SNK's Advanced Mode

This mode is what essentially replaced the extra mode. To concentrate more clearly on the super bars, it ultilizes something much like SFA's. "Levels" of super are stored, however in this case, they are called "stocks". The stocks charge up pretty quickly since attacking makes them charge up. As you can see, coupled with the ability to roll, Advanced mode is very offensive oriented. Supers can charge up fast if you know what to do. The trade-off to this is that when you reach critical/red flashing area of the life bar, well.....there is none. That means no more infinite supers as in extra mode.

However a positive is that you can pull off a super at any time you want more quickly and strategically since it's all charged up. Unlike in Extra mode where when you charge up and get to do a DM, people go apeshit to get away from you, waiting for your opputunity to lay down the hurt on their asses.

The other trade off, coupled with the lack of infinite supers at critical, is that you will have to waste two stocks of super to access "Max" mode and thus perform a SDM. In essence you are somewhat wasting twice the time to charge up in order to perform a SDM, but you do have to realize the fact that your super bar charges up that much faster in Advanced Mode.

As the Extra bar, the MAX bar in Advanced Mode charges down slowly as the match continues.

The final point to be made about Advanced mode is how each time you lose a team-mate to a KO, you gain an extra space to put a "stock" into up to a maximum of five stocks. Basically fully charged, you have a possible 2 SDMs & 1 DM or 5 DMs at your disposal at any time you choose during the match. In a way to really construct your team, as your team-mate get's KO'd, they might actually give, or take away stocks for the next person in line.

Stocks are usually carried over, but sometimes if the person hates/likes the next person in line, they would tend to take/give extra stocks away/to them. On a professional level, this doesn't really matter since to some degree, "stocks" can be built up pretty quickly and ultimatly team organization is more important towards who counters which opponent well, as opposed to who likes who on your team.

SNK Super bar

It's been a while since I updated. Sorry, for all those fans...all one of them.

Anyways SNK super bar has always been evolving every so often. But KOF 98 is a very good way to start off on the DMs.

Extra Mode

This mode basically was for KOF 94-KOF 96. KOF 97 is where a big change happened and "advance mode" had made it's appearance. Now extra mode is just a huge generalization, but still a good mode to tell you about in regards to the super bar.

Basically this is a super bar that put more focus on general defense and such because of the neat ability to "charge" your super bar at any time. The only other different way for the super bar to charge is to get hit. But anyways, basically you could charge your super bar by pressing "ABC" together and holding it. The problem is that it has both a moderate amount of start up time and recovery time for the charge, and your opponent could see it a mile away. The charge itself also leaves you vulnerable, hence the whole point of this mode being more defensive.

The plus side to this super bar, is the fact that you could basically access a super bar at anytime. Once the bar fills up, instantly you go into a mode called "Max Mode" and your super bar becomes a timer. This is basically a suped up mode of yourself where you do more damage with your hits. This is fairly good if you able to pull off combos and such. You could forgo the entire bar running out in max mode for just a DM.

The only downside to this is that you have a limited amount of time to use Max Made to it's fullest potential or pull off a DM. At this point of time, opponent usually jump the fuck away from you playing a keepaway game. The good side about this in a fight as your team dwindles down (you usually pick 3 team members) so does the super bar, hence making charging time much shorter. This is a great contrast to the Advanced mode which only adds more stocks to the meter rather than make charging easier.
More on that later.

The other good aspect about extra mode is when your life bar flashes red, at the critical/desperation point, you have access to pull off a regular DM at any time. But when you charge the super bar, you gain access to you SDM. The super bar actually looks different when it has the ability to the SDM.

More later.

Tech Throw/Throw escape
I forgot to mention throws in the whole equation of fighting games. Throws/holds are basically what they are, throwing/holding plus hitting people. There has been lots of contrevertsy on whether or not throws are cheap aka much like cheating or an easy way to earn a buck. The fact is, without throws you get a game like Killer Instinct where turtles are prevalent. The thing is what makes a throw seem cheap is the fact that for seemingly little effort, you get a lot of payback. A throw can vary in different strengths but often the throw damage is very significant which IMHO should be. Even though there seems to be little risk to pulling off a throw:
press towards + Any punch or kick > a weak punch or kick...once you are near the opponent
what the real risk is getting hit in order to get close to the person. IMHO it's stupid to think a throw is cheap because if there weren't any throws, a huge option of being offensive on an blocking opponent is thrown right out the window. Because a throw can penetrate anything short of an attack into your face.
In order to combat this lovely "throw friendlyness" I imagine SNK and Capcom came up with throw escapes/tech throws. Basically if you do a throw movement at the exact same time as the opponent throws you, you "escape" that throw with no damage. In some ways that evens out the playing field and speeds up gameplay so we a progression.

On the entire topic of throws being cheap in general, I would have to say it isn't cheap. The fact of the matter is, if the programmers who actually make the game, thought that somehow this technique was cheap...they by all means would take it out. As seen it really hasn't happened in any of the mainstream fighting games. The whole notion of "boo fucking whoo they get so much energy off by just pretty a button and one motion" is too narrow-minded.

If you were to realize that there is an element of risk and getting just punched in the face when one person tries to throw. Hell even nowadays there are ways to avoid throwing with tech hitting, dashing etc. There should be no excuse why one should whine about throws becasue in all cases it could be avoided.

Wake up attack
Ok let's just say you got knocked down and your opponent is basically standing (or jumping) right upon you, ready to kick your ass even before you got up. What do you do? The only options seemed to be to eat fist or foot, or just suck it up and block an attack, effectively giving your opponent the upper hand. This is why the Wake up was introduced. It was originally in SF2. Basically what is was is that you had one special move (or a few) that served the alternate purpose of being your "wake up" attack. Much like how you would "wake up" suddenly, this attack was used to basically send a back-the-fuck-up message to your opponent. Take for instance Ryu's shoryuken. That was his wake up attack. When an opponent was close enough and right as Ryu was getting up, he would perform his wake-up attack and hit the opponent. Now this attack almost made the entire process of getting up shortened because you interupted your getting up animation in exchange for a direct attack which is useful and quick. However make sure you are goint to hit or else the opponent could just wait you out; and hit you as you recover.
Meaty Attack
Meaty attack is basically the counter to the wake up attack. If you were so bold, and decided to attack a person, knowing that they might be waking up or not, the meaty attack is the way to counter any wake up attack. Basically it would hit at the exact moment the person recovers and hence nullify the wake-up attack. Of course the window of oppurtunity was incredibly small, but still could be done.

Safety Roll

This is very apparent in all forms of fighting games now. Basically a safety roll is a way to avoid people kicking your ass *again* with a meaty attack. If this continued, the opponent could keep you down on the groud, regardless if you had a wake-up in the process. The thing is if you do the QCD motion starting from either forward or backward you would "roll away" from where you would normally lay and recover This advantages of this is usually the recovery roll is also a good way to recover quickly with movement. However if the opponent is on to you, then you are screwed as well. It really depends when you want to just get hit or safety roll. In the case of the VS series, rolling often results in the character rolling an entire screen's length, very handy if you were getting your ass handed to you in a corner and you need to escape.

SNK S/DM

It's been a while since I promised to mentioned SNK's side of the super. So here it is kinda breifly.

