CvS2 Chun Li Strategy Guide Reference

Game Versions: Capcom vs SNK / Dreamcast / Japan / 2000
Game Versions: Capcom vs SNK 2 / Dreamcast / Japan / 2001
Soundtrack: Queen - Another One Bites The Dust
Anime Sources: Street Fighter II: Victory (1995)
Anime Sources: Street Fighter Alpha (1999)

This video was featured on Clockw0rk.com a mere two months after the game's release. It was my first attempt at video making, inspired by what tragic taught me while collaborating with him on the two gamecombos.com CvS2 C-Groove Exhibitions. Most of the strategy clips focus on offensive mix-ups and crossup setups that have since become commonplace in high-level play. Combos and random bonuses that were fairly innovative at the time comprise the rest of the video. In keeping with the nostalgia, this reference is taken directly from the original Shoryuken.com thread explaining everything in the video. All combos were performed on a standard Dreamcast pad without any assistance, using the Training Mode Dummy feature whenever an opponent action was necessary.

Chun Li Tactics

1) Counter Attack into lvl3 Puffball super. This is a sort of useful tactic that gives N-Chun with stock broken and two extra dots a great deal of pressure ability in the corner, because your opponent can't even risk you blocking an attack. Comes in handy every once in awhile.
The DF+HK creates a very strong mixup in the corner after a knockdown. Depending on how you time this move, you will either end up in the corner, or remain outside the corner, forcing your opponent to guess which way to block.
Chun Li's close s.HK, for whatever reason, can be superjump canceled. Near the corner where you can use the wall to triangle jump, this move an be used to create a crossup situation that your opponent will have a hard time getting around. Since Chun Li's crossup j.LK has such big range and since the s.HK puts your opponent in a fair amount of hit stun or block stun, they can't move until you're about on top of them.
Chun Li's SBK is actually a powerful attack that does a good deal of damage, good deal of stun damage, and against opponents that cannot duck under it like Blanka, a good deal of block damage and guard bar damage. If you vary the duration of this attack, since you recover at basically the same time as your opponent, you can fool your opponent into thinking you've done an HK SBK but instead do an LK SBK or MK SBK and follow up with a throw. You don't have frame advantage after her SBK because if you did, it would be possible to combo another attack after it which would be pretty cheap and would lead to infinites, but contrary to what most people believe, you aren't at a disadvantage either, especially if you have a super at your disposal or can dodge/roll/Parry/CC.

2) This is pretty self-explanatory. Chun Li's c.MP can duck under mid-level fireballs and super fireballs. It doesn't duck under for the whole duration of the move however, so don't think you can do c.MP under LP fireballs. The first fireball that Ryu throws is an MP red fireball, so basically as long as they're not LP fireballs you're good to go.

3) Just as she can c.MP under mid-level fireballs, Chun Li can s.HK over ground fireballs. The first fireball Terry throws is done with LP and the second is HP, so it is possible to go over LP fireballs with her s.HK but much easier to go over them with her F+HK since it moves forward as well. I use her F+HK the second time to demonstrate this. The last bit is another use of her c.MP - to duck under certain attacks, specials, and supers that don't hit all the way down to the ground and buffer into an appropriate super. It also shows the ability to cancel lvl2 supers into Taunts, which i thought was a cool, (but mostly useless) tidbit for Capcom to have included.

4) Some air attacks come out relatively slowly, but once they are out they have great vertical and horizontal reach, and have awesome priority to the point where they are often difficult to even DP cleanly. Rock's j.HK, Mai's j.HK, and Yamazaki's j.HK are good examples of this. While it may be difficult for Chun Li to deal with them using her ground-based anti-air (since she has no uber-priority anti-air special), a well-timed air throw will often beat these attacks - and is a lot less dangerous than it seems because an air throw does more damage than the jumpins mentioned, since for most characters, it's impossible to combo off air to air attacks in CvS2.
Now once your opponent becomes fearful of getting air thrown, they will often feel the need to use air attacks earlier in their jump. In most cases they will also use an attack that lasts longer so they aren't naked as they're landing, such as j.LK or j.LP attacks. In most cases (you will have to judge by the attack used), Chun Li's c.MP will be able to duck under these attacks (since they are performed earlier in the jump and often don't have the downward angle of their HK counterparts) and counter your opponent's jumpin, with the additional option of buffering into a super or special.
Now one of the options after Chun Li's kick super is superjump canceling into her j.HPHP and doing a throw right when you land. This throw setup is one of the best she has because you land at about the same time as your opponent, you have a good deal of other options upon landing, and you have psychological momentum. I'll elaborate on these options more in the last bit (Chun Li vs Blanka), which demonstrates her best ones.

