch button, hold down for the charge duration but then press up and a kick button the same time that up on the joystick is reached. Also make sure to go from down to up in a straight line instead of an arc (games likes SvC are more strict with charging). In most SF games you can hold down and back (low blocking) at the same time that way you can charge both down and back at the same time. After charge duration is reached you can then press forward + punch with Guile for an instant sonic boom or up + kick for an instant flash kick.

You also might want to learn to buffer moves. For example, it might seem impossible to attack an opponent and have time to charge a move, but you can press an attack button and charge the joystick at the same time. If you are holding and have charged the charge duration with Guile, press an attack and then do up + kick and your character should cancel/combo/chain into a flash kick instantly. Now the question is how do I know that move X combos into move Y? A lot of FAQs have lists of what cancels into what usually and using this you can create combos. Also it’s important to learn the frames and recovery of moves. If you recover from a move before the opponent you can then still land a hit on the opponent without the need to cancel. Take Strider’s LP in Marvel vs Capcom for example. Just and hit lp at the top of an opponent’s head, you recover so fast and the opponent is still in hit stun so you can press LP again and it will “combo.”

You said your blocking fails. Usually, there are four types of blockable attacks: High, Mid, Low, and Ground. For basic understanding you might want to think of Low and Mid as the same because when most players say Low they mean ground and the term ground is merely a programming term. So from now on when I say low I mean ground. A high attack must be blocked by standing and holding back. Examples include an opponent jumping on you and hitting you from the air or doing an overhead attack on the ground (learn which attacks count as overhead). Mid attacks can be blocked low or high. Low attacks are attacks that usually trip your character and must be blocked low (hold down and back at the same time). Throws can’t be blocked. On the ground you can mix up overheads (must be blocked high), low attacks (must be blocked low), and throws. Most people prefer low attacks unless playing a throw based character so try to stay out of throw range and be ready to block low. In basic SF games most jump in characters will do a high attack so be ready to block high.

I have to go right now so I will stop here and if you ask more stuff I will post more later. Learn what moves beat others moves. Work on timing. Try playing the game at a lower speed if you can’t understand anything but once you learn the basics play at max speed to increase your reflexes.

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[media=youtube]d0cFs5mHQC4[/media]

Watch that (and part 2 of course). Me also being a noob at 2D fighting games, these videos helped me a lot.

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I kind of prefer alpha 3 due to the fact that I can actually hit people with normal attacks haha, there’s something weird about the SF2 hitboxes to me, like people seem to hit me from so far away or from awkward places and I just go WTF?? lol. Also for some reason tatsumaki senpuukyaku (finally searched the correct name) feels less responsive in SF2 compared to alpha.

Cammy and Deejay especially were impossible for me to beat with any character I tried (SF2), because I’d go in to punch them and somehow their kicks would get priority over whatever I’d do, even those tatsumaki senpuukyaku’s I’d get broken out of (I think). Basically any normal punches/kicks I’d try and do would end in failure because they get the first hit on me somehow, and this doesn’t happen to me in alpha 3.

Zangief was kind of hard for me as well because I find it difficult to avoid being grappled when I’m trying to pull off a combo (chain), otherwise I just jump in and out and try and use longer ranged HP, HK etc.

However I tend to do pretty well on SF2 turbo on the slow setting (1), but once I put it to 2 or 3 I play like I’ve never touched a fighting game in my life which is kinda weird

Which game is going to be more like SF IV? Because I’ll probably focus on whichever is the closest so my reflexes are accustomed to that speed. I read that SF2 turbo is about the speed, but what speed setting for turbo are people talking about, 1,2, or 3?

Sorry for all the wall of text, just trying to make things as clear as possible.

Also, thanks alot for what you guys have said so far, it’s been really helpful

I pretty much got charge characters down now, the hard part now is withstanding the barrage of combos people throw at you and getting your own moves off :frowning:

If you guys don’t mind me asking though, what are “frames” and how are they useful? From what I understand there’s 60 frames a second in a game, but how can you guys possibly count the frames and use them somehow?

