Turning the Corner stories

Classic Fighting Games SSF2T: HD Remix
1

I can’t say for everyone, maybe some of you just gradually improved and there was never any significant points where you really felt like you turned a corner and became better, but for me there was a clear point. As such I thought it might be interesting to hear people share their stories on when things first started to click for them, whether it was in HD Remix as it was for me or the original ST. It might also help beginner players who feel stuck hear some stories of how people were able to get over that hump.

In my case I’d played Street Fighter before HD Remix, as a kid I’d played the original in arcades and Super SF2 on my genesis years ago but I was never anything more then casual. Back then my favorite characters were Cammy and Ryu because I could actually pull off cannon drill and hadoken, but not much else, plus I just thought they were cool.

Fast forward many years to recently when HD Remix released. I’d never played the original ST, so concepts like supers and throw softening were new to me to begin with but even more so it quickly became apparent to me that the game’s high level of play had evolved well beyond punch, kick, and occasionally fireball I did with friends as a kid. Still I was interested in being a part of this crazy fighting world so rather then shy away from the game or always select the “random” button for character selection as I’ve done in most other fighting games I’ve played over the years I decided I would pick one character and learn them inside and out. Seeing both that Ryu seemed to be overly popular now, and that several of Cammy’s moves were now the fireball motion that I was actually capable of performing with any consistency I quickly chose her as my main. I trained with her, went through arcade mode with her many many times until I could do every one of her moves outside of cannon spike with near perfect consistency.

Then I went online.

I wouldn’t call it a bad experience, I never really got overly frustrated, but it was clear early on I was out matched by 75% of the people I played. My first day online found me with a 5-15 record, and one of those wins came when my opponent who was up 2-1 disconnected, another when, desiring to shake things up to break my losing streak funk, I gave up on Cammy for a game and picked (then won with) Chun li.

The next day I began to look for tips online and found a little trick called a cross up. Previously knocking an opponent down meant nothing to me, I just waited till they got back up and we went back at it, but now I started training myself to use these opportunities to perform cross ups and really put the pressure on. Further still I began to go into training with the hit boxes on and really examine where my hitboxes extended to. I learned that certain light attack hit boxes of Cammy’s extended farther then I realized and that her spinning back fist could be done from such a range that I could hit them just before they could sweep me as they’d been doing.

I took my new found tactics online… and saw NO improvement! When I stopped for the night I was 4-14 on the day, an actually lower winning percentage! But something was different. I was almost never getting 3-0’d as I had been before, almost every match seemed to see me fall behind 2-0, then I’d start to get a better feel for the match up and win either one or two games before losing just barely 3-1/3-2. The results didn’t show it but some how I really felt like I was SO close.

And so that night before calling it a night and going to bed I signed in for a few more matches. I finished that night 5-0! And most of the matches weren’t even close, I was winning 3-0 in most of them. You’d think that’d make it easier to sleep but it didn’t, I wanted to keep playing, I’d tasted success and it was sweet.

The following day my success continued, I went 10-2! The previous night wasn’t just a fluke. I had turned a corner. The cross ups and more aggressive play had helped, but the biggest thing was experience. I had learned what did and didn’t work in most of Cammy’s match ups. For new players I can’t emphasize this enough, don’t just be frustrated by losses, learn from them. Keep trying different things, you’d be surprised how often something as simple as spamming a standing medium kick, or using a jumping medium punch instead of a jumping medium kick can completely turn a match up around.

Since then I’ve been continuing to work on improving. I can now cannon spike (thrust kick) pretty much 90% of the time I want to. I can now almost always use the right cannon drill for the distance I’m at so that its safe on block. I now use my cannonball throw (hooligan throw) much more wisesly and as such it almost never fails to connect when I do. I only use my cannon spin (spinning backfist) in a few match ups but in those match ups I have the range down so that I know where to position myself to use it to punish fireballs on reaction. I still can’t do my spin drive smasher with the consistency I’d like but I’m getting better at knowing when to use it (hurray for invulnerability) and slowly getting more consistent with its activation. I’m still working on getting wake up cannon spikes to come out consistently but even when I don’t I’m getting out of wake up traps that I used to never get out of. Conversely I’m almost always landing cross ups on waking up opponents and outside of them being in the corner I almost never get hit by their wake up shoryukens.

My win percentage has completely flip-flopped, instead of coming in expecting to lose and every once in a while stealing a win, I’m now coming in expecting to win and every once in a while suffering a close loss. I’m hardly a great player, but as the record now shows, I’m now better then most, something in those first 30 or so games online I was truly beginning to doubt would ever happen.

