The Natural Edge

Classic Fighting Games Super Street Fighter II Turbo
1

I am learning street fighter ii right now and documenting a few vids on youtube as i go along–also, i am collecting vids of example play of specific characters and match-ups.
Before I move on to examine Blanka in SFII: WW, i wanted to focus on the proper use of the basics, and I mean the VERY basics.

The Basics (of WW):

THE GAME-

 Usually, win 2 out of 3 rounds vs your opponent.

JOYSTICK COMMANDS-

 Here I wanted to focus on footwork. Naturally, this can make or break a fight once the movesets of each character are also introduced.

Why would you advance? retreat? crouch? jump? jump forward? jump back? Until I introduce movesets and other commands, these are rhetorical questions…

BUTTON COMMANDS-

 How you attack is also key in gameplay. There are 6 basic attacks: punches being jab, strong, and fierce; kicks being short, forward, and roundhouse. These 6 basic attacks usually become 18 basic attacks when introducing the jump, neutral, and the crouch. Consider strength/speed/recovery/priority/range (hitbox). Usually the button commands are already in ascending order in reference to this. For example, jabs/shorts are usually, if not always, weaker than strongs/forwards, but are also quicker, recover faster, but have a shorter range. However, is priority always this simple, too? Just something to consider later on after evaluating moves, for, although each character has the same basic button command, what they do may be similar, but has key differences.

*Are there any scenarios where, when 2 characters are face to face and pressing their attacks at the same time, a s.fierce beats a s.strong/s.jab? A s.roundhouse beats a s.forward/s.short?
*The above may be easy, but what about these scenarios:
s.jab vs. s.short
s.strong vs. s.forward
s.fierce vs. s.roundhouse
It gets a little trickier, not including the speed variations and attack variations of specific characters…

BLOCKING-

 Why block? Though it is natural to say, "Blocking is good," who really WANTS to block? Once you start blocking, you enter a small guessing game: do you block low or do you block high? How do you block? You can block standing, you can block crouching, but--in this game--you CAN NOT block in the air (-1 for jumping, huh? you had better have a darn good reason for being in the air, then...)

standing block: blocks all standing attacks
crouching block: blocks all standing attacks? (no? later…) blocks all crouching attacks

Theoretically, launching a constant offense would prevent the need to ever block at all. The question though: is that possible? (it would depend on your attack/attack sequence OR your attack/attack sequence AND your opponents will/knowledge).

Theoretically, if you are so skilled where you can block ALL incoming attacks, you could simply COUNTER if (if?!?) the opportunity presents itself and run the clock to either win by most health or victory. Not in this game. Some moves do chip damage and some are unblockable. Well, ONLY special moves do chip damage (right?), thus it might be useful to know when to expect a normal attack vs a special attack vs an unblockable. Thus, it might be useful to know which moves of your own do chip (and how much) and are unblockable…not forgetting your opponents.

THROWS:

   Throws are interesting for the simple fact that they can't be blocked. Throws however, must be performed directly in front of your opponent (right?) Perform a throw too far from your opponent, and you will simply see the corresponding normal. So, how close do you have to be in order to throw? From what I've seen, this varies between characters and command throws (!).

Theoretically, the offensive player could just force the opponent to block, and simply throw them. This puts the defensive player in the position of needing to know when to counter the throw with a faster throw, or to continue to block. If the defensive player guesses incorrectly as far as countering a throw, and inputs a normal throw, they will be stuffed with a normal attack. (Is this always true with normal throws? does the target have to be in either block or neutral? i think so…)

*What if the character on defense has a command throw (does not require the target to be in block or neutral) and counters an offensive string with their command throw? Will it out-prioritize or be faster? Will consider when a command throw is encountered later…

*Exactly how useful are Chun-li and Guile’s AIR THROWS? (If any want to stab at this now, feel free, but I will check it out when I get to them)

Peace

2

http://www.shoryuken.com/wiki/index.php/Super_Turbo

3

http://www.crunkgames.com/?p=87&page=50

4

LOL! :rofl: Seriously nohoho, how long have you been waiting to use that link?

5

that was a good read, nohoho. lol familiar. heh, no need to try and re-invent the wheel. guess i’ll focus on my 3 characters then: gief, t.hawk, and sagat

6

actually, i think i might change up on my characters…

7

Ok,

Based on my preferred play-styles, I have narrowed down my character selection to the following pairs:
  1. T.Hawk OR Vega OR E.Honda OR Cammy

&

  1. Guile OR Sagat OR Dhalsim OR Vega

This is a little tough for me, but in the first match-up, I am clueless. As far as the second match-up, Guile seems to be taking the lead slightly over Sim.

8

Guile &

Alright,

 Out of the 1st pair, I bump up Guile and choose him. As for the 2nd, Sim is my choice.
9

judge_rl - I wasn’t trying to flame. I think that attempting to look at SF2 with fresh eyes is an intriguing idea. I mean I wasn’t trying to discourage you from working on that.

See but here I will start flaming: I could give a fuck about what character you use. “Who should I use?” is some solipsistic crap that plagues SRK in general imo. Quad post, too? Don’t be a jackass.

10

nohoho:

You didn’t discourage me from taking a fresh look at SF2, just kinda quieted down my thinking on keyboard a bit. Also, I figure I should probably take a look at the character(s) I want to focus on and maybe strategies on their match-ups. Again, this game has been out for a minute, thus there are likely older threads with whatever it is I might consider to post, so why not check first?