Much different from Capcom's versions. I think in making the moves more difficult to pull off, they inherently created two things:

1. Made the game more complex
2. Made 'accidental' DMs come out less frequent.

Not to mention how truly screwed up their joystick system. Whereas the Capcom joystick system is very literal and leniant, the SNK joystick methods are a bit more precise. Once again to prevent accidental supers coming out. the QCF, QCF, motions are very often hard for me to do, unless on a proper machine because sometimes depending on the machine, it might react differently. However the main reason why it took me so long as to find the will to write up about SNK's DMs, is that I wanted to find a FAQ on GamesFaqs (actually much better than explaining than I am) in how to do some of the DM's motion's shortcuts which are very effective. So here's the link since I don't want to cut and paste from the FAQ directly.

http://db.gamefaqs.com/coinop/arcade/file/king_of_fighters_97_beginners.txt

If you cannot find it, then just search for "King of Fighters" and click on KOF 97 faqs and look for the "beginners" FAQ. and about a few pages down should be the shortcuts.

Generally speaking some of the moves nature are as follows:

QCF, HCB + P/K: Usually this movement entails an auto combo DM where you approach the character and if you hit them, automatically hit them for a few hits and end it with some super attack.

QCB, HCF: Usually this means a fireball super move. Although the above and this is interchangable on what they actually do, this is generally the concensus.

QCF, QCF or QCB, QCB: Usually attacks such as these ones mean one hit DM. Very powerful, but also pretty stationary aka not a lot of reach. In most cases these are moves that are good for combo finishers.

HCB, HCB or HCF, HCF: Usually these are "hold/throw" DMs that results in powerful attacks as usual. Usually prett small range, but still sometimes it can catch people off guard.

I really do suggest reading the FAQ I put up since it does such a better job explaining the SNK system than I.

Evolution of the Super Bars

In order to really grasp the idea of super bars, I'll bring you along a short history of both the Capcom side and the SNK side of the super bars.

Capcom History

Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo was the first to introduce super bars to the SF series. In general it's merely one super bar for one particular super move. Nothing special. As I mentioned before, also not very effective since by the end of the round, the use of a super was more for show than any actual tactical advantage. (OOOO shiny sun flash!) Usually the excution for the super move would be a repeated joystick motion twice (usually similar to the special that the super move is based upon) and *one* button. Such as the fireball be:

QCF, QCF + P

Now it didn't matter what strength of punch you did since it was really only one super bar.

Street Fighter Alpha 1 + 2 I skipped over the Darkstalkers and XMEN:COTA just because chances are you wouldn't be playing these too often. The alpha series featured 3 levels of super bar, with each level giving more power and damage to your super and sometimes different supers. The thing is how to differentiate the different levels of supers is usually determined on how many buttons you pressed in the super move motion Once again with the fireball:

QCF, QCF + P: Pressing only one punch button (anyone Jab, Strong or Fierce) will result in activating a Level 1 super. Pretty easy to remember and if you are still kinda button mashing, quite often a mistake that you might make when you try to do a fireball, yet are a bit too quick.

QCF, QCF + 2P/PP: Yields a level 2 super. Usually the level 2 supers are the ones that are the most different supers of the bunch since it's in the middle. They have a more tactical advantage, but only in a few cases.

QCF, QCF + 3P/PPP: Yields a level 3 super. The most powerful attack of that super, but as seen on some controllers like the PSX controller, they've assigned two extra buttons with a button called 3P and 3K so you don't need the flexibility of a yoga master in order to actually pull off this feat with your fingers.

Street Fighter Alpha 2: Side bar...Custom Combos. Custome combos was kind of a debated topic of how useful it was. The thing is when you had more than half a complete super bar (1.5 levels) you could activate the "custom combo" mode. What resulted was your character would flash and start to advance on the opponent very quickly (without you pressing forward) and have shadows following him for effect. What this mode meant is that you could create any combo you wanted to with any move. You're recovery time on every move was basically nil (save for super moves which would instantly cancel the Custom Combo [CC] and shoot out a super move) and you could connect every single possible move together wihtout having to worry about the opponent getting pushed back (because you are always advancing). The drawback is that in exchange for you speedy attacks and ability to link everything together, you lose attack power.

As you can see, this could be done very well or else very poorly. Usually this type of mode promotes button mashing but it cannot be helped. Activation of this mode is done by:

Pressing two kicks and one punch together or vice versa.

Street Fighter Alpha 3: Large shift in how the game is played since this is when it first introduced the "groove" to the SF series. A groove is basically a battle system for you to pick in order to play your character. In SFA3, we have A-ism which was for the SFA series, so 3 level super bars and air blocking etc.

There was also the X-sim which was more attuned to the SSF2T series when the super first appeared. The trade off was it was bare bones fighting, basic blocking and only one super and one super bar. The advantage was that this mode left your character *much* stronger. You attacks caused more damage and your have more defense and your supers were extra powerful, possibly even more powerful than their A-ism counterparts.

The last was the V-sim which was pretty underrated. Possibly the hardest groove to learn, this was the groove where you had basically everything of the A-sim mode, but instead of supers, you have the CC's (this time called Variable Combos, hence the "V-sim"). Supers had changed drastically since it was more simplified, and resulted in less mistakes due to sticky fingers, or buttons. Once again in the case of the fireball super:

Lvl 1 super = QCF, QCF + Jab
Lvl 2 super = QCF, QCF + Strong
Lvl 3 super = QCF, QCF + Fierce

This wasn't really a new idea since long ago, EX characters basically paved the way for Grooves. EX usually refers to "extra characters", a different version of a character in a game usually accessed through pressing "start" and a button at the select screen. Usually EX character are referring to old incarnations of characters which were often fairly popular or throwbacks to older different games. KOF 98 had many EX characters, usually incarnations of previous KOF versions, or even in other fighting games series outside of KOF (Such as some of the Fatal Fury characters have properties of their Fatal Fury counterparts).

Street Fighter 3: Once again this throwsback to the idea of the SSF2T series where there was only really one super bar, no levels. Although it was a bit different. First of all characters did have multiple supers, however you could only choose *one* super to use for the entire game (of switch when 2P joined in in the later games). Usually there were 2 -3 supers to choose from. The thing is, depending on your super of your choice, the result of the super bar would be very different and drastic. Basically one could liken to "stocks" of super bar stored up.

If you chose a super which was fairly fast, but not very powerful then in most cases you would have a very short super bar with the ability to store up 2-3 stocks of that super. It's not really levels of super since in almost all cases, you cannot increase the power of your super by expending more stocks of your stored up supers. (Aside from Akuma and Oro).

If you chose a more powerful super you might just get one long huge super bar, or two fairly long super bars. As you can see often it really pays off on which super you have to pick but in the latest SF3 game (SF3:3S) you would eventually pick some of the more powerful supers since the short super bar little damage supers are just a waste sometimes.

Once again the motion of the supers are back to how SSF2:T would be, any punch or kick button would do fine.

X-MEN:COTA, MSH, XvSF, MvSF, MvC, MvC2

These are were super outrageous supers that I was talking about. Very much a cumalation of all the games I mentioned because of some many elements. I will got through each game briefly to explain the differences, but what stays the same throughout is this, all supers were greatly simplified with this motion, once again with the super fireball:

QCF + PP or KK

As you can see this shows how simple the game is sometimes especially needed when fast gameplay is included.

XMEN:COTA: As mentioned before, just one large super bar. When completly filled, their super can be unleashed. Smaller and weaker supers or abilities could be released when the color of the bar changes to indicate a different level, however it's not set in stone on where it would be for each character.

MSH: A small note: Infinity gems could be used in order to augment some powers. In some cases, most characters have one specific infinity gem attuned to them to give them extraordinary powers different than the other characters. Such as Wolverine getting the speed gem, would make him especially more speedy, more than the other characters. Shuma Gorath getting a specific gem would make it split into two characters, no other characters have that ability.