So that’s my story of how I turned the first corner in my striving to be a decent STR player. I’m proof positive that you can come into this game a terrible player and yet evolve into something some what respectable with a little practice, patience, and persistence. I’d be interested to hear if anyone else had a story of their own.

2

On PSN 99% of people under ~2000 rating have no idea how to block crossups. You can juast pick Ken and TOD them over and over.

3

For me… It was as simple as stop playing mindlessly and learn the character’s normals/moves and then come up with strategies of my own and ones from videos.

Then it only got better. lol.

4

DanTheTimid: Props to you dude. Most people I’ve encountered in LIVE are just douchebags, seriously, around 70% of the people either send me hate messages, ragequit, call me ****** , neg rep me, etc.

It takes balls to accept you need to improve instead of just complaining about things being cheap or broken and blaming everything/everyone else for your own lack of skill. But I’m still glad the other 30% are players willing to learn this game.

5

I’ll post up my story. And this is actually a story from FURTHER along in my SF career, basically when I went from good player who can manage himself to the next level of being able to call myself actually an “expert.”

It was at UCLA, and it was Alpha 2, actually. There was one player there who was particularly good (who never played in tourneys and what not… such a shame) named Dean. Now keep in mind, I was already one of the better players at the school. I wasn’t bad by any means and I knew all the high level technical tricks and such. I was awesome at Combos, I could do Cross-ups, I had all the theories down, I knew tricks and baits and stuff, I had been posting on agsf2, etc. etc. I had a HUGE wealth of knowledge on playing Fighting Games. But I had never reached that next elusive level. And, IMO, it’s the HARDEST gap to jump for most players because it’s almost impossible to explain.

So it was SFA2, and Dean and I were playing, just us, no one else. I was Birdie and he was Bison and he was kicking my ass. Granted, that’s a bad match up, but he was destroying me. I mean, I should be able to win a round or a game here and there, but I mean, I played him a TON of times in a row, and I could never, ever, ever beat him. I don’t think I even ever got a single round.

At one point in time, he kept doing Devil’s Reverse in the corner over and over again, and I couldn’t figure out a way to stop it. And after losing to that, like, 5 matches in a row, I figured out a counter to it. So the next time he did it, I was gonna get him!

But the funniest thing happened. He stopped doing it. He never did it again, even though I was prepared for it this time. And it made me soooo angry. And then he proceeded to kick my ass with other tactics. The whole rest of the night, I was waiting for that damn Devil’s Reverse, and he never did it anymore.

Finally, after losing what felt like 800 times in a row or something, I gave up. Afterwards, he apologized to me for being so brutal, but he said the hot Asian chick who played Street Fighter was watching, so he had to kick my ass. Dean and I were friends, so we had a good laugh about that and I said I didn’t blame him, and walked home.

The ENTIRE time walking home, though, I was so mad. I was SUPER upset about that Devil’s Reverse. Why was it that right when I figured out how to stop it, he didn’t do it anymore? That wasn’t fair at all!!! And then, while walking home, that’s when the light bulb went off. That’s when I was hit with the epiphany.

He KNEW I figured it out.

Without me ever actually getting to do the counter, he KNEW I thought of a way to counter it. In fact, he was playing me like a fiddle. He knew EXACTLY when I figured it out and, what made it worse, he MADE me figure it out so he could kill me in other ways. In other words, he was MAKING me do everything he wanted me to do. It was very subtle, but he noticed a change in my play style… a pattern shift. He could see me not attacking as much and not being aggressive anymore and waiting for something. And so he knew, without ever seeing me counter it, that I was going to counter it the next time he did it. So he stopped doing it ever again.

And that’s when Street Fighter reached a whole 'nother level for me. I began to understand that it’s not about tricks and block strings and traps and throw loops and safe jumps and such. Knowing all that is good ammo, but unless you know how and when and why to apply all of these things, you’ll never be able to achieve that level of expertise. It wasn’t about psychic DP’s. To paraphrase Neo and Morpheus’s conversation about stopping bullets from the Matrix, “You’re telling me that when I achieve that level, I can guess right and psychic DP limbs every time?” “No, I’m telling you, when you reach that level, you won’t HAVE to guess.” Once you figure out how to control your opponent and read them, you KNOW they are gonna kick, so DP’ing their limb isn’t guessing at all. You knew they were gonna do it all along. In fact, you MADE them do it.

