Monthly Archives: December 2009

Weekly Screenshot: Fusion Dance Gill

Here’s the final Kizuna Encounter screenshot, featuring all kinds of elemental effects.

kizuna-elemental-damage-01

KE Eagle’s Axe Boom trades with Mezu’s Higoromo, setting fire to Mezu and freezing Eagle. If you look closely, you can spot a few raindrops too.

Whoever comes up with the best title wins an unopened Street Fighter Storyteller’s Screen, published by White Wolf back in 1994. Trust me, it’s awesome. As always, the rules are one entry per person and i’ll choose my favorite on Monday.

SF2 Series Backwards Attack Conditions

In many advanced ST combo videos, you see someone cross up an opponent, and then hit them with an attack while facing the wrong way. Everyone knows that the crossup must barely make it over the opponent and that the follow-up must be performed as soon as possible, usually on the landing frame. However, there are quite a few additional conditions which must be satisfied in order for the attack to come out facing backwards.

The main trick lies in causing the dummy character to reel backward fully before you land. That way their head is extended past your body and the game takes longer to figure out that your opponent is actually behind you. Here are the basic rules which apply to most characters:

1) must use a medium or hard jump attack because light attacks don’t trigger full hit reel
2) opponent must be crouching because jump attacks cause more pushback against crouching characters, plus they lean back further
3) jump attack must hit early enough during jump arc to give opponent enough time to lean back fully before landing
4) 1P characters must cross up by jumping from left to right and 2P characters must cross up jumping from right to left

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CV Spotlight: joo’s MvC2 DVD Preview

Since there wasn’t anything major released this week, now seems like a good time to talk about … well, insanity.

For the past five years, joo has been creating absurdly nuanced Marvel vs Capcom 2 combo videos, on his own as well as in collaboration with the group Meikyoushisui. If you care about Marvel at all then you’ve seen his videos, and if you’ve seen one of his videos then i don’t need to tell you how big a deal this guy is.

Recently he announced his plans to release a (free!) DVD compilation of MvC2 combos. The shocking part is, apparently he’s been saving all of his best material for this DVD. In other words, we’ve been watching b-sides and deleted scenes all this time. It’s hard to imagine what’s on the DVD itself when the preview trailer is quite possibly the craziest MvC2 combo video of the past two years.

Meikyoushisui Presents: Marvel vs Capcom 2 DVD Preview

After a year of remastering and additional production, the deadline has been finalized for January 31st, 2010; roughly a month away. Magnetro has been helping with explanation tutorials, and he’s got an SRK thread going which covers everything about the project as well as links to all previous volumes. I don’t know what else to say about this except that everyone i know is looking forward to it, so you should go check out the trailer and join us in the thread.

Street Fighter Footsies Handbook, Chapter 3

This segment focuses on the massive advantages gained by cornering your opponent. As you may have noticed, the capacity to safely/stealthily withdraw from an opponent’s attack space is a crucial aspect of footsies. Backing your opponent against a wall negates their ability to walk backward, giving you sole control over when you’re in and out of attack range.

Element 07: Whenever you knock someone into the corner, establish a safe position slightly outside their reach. Then as soon as you get the feeling they’re about to advance or let their guard down, step forward and poke their toes with a low medium kick. Getting hit by one of these gives a lot of players the urge to retaliate with one of their own. Simply let it whiff then strike their extended limb or throw them right back into the corner. However, keep in mind that veteran players often take a step forward before counterpoking, so you might want to give them a little extra room.

Element 08: Shortly after succeeding with a typical tick-throw setup, repeat a similar sequence except step backward instead of executing the throw. If you catch your opponent’s tech attempt whiffing, respond with a damaging combo. The corner severely limits your opponent’s options for escaping throws, thereby forcing them to take greater risks. They’re certainly not going to walk out of your throw range, so they have to do something proactive to avoid dying to simple throw loops. Having nowhere to go also makes them an easy combo target when they get baited.

Element 09: Following a basic combo or block string, poke with a light attack from its maximum distance. The corner will ensure your attack doesn’t whiff, so you lose nothing if they continue blocking. On the other hand if they happen to press a button, yours will usually come out sooner and stuff whatever they were trying to do. Most everyone’s natural reaction to having their attack interrupted is to block, which makes it easy to walk up and throw them in their moment of hesitation. Some people have a habit of jumping instead, which can also be punished with an uppercut on reaction.

Generally speaking, there are two approaches to corner offense. Either you can press the advantage and rush them down, armed with the confidence that your pokes aren’t going to whiff. Or you can hold your ground and counter their every attempt to exit the corner, waging a battle of attrition which heavily favors whomever the corner benefits.

It’s actually difficult to find good examples of corner footsies in tournament finals, because both players are fully aware that everything can be punished. Therefore the cornered player becomes extremely defensive, while waiting for a way out. Five to ten seconds can go by without anything major happening, because the other player doesn’t want to open up an escape route either. Yet it’s no coincidence that the longer someone stays in the corner, the more often they tend to lose.

Rule #2: Dictate where the match will be fought. Easier said than done, but Alex Wolfe’s unbelievable EvoWest2k6 comeback in the final round of an elimination bout provides an excellent example. His HSF2 N.Dhalsim catches a few bad breaks at the start, but once he manages to recover, he simply refuses to play the game at mid-range. Usually Dhalsim dominates at that distance, but not against CE Bison. Thus he stays as far away as possible, waiting for the one mistake he can capitalize on. When the opportunity arrives, he does everything in his power to prevent Bison from escaping to reset the match.

What Happened to 2D Brawlers?

I know i’m not the only one who misses them, because the announcement of Guy and Cody returning in SSF4 brought on a wave of Final Fight nostalgia throughout literally every gaming forum on the internet. Over the past couple years, we’ve seen various classic franchises such as Streets of Rage and Golden Axe ported to nearly all the current gen consoles. Now Capcom is rereleasing Final Fight and Magic Sword on XBL and PSN with GGPO netcode.

sor2-axel-shiva-02ySomeone’s obviously buying these things, yet there haven’t been any new titles to speak of. Why is that? Sure, we have seen a few modest offerings such as the 3D remake of Turtles In Time, but nothing that truly captures the feeling of playing Streets of Rage 2 on the Sega Genesis in glorious 320×224 resolution.

It’s almost as if the game industry has forgotten what made the beat ’em up genre so fun to play. This isn’t a 2D versus 3D issue because third-person 3D action game developers still know how to do combat properly, as evidenced by incredibly polished series like Devil May Cry and God of War. For whatever reason, nobody can figure out how to get the hits in a modern brawler to feel right anymore.

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