The super levels are more attuned to how SF3's system is like. Characters might have more than one super, but often the "stocks" of super that they can hold differs from character to character. Wolverine can hold 2/3? stocks of super, whereas Shuma Gorath has only one super stock that takes a long time to gather super bar energy for.

XvSF: This was the first inclusion of tag team match ups (and SF characters) into the Marvel world. Tagging is performed by pressing FP + RH together This is where everything was set. Once again a super uses up only one super bar, but you could store 3 stocks of super meter. However an interesting concept was to have "team supers" where your team (when you do QCF + FP+RH) you use up two super bars, but inflict potentially twice the damange while your character and their partner comes out and unleash two supers simotaneously (the super of the partner is predetermined, there is no way to choose what super they do).

Benefit, Akuma's usual lvl 3 super raging demon could be performed with only one level of super bar. FUN FUN FUN.

MSH vs. SF: Stil the same old same old, nothing new save for some potentially new duo supers. Inclusion of secret characters and the emergence of "assists" for characters. By pressing Strong + Forward together, you result in your tagged out character to jump out and performing a special move. Pretty nice, but it leaves you (and your partner) very much vulnerable since you taunt for a long time for this to happen.

MvC: Some drastic changes. You start out with one super bar already. You can choose an assist character to help out, but depending which assist character, it determines the amount of times you could call them out during a match. Collosus was very popular due to how he comes in (fast and from mid way up the screen) and pushes the character back (whether or not blocked) and goes in for multiple hits. Great character to set up for combos or if you need some space. Not to mention that there were 5 stocks of him to call him out and he had armour, so he was fairly hard to actually hit out.

NOTE: The assist characters were at first seen to be random, however with the proper buttons holds you could choose your assist character AND access some hidden characters as well.

Most notable change was the mode to bring in you partner and use both characters the same time with the potential of *infinite supers*. Yes, for a specific time (after getting more than 2 levels of super) you could call your partner in and perform infinite supers for utter mayhem. Not really great considering that whatever you do, you partner does as well, but the confusion often screws up the opponent on where to block. Usually the opponent has to block against the character they were fighting, NOT the partner. The partner could be kicking your backside, but if you block against the character you were fighting, then you'll be safe.

MvC2: Big changes indeed you could choose 3 characters this time. Assist characters had been replaced with your own selection of characters. When you choose you character, you could also choose 1 of 3 types of assists they can do from their special moves list. Calling them out has been replaced with two buttons Assist 1 and Assist 2. Of course the result was that the Medium attacks, Strong and Forward were replaced. The assist buttons laid where the FP and RH were, and the FP and RH were moved to the left one space to the missing Strong and Forward buttons spaces.

Tagging in and out were put for:

Jab + Short = Tag in second character.
FP + RH = Tag in third character.

Of course the assist buttons had replaced the "duo super attack" for a "triple super attack" combination. You just press A1 ande A2 together to perform the attack. For three super bars you get all three characters to perform supers...supers which are determined by what assist attack you assign them when you choose them.(you can choose for some characters now). However if you have only 1 super bar stock, you would just do your pre-determined super; 2 levels of stock, then you have only two characters to perform the attack.

Lastly you could "link" supers together. Before one super is done, you could call out your other character to replace your current character to perform another super and continuing the onslaught of attacks.

There are other things to consider but this is only concerned to what the supers are.

Dodging:

I should have mentioned this technique found only in SNK games plus the Capcom VS. SNK games (CvS). This was in the early KOF games from KOF 94-96 I imagine. Basically what it was is that you pressed A and B together (WP + WK) and you would dodge to the "side". You actually went into the background avoiding all attacks. Much like the roll, it had it's drawbacks. The main one is recovery time. However you could "counter" attack which is a regular attack you do which only happens as you are going back "into" the foreground, back into play. This had been replaced by the roll I mentioned earlier. Perhaps it was the fact that the dodge kinda slows down gameplay, not to mention it was not as effective as some people may think. The fact that you stay stationary leaves much to be desired, especially as using the "dodge" as a form of avoidance of multi hitting attacks (Ralph's Vulcan Arm or just someone pressing jab repeatedly) what results is that you're still stuck in the same place and eventually coming back into the opponents attack whose job was made easier by you dodging.

This technique is still present in KOF 98 called "Extra" mode and CvS1/2 because you could choose what type of "groove" you want (Groove is a mode of fighting you pick which I'll explain later).

Parrying and Just Defense:

These are relativly newly popularized conventions of video-gaming. It presents a really large jump in trying to speed up gameplay and making characters more offensive and defensive oriented. Parrying was first introduced in SS series (Samurai Shodown). Since it was a weapon based combat game there were some neat features that SNK innovated (even pioneered). Such as Super attacks (if they hit the person) would destroy the opponent's weapon, or the ability to actually lose your weapon on the field. One of the more interesting concepts, fully derived from kool ass ninjas, is when you are weaonless. The ability to do a command and then at the right moment "catch" your oppoent's weapon during an attack and counter with your own attack. This was one of the first versions of parrying to appear since it created two concepts related to parrying:

1. Doing a command other than "blocking" as a form of defense and *not* sustain damage in anyway.
2. Being able to immediatly attack after your opponents attack that you've stopped.

What differs parrying from rolls or dodges is specifically point #2. The indirect point number 3 is that there is a more element of risk when performing parrying or just defense (JD). In somecases to consistently parry/JD properly, you have risk more and anticipate more. You're parry/JD command has to be almost exactly when the attack comes, not something that lasts for a few seconds or forever such as rolling or blocking respectivly. You could see how this can greatly sped up gameplay due to how there are great rewards to take an intiative and anticipate your opponent's moves. But to explore in more depth I'll describe Capcom's "Parrying" and SNK's Just defense".

Parrying:

Parrying is Capcom's latest feature in their latest SF series SF3. Basically how it works is that you tap forward (for high/standing attacks or even in the air) or down (for low attacks) just at the moment an attack will hit you and you will 'parry' a single attack. This means that the attack would be nullified. Usually your character would flash and be in their parry animation when you sucessfully parried. The good thing about parrying is that effectively makes all attacks useless short of throws (you cannot parry throws), you gain super meter power, *and* you stand in the same place in where you parried (you usually get pushed back when just blocking). The better thing is that you can attack right after you parry, unlike blocking which you get pushed back and get locked into blocking animation.

This opens up an entirely new world of hurt since you parry once and unleash a combo from hell. Fireballs effectively have become null as far distance attacks since they can be seen a mile away and parried with the greatest of ease. People who relied on simple combos over and over again must adapt to different techniques in order to mix up which combos to use. It's great to use especailly when you are down to a sliver of energy, a single blocked fireball can do you in (specials and supers cause block damage, small damage you incur regardless of you blocking), and you parry in order to keep your life from draining to a KO.

But as you can see, this also becomes the problem as well as solution. Often at high levels of play, this results in players doing *nothing* greater than a Jab or Short because they are usually very hard to parry let alone anticipate. Mind games are more prevalent where someone would jump, and the other opponent is expected to parry, but instead the jumping character just does nothing also expecting to parry. What happens is the domination of who is able to thorw the best or the first person to make a mistake and pay dearly for it. As you can see, these matches could get quite boring, but the good thing is, we all aren't experts so we won't be getting to that high of level.

The downside to parrying pratically speaking is that it's quite hard to do. For quick multiple attacks (such as Chun-Li's lightning kick special) it's often hard to parry let alone worth it to parry. You have to parry every single attack! Fireballs take some pratice to learn how to parry, and the very big element of risk. Granted you have somewhat of lee-way on when to exactly parry, but the fact remains that you are performing a joystick movement that is counter-productive to the regular defensive habit of holding back or down-back for blocking. Afterall you are pressing "towards" or "down" in order to prevent an attack. Failure would result in damage or a big ass combo. I have managed to parry well, but it's because of the endless lines of Ryus, Kens and Akumas that gave me the ability to parry most of those characters basic attacks at a rookie level.