5) This clip just shows the versatility of Chun Li's s.HK superjump cancelability when used as anti-air. If it's Parried or Just Defended, you can jump cancel to air throw before they are able to bust out a hard attack or if you think they're gonna try to parry your followup attack, or you can jump cancel away if you're trying to get some space.
If the s.HK connects as anti-air (for example after a Parry), you can superjump cancel into a jumping attack and it will combo just like her superjump cancel attacks after her kick super. However, since your opponent isn't in knockdown animation, you can also jumpcancel but not attack until your opponent lands (and you're in the air on top of them), and then cross them up with the possibility for even more damage as shown in the clip.

6) This shows three very important things. First, it shows a Chun Li panty shot, which is always dope. Second, it shows a very good use of dodge for Chun Li (and lots of other characters). There are a lot of situations where your opponent will play wakeup games using either a very high-priority poke, a long-lasting fireball-type special/super, or will create a situation where you simply have to guess if you should do a wakeup or not (and having to guess is giving up control, which is always a bad thing). Now the ability to use dodge as a wake-up/Reversal is very important because it allows you to get around ANY poke, avoid ALL block damage, and take care of two scenarios at once - the one where your opponent attacks and the one where your opponent simply blocks. So the only option left for them is to throw you. But if they are outside throw range, then this leaves them with no way to punish your wake-up dodge which means you get to take a whole chunk out of their wake-up game options and make it very difficult for them to make you guess. Third, it shows the ability to cancel dodges into dodges. This basically makes it is impossible for your opponent to force you into taking block damage unless they put you into block stun somehow beforehand. It comes in handy sometimes.
Don't worry too much about the throw setup. It's worth doing once every couple of matches just to mix up your game a bit, but Chun Li's walking speed is fast enough that you don't need to be able to run to close the distance. Running jabs are good pressure tools however, especially for making turtles uncomfortable.

7) I think what Chun does to Geese right here is downright cheap. It's VERY difficult for any character to combo a normal after a short jump attack. On top of that, in order to do this they have to do the attack very late during their jump arc. Not only is it (for some inexplicable reason) easy to combo after the second hit of Chun Li's j.HPHP, but the fact that she attacks twice means you get to take up space in front of you in the middle of the jump and still be able to attack late enough to combo off a short jump attack. This is a very powerful offensive option, and even if your opponent blocks high, they will often block the first j.HP then duck too soon and get hit by the second hit.
After the kick super, Chun Li does c.LP then immediately does short jump D+MK stomp. This is practically an overhead for her, and when your opponent is cornered, it's very safe whether it connects or is blocked. If you're outside of the corner, Chun Li will bounce over her opponent, which can be unsafe depending on stage positioning but can also lead to crossup possibilities.

8) This clip showcases Chun Li's options after her kick super. I use lvl1 kick supers in S-Groove to demonstrate how scary she can be when low on life, but it takes three lvl1 supers to stun Blanka so this scenario can arise in a number of Grooves. You'll also notice that Blanka starts with zero Stun. In an actual battle, by the time you land one your opponent will usually have about 20-30 Stun points built up, so if you can string just two of these together, you're pretty much guaranteed to Stun your opponent.
The kick super knocks the opponent up different heights depending on what lvl is used - lvl3 knocks them up the highest, while lvl1 launches them lowest. As a result, all of the immediate followups to her kick super are done easiest after a lvl3 and are hardest to do after a lvl1, but since the opponent is lower to the ground after a lvl1, they have less time consider and react to all of Chun Li's mixups. As long as you get the timing down for lvl1 kick supers, you're pretty much set. You can even delay the superjump cancel and the actual air attack after a lvl2/lvl3 to mimic the timing for a lvl1. Now on to the mixups.
a) After superjump canceling, Chun Li can do her j.HPHP which doesn't leave her any time upon landing to do anything other than poke from the front or go for a throw attempt. This is sometimes enough to get a second combo, since some players will be caught off guard by the fact that they are standing and are not automatically knocked down. Her j.HPHP also does the least damage and the least Stun. However, it is the easiest to land so if your opponent has no life, or is almost Stunned you may just want to go for this one.
b) Chun Li also has the option to do her double-hit j.HK, which does more damage and more Stun than her j.HPHP, and knocks the opponent higher than the j.HPHP, giving Chun Li enough time to walk under her opponent upon landing before her opponent touches the ground. Depending on your timing, you can make your opponent guess whether to block left or right, giving you a 50/50 chance to land another combo. You can also do short jump stomp (j.D+MK) right before your opponent lands, which adds a third option for them to worry about when deciding which way to block. Unfortunately, this isn't nearly as frightening a scenario as getting hit by c.MP xx kick super unless your opponent is near-death, so it doesn't really give you more of a chance to land another super. As with the j.HPHP followup, Chun Li can go for a throw after this setup, but with the added luxury of screwing up her opponent's Reversal command and resetting her opponent's back charge by switching sides at the last moment. This just makes your throw attempt a lot safer by making it a lot harder for your opponent to get that DP or Sonic Hurricane out.
c) Chun Li's third and scariest option, is her stomp (j.D+MK) followup. If you do the stomp early, she stays on the same side as she was. If you do the stomp late, she crosses over her opponent. In both cases, she lands only a moment after her opponent does. This means she can follow up with a jumpin from the front, a crossup jumpin with her awesome j.LK, a low c.MP from the front, a low c.MP from the back, and throw attempts from either direction. This gives her six options all of which must be defended against in a different way, four of which allow her to land another super!! The downside to this on the execution side is that it can be tricky to get the timings down consistently against all characters, and on the tactical side, that you get the least amount of guaranteed damage as a followup to her kick super.
I personally think that mixing up her second and third followup options during the course of the match, and using first to go for the sure kill when you're only a few pixels away from victory is the way to go.