And almost immediately after that, my play improved and I got to a level where I was almost equal to Dean. And I entered my very first SHGL tourney and got like 3rd place in Alpha 2. It was a revelation. Of course, there was still a LOT more for me to learn, as the many years of losing to Alex Valle at SHGL taught me, but it definitely helped me get from point C to D. I still have a TON to learn even today as I’m not even remotely close to being someone of the proper calibre to reach Top 8 at Evo, but that was the day where I learned the difference between knowing the tricks and strats to applying the tricks and strats.

  • James
6

Awesome and inspiring story James! I’m definitely still a long way off in mastering the fundamentals I’ll need before I can even begin to hope to turn the corner that you did, but it certainly gives me a long term goal to aspire to. The goal of some day being able to even begin to achieve the level of street fighting transcendence necessary to manipulate your opponent into doing what you want them to when you want them to.

7

SF is like a chess match, IMO.
Its all about strategy.

Good stories tho.

8

This is an incredible thread. Newer players can learn from reading this. Its not a fighting game as such, its a game in the mind. The bluff, the counter bluff etc. New or less experienced players would do better than rehearsing the same combo over and over again and trying to land it in a real match than going right back to basics and working out when to bait and counter and avoid and defend before moving onto the really fancy stuff. i.e. no point in learning a big combo as your never gonna land it in a real match as it will be too obvious you are going for it and you will get found out for trying it over and over again and punished. Iv never known a game (except maybe VF4) that rewards timing and feints and mindgames as much as this game.

At times it seems as though the characters are almost incidental. Im learning too and had my epiphany the other night being schooled by a top 100 player (Jumpsuit). Boy did i look silly trying to jump over fireballs and being punished on ill timed meaty attacks and cross-ups. I was schooled pure and simple but i didnt get angry. I was excited to be involved in the mind games with a decent player and although i lost i took a few rounds off him and think i beat him once (prob down to lag or something i know but still ill take it). I learned from being beat down by him than i have in 2 weeks of mindless crushings of others. I completely re-assessed my game from that day onwards and i must have read 100 or more pages of help threads and tactics and watched many vids.

In 6 months ill be up there competing with the best and im willing to learn. Thats the key. No annoyance with tick throws, just “how do i escape them?”. No annoyance with turtles, just “how do i break them down?”.

Sure you get frustrated but its about not giving up and trying harder. Adapting and being a pain in the ass to beat. Even if you lose just go down fighting and try and learn why it happened and dont do it again etc.

9

I honestly just turned a corner the other day when I was trying so very hard to master Dee Jay’s cu.mk -> cr.jab x2 -> st.strong xx dread kicks combo. You see, whenever I did combos before, I mashed buttons until I saw a hit connect, then went on with the combo, mashing the next button until the move came out. But I could never get the st.strong to connect after the cr.jab x2. I couldn’t figure out why. Then someone told me to stop mashing and start rhythmically timing my combos. Now I can nail the entire combo every single time. And not just with Dee Jay either. My favorite Akuma combo, cu.mk -> cr.mk xx mk hurricane kick -> juggle jab dp is heavily supportive of mashing the mk button, but now that I time the hits, I feel so much more fulfilled and can get the cr.mk much more consistently (I used to accidentally cancel the j.mk into hurricane by mashing quite frequently). My game has improved dramatically just from that simple fundamental principle of combos.

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Also, accepting that I’m a slow learner with fighting games, accepting that I’m not the best, accepting that tactics that almost always destroy me aren’t cheap but simply require a counter that I’ve yet to grasp, and accepting that I’m honestly not that good at ST are all big blocks in my progress. I have too much pride, arrogance, and conceit. Don’t let things like this hinder you from progressing as I have.

11

didn’t you make top 8 once? or at least get realllllly close?

i remember you beat me in a major tournament and (no offense) i was a little surprised. then you went on to beat a lot of other guys too

12

Here is my story, really doesn’t have much to do with HDR, but here it is:

I started playing Street Fighter II when I was 8 (that was 14 years ago) and I was your typical mash the buttons and waggle the joystick kid. I typically played against people in their teens and they would get so upset if they lost to me.

I remember that I had been dicking around with the game for about two weeks and for the first time, I pulled off a special move. “SONIC BOOM!” I heard. It was awesome and I was hooked for life. I got the game for the Genesis (Championship Ed) when it came out, got a six button controller and continued to play until my first Genesis died.

For a time, I stopped playing Street Fighter. I had finally bought a PS1 and Street Fighter Alpha. Played the crap out of it again and it had convinced me to go back to the arcade and play. I wasn’t any good anymore. Now that I had known specials and supers for a few characters, everybody else did too. I was out of it, and I was no good at SF anymore.

