Advanced Meaty Setups

Last week’s technical article defined meaty attacks and provided basic examples which could be applied to match combos and tactics. Today the goal is to show how elaborate these things can get. To illustrate the point, i’ve made a short video of advanced meaty setups in Capcom vs SNK 2:

Obviously none of these are the least bit practical, but i’ve always considered clever combo setups to be as impressive as the combos themselves. In fact i’ve recorded more than a few combos that were little more than an excuse to demonstrate a cool setup.

0:02 / opponent reaches into active space
Vice’s LK Da Cide Slayer reaches into Dhalsim’s extended B+MP, which gives him enough frame advantage to link c.HP. Dhalsim is actually quite amazing when it comes to these kinds of combos because of the sheer variety of attack ranges available to him. Some characters’ entire arsenals are aimed at a specific spot right in front of them.

0:05 / opponent crouches into extended attack
Guile walks just outside of c.MP range and whiffs one against standing King. Generally speaking, all characters in all fighting games become fatter while crouching. King ducks into the last active frame of Guile’s c.MP which allows him to link into F+HP backfist.

0:08 / backwards projectile pushes opponent into attack space
Ryo’s LP air FB is traveling away from Dhalsim, so it pulls him toward Ryo when Sim’s s.HP touches it. Ryo’s s.LP normally gives +5 hit advantage and his s.MK has 7 frames of startup. However, s.LP has 4 active frames which means he can cut 3 extra frames of recovery time by using the meatiest possible setup. Once he reaches +8 frame advantage, he can combo into s.MK as a one-frame link. Basically the reverse pushback from Ryo’s projectile slides Dhalsim into Ryo’s meaty s.LP hitbox on its last active frame.

0:11 / multi-hit attack guard crushes
Bison’s LP Psycho Crusher normally leaves him with severe frame disadvantage, but it’s active for 31 frames. Most of that duration is taken out of the equation here because Balrog blocks the first two hits and gets guard crushed before the third hit connects. That leaves Bison with plenty of time to recover and juggle with lvl3 Mega Psycho Crusher.

0:17 / opponent is clearly trying too hard
This is somewhat similar to the first clip in that Maki’s s.HK reaches into Geese’s Counter Attack. However, there are a few extra elements in play here, such as Geese’s backwards orientation pulling Maki over him to create a midscreen lvl2 Raging Storm setup. Obviously if he had been facing her, the Counter Attack would’ve knocked her way out of range. And it’s just plain cool how Geese is facing away from his opponent throughout most of this combo.

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0:24 / attack outlasts opponent’s invincibility
Vega’s LP Rolling Crystal Flash normally gives him exactly zero frame advantage. In this clip, P-Iori parries once to get rid of its first rolling hit, then creates a meaty setup for Vega’s claw using the startup invincibility of his own lvl3 FB super. Vega’s c.MP has 4 frames of startup, which is easily covered by the counterhit meaty LP Rolling Crystal Flash, which has 11 active frames on that last hit. If you ignore the extra bells and whistles, this is actually a very basic meaty setup relying on opponent invincibility.

0:32 / Blanka’s Counter Attack is garbage
Blanka has the misfortune of having the only Counter Attack in the game which runs out of invincibility before its startup period is over. Every other Counter Attack remains invincible until its last startup frame, which means their first vulnerable frame coincides with their first active frame. In other words, the very least they can do is trade hits (unless they’re up against another invincible move). Here Blanka blocks the first hit of Ryu’s close s.HK and then turns the second hit meaty through his Counter Attack. Furthermore, initiating the Counter Attack instantly eliminates any pushback from the first hit. Ryu’s s.HK normally gives him +2 hit advantage, but it has 4 active frames which allows him to get as high as +5 with the meatiest possible setup. The counterhit bonus gives him an extra 4 frames, which puts him at +9 advantage, barely enough to link that far s.HP, which has 7-frame startup.

0:38 / Tech-Throw Reversal glitch invincibility
Admittedly, this scenario doesn’t quite fit in with the rest of the examples shown in the video. It is a meaty setup in the sense that Yamazaki’s invincibility delays impact, but it’s a special case where the meatiness doesn’t make a difference to Mai. The true key to Tech-Throw Reversal combos is eliminating the attacker’s recovery. It’s the only case where the attacker gets the same frame advantage regardless of how meaty you make the attack.

This is a tool-assisted combo video recorded with two ASCII PAD V Pro programmable controllers. Absolutely no cheats, hacks, or game-altering devices were used in the making of.

Why does everything look so glitchy? I’m fairly certain my Dreamcast was dying, although i stopped using it before it died. These weird artifacts would show up in almost every game i tried, especially over 3D objects. In fact, you can see subtle traces of this issue developing in the CvS segment of my 2007 Guile video. However, the Ryu video was recorded on a new (used) Dreamcast so that one’s clean.

2 thoughts on “Advanced Meaty Setups

  1. Remxi

    Nice. I really like the M. Bison guard crush PC into meaty. Never seen something like that before.

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