Monthly Archives: August 2010

CV Spotlight: Doopliss’ Bizarre SSF4 Combos

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Over the past several months, Doopliss has steadily assembled a wide variety of creative clips for an intense seven-minute SSF4 video. Nearly every character in the cast is present – all set to music from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, with a matching intro storyboard to boot.

“DaDoop’s Bizarre Combos” – A SSFIV Combo Video

It’s a thoroughly entertaining video, made all the more impressive by the fact that the clips are short, so it contains a lot of interesting discoveries. What stood out to me were the Dhalsim lvl2 Focus Attack into Yoga Shangri-La combos at 2:26, the Seth stomp combo at 3:05, and Juri’s various EX fireball juggles starting at 3:31.

It was also nice to see some T.Hawk combos for a change of pace, starting at 5:07. Makoto’s dashpunch passing through Vega at 5:28 was very cool too, and i liked seeing Gouken’s EX Hurricane Kick juggling at 5:40 after its first hit whiffed. However, Dhalsim’s Yoga Inferno ping pong combo at 5:47 was probably the most impressive display overall.

Five Milestones that Change Everything

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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.

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Weekly Screenshot: I Must Break You

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Whoever comes up with the best title for this week’s screenshot gets to choose the character paired with Dan for the next SF4 Biweekly TACV after Chun Li and Balrog’s installment! As always, the rules are one entry per person and i’ll choose my favorite on Monday.

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COTA Colossus knocks Sentinel down using c.HK as Sentinel summons HK Sentinel Force, then picks him up off the ground with HP Lift Up while Sentinel mashes to escape.

SF4 Biweekly TACV 14: Chun Li

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Obviously Chun Li has an abundance of combo tools within the SF4 engine. She has plenty of juggle potential, she gets frame advantage in important places, she can do interesting things in the air, she gains vast forward movement from canceling c.HP, and having a slow fireball helps too. It’s no surprise that she ends up with such a dynamic assortment of combos.

0:11 With Chun Li’s back to the corner, the pushback from C.Viper’s s.HK gets added to the pushback from Chun’s s.HK, swiftly propelling Viper backward into the LP Kikoken. Chun Li has just enough time to dash forward and connect her Hosenka ultra – which has ridiculous range. Whiffing DF+LK was completely superfluous, but there’s too much idle time to kill while waiting for the fireball to travel as far as possible.

0:25 This is another take on my Fun With SF4 vol.1 Chun Li combo; except replacing the initial LP Kikoken with an HP Kikoken tightens up the timing substantially. It’s now performed by combining two charge tricks: returning to DB before pressing HP and maximizing the reversal window. Evidently the SF4 reversal window is around 5 frames, so instead of the first fireball coming out when i press HP, it comes out 4-5 frames later – thereby reducing the interval between the two fireballs appearing on screen. In other words, the second fireball would’ve come out at the same time no matter what, but the reversal delays the first one by 5 frames.

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CV Spotlight: Calcius Repton’s BGM Promo

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I’m embarrassingly late to the party with this, but there seemed to be something major or urgent going on every week since its release. At any rate, better late than never, right?

Calcius Repton’s ‘BGM’ Promo | Bonus Round

To celebrate his band’s third album, desk collaborated with error1 on this special promo video. It contains single rounds of choroegraphed footage from SSF2T, SFA2, SF3:3S, MvSF, and SFA Dramatic Battle – along with a deleted Gem Fighter round.

The action flows continuously from one clip to the next, with the end of each round duplicated in successive titles. Even the victory symbols and lifebar levels are carefully kept intact. However, the most impressive facet of this whole project is the meticulous balance they struck between showing off difficult combos and maintaining a logical progression of counters to make it look like Ryu and Chun Li are actually fighting. That’s not at all easy to pull off.