Just Defense

SNk's version of the parry. First appeared in Garou: Mark of the Wolves (herein referred as MOTW), a future set sequel of the Fatal Fury series (only a few years 2008 or soemthing). It's waaaay more convinient and somewhat less abusive than Capcom's since you could really only do specials and S/DM's after the JD, not every attack under the sun (I think). What makes it much more convinient is how it's actually set up. As opposed to promoting offensive tatics, MOTW has the exact opposite tactics of Capcom's parry. Instead of pressing toward to JD an attack, you instead tap back (or back-down I think for low attacks) at the exact moment the attack hits and then JD'd it. The added safety to this is that you actually gain both super bar power *and* health back for JDing!! Not to mention that even if you fuck up, you still end up in block animation anyways! Although if you do screw up for multiple attacks, then your joystick movement back to neutral would probably result in you getting hit. So this somewhat promotes a very defensive type of tatics since in someways you could recover your entire health bar with just JDing. Problems associated with this is also outlined above with Capcom's parrying.

Small jump/hop

The 'hop' has been prevalent in most KOF games. A lot of people say that with the inclusion of three types of jumps (six if you include dashing jumps), it adds much variety to the gameplay. But basically what the hop is, is a good way to perform an overhead which I already explained before. This is a really good thing because it really prevents people from turtling (people who block all day). The result would be a more active fight. As you can see, doing this greatly improves your odds of not getting hit out of a jump because it's short and fast. The thing with KOF's jumps, they all serve a purpose of positioning, instead of like most of Capcom's games where they have one generic jump, these three types of jumps: long, regular and hop, aid in giving the person more options to play the game.

Crossup

Ever played SF2 and had Ryu do a J.RH on your blocking character, but still Ryu still managed to hit you? Yes you were in standing/high block. Yes you were pressing the right way. But ever notice something different? How it wasn't the foot that Ryu hit you with, but almost looked like he sat on your head with his butt.

Well that my friends is called a Crossup. A crossup is the term used for an method of a jumping attack in which you hit your blocking oppoent on the "other side" of their body. In the case of Ryu still kicking your head with his ass, the point is that what happened is that he actually hit you on your "other side" as he jumped over you.

Let's just say your character was facing towards the left. By the time the attack Ryu dished out on your head actually hit, he was so far on the other side that you holding "Back" to block was actually switched to pressing "Towards" and walking towards the right. Ryu and Ken's RH crossup is very famous because it's basically one of the first attacks to be associated with crossups. Now overall, not all attacks have the potential to be crossups so be careful. There are some that are more useful than others. The most famous crossup attack ever though, (and actually was an attack made for exactly crossup purposes) is KOF's Iori's J. Back.WK. What this attack does is have one of his legs extend behind him (if he were facing right, his kick would come out to the left) during his jump and hit the opponent. Very useful because it doesn't require the character to be pratically be sitting on the opponent's head to perform a crossup, Iori could do a jump or SJ even closer to his opponent, sail way past him and still be able to hit the character, potentially less risky.

So why would you want to do a cross up? Combo potential. What basically kills a combo is the fact that each attack (whether hit or blocked) results in the opponent being pushed back. The stronger the attack, the further the push. Often the term Jump deep comes into constructing combos. (Jumping deep means to basically jump and attack as close and far as you can go without landing on the ground in order to lengthen the time the character is stunned so as to continue on with a combo. Anything earlier might cause the stun to run it's course before you recover to perform the rest of the combo). Jumping deep helps in constructing combos in the way that when you jump you jump so deep that you end up right beside the character (not within an attacks length range away) and have potential to throw more attacks because you are closer, therefore less "push" space would occur.

The cross over acts like the extreme part of jumping deep. Despite how deep we might jump into an opponent, we always end up with the small amount of "push back" space that shortens our combo. With a crossover, the thing is, even though you sill hit the opponent on the "other side", your oppenent still get's "pushed back" as if they were hit in the direction they were facing. This means the "push back" goes "towards" you as you land. You can see how great this is because essentially you had eliminated any form of push back and resulted in your oppoent being right beside you, opening up to potential of using more attacks in the combo, or even using more powerful attacks because of the more "push back" space you have to work with.

Air blocking

Blocking in the air, as simple as that. It basically makes jumping all the more easier and less risky. KOF however had made it (such as in KOF 98) where it was more defensive oriented, by making air blocking only availble when you jump backwards, not forwards. Generally nowadays, save for 'spazz games' (GG, VS. series) there is little air blocking since the whole point of jumping has to have an element of risk behind it anyways. In the ends, it differs between which games have and don't have air blocking, but generally the Alpha series, GG and VS series have full on air blocking.

Dashing/Running

It's obviously how dashing and running are performed, just two taps towards (hold towards if running). This really helps out considering that it greatly speeds up gameplay and is often crucial to winning a game (as in the VS. series.). The thing is, there must be a different made between dashing and running. Dashing is really short, about a few feet sometimes at most, half of the screen. Running is all out sprint and will always keep on going so long as the runner does so (and not get hit). Often you can back dash and forward dash, but never perform back running.

Advanced tactics in dashing and running

In KOF, Iori has a great back dash. The thing is, when he dashes back, he actually rises in the air a bit, thus accessing his basic air attacks. The thing is his cross up mentioned before, flattens him out pretty well. So if you dash back with him and press B.WK while doing so, you make his body flatter, therefore he spends more time horizontally moving since he has more vertical time as well. In effect, he can dash back half way the screen becasue of this party trick, very handy to get away from opponents.

In the VS series, there's a recent term that has been coined called "wave dashing". The thing is, with some characters, dashing ends rather messily. When you dash, some characters go to their limit, slide (or stop) and there's like a "dash recover" in the process of the dash. Wave dashing had came about from the fact that you could cancel the dash at any time by ducking (thus letting go of any commitment to a complete dash with dash recovery). This resulted in a thing where you dash, duck and dash and duck (repeat) at regular intervals (depending if the character needs wave dashing or not). Hence it looks like a "wave" of dashing where dashing goes up and down. This helps out greatly because most characters go across the screen faster because of this method (especially for those characters with short dash distances) and even make people with short dashs, have a long dash. The thing is, not all characters need this because characters like Magneto, or Sentinal in MvC2, are fast enough and have far enough dashes that are better off *not* wave dashing.

Well since my really long abcense (and lack of motivation) of coninuing my fighting 101, I might just skip SNK supers for now and just head into some more hardcore aspects of fighting games.

Super Jumping: There's two types really. "Real world" super jumping and "VS. series" super jumping.

I'll start with VS. series jumping since it'll be easier to explain real world jumping later. From herin super jump would be shortened to SJ. The key with the VS. series SJ is to think like Chinese kung fu flicks, or more westernly the Matrix. Yes people these are jumps that defy nature (and even video game nature) and jump approximately 2-2.5 screens high. Now SJ such as this hasn't been popularized since the VS series, more accurately X-MEN: COTA. The key is, flash. Really flash jumps and shit like that. Keeping up with the magnified pace and the super hero aspect of Marvel characters, you can see how SJ really fits in. Guilty Gear (GG) and Rival Schools (RS) has done some of this to a degree. Basically how this super jump is accomplished is either:

*Usually: tapping Down and quickly pressing Up/Up T./ Up B.

OR

pressing all (3) kick buttons (only from XvSF-MvC...not MvC2).

