Monthly Archives: October 2009

Advanced Meaty Setups

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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.

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The SoCal Tournament Scene Without SHGL

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Several years ago i wrote an editorial article about the closing of Southern Hills Golfland, the arcade where all of Southern California’s best players gathered for nearly a decade. People still talk about SHGL’s monthly 128-man Marvel tournaments attracting players from all over the country on a ridiculously regular basis. The article was originally posted on Video Opera which has been falling apart at a steady pace since then. It seems like a good idea to repost it here because those photo links are bound to stop working any day now.
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The SoCal Tournament Scene Without SHGL
December 17th, 2003

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the fall of Southern Hills Golfland, the center of Southern California’s fighting game tournament scene for over seven years. With revenues steadily decreasing since the close of the movie theater next door, Golfland Entertainment Centers, Inc. saw no reason to keep the small arcade open. The high value of the land it occupied lead to the demolition of the arcade to make way for a gated community of single family houses.

There is nothing left of SHGL now, with the newly constructed buildings almost completed. The entire area, including what was the SHGL parking lot, is enclosed in a brick wall perimeter. The main access road is named Stepping Stone Cir, which meets Beach Blvd at the entrance to the community. Within the walls are over twenty separate houses, at least one of which serves as the sales office.

The deserted movie theater has since been replaced by Super Autobacs, a Japanese automotive store specializing in rice rocket power ups. The Yoshinoya and the Burger King are still open, along with a new Quiznos restaurant and a new Poofy’s Pastrami restaurant. The Pho place near the mysteriously vacant donut store has been revamped. Finally, the furniture store next door with the crazy neon lights remains completely unchanged.

Camelot Golfland, the supposed replacement for SHGL, has nowhere near the management support that John “SHGLBoss” Bailon provided the regulars at his arcade. Camelot may be a much bigger and better funded arcade, but it caters solely to children’s parties and family outings. Where the SHGL management encouraged its big name players and recognized their valuable ability to help bring in new customers, Camelot has made an enemy out of every player who requests tournament support and demands working equipment.

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CV Spotlight: oKutabareo’s SF3:2I Combovids

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Earlier this year, oKutabareo released two combo videos focusing on SF3: 2nd Impact. Both were performed manually on a PC keyboard and both are excellent. It’s always entertaining to go back to earlier iterations of a popular game and check out the subtle differences in attack properties and juggle setups/limits.

SFIII: 2nd Impact Combo Video

If i had recorded that Hugo clapping combo at 2:02, it would have been dedicated to MrWizard.

SFIII: 2nd Impact Left Over Combos and Glitches

The Alex combo at 1:04 is a good example of version-specific combos. 2I introduced EX moves to the SF3 series but Alex’s EX Slash Elbow didn’t knock down, so you get this combo which looks exotic (and cool) to dedicated 3S players. Then you’ve got more dramatic differences, such as the Hugo infinite at 2:18 which was obviously eliminated in 3S. And of course there are completely subtle changes, such as Sean’s s.LP to s.MP link.

My favorite clip has to be the Ryu mixup at 3:27. I doubt it’ll work on anyone more than once, but it looks so damn stylish!

What Is Cheap?

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In other words, should we as players worry about whether the characters or tactics we employ are fair? Should we worry about “breaking” the game or creating situations that are too disadvantageous to opponents?

My viewpoint is that nothing is cheap. Or rather, that players shouldn’t worry about it one way or the other. Cheating is bad form in real life because real life only gives us one physics engine to play in and one set of laws to obey. If someone wins through a loophole, everyone else has to suffer and there’s really no escape. That’s why “cheap” tactics carry such a bad vibe on an almost subconscious level.

However with fighting games, the Capcom community alone has access to over half a dozen classic titles that have been tested rigorously by the tournament scene and proven to be competitively viable. In other words, there’s no reason to hold back. If it turns out that Super Street Fighter IV is garbage, we don’t have to keep playing it. Of course i’m hoping that it’s a great game and that it fixes all of SF4’s problems without introducing any new ones. But if it disappoints me, it’s not the end of the world.

What this means is we don’t have to handle these games with kid gloves. Pick the character you feel is strongest and give it your best shot. If you break the game, then it wasn’t worth playing to begin with. And however long it takes you to reach this conclusion, you’ll have gained a wealth of knowledge and skill along the way that will transfer over to almost any other fighting game.

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Weekly Screenshot: Scarlet Spiral Gymnastics

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Not everything has to be crowded scenes of flashy supers and lightning storms, right?

sfa3-gymnastics-01

SFA3 V-Vega whiffs LK Scarlet Terror over V-Cammy’s wakeup animation, after his VC2 shadow c.HK swept her from the other side.

Tried lots of elaborate setups to replace that Scarlet Terror with the recovery backflip of Vega’s HP Sky High Claw (simply because it’s slightly lower to the ground), but couldn’t get the spacing right.