Thanks for your post eldergod, helped clear up some things, I realize that I didn’t know that air attacks had to be blocked with simply ‘back’, because I tend to block ‘down-back’ because slide kicks always woop my ass
Can you block in the air too (I’ve never seen it work before) or is that only in V-ism or whatever in alpha 3, I always play A-ism I think (the standard one).

And thanks Chemical Justice for that video, I had no idea about throw softening!

Does anyone know of a site that tells you what specials avoid other things? *ex. in that movie balrogs headbut going over hadoukens
I’m going to be focusing mostly on vega, ken, and maybe dhalsim, so any info would be appreciated.

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SF IV is closest to SF IV, start now but if you can’t then SF 2 is as close as you can get.

SF 2 does not allow air block, which means unless you have a good reason for jumping, you shouldn’t do it.

Kara cancel is used in 3S a lot. Usually you have a certain range for your throw. Characters can move their position based on their moves. If you input a regular punch or kick that moves your character forward and instantly input a throw your character will cancel the punch or kick you did and execute a throw for that new position that’s [probably] closer to your opponent. This basically allows you to do a throw at range throw range + range gained from moving during the attack you will cancel. This is good to use because the extra range may be enough to throw the opponent when the normal range is not enough.

There are many easy ways to count frames, but all you need to know is that a frame is the basic unit of time for a fighting game. The Japanese make frame charts, which list every move and the frames. Here is an example for third strike: http://ensabahnur.free.fr/Baston/index.php?page=gameChars&gameNum=20&gameName=Street%20Fighter%20III%20Third%20Strike. Not everyone knows the really advanced stuff but common terms all people use that a move has are start up, duration/active frames, and recovery. Start up is how long after starting the move the move will have an active hit box (can actually hit), duration is the duration of the hit box(es), and recovery is how long it takes to recover from a certain move. Knowing frame advantages and disadvantages lets you know which moves in which situations will hit first or be safe and which moves you shouldn’t do in certain situations. Knowing this you will know if you block a certain move if you will be able to do a certain move to your opponent before they can block to counter. If both characters and their moves are non-invincibility moves where both characters remain completely on the ground and within each other’s range, but one move takes more frames to “start-up” this means that the move with less frames (less start up) will hit first. This may not sound like much by itself, but by cancel/combo you can actually end up doing a lot of damage. An example is Magneto in MvC2. You may say his c. lk is a weak low range attack but because it is 1 frame only, it will beat any other move that has a longer start up as long as the opponent’s hitbox exists in the target plane. Magneto can cancel it and with a single reset can kill an entire character, all starting thanks to that c. lk. Although some moves may have a longer start up duration to actually hit the opponent, they may have some instant properties. Just like I explained kara throws being a technique to increase range, some moves have other properties as well. For example Iron Man’s standing fierce kick has the property that it removes his low left hitbox so Magneto’s c. lk may whiff (miss) and then the active frames of Iron Man’s attack will cause Magneto to get hit.

I’m starting to go into wall of text mode, so back to basics. Out of the three characters you stated, I recommend Ken, but if you don’t mind I recommend you change Ken to Ryu. You can read about Shoryuken frames and invincibility, but the best method for you is to play against people, and learn for yourself from experience. Also I don’t like that I know slow fireball is better than fast fireball mentality. Each has their own use, learn what space each controls per time unit. Yes, I said per time unit, the tutorial has a flaw that it just states a fireball covering the entire horizontal plane. When a character is just starting a fireball since the fireball is not next to you, you can still move dash forward and then do something like a super or move to go through/over/under the fireball and still hit the opponent.

Some basics for the SF2 version:
Frame Data: http://nki.combovideos.com/flame.html
SRK wiki for ST: http://shoryuken.com/wiki/index.php/Super_Street_Fighter_2_Turbo#Kara_Canceling

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If you like Alpha 3 but don’t quite like the SF2 feel, try Alpha 2. As for frame data, don’t worry about it for now. It isn’t nearly as important for 2D fighters as it is for something like VF or Tekken. It’s good to understand how frames work, but don’t worry about learning frame data for now. The best way right now to learn is to stick with one character you like, which also fits your style (shoto, poking, defensive, etc.), then either locally or through GGPO/2DF play people that are about your level, and also people that are better than you and can teach you stuff.