To tell the truth, all SJ accomplishes is adding to the flash. Not only as a defensive way to avoid all matters of shit happening on the ground (fireballs, beams, flying rocks, pink shit) but also it's the key in performing an air combo after you hit someone with a launcher attack. Note that launcher attacks, (usually D.FP or D.RH) are attacks that send you opponent in the air when it connects, setting up all matters of bodily harm, (usually an air combo is followed up with it). Air combos usually extend only to the peak of your jump, or when you decide to finish off the combo. (With either a finisher such as FP or RH; throw; special; or Super.)

The real world super jumping applies to games such as SNK and SF3 series. The basis behind this is that this real world jumping that it seems more "real" in the fact that it doesn't jump up 2 screens high. Usually it hits the "top" of the screen for that kind of SJ. Once again this is very useful and often it offers more "horizontal" advancement than the VS series SJ. for the sheer fact that it's not going as high. This adds more tactical advantages since it's more realistically used as a way to position yourself, NOT as a way to continue or make an air combo.

Usually games that aren't as spazzy as the VS series don't have air combos. At most, it would be a "juggle". Juggles first appeared in Mortal Kombat. Basically what it meant that you could hit an opponent as they fell from an attack in the air. Juggles have been included cause it's become a natural convention. Usually there are a limits to how many juggles can happen to the sole fact that to perform a juggle would usually result in one extra hit.

Capcom Supers: Capcom usually experiements with other types of fighters before attempting to go ahead and apply it to their flagship game SF. In X-Men: Children of the Atom (and basis for the VS. series), they had supers as well, one entire bar. But Instead of merely one super bar associated to only one super move, they instead incorporated many different types of supers in that one bar. At certain points of the bar, characters could use a part of that bar to perform a super attack or an enhancement of ability such as speed or power (Usually those ability enhancements were those moves that used up less of the super bar).

Wolverine had one super move where he tore the shit out of people when the bar was full, but also had a super move that required about 2/3s of the bar in order to heal/regain his lifebar. This translated into Street Fighter Alpha (SFA), a series where the timeline is set between SF2 and SF1.

Street Fighter Alpha (SFA)

In the SFA series, the super bar had three levels. At each level you can pull off a super of either lvl. 1, lvl 2, or a lvl. 3 super. Naturally the higher the bar went, the more powerful or more hits the super did. Also it is good to note, that always using a lvl. 3 super just to try to kill someone isn't always good because tactically it might prove stupid.

A lvl. 1 or lvl. 2 might be quicker. It really all depends on when to actually use it, because sometimes, even a lvl. 3 super might not be worth the effort in order to get more damage in when comparativly to what a lvl. 2 does. The waste of another potential lvl of super is just too great. Another thing to consider is regarding back to priority, since some lvl.s might have different priority than others. Not to mention the fact that even different levels result in different types of supers (not all the time but in some cases). So it really is up to the person to study whether or not it's good to use what lvl. of super in the fight.

As for the commands, most often for Capcom it's a double joystick motion of the move, with the appropriate button press. For example, Ryu's Super Fireball is:

QCF, QCF + P

It's kind hard to learn at first since using all the special move commands it just's hard to learn not to press a button right after the first QCF. But on a joystick it's fairly easy since it doesn't need to be totally anal and you can just rub the joystick QCF up back down and up again, and it should register. On a direcitonal pad and you if you have a big enough thumb, merely flex your thumb twice, for it to roll over the motion twice, easily. For ever super of a certain special, it would always try to mimic the movement properties of said special.

HOWEVER this technique used to do a super such as described above does not translate into SNK fighting games such as KOF. Their joystick system is a bit different where what is written has a totally different way of performing it which I'll explain later.

Another trick to learn is the "charge" chracters and their supers, such as Guile or Blanka from SF2. Usually it's:

Charge B, F, B, F + P

That is for their own respective moves. Pretty easy but probably the most difficult super motion that I have problem performing is the dreaded "Flash Kick" super, usually for Guile and his clone Charlie:

Charge D, DF, DB, U + K

This super is usualy used as primarily an "anti air" super, usually which involves a hefty amount of rising. This is usually a super that requires your opponent to be in the air as you pull it off for optimal effectiveness. As you can see how difficult it would be to pull this off since the whole ordeal of it would have you ending up sucking dropkick if you aren't fast enough. Yet people still can pull this off.

One last thing to touch upon is Level 3 only supers. These are super attacks that only be performed when your character has built up the super bar to level 3. Usually these moves are very elaborate, often flash, and very hard to actually land. Hell in SF:EX2 (Capcom's venture into 3D gaming, but it was more like 3D characters on a 2D plane) everyone had a lvl. 3 super and most of them seemed useless as well with KOF 2002 which had Hyper SDMs (HSDMs) which were essentially the Capcom equilavent of a lvl 3. (possibly a lvl. 4 since most of them were pretty outrageous).

The thing is, for such a super to actually *require* a super bar at lvl. 3 to perform, usually equates ultimate move with precise execution. Often the move would have the character very vulnerable when they set up their move, and hell, even very vulnerable when they miss the move. Which leads me to two points, the "Raging Demon".

Command supersThis was basically the first command in SF history. The owner of the Raging Demon technique is Akuma, ultimate bad-ass of the SF series. Actually it was called the "Bison Killer" since in SSF2T, if you managed to get a certain amount of super finishes, perfects and not lose a round; your final fight with M. Bison would be interupted by Akuma jumping in and laying the smackdown on M. Bison in one attack, thereby challenging you.

Basically what the Raging Demon is, is a move that hits 15 vital points on the character, essentially killing the. There's some fucked up more geeky stuff behind it, but I feel filthy enough so I'll end it there. First: 'Why it's called a command super'. The reason is simple, because it's all in the excution:

Raging Demon = Jab, Jab, (press towards), Short Kick, Fierce Punch.

As you can see it's very much like typing the thing out, hence the term command super. Your seemingly inputting 'commands' into the game in order to do it. However often in fighters, they called it merely the "Raging Demon Super", regardless of what which buttons are pressed in which order.

What results for the super is Akuma floating towards his opponent and if he connects with the opponent (it's actually un-blockable) 15 hits later, at least 50% of their life is gone. Now note, that I said "float" towards his opponent. As you can see he's *very* vulnerable at this point of time. Hell a Jab could knock him out of it. Most of the time, lvl.-3-only supers are this hard to land, because of the amount of payoff involved in landing it. Whether it's imposed "limits" would be Akuma's vulnerable 'gliding', to having to be right beside the person in order to perform the super, to even having to exactly pin-point where the super hits to maintain maximum painage. And most of the time, lvl.-3-only supers are totally not worth it. You really need to do your research in order to find out what is good or not.

Next time SNK supers

Before I continue on babbling, I think I should stop and take a break with all this verbal diarrhea. So I decided to put up popular “gaming terms” that have been produced as a result of fighting games:

Button Masher: This is quite obvious. A kind of relation to the screamer in gyms (people who shout like they’re passing a kidney stone every rep). Kinda sad really, since it’s merely the problem that they don’t know how to play so they randomly just press buttons…AKA Mash. Now a relative term to this is Masher Friendly Game. Usually this is an insult to games since it says

“Anyone can be successful at this game by just mashing the shit out of the buttons.”

Also meaning this is a skill-less game. And to some degree that is true, there are plenty of games out there that are *very* masher friendly especially 3D fighters and Capcom’s VS. series (X-Men VS. SF [XvSF], Marvel VS. SF [MvSF], Marvel VS. Capcom [MvC], and Marvel VS. Capcom 2 [MvC2]) mainly because of how many things are simplified, or else a lot of stuff has been put onto the buttons, that about any combination of “mashes” would result in some elaborate combo (I hate when mashers beat me actually. They make me cry).

