Ultra Street Fighter IV

[Qazimod]

Here is a video of Ono and Zhi :

On topic, triangle inputs hate me. In doing my lab research I've ended up refamiliarising myself with pretty much every special, super and ultra going (which would help me clear some of those earlier trials if only I knew which ones I still had to do), but I think that the floaty d-pad actually works against me when I'm trying to rock between down-back and down-forward quickly and I inevitably end up slipping onto forward (instead of down-forward) or something. I suppose in theory the start of the motion is like a condensed half circle (as you're only rolling between the diagonals rather than the left and right side) but doing it under controlled conditions (lab work) is tricky, and doing it in a real match is near-impossible.

Direction Fighter.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

Yessssssss! I finally got the achievement for getting all the taunts! I can stop playing now, right?

[Plopboy]

Yes you can stop playing those dodgy top tier characters and play a proper one like Dan. (finds rock, moves in, decorates in a nice art nouveaux style, has rock warming party and lives happily ever after under his rock)

[mayor_mike_haggar]

I think both donut and I are intensely salty right now. Bloody yun.

[joffocakes]

JLM utterly mauled me in a random select endless lobby last night. 18 -5 it ended. It was much fun though; I would have won a match as Oni if it'd been able to punish with something more significant than close hard punch. I just could not do that ultra. I've still not got any clue what to do with the AE 4, or Juri. Or Guy actually, even though I got half-decent with him back in Super (though I think my idea of 'half-decent' has changed since then).

My only proud moment was doing Karakusa > HP x HP.Hayate FADC straight into Ultra 2 as Makoto, guessing that JLM's 3-bar Rufus would EX Messiah. Strangely, he did downforward.mk instead, I'm not sure if it was a deliberate throw tech/backdash catching option select? It would have lost to karakusa, so I'm not sure. Anyway, I'm chuffed.

JLM's Sakura has some ridiculously consistent links now too. How to you input that one ending in cr.mk to SRK? Do you tap forward for the last jab, then just down+mk, downforward.hp? I often mess that up and get overhead. My inputs are clumsy.

I think I oughta train with this new Cammy as well. Dem easylinks.

Also, goot Third Striking. I am such a fraud with Necro.

[Plopboy]

Well I've got a cold that is making me very salty and I got charged import duty on my Elf tshirt which would make me very salty but it is so awesome:)

Though do tell us about your fraudulent Necro, any rage mail yet?

[joffocakes]

Nah, no rage really; I just feel guilty about doing unsafe nonsense and getting away with it because punish windows and timings are much stricter in Third Strike. Necro is a bit like Makoto in some ways because when he has a bit of meter behind him and gets in first the high stun means two mistakes means death for a lot of characters. I did have a bit of legitimate post corner-throw reset mix-up action, but it was always the same overhead I used. Also, Donut Corkscrew Blew right through my tongue taunt.

[Nate Dogg III]

JLM utterly mauled me in a random select endless lobby last night.

That pleases me because I think that as soon as the current tournament is over we should start another one. Identical format, FT5 and all, but random select in every match.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

No! I want to do one where we choose the character our opponent has to play!

The we have like a million t hawk v guy matches.

[joffocakes]

Hugo mirrors with Donut were hilrious. Goemon telling me at Heggfest that standing SPDs are just as easy in 3rd Strike made a big difference. Such a terrfying character. Parries are crazy, really, because the turn attacks with slow startup, which would be next to useless in other games, into terrifying rhythm-ruiners.

I need to learn some throw-tech/parry/attack option select wildness.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

I actually have semi-regularly working option selects with my shit ryu now. you can tell I'm trying one because I do a jumping attack and then nothing else, expecting my OS to come out and not expecting you to block. It's high level stuff.

[joffocakes]

JLM's Sakura took the piss out of my Vega last night as well, simply because he knew i'd be incapable of defending anything if he maintained pressure. Poor Vega. I'm sure Vega players catch me with stuff that's trickier than just the occasional EX cross-up wall thingy; Redbull Ninja routinely messes me up. Can't remember for the life of me what I should be doing when I use him though.

