Ultra Street Fighter IV

[Plopboy]

I heard he got mixed up with the Russian mafia, something to do with dealing in stolen road equipment.

[Qazimod]

Earlier today I had this brilliant idea of setting up a TEAM BATTLE lobby sometime since no-one ever does team battles anymore.

Then I realised that I probably wouldn't be able to find any other players since no-one ever does team battles anymore.

[joffocakes]

I thought about setting up team battles yesterday to help Alasdair get the achievements, but then I didn't do it because I ended up fighting him in endless instead and forgetting. His Oni is really fun to fight, though he lied and told me I could easily punish his forward and hard punch if I blocked it, only for me to whiff my attack and get chinned by it again, haha. Lovely, lovely FADC into deliciously hard looking punch combos and cheeky quick dash throws. Also: DAT EX UPPERCUT CHIP.

A donut man came in and smashed my face off also, after casually sitting out, drinking tea and acting cool, I imagine. I forgot how ballsy Donut's dash-in EX Karakusa nonsense was. Evil.

I am most proud of landing 4x cr.lk x lk.scissors with Bison loads.

[MacMantis]

*sticks head round door* I'm recovered enough from a combined Minecraft/Netflix addiction to try and struggle my way back to SSFIV:AE, and as I have a night to myself tonight (apparently), and no money to go out (definitely), I thought I might drop online later today/this evening for some fisticuffs. Anyone likely to be aboot?

[Goemon]

I thought about setting up team battles yesterday to help Alasdair get the achievements

Whoa, whoa, whoa, team battle achievements...Sign me up for that whoring, they're all I'm missing.

[Camel]

I too don't have any team battle achievements. I have never played a team battle.

[Lyrical Donut]

GGs to Joffystar. The whole tea thing wasn't really anything like you'd imagined, sadly. As I was waiting for the kettle to boil a friend phoned and I almost forgot I was in a lobby with you guys. I don't really remember smashing anyone's face in either. Quite the opposite, in fact.

I'd be up for some teamy battling.

[joffocakes]

You were Makoto-ing me up! As well as some Seth-ing. You were succesfully Yun-ing Allie Ballie Bee at one point as well, but EX Uppercuts, raw ultras and a general lack of shame saw him through.

Dunno if I'll make it on this evening for Team Battles. I think the achievements are for creating the lobbies? You have to at least have one fight as well. I thought it was you who helped me grind to that, Goemon? I assumed we both had it. Maybe that was something and someone else?

[nuskool]

Woohoooo... 'B' ranked Ryu!

I really don't deserve it... I even lost the next 5 games after my rank went up lol.

[strawdonkey]

I'll come on for some team battles if they're over the weekend - about time I dusted off that TE stick for a few rounds.

[Qazimod]

Hurrah! Seriously, it'll be ace. Co-op fightings without all the salty ranting from me whenever I do SFxT Pair Play.

[imp]

Oh man, I miss team battles, those days were fun. Bagsy Hegg on my team as anchor.

[hegg]

I've got your rear.

[Nate Dogg III]

Ewwww.

Could be up for teams tonight - will be half ten before I'm on though, probably.

[ah]

I thought about setting up team battles yesterday to help Alasdair get the achievements, but then I didn't do it because I ended up fighting him in endless instead and forgetting. His Oni is really fun to fight, though he lied and told me I could easily punish his forward and hard punch if I blocked it, only for me to whiff my attack and get chinned by it again, haha. Lovely, lovely FADC into deliciously hard looking punch combos and cheeky quick dash throws. Also: DAT EX UPPERCUT CHIP.

A donut man came in and smashed my face off also, after casually sitting out, drinking tea and acting cool, I imagine. I forgot how ballsy Donut's dash-in EX Karakusa nonsense was. Evil.

I am most proud of landing 4x cr.lk x lk.scissors with Bison loads.

GGs to Joffystar. The whole tea thing wasn't really anything like you'd imagined, sadly. As I was waiting for the kettle to boil a friend phoned and I almost forgot I was in a lobby with you guys. I don't really remember smashing anyone's face in either. Quite the opposite, in fact.

I'd be up for some teamy battling.

You were Makoto-ing me up! As well as some Seth-ing. You were succesfully Yun-ing Allie Ballie Bee at one point as well, but EX Uppercuts, raw ultras and a general lack of shame saw him through.