Chun Li Combos

1) I picked these based on what i thought looked cool. I think there are enough practical combos in the Tactics section to fill almost every need that would arise in a real game. This first combo takes such perfect spacing that i thought it would be worthwhile to show my setup for it before the combo starts (close s.HP, c.LK puts you at the perfect distance). Chun Li's far s.LK has some weird chain property, where it chains into a different s.LK and into yet another s.LK, all of which are bufferable into specials/supers. It looks cool i think, but the game is really picky on the distances. I link the lvl1 puffball super after the lvl3 kick super without any cancels.

2) This combo just shows that you can superjump cancel her lvl3 kick super into an attack, then juggle with her lvl1 puffball super. Since superjump canceling her kick super gives you a free juggle, the j.HP is considered the juggle starter, so as far as the puffball juggle count is concerned, the state immediately following the j.HP is equivalent to the state following the last kick of the kick super in the previous combo. That's why the lvl1 puffball super does the same number of hits in this combo as it does in the previous one. I'm sure the details of the combo engine will be catalogued somewhere soon enough, but basically it follows CvS1 juggle rules with a bunch of new additions and exceptions.

3) This combo is especially useless but that much cooler because of it. It turns out Chun Li's F+MK gives her a good deal of frame advantage when it connects, and her close s.HK comes out fast enough to combo and can be superjump canceled into a j.MK for three hits total! Guile airthrowing Chun Li just goes to prove that it is indeed a useless combo. It might have been useful if she could combo j.D+MK (stomp) after s.HK since she would bounce away to safety, but it just doesn't come out fast enough to work. The core of this combo was omni's creation so he deserves credit for it. I just added the F+MK, s.HK link to it.

4) In case you hadn't noticed, this combo works only in the left corner because of the corner differences in the way the opponent bounces from Chun Li's DF+HK (demonstrated at the end of the video). However, she can CC just as well (if not better) in the right corner because the opponent remains cornered on that side. Again, i just thought it looked cool to do twelve stomps and then OTG throw Rolento. Again, omni deserves credit for finding that normal throws can be used to OTG Rolento and Dan, but can only be done once to the opponent in every case except a small handful of specific throws (Chang's, Hibiki's, Maki's, and Yun's). For the record, Chun Li can follow up the last stomp with a late air attack as she's landing, do c.HK xx kick super and still get to superjump cancel the kick super at the end provided the opponent is in the corner. Then again, wasting 4/5 of the CC on twelve stomps wasn't the best way to begin a damaging Custom anyway. Just a cool lookin' combo i thought.

5) Everyone that knows me knows how much i was into CvS1 before CvS2 came out, so i figured i'd include a dope CvS1 Chun Li combo i hadn't seen in any combo videos. The trick is to be far enough away from the opponent when you do the Tenshou Kyaku that it doesn't connect until her leg is fully extended. This allows her to land before her opponent, giving her enough time to bust out the lvl3 Hazan Tenshou Kyaku and have it all juggle. For a while i was considering telling people that i had found a new outfit, new stage, new special, new super, and new taunt for Chun Li. I wonder how many people would have fallen for it, considering how few actually played CvS1 :P

