Monthly Archives: March 2010

CV Spotlight: Keiko’s SFA2 Ryu Custom Combos

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Things finally seem to’ve gone back to normal after last month’s combo video frenzy. Now’s a good time to revisit Keiko‘s exceptional SFA2 Custom Combo guide series. He’s kept releasing them on a regular basis since October, making his way through seventeen characters already.

Street Fighter Alpha 2 – Ryu Custom Combos

Every episode covers a wide range of practical SFA2 and SFZ2A CCs for every situation, in addition to flashy combos to impress technical-minded viewers. Ryu’s installment was one of my favorites, especially the combos at 0:55 and 1:00. Those hopkick cancels were awesome too, for instance at 1:31. And of course, using Evil Ryu’s teleport to set up a backwards attack at 2:16 is always cool.

He’s also put together a couple of quick tutorials illustrating various obscure yet versatile glitches involving Dhalsim’s recovery options.

Dhalsim Glitches – Recovery Tech Roll | Recovery Teleport

Take a look and give them a try.

Grappler Training

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Everyone should learn to play Zangief. Every character in Street Fighter has a wonderfully unique gameplay style which emphasizes certain skills above others. While you certainly can develop a strong throw game by using Guile, you’d have to go way out of your way to learn it. On the other hand, picking Gief will put you on the fast track to building all those dirty mental pathways which make for a strong throw game.

Needing to throw to win with Zangief will teach you precisely how to set up that last throw with Guile or how to land that mid-match throw with Cammy to energize your entire offense. It’s as much a psychological challenge as a tactical matter. Using a committed grappler such as SF4 Gief/Abel, ST Gief/T.Hawk/Bison, 3S Makoto/Alex/Hugo, CvS2 Gief/Raiden/Vice, etc. can help you identify and exploit these subtle signs to determine when an opponent becomes highly susceptible to throw attempts.

Ask the right question and every experienced Gief player will tell you that people react differently to throws depending on specific circumstances – whether it’s the first throw attempt in a round, the second throw in succession, or potentially fatal throw setups near the end of a round. Perhaps even more important than the skill required to land throws is the ability to detect an opponent’s growing fear and harness it to steer turtles into the corner for free. Zangief players learn right away that damage from punishing foolish escape attempts is no less valuable than damage from successful throws.

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SF4 Combo Challenge 07: Fireworks

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I’m sure it comes as no surprise to anyone that i love projectile combos. There’s so much you can do with them, that they open up a whole new dimension to what’s possible in fighting games. With that in mind, i thought it’d be fun to issue a cast-wide fireball challenge.

Most fireballs have lengthy recovery periods. SF4’s EX Focus Attack dash cancel mechanism shortens recovery times, but comes with a steep meter cost.

Challenge: Using any character, combo five or more projectiles.

Rule #1: Obey gauge limits. (Set S.C. Gauge to Refill but use only 4 stocks. If you plan on building enough meter to use 5 or more bars, set S.C. Gauge to Normal or Max Start so we can verify your method. Keep in mind that super meter charges slower during combos.)

Rule #2: Multi-projectile specials count as one. (As in, you can use Seth’s EX Sonic Boom and Akuma’s EX Zanku Hadoken, but each pair only counts as one against the challenge limit.)

Hard Mode: Do not dizzy the dummy character.

(Apologies for skipping Abel, but stitching these together always takes a full day or two and i couldn’t think of anything interesting enough to justify it.)

Turbo Speed Mechanics

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Starting with Hyper Fighting and Super Turbo, most Capcom fighting games have supported accelerated game speed settings. Since all Capcom titles already display 60 frames per second on the screen and sample controller inputs at a refresh rate of 60 frames per second, turbo speeds are implemented by skipping over frames. Increasing the frame rate would be impossible because most televisions wouldn’t support it.

Taking Capcom Fighting Evolution as an example, every frame is drawn and shown on the screen at the lowest game speed setting. Every 60 internal frames, the overhead match clock counts down one second.

Increasing the speed setting does not increase the number of frames shown per second, but rather causes internal frames to skip at regular intervals. At speed two, 1 frame skips for every 6 frames shown. At speed three, which is the default speed, 1 frame skips for every 4 frames shown. 1 frame skips for every 3 frames shown at speed four and 1 frame skips for every 2 frames shown at the maximum speed of five.

The game engine does not skip over frames internally, so an attack with one more startup than another will not suddenly trade with the faster attack if the game skips over its first active frame. Instead, the first active frame will not be shown, but the following frame will show the second impact frame with the faster attack winning cleanly. In other words, CFE runs at an internal speed of 75 frames per second on speed three.

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