Since the widespread success of SF4, a lot of newcomers have been asking whether it’s too late to learn how to play. After all, some of us have been playing fighting games in one form or another for decades. One guy even asked if a new player who’s still struggling with quarter-circle special moves “in his middle forties” should give up hope.
The short answer is yes.
The long answer is no.
The mistake everyone makes is thinking that Street Fighter is about super moves and fancy combos. That’s never been the core of Street Fighter, not even in the titles dominated by Custom Combos. At the end of the day, SF is about finding one character who makes sense to you, figuring out something new about them every day, going out of your way to find quality competion, understanding why they’re beating you, taking apart their patterns, figuring out how to counter each and every tactic, and (re)combining everything you’ve learned into a cohesive gameplan.
You don’t need to be a combo master or a fighting game historian to do any of this. All you need is determination, focus, an open mind, and a little bit of humility. Believe it or not, you can win almost any match using only normal moves, throws, and a solid defense. Remember, there’s nothing wrong with losing as long as you walk away having gained (aka learned) something. On the other hand if you walk away frustrated, then you’ve wasted an opportunity to analyze a formidable opponent or a difficult character matchup.
Of course, the magic ingredient is practice. Theory Fighter helps but there’s no substitute for twenty matches against the best player you can find. Nobody’s saying you have to play five hours a day, every day. But however much time you can spare, make sure you’re getting the most out of it. After a play session against a challenging opponent, try to remember which tactics gave you trouble and take notes.
If you can’t figure out an immediate solution to a threat, then plan on spending a little time in Training Mode finding the best counter. “Best” means the most reliable, most damaging, and safest one you can find (prioritized in that order). Nearly all recent fighting games allow you to record and replay training dummy actions, which is a convenient tool for finding ways to deal with a specific attack. Investing fifteen minutes here can save you from hours of headaches in match play.
Remember, the real “depth” of (good) fighting games is that any given problem has several solutions. Whatever your individual skill level may be, you can always find an answer that works for you.
The good news is, once you get good at (any) Street Fighter you’ll always be less than a week away from being good at any fighting or action game. It’s hard to find a genre that demands a more intense variety of skills from players. You’re expected to have excellent hand-eye coordination, fast reaction times, sharp puzzle-solving skills, the ability to frequently improvise under pressure, and a solid grasp of strategic planning. While it’s almost impossible to become a top player across multiple game genres, it’s much easier to jump from intermediate status in fighting games to intermediate status in any other kind of game than vice versa.
Fighting games are the Hyperbolic Time Chamber of the video game world.
“Believe it or not, you can win almost any match using only normal moves, throws, and a solid defense.”
I discovered this by watching Japanese 3rd Strike matches that had players who mained low-tier characters like Twelve and Sean. They understood the importance of normals, throws (probably the *most* important thing), and learning their opponents’ routine.
I do admit that when I play a series like KoF, I sit there and try and figure out the Supers and Specials as fast as I can, since it’s a series with a lot of characters and interesting ideas for fighting styles – but I also recognize that if I ever want to be good at any of those games, I’d have to sit down with only a few select characters and learn the applications of all their normals, commands, throws, etc. – the stuff that bores me initially.
Well, i think 3S is kind of a special case in terms of throws being at the top of the list. You’re right though, if you play without specials then you tend to gravitate towards a throw mixup game.
KoF is interesting too, because if you watch high-level matches, the vast majority of it is normal moves. Offense is usually built around those ridiculously fast short jumps which makes everyone use normal move antiairs because it’s too hard to react with a special move. On the ground, most characters poke with normal moves and supers are relatively useless outside of combos.
Anyway, the point i was trying to make is that if someone likes Street Fighter but finds themselves struggling with complicated special move commands, they shouldn’t let that hold them back from playing against human competition. Once they make that jump, they’ll actually have some motivation to work on execution, and they’ll be having fun learning strategy in the meantime.
lol @ your “Hyperbolic Time Chamber” reference.
I always tell my friends that if you play Marvel for an hour, then swap back to your other game, it feels like you’ve been training in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber. Everything else slows down.