Dunno if I'll make it on this evening for Team Battles. I think the achievements are for creating the lobbies? You have to at least have one fight as well. I thought it was you who helped me grind to that, Goemon? I assumed we both had it. Maybe that was something and someone else?

Oh there was plenty of shame, don't worry about that. I'm too old now to change my ways, though. Also you're a lovely man for thinking of my achievement points - I didn't care about them one bit until they were the only ones left that I didn't have, and now I kind of want them. I didn't mention it but clearly the longing came through somehow in the tone of my voice.

I think beating arcade mode with Yun was probably the hardest of the achievements for this game.

I think that the team battle achievements involve setting up a team battle and having at least one fight, then repeating that thirty times, and hopefully winning enough times while that was happening to trigger the other achievement. I also think that you can actually have a team battle with only one person on each team, though that's kind of missing the point - albeit perhaps missing the point so spectacularly that it almost becomes its own kind of point.

I should be around tonight.

[Lyrical Donut]

Dedicated room for hegg and imp at heggfest confirmed?

[strawdonkey]

Team Geegs to Alistarr, Jellum and Donut - apologies for being so terrible! Condolences to Qazimod who gave us the idea of Team Battle then was unable to make it due to the oppressive router of JLM.

[joeplus]

Interesting evening on ranked. Decided to go back to Ryu and try to sort out my fundamentals - easier than expected, got to 500BP from 50 with much less pain than Cody caused me. <3 Shotos

Also working on my Chun. I recorded this match because of one mad bit, but I need some feedback on my Chun game. Help me out rllmuk.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odl3MEs85ew

[joeplus]

Oh and shout out to scott nuskool who I met in the wilds!

[JLM]

Well, Chun is still my main character even though I don't play her as often these days, so I am quite the back seat Chun player. I find myself shouting at the Chuns I see on streams even if they're better than me, because even when there are gaps in my Chun gameplay I at least know what Chun should be doing most of the time.

Here is my break down of the video. It's detailed because I'm a bit of an obsessive when it comes to match analysis (Chun matches in particular!) and not because I think you did everything wrong!

Also, before I get into this, nice comeback in round 2!

Here is professor Jellum's Chunalysis:

0:07 First thing to note here is that I'd strongly recommend going with Ultra 1 against Akuma. You can punish all grounded fireballs with it and you can also punish jump back air fireball on reaction. This Akuma in particular was extremely fireball happy and it would have been a nice deterrent.

0:18 Be careful using df+roundhouse against characters with dragon punches. This guy didn't know what to do but you can eat an uppercut for that.

After it hit he could have dragon punched before your sweep also. If that kick hits you can link a crouching light kick and go into cr. lk cr. lk - > EX legs, which is Chun's bread and butter combo. As you didn't have meter here you could have gone with with two crouching light kicks into nothing, one crouching light kick into nothing, crouching light kicks into jabs or crouching light kicks into jabs linked into standing fierce if you want to be fancy. You could also link a crouching light kick and then go for a tick throw, or you could back dash to bait an uppercut. Croucing light kick into lk hazanshu for a quick high/low mix up is also an option. This guy didn't know what to do, chose a bad button and ate the sweep, but against a lot of opponents you'd have taken damage there.

0:20 On his wake up you pressured him with a crouching jab. This isn't a bad option, but if you're going to go for a meaty light attack with Chun I'd go for crouching light kick. Again it leads into cr. lk cr. lk EX legs, and it also requires the opponent to block low whereas the jab doesn't.

0:26 to 0:43 So he tries a bit of zoning here. Try to be a bit more patient against this. Neutral jump and block fireballs and inch your way in. He escapes a couple of times with tatsu because you fall into a pattern of jumping forward over his fireballs. Chun has an awful floaty jump and she doesn't have great horizontal range on her best jumping attacks either, so the classic approach of jumping over a fireball and punishing it with a full combo will only work for Chun if the opponent throws one at suicidally close range. She does, however, have other tools to compensate for this.

Firstly, your fireball recovers faster than everyone else's aside from Guile and Dee Jay, so if you respond to a fireball with your own and then immediately walk forward, you'll have gained ground on the opponent and also built some free meter.

Second, Chun Li's walk speed is one of the fastest in the game, so just by blocking and gradually inching forward you'll close the distance witthout allowing them to slip away under the aforementioned terrible floaty jump.