Infinite: Ah, the bane of all fighting games. There’s still continued debate on how “cheap” this is, but I’m not here to explore the geeky philosophy of fighting games. Infinities are basically a combination of attacks that will hit your character forever, so long as the person continues the combination of attacks. The VS. series is seriously bad for this since even XvSF, almost everyone had an infinite.

Relatively are “semi infinities” that are more related on the KOF side (only when in KOF 2000, characters had “assistants”/strikers which they called out a character to perform an attack or action). They were limited because at one point, the allowed “use” of your assistant would deplete, leaving someone people with no way to continue on the infinite, hence “semi-infinite”.

Rush that shit down!!! This is a term spawned by the VS series. Why this is the case is because the VS series actually sped the speed of fights, therefore making some characters really fast. Hence these fast nimble characters (Like Wolverine, Stirder, Chun-Li and recently Magneto) were labeled Rushdown Characters. These were characters that super fast, in your face and comboed the shit out of you. They’re speed alone could keep you pinned down for an entire match, forcing you to block, until you made one mistake.

Hence when someone is doing some weird shit, like just throwing fireballs, or jumping around, once a Rushdown Character came out it was time to “Rush that shit down!”. Of course this could apply to anything IMHO. Like exams would be “Exam that shit down” or like C++ programming “C++/Program that shit down!”. It’s a barrel of geeky fun, but still it’s basically as cool (if not less) than 1337 speak and we all know how 1@m3 +Ha+ !$ LOLLY!

Tiers

Can be related to sports. Basically what tiers mean in fighting games is the grouping of characters in their relation to rank in the game. The oft used top tier means that these characters basically are the best to use the entire game. Bottom tier means the worse possible characters. Of course I have to mention that the difference between tiers, (say top and second tiers) is whether or not characters in the second tier can face off and have a fair chance of beating a character in the top tier. Note that these tiers are often established at tournaments or the top players of each respective game. In relation to this is the idea of balance. A balanced game is usually a game who has relatively few tiers or the tiers are fairly close. As seen in CvS2, it is somewhat unbalanced due to the fact that Sagat and Blanka are the *only* characters in top tier out of a few dozen characters, and dominate the game very easily.

Granted there is some sort of “joy” in having such a small tier. It’s very much how scientists or artisans suddenly spend a bulk of their lifetime analysing this one insignificant thing, which really holds a lot of information on it. But in the long run, it’s kinda bad since a worth of a game is how much stuff with other characters you can do, not how well you could continually do it with the same characters over and over again.

Supers

Ah, the infamous super. Somehow magically get’s mashed the fuck out, surprising newbies and children alike. This part would be different in descrbing the “specials” since in a sense, the supers nature is relatively the same. However what is important is the some of the execution of supers and some other neats things that had popped up recently related to supers. But first:

Super bar: To tell the truth, SNK invented the super with Fatal Fury 2 (FF2), of Art of Fighting (AOF). A super is basically a souped up attack of the character's regular special moves (but nowadays a lot of characters have supers that are original upon themselves). However it wasn’t in such a way where you have to “build up” a super bar in order to gather enough to pull off a super attack.

What FF2 did is when near death, your lifebar starts to blink red and yellow. It was both as an indicator that you’re near getting skooled and telling you can do a super move. It was usually around 80% life gone before it starts blinking. However in relation to your character’s dire circumstances, they coined the super the term Desperation Move (DM for short) (and the suped up version, Super Desperation Move [SDM]). These terms are usually related to SNK games, where as the general term ‘supers’ are related to Capcom games.

It was actually quite fitting since these moves could greatly change the entire course of the match. A character would be near death, barely taking 20% off their opponent, but when the super blasts out in FF2, pfft…anywhere from 45%-60% of your life…GONE. Of course, having this power was kinda unbalanced since there were no actual limits to how many times you could pull off a DM. So then you have another chance to quickly end the match by just pulling off another DM killing you opponent easily. This has been toned down of course to some degree, but I’ll explain later.

Then came Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo (SSF2T) with the inclusion of the “super bar” an actual gauge that builds up with each sucessful attack or special pulled off. Like SNK, these supers were devastating, taking off 50% off easily. However it did prove to be a limit to how many times a character could pull off a super. In my experience though, it seemed like futile since every round, the super bar resetted to nothing and it would almost take an entire rounds’ worth of fighting to build up one super, usually a one point where my opponent was almost dead anways.

I’d like to also touch onto the “rage meter” that belongs to the Samurai Shodown/Spirits (SS) series. This is also another form of super but it was made in such a way that only built up when you got hit. Therefore as it grew, so did your “rage” which when topped off would result in increased abilities (higher power, and viltality) but also the ability to use up all your rage bar to pull off one super (usually breaking the opponents weapon in the process if it hit).

So the evolution of the super bar continued, and still continues (primarily on SNKs side) but I would explain the general idea behind these two companies super bars.

No super attacks disscussion today since I'm feeling like shit [there's a post below this post that kinda explains the start of my day] plus the fact that special attacks are a monster of an article in the first place.

Special attacks

Ah, the ever useful “fireball”. To tell the truth this might be the largest section of this article since special attacks are fairly deep. As all people know, special attacks are usually what results in our good old “fireball wars” where we just wait for one slip-up to land an attack which would have been worth more health if we just jumped over the fireball and comboed the fucker. Although I’m not here to explain each attack, I will explain some of the ways to understand the nature of commands related to the special attacks. But first the general nature of special attacks.

As seen in SF games, special attacks (usually short formed called ‘specials’) each attack corresponds with a different level of the attack button (P or K) used weak, med, or strong. Most of the time use of a weaker attack button when you perform the attack would result in:

- A slower special
- A shorter distanced special
- A less hitting special
- A weaker special

In KOF sometimes the attack results in a totally different attack. One when looking at Terry Bogard nowadays, he has two types of ‘fireballs’ both done by a QCF (quarter circle forward) + P. It all depends on the punch. His WP results in his regular travel-full-distance-of-the-screen fireball. But his SP. results in a small gush of power that hits anything within a few feet in front of him.

As the power of the attack button used increases ( i.e. from weak to medium) the properties could result in:

- A faster special
- A farther distanced special
- A more hitting special
- A stronger special

Now onto: the special commands.

Special Commands

QCF (quarter circle forward) + Punch/kick: The quarter circle forward motion usually represents a fairly offensive special since the very movement of it screams offensive attack. It’s quick with the joystick moving forward.

For the punch, it usually translates into the traditional fireball. For non-fireball characters, it would translate most likely to an advancing special that ends with punch. However for the kick, it usually ends up with some two different connotations. Just another advancing special but ending with a kick, but in the case of Sagat in SF2, depending on whether you use QCF + P or QCF + K, it would results in a high or low fireball respectively. This shows that especially in the Capcom button layout, punches and kicks also represent where they are position on the arcade pad, high and low. So this emphasizes the idea that punch = high special and kick = lower special in the special attack world.

QCB (quarter circle back) + Punch/kick: This too equates to the above, however it must be understood that sometimes these types of specials have a more defensive nature. Not to mention that sometimes it also can be associated with atypical specials since the act of rotating the joystick back is fairly atypical especially when associating it with an offensive special. However the interesting thing is that specials such as these using kicks, usually result in a type of specials that actually “rises” above the ground and kick the person in the famous hurricane kick of Ryu.

DP (F, D, DF) + Punch/Kick: Now I should mention I also had problems performing this move long ago. I would sometimes individually tap each direction really quickly in order to try and get it. But in order to pull it off consecutively, just press forward and do the QCF motion. Practice of course makes perfect.

