gl telling this to a bunch of kids who not only won’t wipe their own ass and instead want you to, but get angry if you don’t use the kind of toilet paper they like.
i’ve tried teaching people. i’ve tried giving full course meals to anyone who’ll eat. i get niggas who want a burger and some fries. sometimes, they just want a sprite. i was like FML till i was like wait, fuck this. not helping anyone who doesn’t beg.
post might get nominated, but i severely doubt it will give the intended effect. hope it’s useful to someone though… i know i’m not the only one going my path
I think it’s pretty obvious, it’s always what I thought, I beat people who are a lot more knowledgeable than me. Cause instead of reading shits about the game and learning the Street Fighter langage I play the damn game.
I liked it, I found some things that sounded demoralizing and might off-put some new players, (Basically, the “You’ll never be as good as these guys, but fight on anyway, newb.” parts.) but other than that, pretty well thought out.
Well, you just aren’t suitable to be a teacher then. You’re being too demanding, even if you might not see it that way. Who seriously wants to be taught by someone who wants you to beg them first?
All this is something that i forgot to do, after a few months off or just messing in training mode, my games gone to bits but the last hour or so playing it’s clicking again.
Yesterday, after picking the game up again i was slap bang in the middle of one of those slumps, falling for all sorts of randomness, not having a gameplan of my own.
Gritted my teeth a little today and slowed things down and am playing to sharpen up instead of looking to win games, that’ll come once the dust settles.
i just got through looking at some other posts after reading this and this is so true. I never understood what it was like to learn a fighting game without any help/command lists unfortunately it’s sorta a double edged sword though new players can get better faster but pro players also can learn even more by coutnering counters as you say (the new scrubs are really whinny…)
I started playing SF just before Champion Edition hit arcades (which was about the same time SF2 on the SNES was announced. No one had it in their home yet so there was no CHOICE but to go to the arcade, and the only guides available (that I knew of anyway) were the ones in GamePro that had how to do the special moves in them and that was about it. Info was hard to come by (especially because I was 11-12 at the time and game mags were about it for me)
I didn’t come to this site until about 2007. I didn’t know what frame data was, and once I found out, I was like, “Really? This is SF not a math test.” I’ve always “just played,” and maybe that’s part of why I’m not better than I am. But it’s always made sense to me that you can either read up on how to do something or you can learn by ACTUALLY DOING IT. Though now, you can do both. Isn’t the 21st century just the bee’s knees? Nominated. Excellent work Fartley!
This is a great post. Since I’m in high school, I always want to know how people back then, especially Tomo, discover these tactics in the early days since there was little internet. I’ll be honest, if there was any information on how to get better, I would’ve stop playing SF because of no one telling me tips or advices.
My only criticism with the article is that it kind of glosses over one of the luxuries old school arcade players like Tomo, Watson etc had that most current players don’t have access to; that being the exchange of information in arcades. It’s really so important and that’s what online forums try to emulate. There are a lot of things lost in translation though. Information is generalized and mainly only deals with low to mid level concepts. There is also no quality control. In an arcade, you know who is good and who isn’t, but online lots of people add in information that isn’t necessarily correct or helpful. Of course, its still helpful, and the purpose of this article is more about people who use online sources as a crutch, which is fair, but theres a lot that goes into getting good outside of the game.
lol is this nigga serious. man some of the best teachers in the UNIVERSE take the stance i’ve taken on teaching. not to make it sound like i’m the greatest teacher in the world or anything. i’m not “too demanding”, i just hate teaching people who don’t actually want to be taught. i’d teach anyone im interested in as long as i know their goals. not listening to any generic “plz teach me” niggas anymore
Excellent post OP. I was in my prime back in the early 90’s so I know exactly what you’re talking about. What’s interesting is that I stopped playing fighting games shortly after Super Turbo was getting old and didn’t start up again until CVS2 came out.
A buddy of mine told me that CVS2 played very old school so I thought I would give it a shot. Third Strike really turned me off prior to that because I was getting older and I just didn’t have the time to learn the new parry system and all that jazz so I just gave up on fighting games all together because I knew that there was no way that I had the TIME to put in to be competitive at all.
Even after my long break from fighting games, I still held my own against the younger guys at the arcade on CVS2 because of all the time that I put in to the older games. Sure, I had to learn some new moves here and there but it seemed that I never lost my knowledge on how to play mind games with opponents. It is after all a chess match.
I only played CVS2 for 4 or 5 months and then just stopped all together until SF4 came out. Again, same thing, despite my long layoff and lack of matches I was still winning 70 percent of my matches online using old school tactics and mind games that still work to this day.
In short, playing the game and getting your ass handed to you over and over is the only way to get better just like you said. People need to concentrate on developing a style that works for them and not worry about all these different moves and combos you can do. Focus on the chess match and the moves and combos will eventually come.
(the new scrubs are really whinny…)