Thirdly, hazanshu is made for this situation. Learn the max range of your roundhouse hazanshu and EX hazanshu and try to keep yourself close to that range against fireball users. You can punish fireballs on reaction and the EX one does a nice chunk of damage if you have meter to burn. At further distances you can also use the lk and mk hazanshus to hop over fireballs to build meter and keep active if you don't want to just neutral jump. You can also use these as baits, so you could stand outside of the max distance for roundhouse hazanshu, then hop over a fireball using medium or light. This can make people think you're trying to punish their fireball from too far out and stick out an attack which you can whiff punish with a sweep.

Lastly, as mentioned earlier, Ultra 1's primary function is to punish fireballs or (against better players) stop people throwing them at certain ranges because of the threat it offers. Against Ryu, Sagat and anyone else who tries to control space with plasma it's often essential.

0:39 As tempting as it can be against relentless plasma chuckery, try not use EX fireballs in that situation. If you absolutely have to against Guile or Sagat just to keep pace then it has occasional uses, but the vast majority of the time it's a waste of meter. At full screen it's extremely rare for it to hit, and even if it does it does pitiful damage and doesn't even have the benefit of a knockdown like Ryu's or Sagat's. Chun's only decent reversals require EX meter, her b'n'b combo requires meter, her Super is one of the best in the game and juggling with EX spinning bird kick will always net you more damage than an EX fireball. The only other times tyou might want to use it are for round winning chip, or for pure surprise factor when they have no life left and it'll be too fast for them to react to, or if passing through their fireball and landing one hit from it will be enough to kill. Aside from that, pretty much any other way you could possibly spend an EX stock with Chun is a better option.

1:51 Waking up with roundhouse legs isn't a great option. EX legs starts up fast and has decent invincibility and has its uses as a mashed reversal, but meterless legs will lose to a lot of stuff. Her best reversal and "get off me!" move is EX spinning bird kick, so if you're sure they're going to be pushing buttons on your wake up I'd go with that. However, in this instance you didn't have meter, and I'm afraid in cases like that Chun has to suck it up and block. Her back dash is up there with Rose's as one of the best in the game too, so that's a decent option when you have no meter and you're under pressure. Just try not to fall into the habit of doing it every time of course.

2:05 Not a Chun specific thing, but when you've ducked under a tatsu and it's sailing over you like that, you can hit him out of it as it goes over your head for free damage. It'll also stop him landing so far away.

2:10 Never let anyone jump in on you for free at that range as Chun. Aside from her amazing pokes/footsies game, her main strength is her anti-airs.

Grounded anti-airs: Standing fierce or sweep would both have worked at that distance. At slightly closer range you can use standing medium kick, and at even close ranges your close standing medium punch is better than nothing in an emergency. You can also use crouching fierce against jumping attacks that hit low to the ground, and crouching medium punch makes Chun so small that jumping attacks whiff and you can surprise them with a throw or low attack when they land. On the ground at longer ranges you can also use standing roundhouse to tag people who are just about to leave the ground. This is an extremely frustrating poke and will hit lots of folks when they're trying to jump away or jump in. It's also up there with Sagat's standing roundhouse for Zangief's single most hated normal attack. Jab fireball is also a surprisingly good anti-air when you're slightly further back, and if you have charge and meter then EX spinning bird kick is a great anti-air too.

Air to airs: Chun's air normals can be fantastic anti-airs in their own right, partly because they're fast and have good hit boxes and partly because she jumps at such a funny angle. You can react to jumps at close ranges with jumping double fierce punch (which you can juggle after with stomps, EX spinning bird kick or ultra), jumping roundhouse, neutral jump roundhouse and air throw. These will often come out before their normal, and if Chun jumps second she invariably wins. If they jump from further away you can also win air to airs with jumping medium kick and jumping light kick, which both have a lot more range than fierce and roundhouse. There are specific cases like Rufus' godlike jumping roundhouse where going air to air is risky, but against most of the cast Chun will win if your timing and spacing are on point.

So yeah, the bit towards the end where he starts jumping like a mad man, with practise you shouldn't have to take that, and with well chosen anti-airs you can stand your ground and not have to walk yourself into the corner. That's the other thing to learn with a character like Chun; all of her pokes and anti-airs are there so you don't have to back up, rather than for you to tap at the opponent as you run away. Any time you successfully anti-air or get a knock down, use your walk speed to claim any free space that opeons up and try to keep your back away from the wall.