Also, y'all should post stuff. I'm bored. Also I want a big game of Anarchy Reigns with all youse. Have we all been in a big lobby of a different game before? There's games we can all play at the same time!

[jiroczech]

Yeah a big SFIV thread Anarchy Reigns love-in could be fun. I played some ball game in it with Singho and Into the Preach but I was totally confused and had no idea what was going on. I think there's like a co-op beat up CPUs mode which might be a laugh.

For Joffo: Your new avatar scares me. Did you see this other scary thing?

Holy fuck! Burn that thing!

[joffocakes]

That looks terrifying. My avatar is from that Trekkies documentary I watched on Netflix over the weekend. He was the most Tim and Eric man in it.

Anarchy Reigns should be stupid fun. I'm looking forward to getting stuck in for a few hours later today. With this sort of game, especially Bayonetta, I always end up reaching the end and still feel like I don't really know what I'm doing. I always feel like I'm not playing 'properly'.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

I thought that picture was just a particularly bad one of "radlord".

[JLM]

It's totally a bit far for you then. Shame. Apparently it's been running for just over a year, so I was very late in discovering it. There's also a dedicated Marvel night on Thursdays hosted by one of the regulars, and another of the regulars lives two minutes' walk from me and wants to set up an even more local AE night. I thought nobody played fighting games in Leeds.

Joffles, for that Sakura combo I make the down + MK press very deliberate and then input the uppercut motion as fast as I can. I have the same problem as you where if I try to start buffering the DP earlier I get accidental overhead. You can cancel Sakura's crouching MK a fair bit later than you'd think, so there's time to input the DP on it's own. Took me ages to get it though, and it's one where I spent a while working on it in training because it's really satisfying to hit and I always saw it as the mark of a Sakura who was better than me if they could do it in mirrors and I couldn't. The good thing about perfecting that combo is that it has the exact same timings as Juri's Cr. lk - > cr. jab - > stand jab - > cr. mk - > pinwheel and Yang's jabs into cr. MK into rekkas/uppercut, so I can do those consistently without accidentally pressing forward now too.

My biggest execution block I have now (that isn't very difficult high execution stuff of course) is still Ibuki's b'n'b jabs into standing MK into special move. When I go to neutral for the standing MK, I always, always start to input the special move too fast and get overhead or slide. This happens even if I'm cancelling into spinny kicks, which has not forward input in the motion. It's very frustrating.

[joffocakes]

Yeah, I did that a lot with Ibuki. Still do. Interested to hear about Juri having a combo with similar timings; I'll need to learn some Juri eventually (I totally don't need to; I could just stop playing Street Fighter forever and go live on a farm or something), and knowing one thing like that would make it better. My problem with her is that she clearly works better when played with a bit of intelligent zoning, and her zoning requires even more forethought than most; forethought I already do not have to play a succesful Ryu zoning game, so I'm stuffed. Her wild inyourface stuff looks brilliant, though.

[JLM]

I only have the patience to zone for a bit with Juri. I spent most of my time working on rushing down with her in SFXT and most of it has transferred over. She's turned out to be one of my stronger characters and is on my shortlist of potential Chun back ups, but she does have some hand-mangling higher execution stuff that scares me a bit. I can post Juri things later if you want to pick her up. It's baffling to me that more people don't because she is both a very useful character and also loooads of fun. The corner pressure and FSE stuff in particular is the best thing when you get a good rhythm going. Getting a looong dizzy on someone because they've been locked down for half a round is so satisfying. You can keep yourself at frame advantage with released fuhajin, mix in some overheads, have two amazing anti-airs and a juggling air to air ready if they try to jump out and you can store more fuhajins at the end of your blockstrings to keep it going. Also in this version her FADC combos are much easier than they used to be, so you can get fancy and burn all your bars. I also find resetting with pinwheel - > FADC - > throw has an amazing success rate because it's a big confusing flurry of activity and her forward dash is exceptionally good.

Juri is greay. Play Juri guys.

