Attacks

Another thing I would like to bring up related to health is viltality. This is otherwise known as the durability of the character. Most of the time, characters are relative to what we expect from characters. So therefore small petite characters such as children, fairly flowerly girls, and the ever sneaky ninjas are prime candidates of those with shit vitality. This is somewhat logical because in exchange for basically dying from any hit beyond a wet napkin, they have speed in their attacks. This would mean attacks that hit multiple times or are attaacks of a decieving nature such as the ninja.

On the other side of the spectrum, muscly looking guys and huge ass wrestlers (called grapplers because often being werestlers their repretoire of moves consist of grappling moves) usually are candidates with higher viltality because of their steroid use. Of course they would need all this extra vitality due to the fact that they slowly lumber almost retarded-ly (due to steroid use) towards their opponents because they usually have hold or throw attacks. Note that there are people such as “semi grapplers”, most notably people like Ralf, and Vice from KOF who do have grapple moves, but half of their colleciton of attacks also non-grappler associated (i.e. fireballs, long distance moves, being quicker than the average grappler)

Of course this is generally speaking, because there are *always* exceptions, especially in KOF where SNK usually mixes and melds different aspects of each of these characters.

It was kinda weird since in SF2, the booklet actually mentions these differences in viltality (as well with many prominent gaming mags) but to tell the truth, all the characters’s basica attacks in the first SF2 did the exact same damage, save for special moves. But of course as time went by, the conventions explained above came into focus and now get out of focus as games advance.

But now that we have explained what we are going to protect, now let’s go on how to befeat your opponent.:

Button layout and attacks terminolgy

There are a lot of button layouts, but I’m going to heavily focus on a few series mainly:

Street Fighter (SF)
King of Fighters (KOF)
Tekken (T1,2,3,4)

I admit I don’t know all the properties of the buttons layouts or even have played all the games I mentioned above, but they are helpful towards understanding the fighting game genre.

First of all SF (3x2 button layout):

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It has been a long time since the days of naming all the punches and kicks of the SF games by their strength such as Weak: Punch and Kck; Medium Punch and Kick; and Strong: Punch and Kick; The thing is Capcom had adapted a new way of assigning names to each basic attack so to streamline things more and probably not to confuse terminology between punch and kick. They are:

Weak punch = Jab (jp): Kinda obvious since it’s like boxing terminology. Quick attack with the first.

Medium punch = Strong (sp): When you see what the last of the punches are, you’ll understand why strong has been regulated to fierce.

Strong punch = Fierce (fp): oh yeah baby fucking hardcore. Strongest punch.

Weak kick = Short (sk): should be since this is usually a really short kick. Note that most crouching kicks for characters are the only means of attacking “low” on opponents.

Medium kick = Forward (fk): now I might be wrong, but I think why this is named as such is since a lot of times, this kick has actually moved the character forward in fighting games. Whether be just standing, a command move or crouching, this kick is pretty special and usually the most used Cr.Kick in the repretoire in continuing combos due to it does not knock the opponent flat on their asses

Strong kick = Roundhouse (rh): Once again obvious since the roundhosue is this grandiose type kick that inflicts a lot of damage. Almost always the kick that when performed crouching, will sweep/knock the opponent flat on their asses. The only exception would be a character from the SF3 series whose Cr. Fp is the one that sweeps people off their feet. But that’s in the future.

KOF (4x1 button layout):

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Kof is a bit more insteresting in the sense that actually how they set up their attack buttons since they are in a row. They have a more of a through back to old fighting games since they have only two punches and kicks each. However since SNK has been using their own motherboard from over a decade ago, their set up for all their games has always been with the same buttons, aptly named A,B,C,D. Therefore you have:

Weak Punch = A button (A/WP) What is different with this set up of attacks is that in SF it’s loosely associated that a level of kick = a level of punch. So kinda like how a jab punch’s damage would roughly equal a short kick’s damage. In KOF it’s different since the damage hierchy grows stronger with each advance of the button right (usually SNK games (like KOF) have a straight line of 4x1 buttons layout as opposed to the 3x2 layout of SF). So weak punch is actually the weakest attack of basic attacks.

Weak Kick = B button (B/WK) An up in damage from the weak punch.

Strong Punch = C button (C/SP) strongest damage of the punches but not as powerful as the…

Strong Kick = D Button (D/SK) strongest attack of the basic attacks, aside from the attack that requires the buttons SP. and SK. (called a ‘CD’ attack) to be pressed at the same time.

Note that sometimes reading the attacks in a guide or FAQ would actually interchange depending on the preferences of the author. Most of the time though, to avoid confusion it’s used with the WK, WP, SP, SK variety.

Tekken (2x2 button layout):

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Tekken is an intresting game since it possibly gave the most control to their characters through their unique button layout. Done in a 2x2 manner, the buttons are actually associated with each limb of the body. So starting from top left corner and counting across:

Left Punch = LP (Button 1)

Right Punch = RP (Button 2)

Left Kick = LK (Button 3)

Right Kick = RK (Button 4)

So easy enough to associated, left side of the buttons associated with the left side of the body limbs and the upper buttons associate with punch with lower buttons associate with the kick. This is a neat set up since you can control better the use of all your limbs; becoming more natural and not just have a standard limb doing a standard attack all the time. Instead a more natural control over the fight had come since each tap of the button can be associated with a certain limb. Since Tekken is a 3D game, usually it is easier to animated and therefore more moves, basic attacks, and specials are crammed into the game. Tekken is probably one of the more combo friendly games (aka ability to construct a variety of combos) because of this set up. Of course as always there are limits, you can’t be a total dork in Tekken and press buttons 1,3 at the same time (LP and LK) and expect a punch and kick and your character to fall flat on their side.

Generally speaking most of the FAQs for Tekken combos are in the number format 1,2,3,4.

Now that I have somewhat explained basic attacks, I should explore:

Command attacks

I might be going a bit fast but I think this might be the right track. It’s just that basic attacks are usually very easy to learn.

Command attacks are different from the next level of attacks which are “special (command) attacks”. However they should not be ignored at all. This can be related exactly to my explanation of crouching attacks in offensive and defensive stances. A command attack usually results in a different attack or even a variation of an attack of the button you pressed. The most easiest one to point out is Ryu from SF.

If you hold the forward and press strong (medium punch) a strong punch would not come out. Instead his overhead attack would come out. The main point is that usually really useful attacks come out from these command attacks. They sometimes have longer reach, more combo-bility (or even start combos) and even help with increasing your offensive power.

Just to explain overheads very quickly: they’re attacks performed by your character on the ground that can hit a opponent who Cr. Blocks so you do not have to risk “jumpimg” in order to merely attack a blocking character.

Although useful, command attacks are also fairly sparce, usually regulated to the strong (sk) and forward (fk) buttons. However in other fighters, since they don’t have as many buttons as SF, they often associate command attacks with all buttons.

Next time: Special and Super moves