Also, don’t worry about fighting the CPU in any game. The CPU just reads inputs and cheats, and does not do logical things.

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Well, since you’ve been playing Street Fighter through the magic of emulation, I’m sure you don’t own SFAC and thus, haven’t seen David Sirlin’s tutorials to Super Turbo:

Beginner: (pt1) [media=youtube]d0cFs5mHQC4[/media]
Beginner: (pt2) [media=youtube]OoILSEQL9jE[/media]
Intermediate: [media=youtube]jCapuhsOMcg[/media]
Advanced: [media=youtube]t8dD3K2_Pz4[/media]

The Beginner parts might be too basic for you, but I definately recommend watching Intermediate and Advanced a few times and letting all that delicious knowledge about crossups and reversals soak in. It’s general knowledge that should help you in all fighting games, especially Super Turbo (which also happens to be probably the closest game to SFIV)

Press Punch just as you press Up. Execution is much easier in SFIV, so don’t worry too much if you can’t quite hit 100% execution (though, that’ll certainly help). I’m sure by the time you’ve mastered everything else everyone is telling you to learn, your execution will be solid in time for SFIV :looney:

Oh man.

The first combo you described is a jump-in - you start off with a strong jumping attack… time it so that it hits just as you hit the ground. Then follow it up with pretty much any ground combo and it’ll work.

Start off with the basic Jumping HK, Crouching HK. Then start doing Jumping HK, 2-in-1 (usually Crouching MK, Hadouken). Just keep working on up…

While you’re at it, you can learn some cross-ups too. That might be a little advanced for now, though.

The second combo you described is a juggle. Most games are rather inconsistent with juggles (attacks that look like they should juggle don’t), and usually most characters will only have one or two specific juggles that you’d need to learn. Figure out what those are and practice them.

Priority… varies from game to game. It doesn’t seem like you need a strong grasp of priority to do well in SFIV, knowing the speed of your attacks and what attacks will stuff out what seems to be more important.

I don’t think being a charge character gives a disposition to being a defensive or offensive character. It really depends on the character itself and what tools they have at their disposal. Charging just really means that your character controls differently from others.

You can learn a lot of these secrets by looking at frame data… it’s a little complicated, but between the frame data that’s posted here on SRK and the countless videos you find on YouTube, I think you should be able to find all of these “secrets”, with a bit of work.

I personally don’t know all the data for ST, so I can’t say much for whether LP/HP hadoukens differ in damage or recovery. I just know one moves faster than the other :rofl:

I guess a pro would be a quick learner and always aims to learn from every game he plays, win or lose. If you get completely shutdown by a certain style of play, practice against that style (find a friend to copy it, or just rematch the original user) until you’ve completely mastered how to get around it. The fewer ways your opponent has to completely beat you down, the better. You’re one step closer to not getting double perfected all the time and having actual intense mind games with your opponent :wgrin:

Yes, focus on reflexes. Your best friend for ST and SFIV are reflexes. Avoid slow games that’ll just dull your reflexes :rofl:

Spamming specials isn’t always a bad thing. Just know that you have normal attacks and that they do have their purposes… think of your attacks as tools. Sometimes some tools will be much much more useful than others in certain situations, and there’s nothing wrong with taking advantage of that.

Look at Akuma vs Zangief in SFIV. Akuma relies on teleports and go zankuu because almost every other option in his arsenal can result in him getting thrown for 20% of his health.

Can’t really say much for the rest that I haven’t said already.

Again, frame data is your friend here.

If your opponent has a 3 frame attack, and your fastest attack is 4 frames, then you should generally assume that you are NOT going to get first hit in a situation like that. There are just cases like that where you are never going to win, no matter how quickly you mash that jab button.

It’s something that’ll come with time, but you should definately know now that there are situations where you can’t win. Avoid letting those situations happen :slight_smile: