I’ve never had a shoto-whore beat me at HF yet. All the arguments of good ranging fall short with Vega’s speed on both in the air and on the ground. Mix it up with quick wall jumps and crossup “Inza Drop” and they go home crying every time with their “foolproof” tactics.
Even a good Blanka player will walk all over a shoto in HF. Good airspeed kills any sucker relying on hadouken ranging in HF. Ken especially was great in CE, but HF balanced everything up nicely.
I am so looking forward to this hitting XBLA. I can’t wait to teach all those Ryu/Ken babies how to play.
you must have good reactions or something because HF vega is the worst between ce, hf, super, and ST and one of the worst in the game. He has no reversal and no anti air move from the ground. I’ll gladly get poked 3-5 times just to land one dp followed by wakeup. One blocked jump in=death to vega from shoto. Backflip isn’t gonna save you.
The SNES version of HF was where I learned the game. At the game start screen there were a number of “stars” that indicated game speed. 3 stars (4 on the PAL version) was arcade speed. With a cheat, you could push it up to 10 stars (ie: roughly twice as fast as the arcade).
As a kid I played that game non stop on 10 star, hardest difficulty. Or against any mates willing to come around and play. Do that for 5 years, and fast reactions against shotos is a walk in the park.
Like I said above, I hear a lot of shoto players tell me that Ryu/Ken are unbeatable. I’m yet to see it with my own eyes. And most people get a rude shock when they’ve been beaten 25 games to nil with Vega-claw.
What does any of that have to do with Honda dying to Ken and Ryu? Besides, it’s not like Blanka beats either of them either. It’s probably 5/5 or even 6/4 in favor of the ansatsuken fighter.
Honda definitely has a rougher time with the shotos, particularly with his back to the wall. His splash will catch them off guard if they’re close enough (upwards invincibility through fireballs), but good range players will sit slightly outside that and catch him on the way down.
Mix up tactics will help you there. Too many people jump forwards over fireballs. A well timed up or even back jump (especially after walking forwards) can draw out a shoryu that won’t connect, and Honda is all over them after that. Difficult, but not impossible. With two experts versing, Ryu/Ken definitely have the slight favour over Honda. Not a guaranteed win by any means, but definitely better odds. But again, over here too many people make too many silly mistakes with shotos.
Are you talking about star speed or star difficulty? Because you start off talking about stars and their speed, and then start talking about star difficulty. ARAIK, star difficulty only goes up to 8 (speed to 10) and difficulty has nothing to do with speed.
ok, well give some HF vega strats vs HF shotos then, like what moves do you use the most, or combos. I like playing vega vs shoto too.
I sometimes have a hard time against a crazy cpu vega.
SNES HF had difficulty 1-8, and default speed 1-4. Speeds 1-10 were available with the “capcom code” (Down, R, Up, L, Y, B, X, A). Play Difficulty 8, speed 10 against the CPU to test your skills!
Obviously the SNES version isn’t arcade perfect. I play on a real PCB, but MAME is pretty good too (the usual “if you use Windows MAME and VSync don’t whine to me about timing issues” disclaimer applies - I use Linux and AdvanceMAME). I’ve generally stayed away from console versions since the SNES.
Vega’s light on combos. As mentioned by others, his annoyance factor is high. I use his ground speed to maximum advantage. You can often walk straight up to your opponent and throw them before they realise what the hell is going on.
Likewise, walk straight up and do a crouching medium kick. Do a half-second pause and throw another. 9 times out of 10 one or both will connect as they expect something completely different.
Use the Izuna Drop only as a double-crossup. Watch out for shotos with fast reflexes, as they can catch you on the way up (if they miss, however…). If you are on the left, Izuna to the right and then quickly to the left again and slam. Your opponent will need to change sides twice, which really messes with people’s DPs (and charge characters too). Mix this up with some Izunas that don’t connect at all. Go for the move, and then come in as normal, but at the last minute hold back. With the speed of the game and Vega’s speed, people will panic and throw anti-airs all the time. You can literally walk straight up and drop them on their heads with his throw, thanks to his crazy ground speed. Blankas will try to either jump back and kick, or use electricity. Again, a wiffed Izuna works wonders forcing people to pull out moves they don’t want to.
Even during the Izuna Drop Vega has great air control and speed. Sometimes I’ll wiggle the stick so he seems to fly in “bursts” across the screen, again messing up people’s timings even more.
DON’T use the crouching heavy kick slide unless you are well out of range. Use it only to keep an opponent away from you as they walk in. Doing the slide deep ends you in all sorts of strife as they block then punish.
The “Crystal Flash” (rolling attack) is a bit iffy. No go on shotos (unless it’s a guaranteed like on the way down from a shoryu, or when dizzy). Anyone else has problems with it most of the time, particularly when getting up off the floor (again, not on shotos - wakeup DPs are bad, mmm’kay?). Hit 2-3 times with it and throw a crouching feirce afterwards. If they’re stupid enough to walk into the feirce (as most seem to want to do - maybe they think the roll pauses too long and want to counter?) the fierce will generally dizzy. If you’re already out of the dizzy, use crouching jabs instead to score a few annoying hits.
In fact, the crouching feirce is pretty good generally too. It does good (not great) damage, has heaps of range, and can dizzy in 2 or 3 good solid hits.
Vega with his claw on has some incredible reach. That combined with his speed makes him a right bastard. HF is a quick game, and Vega is a quick character. His jumps have a decent distance on them, but are quick. If you’ve got good reflexes, you can easily overpower shotos trying to range you, as a Hadouken is just so painfully slow compared to Vega. He can get away with a lot of cheeky stuff that no other character can. Don’t expect whopping big combos and killer attacks. But you’ll get in 10 attacks to your opponent’s 1 if your reflexes can keep up.
I know people who try to chain crouching medium punches into a Crystal Flash, or other such risky stuff. Vega isn’t quick enough to cancel out of standard moves for guaranteed combo strikes, so most of those techniques are blockable and punishable.
I don’t ever use his backflip. It’s pointless. It causes far more dramas than it’s worth.
Versus Vega, you need to fight fire with fire. Big slow moves will be blocked and punished. Use quick light moves. Jabs and shorts in close. Ken’s hurricane is a Vega destroyer. Catch Vega right on top with a hurricane and you’ll hit on both sides of the spin, doubling the amount of hits (and lining up nicely for a dizzy). Likewise Honda, Chun Li and Blanka all have their button-mash moves which hit a few times if blocked, and get you all the closer to knocking that claw off.
When Vega’s claw comes off, he loses quite a bit of range. So again, don’t worry about big hits. Get lots of little hits in and force Vega to block. Knock that claw off, and go crazy when it does.
As mentioned, Vega doesn’t have an effective anti-air. Good Vega players will use the air-throw as an anti-air. Again, with Vega’s sheer speed, it’s doable for those blessed with quick reflexes. Versus Chun Li and her powerful legs (and Blanka to a point), or a shoto coming in with a air-hurricane, it’s all bad.
I should note that HF is the ONLY game I use Vega in. In CE and prior he (and the game in general) are too slow, and in the “Super” and later games they nerfed him big time with crap, slow moves, reduced range, reduced damage, stupid kicks that don’t work, etc, etc. HF Vega is the only Vega worth playing IMHO.
Crouching medium kick, or maybe jab. Or jump back out again just to tease them. Vega play is a real mental game. Frustrating the crap out of your opponent is half the fun.
If the slide connects for a knockdown and they don’t have any high priority moves, or easy wakeups, then a crystal flash will give you some chip damage if they block, or a nice deap 2-3 hits if they try something heroic.
For folks with easy wakeups, I’ll take a step back (out of wakeup throw range) and use a low fierce for a nice deep hit. Mix this up with a half-second pause and a feirce, and you’ll get folks trying wakeups and being vulnerable on the way down (or recoil, or follow through, or whatever). Same principle for people gettnig up from Izuna Drops, ground throws, or air throws.
Pretty much. Vega’s no combo king. He’s good for chipping away slowly at someone. With the advent of combo-centric games, super specials, etc, he fell to the wayside (although I see more and more people using him in CvS2 lately). But for HF, he’s just perfect.
Super Vega I find too slow, and he has all these annoying kicks that don’t do anything special. His real power is in his crazy speed. I’m a bit of a “twitch” player (I love my manic shmups too), so reflex-play is my favourite way to go. I try not to plan too far ahead, and prefer to play the game by reactions.
I missed the ST phase. That was about the time I hit late highschool, and for the next 3-5 years gave up a lot of my serious SF playtime in exchange for study (only catching casual matches here and there when I was waiting for busses or skipping really boring thermodynamics classes). Around the time of the vs games (XMvSF, etc) was when I got back into it all, so from around ST through to Alpha 2 I’m not crash hot.
I love my oldschool. You should see my 3S. I suck. Badly. :lol:
Annoying kicks? Stand medium kick is a great poke, and stand RH is the AA Vega needed. Plus, the Flying Barcelona Attack knocks down. How are those not improvements?
Y hes has Crystal Flash, c.HP which must be the easiest redizzy in the SF2 series outside repeated WW Jabs or Shorts, but I didn’t know abr Crystal, c.HP, c.MP …cool. Can anyone post a vid?
The animation time is too slow. Again, Vega is about annoyance factor. Giving him an AA at the expense of speed isn’t a trade I like.
Barcelona knockdown is handy tho.
[edit] And again, I’m not an ST player. I gave up SF in general just after Super, which was a bloody slow game. So I know little of Vega intricacies after HF.
I think someone awhile back (Apoc maybe) talked to the Japanese at Evo and found out that this was just a rumor. Akuma and O.Sagat are the only soft bans in Japan.
