I started playing HDR as a natural progression to SF4. I hadn’t played competitively since the mid 90s and since I hate losing, I wanted to see where my game was since I only played the SF series in arcades and pretty much stopped after HF and the HF mod chips and HDR was the closest derivative that’s popular in the SF series. HF is on the 360 but I don’t own one. I would try at times to play online and whatever but since I never had a legitimate stick I’d give up in frustration after losing and blaming it on the stupid controllers.
I play Sagat because it would be a natural transition to SF4 and he was one of my mains in HF. I also liked how they brought back his 1 hit tiger uppercut.
My progression through the series I played regularly are:
WW: Ryu, Guile
HF: Ryu, Guile, Dhalsim, Sagat, Boxer, then Chun (because i liked her j.FP, s.FP, FP fireball combo, air throw, and walk up throws) but I was never good enough with her to beat the best in my area so she was mainly reserved for the 2nd tier and below crowds.
ST: I didn’t really play this one much but I mained Ryu and Guile for a short time. I rather play KI and MK3 at the time.
Gief and Hawk is like Apples and Oranges. I honestly do not believe that one is glaringly better than the other. Sure Gief has the laughably long range on his SPD, but how’s the range on his normals compared to Hawks? What about the priority of his normals? We all know Gief’s Cr.:hk: is one of the deadliest normals in the game, but what about the priority on all his other attacks? Where as Hawk, can beat next to anything with his J.:lp: and J.:hp:.
On the other hand, Gief can link his normals like no other. 3/4’s of his normals can pretty much go into each other, when Hawk can only link very little.
As for your whiffing with Hawk, the reason is because Hawk’s grab has next to no start-up, so your ticking must be precise. You know how Gief does that little twitch when he goes for the SPD? That’s his start-up frames. Hawk doesn’t have that. It can be good or bad depending on how you look at it.
If I were you, invest your time in Ken and Gief. Learn them more. In time, branch out to somebody else. You’ll be surprised on who you’ll like. I absolutely hated Bison (CE. Enough said), but when I actually tried him, :smokin:.
There’s always one thing about each character that sets them apart from everyone else. There’s a certain strategy with every character or a certain set-up that just works for them and nobody else, and if you can find it, you’ll know that person is for you. For me, things clicked when I got Hawks throw loop down. For Bison, it was just that sort of :chainsaw: feeling you get when you use him. You’ll know what I mean once it happens.
back as a kid, the izuna drop was my favorite move in sf history. i can never pull it off consistently but when it did come out, it looked awesome.
i didnt know anything about strategy back then, but i knew his slide was good even though i get punished a lot for it after doing it too much. slide into claw roll was the first tactic i’ve ever used
I used to pick Ryu and Charlie in Alpha so I started off with Ryu and Guile when I started playing HDR. I soon picked up Blanka because I could win matches quite easily with him (although I realise now that it was against not so skilled players).
Sometimes I played with Ken and realised I was getting better results than with Ryu so started maining him. After a while I got bored so decided to try someone completely new and picked Zangief. After that I decided to learn to play Blanka properly and learn his biting tricks.
Back in the day (WW for SNES) I mained Guile with only some attention paid to Dhalsim. I wasn’t good enough to use any high level tactics (shoto j. RH to c. RH was the best combo evar!!!), and Sim became my “just for fun” character when everyone would get pissed at my turtling Guile.
That was pretty much the last time I took SF2 seriously until now, but in every game since I’ve always been attracted to the “hard to master but able to control an entire match” playstyle, whether Ivy in SC2 or mono-blue control in M:tG, stealth loadouts in CoD4, the Sicilian Dragon opening as black in chess, whatever. Basically, I prefer to force my opponents into uncomfortable situations and let them make mistakes which I can punish.
So natch, when HDR comes around I completely ignore Guile and go straight for Dhalsim. After getting my ass kicked a few times, I did some reading in the SRK wiki, start getting a feel for controlling his limbs, and that’s all she wrote. Now Dhalsim’s pretty much the only character I can use well, since he’s so unique I had to almost unlearn how to play with a normal fighter.
Hmm lets see back in 1991 I was walking through the arcade with some friends looking for that perfect game to blow my tokens on while at a local amusement park (Castle park in So Cal). We started to play the Simpsons arcade game and noticed a large crowed gathering just on the other side of us. I went to go investigate and there it was the most beautiful game ever! It was the game I had been looking for, Street Fighter II.
I remember the crowds that gathered to play SF1 but never could get into the controls (still cant play that game) it must have been new because nobody really knew how to play and they where reading the instructions on the front and side of the arcade as was I. One guy seemed to have mastered the SPD with Gief and was just mashing it out FTW. While people tried to get a handle on the controls. Some people had played SF1 and knew how to play Ryu pretty well. I think I stood there for about an hour just watching people play all the different characters. Then somebody played Guile, I knew that was the one I wanted to play the moment I saw that upside down kick lol that was the move that sold me. Anyway I played him for many years and could beat just about anyone I came across in the arcades and when it came home to the console. Most of my friend didn’t even want to play me anymore and that kind of bummed me out so I kind of just gave up the game.
Then Super Street Fighter II came out and I tried to get back into it but just never really liked what they did to Guile and I didn’t have the time to play it like I did before so I just walked away from the scene and forgot about SF (yeah I skipped ST The alpha series, SF3 all of them) except every once in a while I would stop by the local arcade and get a few games in just to see if I could still pull of a combo or 2. Then one day I heard the announcement that they where going to release a remake of ST with HD and more importantly online game play!! That got me searching online to get more info.
I started playing with emulators built myself a stick (2 player from a speaker box all Happ) I then found an old Arcade box slapped in some controls and a pc and went to work playing friends and the CPU just to get back into shape and see if their was any other character I wanted to play since Guile I felt had been weakened in the ST version. So I played everyone and thought I might give Ken a good run. While he was fun and I liked his speed and combos so I thought this is my new guy. Anyway HDR came out and I was stuck with a problem. I didn’t have an arcade stick and I can?t stand the Japanese sticks they just felt too lose and cheap, like toys.
Anyway stuck with a Pad I couldn’t do anything with Ken so with no other option I went with Chun Li. I remember her being easy to play with my SNES controller so I thought this will just be temporary until I get a stick. Well I have and now build several sticks and I still play Chun Li. I guess she grew on me and I really enjoy playing her now, to the point where I rarely play anyone else. So maybe it’s true I didn’t choose her she chose me. I like to think it was fate
Though I can’t say I have much of a story for him though. I was playing against my friend a few months ago and I was messing around with the four bosses (Boxer, Claw, Sagat and Vega) to see if there were any nice alternatives to my Akuma. It came down to a choice between Boxer and Sagat. I constantly alternated between the two, and in the end, it seemed like I was much more proficient with Sagat than I was with Boxer (Though I haven’t given up on him entirely yet since I want to learn how to rush-down with that guy)
I guess Sagat was more comfortable for me because I’m already so used to Shoto inputs. He just kinda stuck with me. If anyone has problems with me using Akuma, I just switch to Sagat.
Because I don’t always have tournaments in mind when I play the game. I play the characters that I enjoy playing with, and while Akuma may be banned, that doesn’t magically make him restricted to me outside of tournaments, so why bar myself from using a character I like?
Besides, there’s nothing that says I can’t have more than one main. I’m sure I would be much better if I used only Sagat exclusively, but I still like using my Akuma outside tournaments, so it’ll be my responsibility to invest more time into playing the game and being good with both of them inside and outside competitive matches.
Well…while it’s all fine and good to play who you want to play, my concern for you would be that you’re short-changing yourself by maining Akuma. I mean…he’s banned in tournaments for a reason. While it may be great to have access to, in the words of that ever-lovable voice that eminated from the vocal cords of Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of The Sith, “UN…LIMITED…POWAH!!!” (I hate that Mace Windu had to go out like that, by the way), the fact of the matter is that you won’t have access to that in a tournament…and then you will feel how truly weak you are. (Ok…bad SFA2 Shin Akuma quote pun, but can you get what I’m saying?) Myself, I mess around with ST Akuma and Shin Akuma in the Alpha series every once in a while or so, but I know good and well that I had better stick to people that I can actually play in tournaments if I expect to be ready for one.
If you really want to play Akuma, you should main him in the Alpha series, where he’s still awfully good without being broken. I should know because I’m about to move near the guy who used to give me fits with him back in the day. My Rose will have her revenge.
Perhaps a secondary might come in handy. Maybe I’ll give Guile a try, or maybe even Balrog again. At this point, all I know is that if I’m going to be using Sagat and another character(s) who isn’t Akuma, it would most likely be someone who deviates from the Shoto system. “Down, Foward + Punch” gets old really fast.
Akuma will always be my favourite though. There’s no way I can quit him XD
Dude…if you’re good with Akuma, Ryu would be the most logical choice. Seriously. He’s not that bad. My boy, Ken, isn’t bad, either. Both of them, however, play pretty differently from Akuma. Anyhoo…just trying to steer you towards your strengths.
Blanka for his simplicity, yet complexity in the mind games you play with your opponent. Plus I like being able to constantly keep an opponent running rather than trying to keep someone away.
back when i was a kid playing on the genesis, i generally picked ryu and spent all my time mashing on the controller trying to figure out how to throw a fireball (and once we got those down, we tried to find the command for uppercuts, which i don’t think we ever got). and of course, dhalsim was banned at my friend’s house “because he can hit you from across the screen.” we never even knew about st, i think everybody i played with just knew about hf lol.
i never got attached to a certain character back then, though. once i started playing hdr i homed in on sagat, then dropped hdr for sf4, where i migrated from sagat to bison. bison is just such a crazy character, with his train conductor hat and smiling like a lunatic all the time, not to mention his aerial shenanigans, he’s just too much fun to play. now i think i’m leaving sf4 and coming back to hdr, and i’m going to try out sagat, balrog, ryu, bison, and honda, and see who gets whittled out of that list within the next few days.
Been using sagat in every iteration of sf2 I just like how his effectiveness is determined by your anticipation much more so then any other character so being good with fb mixups whether you turtle or play aggressive is the true test of yomi ability.
Then when sthd dropped I mained bison because he’s the most versatile of the cast, the most fun, and the most flashy to win with.
Then I played on random select and main everyone other then honda, hawk, and cammy.
I would try at times to play online and whatever but since I never had a legitimate stick I’d give up in frustration after losing and blaming it on the stupid controllers.