Thinking back on how i learned to play Street Fighter, it was definitely a long progression from reading the Sega Genesis SF2: Special Champion Edition manual to writing footsies articles for a revitalized community. However, certain breakthrough moments immediately spring to mind.
The first milestone is obvious: learning how to do special moves. This is the wall everyone has to climb over in order to get into the fighting game playground. It’s harsh to expect newcomers to learn so much before they can enjoy the genre, but that’s just the way things are. You may as well not be playing Street Fighter until you make it past this point. I still remember the first special move i learned to execute consistently (Psycho Crusher) and the last remaining special move i dared to attempt (Spinning Piledriver) after weeks of practice with other characters.
The second milestone is learning how to defend yourself against basic attacks. Matches simply can not become strategic while “jump kick, trip” is considered an unbeatable loop. Until you’re able to block high and low as needed at will, offensive momentum is unbreakable. Once you feel comfortable with blocking, the next invincible tactic is “low short, throw” and so the next hurdle is learning how to escape and reverse throws. Then it’s on to crossups, mixups, etc.
The third milestone is learning how to combo into super (or ultra, in SF4’s case). Suddenly a single major mistake can end the round, so everything changes once again. When you can deal 40% damage in one shot, the entire match evolves from a series of isolated encounters into one continuous entity. You start to think long-term because you no longer have to win every minor clash, as long as you prepare to seize that big opportunity down the line.
The fourth milestone is finding out about footsies. It’s ironic that everyone should learn to use normal moves so much later than special moves, but this leads to one of the subtle, obvious truths about fighting games: Moves are good based on usefulness, regardless of how cool they look or how difficult/easy they are to execute. More importantly, this marks the stage where everyone learns the difference between playing the game and playing the opponent.
The fifth milestone is figuring out how to use fireballs. If you think you know, try playing against someone who’s been around since Street Fighter II. They’ll make you think twice about every single projectile you throw. There’s a metagame surrounding fireballs that connects everything interesting about fighting games: spacing, timing, patterns, mindgames. A lot of outsiders believe that projectiles are something we put up with to play Street Fighter, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. They are an integral part of the system. You don’t know what you’re missing until you try using them at mid-range.
Of course, everyone takes a different path through the learning process, but this was mine. It varies based on your personality, your competition, your character choices, which titles are popular at the time, and so on. What was the biggest breakthrough you experienced?
Just wanted to write a general article about leveling up in fighting games. Figured it might serve as a good introduction in case anyone asks what the genre is all about, or for anyone who’s stuck at an early stage (which happens too often due to execution barriers).
And i always thought it was interesting how Street Fighter gradually evolves from a hand dexterity challenge, to an open exploration sandbox, to a strategy/puzzle game. At the end of it, you’re trying to outthink your opponent while solving the technical puzzles of how to counter their tricks.
By the way, learning to throw is an important step too, but that’s just a natural part of the offensive arsenal. You definitely learn to defend against basic throw setups before you master using them offensively. Anyway i didn’t go into detail because throws are already mentioned all over the place in my footsies articles. I think i started grasping throws before footsies, but it was roughly around the same time, way after the combo milestone.
But damn, i really need to start writing about fireballs. It’s such a complicated subject though. I know i’ll need a whole series of articles and i never seem to have time to do the initial planning and matchvid scouting. Someday …
Hah… I discovered footsies watching O Ken press “standing fierce” to counter a Boxer Rush Punch. Its usefulness was further enforced when I was on the receiving end of said standing fierce at the start of the round when I tried to throw a Sonic Boom as my oh so clever opening. I saw it and though “Hey, I think I have a move like that.” I proceeded to try to apply anything that looked like a standing fierce to a lot of situations. I got some cool results… whole lot of failures though.
I’ll have to ask krost if he could record some videos of Steve H’s Cammy. He played recently and all I heard was that he’d be down to almost 0 health and stage some miraculous comeback and “he never jumps.” Either way, if there’s anything that’ll at least teach you part of the psychology of the midrange game, it’s having a character with no fireball while trying to stay at that range. A proper jump in from those ranges is usually fatal, and it’s oh so hard to get most of the time because that’s the bait your opponent is hoping to lure you in with.
That actually exactly how I’ve been learning this game, though there was a big gap between learning special moves/combos and the rest, since I didn’t know there was even more to this game. (Never knew about the community)
I haven’t even completed the last step, since I never played fireball characters, though I’ve recently picked up ST Dhalsim.
In Tekken or Street Fighter my evolution went like this:
1) Special moves
2) Basic combos, a move cancelled into a special in SF or a jab string in Tekken
3) Normals, for anti-air and footsies
4) Using the right combos, hit confirming in my combos and using the most damaging punishes one frame link or difficult juggle regardless
5) Movement, learning to backdash when appropriate, learning not to jump, in Tekken learning to Korean backdash, to use crouch dash and to sidestep
Oh and I learnt to block and tech somewhere.
Well… For me i played with a very small group in South London in the days i first started to play SF… It’s funny i don’t recall ever struggling to do specials, except Cammy’s Killer Bee attack & a few others with that input.
That said when i moved i only really played single player (trial modes on SF EX etc) so my execution improved, however my actual game play was nearly non existent.
I’d say i’m probabaly a slightly below avarage online player, however thanks to my decent exectution i’ve probabaly beat above my weight level.
I suck at footsies.
New member here.
First time I remember learning any kind of footsies was playing SF2 on the snes. Learning that Lp beats Blanka balls was awesome since he always gave me the most trouble in arcade mode when I was young. After that I never really got into the game until SF4 came around.