I had purchased SF EX+Alpha and had found that it was the GREATEST teaching method ever. The training mode in that game taught me combos, two in ones, specials, cancels, everything. I had become a force at SF again.

Fast forward to today, I rock my friends at SF and I have a pretty solid win streak online at the game. I still drive to become better, but I thank SFEX’s training mode for almost everything I’ve learned.

13

Well… I made top 8 at an Evo West that was Anniversary Edition… which I guess counts, but for some reason, it being A.E. kinda doesn’t make me take it to heart much. I’ve managed to make it passed the pools into the semis every year I’ve played at an Evo Finals EXCEPT last year, when I was one match away from making it out of my pools. I’ve had good runs and beaten players that were definitely better than me (yourself being one of the main ones) during that time, but at an Evo Finals, I’ve never come close enough… well, close enough for MY own personal criteria… :slight_smile: I’d have to be, like, one match away to a top 8 position to really consider myself as getting reallllllly close.

And I think when I beat you, I was out for revenge, so I had extra motivation. lol! I remember the previous time we played in ST at Evo, I died by Chun Li D/F + Roundhouse. I think you perfected me one round with only that move and just, in general, mopped me up all the other rounds.

  • James
14

Aww, James, don’t beat yourself up, bro. You have probably the most solid Cammy in the US. You’ll make her top tier one day, I promise.

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Oh yeah, man, that training mode was great. Some of those combos were almost puzzle-like, and they all required you to practice and execute well. I still go back and run through it from time to time, even though I’ve never played EX competitively.

It won’t teach strategy, but for execution I’d highly recommend it to anyone just getting into fighting games. It’s like SF boot camp.

16

I totally agree. I still go back to it. It kept my execution reasonably sharp for a long time when I didn’t have anybody to play SF2 with (before I found out about GGPO and before HD Remix came out).

17

The time I’m the most inspired to play Street Fighter, I don’t have my PS3 available. I wish I had a good story, but I remember why I’m losing now, it’s because I forget to analyze what I’m doing wrong. I’ll learn how to get around fireball traps someday, haha.

18

As far as execution goes, I definitely noticed a difference in my play when I was able to do the DP motion 99% of the time. I still have lots to learn, but at least now I can beat anyone that jumps around like a moron, or consistently uses the ol’ Jumping round house - sweep.

I also improved drastically when I started paying attention to character matchups. In any SF game, I would adjust my play soley on which friend i was playing against and what their tendencies were. Then suddenly I started paying attention to what moves work against what characters and I definitely got a lot better.

19

I’m actually glad you said this, because it’s HUGELY important for everyone who wants to get better. Basically, it’s this: you lost for a reason. And it’s always good to analyze why you lost, where you took the most damage from, and things like that. Even I haven’t been immune to complaining about my opponents when I lost during a LOT of my SF-playing life. “That guy turtles! It’s so boring!” “He uses this stupid character, that’s not fun!” “He got lucky with the one super. I was totally winning before that.” Stuff like that. You gotta get that out of your head.

Back when CvS1 came out, SRK put up a bunch of match videos from the first SHGL CvS1 tourney, a set of which was the final match between Valle and I. And I swear, there was one fight where Valle swept me like 90 times in a row. One of my friends NEVER lets me go on this one. “You know, you could have learned to low block” he says. And it was embarrassing. But when you watch it, you can easily dissect WHY Valle was able to sweep me so much (he could always tell when I got restless and needed to try to press the issue to get myself out of the corner, so he swept me with Kim’s super long Sweep everytime I stood up to move). I learned from that to be a LOT more patient, and to not let myself get too restless being stuck in the corner all day.

To this day, I know what my weaknesses are, and I still have a hard time over coming a lot of them. But knowing them and admitting you have them is still better than pretending you don’t have them at all.

Basically, you know you’re getting to a better place when you can lose to someone and, really, the ONLY reason why you lost was that you were flat out outplayed. That’s when you know you’ve gotten really good.

  • James
20

I thought I was doing great with Vega, then I played a Honda that was good and realized I had a long ways to go. I destroy a lot of the random competition and then this guy comes and destroys me.

I realized that I would try and press the issue, trying wall dive after wall dive, KNOWING that he was just going to headbutt me or slap me. Yet I continued to do it.

I should have been more patient but I was getting frustrated. Hopefully I can be as good as you James. That is one of my goals in life.