SUPER Street Fighter 4

[buhwhyen]

In general, when talking about difficulty canceling into special moves, you typically just need to be inputting the commands faster. You can try inputting the standing fierce during the dragon punch motion and just double tapping, or tapping the fierce button as fast as you can to get standing fierce into fierce dragon punch. In either case, the best place to start is training mode, not vs the cpu or even other people. Cause you don't have to worry about anything except your execution, just spend like 10 minutes trying to get that one cancel down (stand fierce into dragon punch) before you go try it in arcade or wherever.

Also, playing against the cpu really...doesn't help you learn match ups as much as you'd like. The only good things that come from playing the cpu are:
-you get to hit a moving target that also blocks (sometimes)
-you get to try to hit combos in a more realistic scenario than training mode
-you get practice seeing patterns (in the cpu). By patterns I mean that the cpu will generally (almost always) do moves in a set sequence. It's good practice to try and figure out what those sequences are during an actual match, this is a really good thing to know how to do.

Challenge is pretty helpful if you want some ideas for simple combos, though some of them are really impractical. For Akuma, you should focus on low medium kick into regular fireball (qcf+punch), fierce into dragon punch, and if you can do those his short hurricane kick into fierce dragon punch combo.

It would be ideal if you could find someone who's also pretty new to play with (NH), cause playing against Josh is not useful. Playing against random people online is...alright if you have nothing else, better than playing against the cpu.

[dyuman]

Yea, I did 5 hours of training mode, 1 hour of vs CPU, and 1 hour of challenge. Went with the CPU for the exact reason you mentioned, a moving target. I'm focusing on not looking at patterns but reacting to the CPU's moves and punishing. Learning things like Wrath of Demon doesn't beat Breathless, etc.

Stuff out of light hurricane kick I can do in training mode with no problem at all.

The damn standing fierce one is the one I just couldnt get. Er... well regular cancel I couldnt get. The way I learned of it was from Challenge mode. EX canceling I have no idea what to do.

Found the controller sucks at doing EX moves with punch (or my fingers aren't used to it). Jump -> qc +3 punch is a bitch.

Don't have anyone in the area at my level unfortunately.

[dyuman]

Do you guys know of any good Japanese Akuma players? Having a hard time finding any by name

[feedback]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tKpXuWCe3I

Tokido is a good one to look for. Not sure of any others off the top of my head.

[buhwhyen]

The only really good AKuma player with videos on youtube is Tokido. Momochi is playing Ibuki from what I remember, and Eita doesn't have anything up on youtube.

The problem with watching Tokido is you have to understand what it is he's abusing because he doesn't play very "conventially." He plays very gimmicky and safe. Some of the links he goes for are also really difficult to land consistently and in a lot of cases are either distance dependent or CH dependent.

So... I wouldn't try to copy his style too much, I don't think it would really help all that much. Any forward jumping fireballs, for instance, are almost always tiger kneed, and need to be done that way in order to be -relatively or situationally- safe. And linking from standing roundhouse to cr.short, cr.jab, cr.strong are all distant dependent links, you can only hit them if you hit the standing roundhouse at a certain distance.


You can look around for the videos of "ksk_tv" for ssf4. It's basically Mago, Tokido, KSK, and someone else that play people online, but it gives you a split view of the game and the player's hands while they're playing. Also some ssf4 replay videos show player inputs, which is kinda helpful, though confusing to understand in real time.

[Pikachu]

1. You can look up older videos for how Eita plays. The general idea is there, so long as you just blank out the parts from vanilla SF4 where Akuma loops his standing roundhouse. Incidentally, there is a live stream of Evo this weekend, so there may be Akuma players to watch.

2. Playing against Jimmy is useful enough for you.

3. Doing many hours of training mode at once is not necessarily great. If you just practice low forward comboed into fireball for 10 mins/day for one week (as 1&2Player), you'd be surprised at what else you can do.

4. Per our conversation earlier today: If you ever want to learn what other characters do, just do a little training mode with them. This DOES NOT mean learn them. It gives you a bit of a reference point, though. Later, watch some videos... the more Japanese, the better. LordAborigineSF4 has a channel with a lot of older vanilla videos, but as a general gameplay guide, it should serve decently.

[Pikachu]

Can't sleep and bored atm, so browsed the SRK forums to take a look at the main highlights of the pools for SSF4.