In regards to the quad post, thinking on keyboard again. I was kinda hoping for some input as I thought ‘aloud.’ Also, I figured it would narrow down for others who I intended on taking a look at, but who cares? There is just something about the SRK community that says…er…said: “Your thoughts are welcome.” Now, it’s more like, “Your thoughts are welcome, as long as they are more organized.” =)

11

This forum has tons of topics on individual characters. Just read those and some good strats on the shoryuken wiki (blanka’s is really good). We don’t care which characters you are interested in. When you choose a character or two and have questions, come bank to have a discussion. Try out a character against some friends/local comp and see which characters “speak to you” as it were.

12

This thread is useless.
Everybody here knows what “blocking” is, there’s no need in writing all that stuff down. Nobody is interested in what character you choose nor does anybody care about which choice top players like Muteki or Noguchi will make concerning characters.
Just play.

If you do need help then ask in the according threads, get information about each character’s advantages/disadvantages and make your choice based on these facts. More important, choose a character you feel comfortable with, i.e. don’t choose T.Hawk if you can’t do negative edged 360’s.

Making such a thread might imply that you are unwilling to learn on your own or that you aren’t even eager to get competitive.

13

So you wanna come onto an old ass thread that people are no longer paying attention to and gang up on this dude cause you see everyone else is flaming the shit outta him and he is not defending himself. Muther fucker you have no heart.
People like you FUCK UP SRK!!! You were a new guy once too and don’t forget that shit!!!

Judge don’t let nobody talk shit to you. I’m going to add you to my buddy list.

14

The point is that I don’t see any need in making a thread that is about the very basics of fighting games. Everybody knows them, so why should we make a FAQ about things that are self-explanitory anyway? For the sake of completeness?
It might be useful for people who don’t play SF but they don’t sign up an account on a fighting game site anyway. That wouldn’t make any sense. Everyone is here to gain knowledge, skill and to improve. Knowing the basics is crucial but that’s certainly not the goal SRK is striving for. The goal here is to gain depth, something that is not self-explanitory and must be explained to “new guys” therefore-be it by experience or research (frame data, glitches).

I don’t understand why you say it’s an old thread. Look at the date of judge’s first post. It’s quite new.
I would fully understand and accept this thread if it was made long time ago (several years) but this thread has just been made, considering how long SRK exists, of course. Also, there have already been made FAQs by jchensor and John Choi that do cover up these things and many more: stuff like “time”, “health bar” and “combo”.

I’ve joined SRK because I wanted to improve and I knew that I wouldn’t get any better if I didn’t take the opportunity to talk to professionals. But in order to talk to them you need to know the basics. Basics are necessary just because they’re self-explanitory and have to be learned by yourself. YOU need to take the first step. Professionals don’t have the time to teach blocking and what a time counter does.

I know I wasn’t friendly (not constructive as well) and I criticized judge without even respecting the effort and the time he took to write this immense load of information down but I don’t see any strategical depth within this. Don’t get me wrong, by strategical depth I mean things like Prorating, Roll-canelling, crouch-cancelling, Wave-dashing, Wall sliding and glitches. Glitches that can actually be applied to in real matches-with great effect.

But at least you’re honest and not afraid of conflicts. That’s something I appreciate. I’m not joking. I mean it. It just bugs me when I see threads on SRK that talk about the use of 1 single move (Chun-Li, 3rd Strike…) while other characters’ threads don’t even fill five pages. That’s just not… alright. I hope we can get this straight somehow.

15

…ok. I posted that initial topic because I am fairly new to playing ST competitively. I have played the game before, but have never REALLY begun to sit and think on specific strats for any certain characters. What I was doing was simply recording what I already knew, and trying to weed out the bad instincts that I and some other players may have in the game.
Many players see blocking and jumping as basics, but to call them basic is to turn a blind eye towards how CRUCIAL they are to your game. Surely, you have moments when you randomly perform a move you never intended on doing and would like to remove that faulty randomness from your overall game. Also, I never implied that I wasn’t willing to play competitively AT ALL; or even refuse to learn on my own. How did you even begin to get that idea?
The greatest hinderance to some of these fighting game communities is that newcomers are sneered at until they gain some sort of respect by winning a tourney or etc. If you can’t log on to a public forum where people post information, ideas, and thoughts and do just that, why have a forum at all…

16

Sorry for the prejudices, I didn’t know you’ve just begun playing. I’ve been to focused on my own thoughts…

You’re right about the very basics of Street Fighter, they ARE crucial to victory.
The first problem I’ve had when playing was what to do next:
either BLOCK or ATTACK??

“Offence is the best defence” is my philosophy, so I went for an attack. I didn’t care which attack; by then I didn’t know that every attack has its own special use, especially “special” attacks. I wanted to learn the motion for the special moves because they’re good but I didn’t know that special moves are only to be used at “special” moments, e.g. Dragon Punches are to be used as anti-airs and not as pokes.
I hope you get my point^^

Maybe it’s not THAT bad at all to have a Basic Super Turbo Guide. You know, Super Turbo is one of THE most basic fighting games on earth. Everyone new to fighting games should start with THIS game, starting with Third Strike would be too disappointing… I’ve started with Super Turbo, too. I’m no pro but I like to increase my knowledge about fighting games, that’s all. Looking up match videos and in-depth strategies or even frame data increases your abilities. Of course it’s just theory but you actually KNOW how to play correctly.

17

=)

Judge weren’t you working on a vid. ?
How’s that coming along? If it’s done can you PM me the link? I’d like to check it out.