Also, when he keeps knocking you down and jumping over you, you can keep hold of your down charge and look for a good moment to EX spinning bird kick him. It's not the best reversal in the game, but against sloppy wake up pressure like that it'll get him off you and give you a second to recover. After hard knock downs (like Akuma's forward throw and sweep) you can't quick rise, and if he jumps immediately and you do EX spinning bird kick he can block it when he lands. It's an easy move for people to safe jump if they know what they're doing. However, if there's any delay and they give you time to get up, or if it's after a knockdown where you can quick rise and they still try to jump on you then EX SBK is your friend. This guy was taking an age to follow up on his forward throws, and every time he jumped over you the EX SBK would have worked.

2:40 A small thing, but after that jumping double fierce you could have killed him with EX SBK juggle. It hit low to the ground, but EX SBK can juggle very low and still give you the full hits. If you don't have charge time and their life is as low as his was there, you can also juggle with EX legs for less damage without having to charge.

Four stars, would watch again.

[joffocakes]

Jesus. What an excellent man you are JLM.

Also, I am in work and can't watch the video (so I dunno if you already know/do this) but the main thing JLM taught me that helped with landing Chun's cr.lk, cr.lk x EX.Legs was that you should do doubletap lk, doubletap lk, 2xKick; the fifth press of kick activates the move, which is true for all rapid button press moves in the game. I had no idea before he said. The important part is timing the gap between each doubletap, so the light kicks link. I suddenly enjoyed Chun after than.

Also, there are no pictures of Akuma looking sad next to a ripped up zone card to be found on google image search, but had there been one I would have posted it here, next to a laughing Chun, and it would have been pretty funny, I can assure you.

[JLM]

What's annoying about that method for EX legs (which is 100% consistent when I practise it) is that I only learned it after I'd already developed horribly sloppy muscle memory. So I know this foolproof method, tell people about it and then proceed to drop my b'n'b combo all the god dang time.

You know what else hurts as a Chun player? Two of the players I've learned the most from have profound physical disabilities and they both have 500% better execution than me. The guy who does the Advanced Chun Techniques video series, showcasing stuff I can do maybe once in every twenty attempts, has ONE HAND. The bastard.

[joffocakes]

Is that BrolyLegs and someone else? I think Broly is from Texas, though I'm not sure if it's near Austin. I guess he wouldn't be playing at arcade UFO much though since he's a 360 pad player.

What does your muscle memory do for that then? I have a similar issue with Honda's jab into hands in that I always do the fierce and cannot piano into EX at all unless I brainlessly mash. Plus my middle finger sometimes has a habit of not pressing MK and messing it all up. And, if I don't de-activate that KKK button on the bottom right, my pinky will brush it and I'll get jab > Focus Attack.

One other thing that's always kinda confused me... FADC, as in Focus Attack Dash Cancel... doesn't that only apply when you've connected with the actual attack part of the focus attack and dash out of its recovery? So SRK > FADC > Ultra is actually SRK > Focus Attack Dash Cancel > Ultra?

[Qazimod]

I wondered that too, because you can kind of dash out of any part of the focus attack. Me, I rarely trust myself to follow up with anything decent so I just backdash all day without actually finishing the attack.

Sorry I couldn't join y'all the other day; my router wasn't playing nice, even after I checked all the ports and stuff. Boo.

[joffocakes]

I've lost many a match as Ryu as I'll always Focus as anti air when I've got a perfectly overpowered dragon punch I could be using. Same with Viper really, especially since she must have the absolute worst focus attack in the game.

[nuskool]

Oh and shout out to scott nuskool who I met in the wilds!

GG mate... I recognised the name then realised you were on my friends list!

When we play next let me fight your Chun... Chuns and Gens just trample all over me!

[joeplus]

JLM you are the greatest, sincere thanks. Anti-airs are the weakest bit of my game all over the cast, if I haven't got an uppercut I seem to forget I've got anything at all - so many times Cody's b.mp would have saved my hide. I'll look into Ultra 1, I stay away from it just because my execution on charge moves is iffy.

Playing Dryu was actually really fun, and for the first time in a while I feel like I'm making some progress. I should really play more non-Drunk Fighter, but how am I supposed to do that when there's football on every day for the next fortnight? Tch, unfair.

[Lyrical Donut]

GeeTeeBees last night! I beat JLM's Cammy with Seth, which was nice considering I took quite the battering in that matchup recently. I even urinated on him in the process.

[Goemon]

because I'm a bit of an obsessive...

A bit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[nuskool]

Grrrrr, GEN oh how i hate thee.

It'll be down to experience/practice but it seems all of his moves attack other side to what I assume.