Now usually the DP motion refers to Ryu and Ken’s dragon punch move from SF2. It was usually regarded as an anti-air attack. Anti-airs are basically attacks that defend yourself from opponents jumping towards you and attacking you. Usually it’s a move that fairly vertical with little horizontal movement at all. It can involve many things (usually a flying uppercut) but still it could also involve a throw, a kick even a column of fire. However it could also represent a powerful attack since it’s association with the early days of SF2 where the DP was very powerful indeed.

HCB and HCF special (half circle forward/back) These are special are usually associated with grappling special, especially in the KOF series. As you can see these specials emphasize more investment in time, therefore getting more of a reward in damage against your opponent. When associating with grapplers/wrestlers, these are usually toned down versions of the dreaded SPD (a full 360 on the joystick) special moves, although are very useful due to how easy they are to perform.

SPD/360 specials: Since Zangeif was the first to utilize the 360, from herein any reference to a 360 joystick movement would be called ‘SPD’ (spinning pile driver). Relatively it should also be mentioned that moves that require a 720 joystick movement would be referred to Zangeif’s super ‘FAB’ (Final Atomic Buster). Now as you can see, this move is primarily regarded for a lot of grapplers. Note that in some faqs, 360 and 720 are usually used in place of it.

The very mention of trying to pull off a SPD shows how much effort is needed in order to land it, hell, sometimes you need a set up in order to go totally around in the joystick in order to complete the move. A hell of an investment for a hell of a payout. In the early days, landing one SPD would results in about 50% of life GONE. It’s been toned down incredibly now but nowadays still puts fear into the person on whether or not you are going to SPD their ass into the ground.

However to tell the truth in SF, the SPD doesn’t truly needed a 360 nowadays. So no more jumping around spinning your thumb to a nub in order to pull of an SPD which you’ll probably never land or just get the shit kicked out of you.

It’s just that it requires at least 7 points on the joystick to be ‘touched’ with a punch in order to really to pull off a SPD. In fact less than that since most players starting to SPDs actually only do a simple F, D, U +P motion (forward slide to down, up). Granted at most this is like only 4 points but it really does work since you hit enough points and leave the jumping “point” on the joystick left, the punch button is pressed before you actually leave the ground, but the game actually registers that joystick command. So on the ground SPD!

Specials that require you to hold a button: Easy enough to know, just think Mega Man and his charge shot, and you should know what holding down a button means. Longer means more power in the attack. Of course it’s very hard to pull off sometimes since it leaves you stationary in your set up time. However like Mega Man who appeared in the Marvel VS. Capcom (MvC), if you hold down FP (Fierce Punch) for a long time, his ‘fireball’ would charge longer for more hits. In the meanwhile, he can do anything such as jump and do other attacks, except for FP.

Before I go onto the idea of “Super Moves” I think I should also elaborate on some special move properties.

Invicinbility Frames

Long ago in SF2 the first one, Ryu and Ken’s Dragon Punches (DP) actually was truly invincible. Nothing could knock them out of it on their ascension to aerial ass kicking. You couldn’t drop kick them out of it, nor punch them out of it. They could be right under you and as you jump, they’ll still knock you flat on your ass. This is what is meant by invincibility frames. Every move has a certain amount of frames, and sometimes the programmers assign “invincibility frames” to some of the moves, usually the beginning.

An example would be to put a Ryu and Ken match in SF2. Let’s just say Ryu and Ken are fighting, and they’re about a few feet away from each other. Ryu tosses out a DP, and about half a second later, Ken tosses one out as well. What will happen is on the way up, (the attack phase) they would actually touch, but not hit each other.

Ryu would be the one that gets the damage from this meeting in the sky. The reason why is that since both characters DP are just totally invincible going up, going down meant their open for an ass-whupping. Since Ryu went first, he would be the first one to get hit. Therefore Ken is still in his rising animation while Ryu is going to recovery by floating down to earth, but will get hit.

Now Capcom knew that this posed a problem since it was basically too powerful of a move. So nowadays, the DPs are only a few frames in the start of the move, which is still good since to some degree it could be used both as a defensive and offensive attack. Some people will take advantage of their invincibility frames in order to blow through one attack and hit the opponent.

Now this mention of invincibility frames brings to mind…

Recovery time

Often called recovery time or recovery frames, this is the time it takes for you to regain control back from your character when they perform any move. When you are in this time, your opponent can basically have their way with you.

A jab would have really small recovery time, where as a fierce punch would have longer recovery time. This is fairly important since special you make would have a element of risk sometime because of recovery time. In the case of Ryu and Ken, their DP havehuge recovery time because the height they go up might be invincible, but the exact same height they come down is all recovery time AKA being vulnerable. Recovery time really varies because often it depends on the type of special move that is performed. Usually the more elaborate/powerful the attack, the more recovery time that it usually associated with it. Also usually on the technical side, recovery time is measured by frames, as well as set up time.

Two in one

You probably heard this term before for it’s been used very much. Easy enough what it means is when a special move is “buffered” from a basic attack. Prime example would be:

Holding down, pressing Jab, sliding the joystick DF to F and then pressing Jab again, results in a fireball.

What results is a Cr. Jab into Fireball. Basically what happened is part of the command for the fireball special move, has already been inputted by initially crouching straight down. This means that it is possible to have basic moves come out (and not interrupt you making an attempt to perform a special move motion)
and have a special move (or even super move) come right out after it, resulting in a combo.

Now that isn’t always the case since sometimes some back moves cannot be interrupted period or it just takes too long to recover from leaving the time you actually input the special move, it doesn’t come out. This brings up the point of “linking”, which basically means the ability for certain moves have their recovery frames interrupted to perform another attack to extend your combo (or at least have their moves recover fast enough to do something else).

This technique is very powerful since it would help set up some special moves, or supers with just basic attacks but with less risk of merely pulling off the special move or super.

This technique can also be related to “buffering” which means basically doing a basic attack in order to perform a motion for a special. Prime example would be Zangeif who would often do a basic move in order to buffer an entire 360 in order to perform a SPD.

Priority

I mentioned this term before when I described the potential of offensive and defensive crouch. I don’t know where exactly to put this, since this applies to all forms of attacks, basic, command, special and super. However I decided to put it here since it seems to be a misc. type thing.

Basically priority is exactly what it sounds like. Which objects or actions gets performed first. Generally speaking the highest priority attack is those who have invincibility frames, such as the DP of Ryu and Ken of SF. This means, this move will basically hit you opponent out of any attack they might do at the same time, hence your attack takes priority over *any* of your opponents attack.

Below attacks that have invincibility frames (or are invincible period) anything is game. A Cr. Jab might over-prioritize a Roundhouse, or a standing Forward Kick over a jump Short Kick. The point is that it’s good to find *basic* attacks that are high in priority since it can be used with less risk than the other attacks. A prime example would be:

Capcom VS. SNK 2’s Sagat’s Cr. FP. Why? It’s because Sagat’s Cr. FP is insanely high on priority. It would basically nullify almost any attack short of attacks with invincibility frames. It doesn’t just end with priority. As you can see, reach is also a high point since his attack extends fairly far, in-fact farther than most characters with a Cr. FP. And since it’s so high in priority, it can also be used as poke. (Pokes are attacks [usually jabs or shorts] that are used for the sole purpose of causing people to block in order to perform another move such as a throw or force opponents to back the fuck off.) Hence priority is often a big thing, and as recently it is has been also somewhat of a game-breaking feature (Capcom VS. SNK 2 has only Sagat and Blanka as the top characters to use, essentially making all the other characters useless).