Random Bonus Combos

1) Everyone knows how much i like Guile so it was probably no surprise that he shows up like 203498029834234 times in this video. This combo's dope because it took me five hours to do. Well, it didn't take me that long to actually do, but it took me forever to figure out what i could and could not do. It started with me wanting to do LP Sonic Boom, running after it to do c.MK then running forward and doing c.MP, c.LP, s.MP xx lvl3 Total Wipeout, lvl1 Somersault Strike (the LP Sonic Boom is supposed to connect after the c.MK connects, giving me enough time to run up and continue the combo). However, after hours of trying to get this all to work on my DC pad (not joystick mind you) in conjunction with the Training Mode Dummy (since i had nobody to help me out), i realized that although you can do that whole combo with a lvl3 Sonic Hurricane at the end, you can't do a lvl3 Total Wipeout at the end and have it all combo. Since i like the other Sonic Hurricane combo on this video better, i figured i'd just go with the Total Wipeout combo you see on the video. Doesn't look too complicated but there's some crazy stuff going on in this combo too. For some reason, in CvS2 if a fireball hits after you hit a cornered opponent with a forward-moving attack, you don't get pushed back like you normally would by having done the attack. Doing j.HK, c.LP, s.HP with Guile is damn hard normally. It's impossible if you put a LP Sonic Boom in front of it, but if you get the LP Sonic Boom to connect after the j.HK, it suddenly all works. Weird and quirky, and cool enough to be in my video.

2) This combo is made possible by one principle. Guile's c.MK, c.MP is a natural link that gives you a two-hit combo. Guile's c.MP is not instant, but his lvl3 Sonic Hurricane is instant. So you put those two facts together, and you get c.MK, lvl3 Sonic Hurricane working as a link! Since you don't have to buffer the c.MK and can wait for it to finish, you have enough time to charge the Sonic Hurricane! The scary thing is that aside from that leading LP Sonic Boom, this combo is actually practical!

3) I found out that the last hit of Ryo's launcher special actually juggles on its own for some reason while messing around with Ryo combos with tragic for his first C-Groove video. It looks kinda cool imo so i included it. It works because superjump canceling Ryo's launcher special gives you a free juggle, and because the opponent is knocked up so high by the lvl2 cancel, Ryo can land in time to do his lvl1 combo super. I was also going to include a Projectile Assist combo with Ryo where he throws an LP fireball, then runs up after it and does s.HK xx lvl3 Super Gut Punch. The LP fireball connects inbetween the s.HK and the super, keeping the opponent in hit stun long enough for the super to connect, but unfortunately it turns out that Ryo's LP fireball only goes about one full screen length before disappearing. Too bad, because it would have been cool i think. For the record, Ryo can combo his lvl3 Super Gut Punch after a counterhit hard attack, but that's not really all that impressive.

4) My friend waterb0y found out about Yamazaki's Sadomaso giving him a free juggle. Normally only the downward hit of Yamazaki's Guillotine juggles, so this combo would be impossible if the Sadomaso didn't result in a free juggle state. I used Joe to show that the Sadomaso can counter his slide which goes to show you another minor reason why Yamazaki is considered top tier by most top players.

5) This is essentially a CvS1 combo. It's here for two reasons. First it looks cool and hasn't been shown in any combo videos (not even CvS1 ones). Second it shows Yamazaki get K-Groove meter for reflecting fireballs just as he does when someone activates his Sadomaso counter! Pretty cheap.

Sadomaso Reversals (Pseudo-Choiversals)

Pretty self-explanatory i think, except that they aren't really Choiversals. In A2 days Choi came up with a way to buffer Alpha Countered normals into uppercuts or supers so that the uppercut or super only came out when the opponent actually did the Alpha Counter. It's a timing thing, and was a very clever idea. However, these Sadomaso Reversals aren't really Choiversals because the character reversing the Sadomaso isn't accounting for two situations. It's obvious that the Sadomaso counter will be activated. But the idea came from Choiversals, and the first time i did one someone said, "Who do you think you are bomberman? John Choi??" So i figured i should give credit to da man somehow.

Corner Differences

This shows one of the corner differences i've found. Simply put, certain moves (usually those dealing with the opponent being knocked down in a certain direction while touching the corner) cause the opponent to fall in a different trajectory and wind up in a different spot based on which corner you're in. Another example of this is a certain set of scenarios dealing with Vega's Flying Barcelona Attack.
Furthermore, in some instances there's a difference between 1P and 2P side as to how some moves behave. A good example of this is Rolento's tripwire super. If 1P Rolento is in the left corner with his opponent touching him and does his tripwire super, he stays in the left corner. But if 1P Rolento is in the right corner with his opponent touching him and does his tripwire super, he switches sides with his opponent and his opponent becomes cornered. This effect is flipped over for 2P Rolento - he stays cornered in the right corner, but switches sides in the left corner.
I'm sure details on side differences will be more accurately sorted out later on, and maybe something relevant will come out of this, but the inconsistency of Rolento's super is a pain in the ass for charge characters that have to guess which way they need to charge to get up with their charge intact.