I still am not perfectly certain on how to use fireballs. I suppose I will eventually learn to use them perfectly.
i dont remember my whole evolution, but i think it went something like this.
using normals at point blank range to attack because special moves are hard
blocking
special moves
combos
footsies
i main balrog in everything. obviously in some games this sucks, but i never had to learn how to use fireballs, but rather get around them in the opponent’s footsies game. i didnt learn about footsies until a friend went for a combo and was out of range for his c.mk and it whiffed, he got s.roundhoused for his troubles. at that point i figured out that i could go to just outside of his c.mk range and wait because i had longer reach. obviously there is more to footsies than that, but thats what made me aware of the footsies game.
Footsies are definitely when you’re on your way – Maj, I’m surprised you didn’t put fireballs in with footsies, as part of a whole “zoning” type milestone.
Last night I was playing this guy I just met on his awesome MAME setup in 3s, and I was annihilating him once I stopped trying to be flashy…his problem was that he was too much into combos and specials (and he couldn’t really set them up properly) and didn’t know footsies, or some basic game mechanics (quick standing, parrying). Once I started with really simple (lol Hugo) high/low mixups, he was done. I even got him in rounds of games I never played, and didn’t know the special inputs for.
His habits were too familiar – always wanting to be on the offensive without understanding that you have to defend a little bit, and not looking for some obvious throw setups. He was too focused on landing his special moves. I think the whole discussion about “which character are you more focused on” is very important. I used to have that problem, you have to remember that to win the game, the important focus is understanding your enemy’s character, not your own.
I’m still no good at hit confirming, but I think a lot of that comes with practice. I Someone suggested turning the dummy in training mode to have random guard set up. I need to give that a shot in SF4PC and CvS2, it’s a shame that 3s’ training mode leaves some to be desired.
I’m glad you wrote about this. It seems like there’s limitless information about mid-to-high level SF out there. But when I try to get more and more of my friends into fighting games, it’s never the mid-to-high level stuff that serves as the brick wall that curbs their interest. It’s ALWAYS one of the 5 milestones you’ve mentioned. Either that or they become overwhelmed by the concept of combos. I think it’s always nice to have experienced players laying out absolute basics, and describing how they made their very first SF steps.. that way new players struggling to learn things know that it’s something we all went through at one point.
I’m pretty sure I learned footsies first because it was a long time from when I started playing to when I got good a special moves. I’m probably
1. throwing
2. defending
3. basic footies
4. special moves
5. using fireballs
still haven’t learned how to do basic combos. that’s why I play Blanka
onreload: Fireballs are definitely a part of footsies, but they’re basically the last component you learn to use in that way. It’s also tricky because recent games have severely weakened projectiles, so people coming into SF4 with a 3S or CvS2 background have a much harder time learning how to use them than people with an ST background.
But there’s also more to fireballs than their use in footsies. Plus a lot of people start with non-fireball characters or characters with feeble/oddball fireballs (Sakura, Dan, Rolento, etc.) so it takes a long time to get around to picking up a proper fireball character. I’ve said before that learning a grappler is important to understanding SF better, and the same is true of learning a fireball character.
Keep in mind, this isn’t a list of skills you need to win. It’s just a list of groundbreaking discoveries – which mostly happens to correspond with the order of steps most players take.
The reason fireballs are last is because it’s shocking how few people know how to use them. But it’s certainly not something you have to learn to play Cammy. Trust me though, when that Cammy player starts using Ken and trying to develop a fireball game, they’ll be amazed at how much more sophisticated it is than they imagined.
One thing I wanted to add bout these milestones that I’ve personally discovered recently from watching videos and my own experience is that no matter how much health you have left, there’s always a chance to win.
I’m sure everybody’s seen their share of major upsets where one dude has like 1hp and catches his opponent slipping, capitalizes on that mistake and pulls out a fresh V.
I used to basically just give up if I was gonna get near perfect’d or my opponent had 50% life or more and I had like 2%. Though I’ve realized going for broke no matter your health can/will surprise you every now and then.
I certainly can’t use fireballs in SF IV. I suppose part of the problem is that I haven’t “mained” a fireball character since Hyperfighting (and that was just playing with friends or at middle school) with the exception of Dee Jay in ST/HDR.
Weren’t tick throws substantially weakened in CvS2 as well? You couldn’t “low short, throw” because there was a separate ~6 frame throw invulnerability (beyond blockstun), right? In SFIV, I’ll do special-move-tick/whiff/empty jump/walkup throw a bit, but I still haven’t really applied “cr.lp/lk, throw” as much as I did in SF2. Perhaps it’s the two button throws that create a mental block to that activity in my mind.
Looks quite accurate to say the least.
Couple hours in Training, learn the specials.
Get whooped like: ”why can’t I parry his jump-ins?” (i play Gouken). Steam off, think.. start blocking! Try blocking for a whole match, no attacking, get hit by a bunch of lows and overheads, quickly learning about the mix-up game (shoutouts to Akuma).
I then put a little focus on Anti-air, essential tactic I hadn’t put any time into, and punishing jump-in-happy hippies with Shin Shoryuken.
Then got to some combos, yay for Gouken. Nowadays, (today :D) I’ll be learning more about footsies.
To understand the fireball game just watch EVO2k4 ST matches or the USA vs. JAPAN series. Pretty much self-explanatory.
These are all very important aspects of the game but learning about matchups I think should go somewhere on that progression line.