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

I cut my fighting gaming thing a bit short because I just did. To continue.

Blocking Part 2

Notice that most games do not have the same block principles. Usually it would be the most natural thing in the game, holding back (or DB for crouching block) but as you can see there are some games that require a touch of a button to block, which brings us to two entirely different games Mortal Kombat (MK) and Soul Calibur(SC).

The thing is MK is a regular fighter with a block button. The funny thing is that this game at the time defied all other conventions of fighting videogames. That meant almost every character had the same basic moves (aside from special/command moves), block was done by holding a button, fireballs didn't cancel each other out (instead the first one to hit an opponent won out while the other one would just disappear as oppsed the usual fireballs nullifiying each other when they hit each other.) and regular attacks caused block damage. The thing is, this was a bad way to do the entire button blocking thing since the entire notion of blocking was based on our inherent instinct of defense, go back. Defending yourself meant going back getting away from attacks and pulling "back" on the joystick should have been easy enough. The awkwardness of pressing an actual "button" as a means of defense seemed just fucked up.

Of course when SC game came out, it was a game that's basis was in a 3D realm fighting games which had a "Guard" button which makes you "Block" with your weapon. This seemed more natural since it was the idea of a 3D game, and more realistic, the idea of having to push a button to block seemed more logical. It could have been the weapons based combat or it could have been the idea that there were other means of defense (running away in a 3D arena, side stepping in and out)

Since my friends lack the certain knowledge of being able to actually befeat me at fighting games, I think I should go about ushering them into the basic concepts and techniques of fighting games.

Basically there are a lot of different fighters. The most common one would be just a fighting game where two opponent battle it out for the best two of three rounds. Of course the amount of rounds could differ depending on the amount set up the arcade operator.

A new trend in games is the tag-in feature. Anywhere from four to 6 players are chosen (2-3 each per player). A button or combination of buttons causes the designated character to pop out, while letting the tagged out player to rest and regain energy.

Movement

Why I decided to focus on "movement" first is due to how important it is. I mean to hit someone you have to be within range to hit them. Usually movements have consist of primarily 3 things; walking back and forth, jumping (backwards, forwards and straight up) and ducking. Some more advanced tactics would be the inclusion of dashing, and running (both usually performed by tapping forwards [or backwards] quickly twice.) and short/hops or long jumps. But that's later. First I would like to emphasize blocking.

Blocking

Blocking has always been a natural convention of merely holding back or diagonally back. What always happens with new people (aka newbies) and never fails to amuse me to tears is how easily I can defeat them by the way of just sweeping their sorry asses to a KO mainly because they don't know how to block low. To understand this it's very simple.

Regular blocking is holding back/away which means it will block high/jumping and standing/mid-level attacks.

That means almost any attack that comes your way with your opponent firmly in their up-right (non-slouching position) or flying through the air, will be stopped by you merely holding back.

BUT this doesn't mean pure invincibility, otherwise you just get off the first hit and block all day long holding just back. Going with common sense, there is lo and behold a low block. This meaning that:

Low blocking is diagonally back which means it will block standing/mid-level attacks and low sweeping attacks.

I put high emphasis on how powerful this technique is because usually, especially in early fighting games, blocking low was fairly important. The idea behind that is that it's much more of a risk to do a jumping attack that leaves you very vulnerable regardless of whether you do anything or not; than to just merely stay on the ground whether you do anything or not. Not many moves in general of the fighting game world is a specfically low attack since because there are just so few.

Not many people catch onto this, even when I give them a chance and all I do is low sweep them to death. Usually the best position to have when not moving back and forth and your opponent isn't sky bound is to just be in crouching block (by holding diagonally back). When your opponent is moving, it might be better to hold onto just standing block (back). Of course this talk of being in the defensive mode especially when in DB leads me to:

Offensive and defensive crouch

What other people fail to recognize is that sometimes characters don't just have moves of a standing nature, jumping nature or crouching nature. An emphasis on offesive attacks and defensive attacks are also divided into each type of nature. That's why a lot of people miss good opputunities when they just press the attack button and decide not to test the waters with different standard joystick directional holds and attacks.

I emphasize offensive and defensive crouch for the main fact that it could help me with two items with one article: The emphasis on different attacks with different standard joystick movements and awareness of defenseive crouch and offensive crouch (from herein be referred to defensive crouch = [DB] offensive crouch = [DF] or crouch = [D]).

The thing is people usually associate the Cr. with two things. Ducking and low blocking. The thing is, although DB and D does do both of these things, it shouldn't be just reffered as such since it does open a lot of offensive capabilites. Especially in Capcom VS. SNK 1 (CvS1) where doing a offensive crouch plus one of the heavy attacks causes a medium attack to come out. However to outline the general standards of these capabilites.

Defensive crouch (DB) or crouch (D) usually results in standard low attacks, aka kicks, attacks, sweeps.

The only exception I could think off the top of my head is Dhalsim of Street Fighter (SF) fame. In the Street Fighter Alpha (SFA) series, Dhalsim gained almost a extra set of low attacks (and standing ones if holding B) when someone holds back in the crouching position. The thing is, Dhalsim usual bunch of crouching kick attacks result in him "sliding" to kick the opponent. This can be both in DF (offensive crouch) or just D

Usually an attack would force someone back when blocked, but this provided somewhat a bad positioning strategy since if you just wanted put distance bwteen you and your opponent. You crouch kick them, they block, you slide into them still end up in the same place, only a few feet more to the left or right. The opponent is still in your face and you actually might have left yourself vulnerable with recovery time from the slide. With Dhalsim you can see the problem.

However when in DB (defensive crouch). Things change. Dhalsim gotten the basic crouch non--sliding kicks of all his counterparts and results in functioning just as good as the rest of his comrades in arms. This means no more slding and even the potential of a new set of moves with different priorities.

Offensive crouch (down forward) usually results in attacks that are a variation of sweeps (or something entirely different) that results in advancing low attacks.

This is really important since usually a lot of people over-look this avenue of attack. The thing is in the old days there would be one crouch attack for all three positions of crouch (back, down and forward). Defensive crouch was used often because of the fact that you could both attack and block, and crouch was used often because it was just fast to tap and hold down. But offensive was hardly used because it posed a threat to you since it too the same amount of time and effort of defensive crouch, but not the same reward of being in block as well.

To really emphasize this point home, regard Capcom VS. SNK 1/Pro (CvS1/Pro). Since Capcom had made this game and decided to adapt SNK's usual four button system (Capcom has a six button system) the medium attacks were lost (Med. P and Med. K). To compensate, they instead used the not often used offesive crouch to brng out the "medium crouching attacks". Now regular combos that required the medium attacks were left intact for most of the Capcom characters. Although this mean a bit more to learn, people got accustomed to it.

However for a more pratical sense, I would have to regard Kyo Kusanagi of The King of Fighters (KOF) fame and Zangeif of SF.

Both their heavy DF (offensive) kicks result in them going further and advancing than their regular DB defensive/just Cr. attacks. This helps out since it increases the range of their effectiveness. Kyo's attack doesn't result in a knockdown, but instead a two hit attack which can be linked into other combos. Zangief's attach reaches out, but the trade off is usually it takes him longer to kick out that his regular kick. Usually the trade off for range is either in speed, power, recovery or priority (meaning which attack would beat out the other attack if they both struck each other at the same time).

In an effort to not ostrisize my friends in general who don't seem to be interested into fighting games...I've decided to split my Fighting game FAQ into this blog so I could not clutter up the rest of my personal blog with it. In effect I'm only ostrisizing one person who has some interest if any. Ta ta!