[Qazimod]

I'm trying

Still transferring my recent Kasatushi notes over to a video capture but it'll take a while to get it all down. A lot of what I've discovered has doubtless been common knowledge for ages but it'll be nice to have something to refer to for myself. Also, a lot of the situations I've set up are probably hugely impractical compared to simply blocking and then doing something whilst an opponent recovers, but it's been interesting nonetheless.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

I keep thinking about playing juri but then the thought of trying to do stuff while half the time holding down a button to store fuhajin just makes me want to back away slowly. Random select gave me juri against quazi the other night, though, so for a little bit I did my very best backwards jumping with her.

I'm thinking about trying to half pick up yet another character, but am teetering indecisively between guy, fei or evil ryu.

[Spuck]

I keep thinking about playing juri but then the thought of trying to do stuff while half the time holding down a button to store fuhajin just makes me want to back away slowly. Random select gave me juri against quazi the other night, though, so for a little bit I did my very best backwards jumping with her.

I'm thinking about trying to half pick up yet another character, but am teetering indecisively between guy, fei or evil ryu.

Fei will spoil you with his ridiculous footsies, learn him! Guy is gimmicks, and E.Ryu is essentially a shitty Akuma.

(Being able to punish shoto c.hk on block with rekkas is priceless)

[mayor_mike_haggar]

I like gimmicks! Gimmicks are fun and easy! And I'm not entirely sure that evil roo is that similar to akuma, I think it's quite superficial similarity. Akuma's all safe vortex wildness and giving you hell off a hard knockdown. Evil Ryu is more about doing the some of most damaging combos in the game as soon as he gets 2 bars and can confirm a poke into fireball FADC. The reason he's bad is that he doesn't have many ways to open people up and get that damage. I just like his wild stomping.

[Spuck]

I like gimmicks! Gimmicks are fun and easy! And I'm not entirely sure that evil roo is that similar to akuma, I think it's quite superficial similarity. Akuma's all safe vortex wildness and giving you hell off a hard knockdown. Evil Ryu is more about doing the some of most damaging combos in the game as soon as he gets 2 bars and can confirm a poke into fireball FADC. The reason he's bad is that he doesn't have many ways to open people up and get that damage. I just like his wild stomping.

Yeah, he just doesn't really seem to have the tools to get in though. I've seen video of Sako playing as ERyu though, and with his hands you can imagine the damage he was throwing out.

I..think playing Cammy has spoiled me, her options after you get a knockdown are utterly terrifying.

[Nate Dogg III]

Evil Ryu is tremendous fun - I enjoy playing him much more than I do Akuma. I play Ken, though, so what do I know.

[jiroczech]

I tried to wean myself off charge characters with E.Ryu - I was rubbish but it was fun playing him alright. Had a hellish time on ranked trying to learn him, very bad for the ego. I had to adopt a Zen attitude to BP/PP. Which was probably a good thing.

[joffocakes]

I remember when people used to sneer if you said you played Ken. I dunno which character would get the most sneery reaction from me if someone told me they were their main. Probably Adon. Definitely Adon.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

I did spend all of about 3 nights pretending to learn fei long. rekka rekka rekka! Donut hated it, I think.

[Qazimod]

I remember when people used to sneer if you said you played Ken. I dunno which character would get the most sneery reaction from me if someone told me they were their main. Probably Adon. Definitely Adon.

SFIV '09 week one - Kens all over the place. I always assumed it was some continuation of his top-tier status in 3rd Strike, but it could have just been the SF2 nostalgics picking it up and forgetting the moves for everyone except the shotos. I seemed to remember getting mauled online (maining Abel at the time) until I learned to Ultra through fireball spam. Fun times.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

I think it's something to do with that and just wilding on his dragon punch probably being a legitimate tactic for the first few weeks.

God, imagine if we could all zoom back in time and pick up vanilla week one. I might have had a chance of getting over 2000pp.

[Lyrical Donut]

I think both donut and I are intensely salty right now. Bloody yun.

More like bloody me spending a round and a half trying to get you near a corner so I could do anti air lp.DP EX fireball FADC EX fireball Ultra.

We should do a mirror match tournament at some point. It could be great, or it could be terrible, but it might be alllllllright.