As shocking as it is to see the upsets happen, I'm not completely surprised. There were a few things that Japan has been doing these past months that have not been smart, and hopefully, this year's Evo will show them that they need to adapt - not in gameplay, but IRL. The biggest thing is switching over to consoles.

I know consoles aren't popular in the Japanese SF crowd in the same way it is here. That SSF4 made it to console first already made me wonder if it would have an impact. Moreover, seeing how many vanilla tournaments are still being held in Japan (because of arcades) while the rest of the world (not just USA) is building its hard-on for SSF4, you gotta wonder if Japan let themselves slip this year. Throw the vastly improved online playability of the game into the mix, and America finally has a way to compete and form a scene. The results speak for themselves. I really wouldn't have thought this would happen after seeing the play last year, but the American mentality of getting better hasn't been this good since old school days. This is a powerful combination of willpower and vibrant community that Japan is, imo, stagnating right now.

Far be it for me to proclaim the Japanese dethroned. It takes more than one year to show it. They still have a lot going for them, and their scene isn't nearly as damned as ours were circa 2000-2001. They can make the necessary jump to consoles, without simply relying on God's Garden. An imminent arcade SSF4 will boost them up for sure, so the places with willing and able players actually have access to an updated game (unlike this country for GGXX Reload/Slash). Lastly, they can also play non-Japanese more and make better decisions when facing foreign players.

The Japanese don't need to look far to buy into this point. Daigo is the only player to religiously adapt to the console switch. He travels everywhere to see what's up. He did the smart thing by giving the finger to the arcade if it didn't provide him with the platform he needed to get the practice he needed. That's why he's top 8 in winner's bracket. Meanwhile, some of Japan's best, who could have made the switch with him, are still showing up in ranbats and tournaments for vanilla SF4.

On a side note, there were like, 400+ people browsing the Adon forums after Gamerbee took down Justin Wong. It also didn't help that JWong had trashed Adon months back. And since we were discussing good Akuma players, I think Infiltrator (from Korea) did really well. Even though his decision making was questionable on certain occasions, he'll be scarier as he improves his game.

Cross your fingers for Daigo tomorrow night, though. Even though I'd still bet money on him, he's still starting against Mike Ross, and only a fool would ever dismiss Mike Ross on any given match.

[buhwhyen]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDBVbEb5JYI&feature=player_embedded

Fucking footsies.

[Pikachu]

Daigo is kinda good.

[Pikachu]

There are apps for iPhone and Droid for SSF4 frame data.

[buhwhyen]

Demon flip dive kick/man-first is much better than Akuma's regular jump ins.

Sagat's st.rh is now cancelable on the first hit. Also there's a new CVS2-esque link of cr.lk, st.rh x special. Whiffs on most crouching characters, but it's still quite funny. Regular tiger knee's only connect the 2nd hit, so tiger uppercut does more damage (even EX). It's also possible to do cr.lk x2, cr.strong as a hit confirm now instead of short short jab. You can also st.jab x2, st.rh, not that it's terribly useful, but it does about the same damage as jab x2, strong, fireball.

Sagat' Angry scar move (his new "freeze frame" special, costs 1 bar of special meter) can be used mid block string to hit confirm. IE, cr.strong x angry scar, cr.jab x tiger uppercut.

Tiger cannon really doesn't seem that great. It seems like a better in corner ultra, but I think ultra 1 is still overall better? Ultra 1 always had enough invincibility to go through fireballs and ultra 2 is pretty slow (1+10 start up, though ultra 1 is only 1+9 start up) so I don't think you can really punish fireballs on reaction? Maybe jump-ins?

[Pikachu]

You can punish fireballs on reaction with Tiger Cannon. The startup doesn't seem that impressive, but the projectile speed is hella fast. Aside from that, it's pretty easy to react to a full screen Ultra juggle off EX Tiger Shot.

Edit - The damage is definitely unimpressive for what it is, even if you do get more openings than Ultra I.

[buhwhyen]

Found a weird bug? or glitch with Chun-Li. If you're point blank, as close as you can get, to Bison/Dictator (standing) and cr.short short the second short will ocassionally whiff completely. It depends how you time the second short, but I can get the second short to whiff pretty consistently. I've never seen this before, but I wonder if it applies to more of the cast too.

[Pikachu]

Trying out phone here. That is a weird bug. Gonna try that out myself.

[buhwhyen]

So...apparently metsu hado goes under Ken's ultra 2.