How not to suck at Street Fighter

[Kanthos]

Mods, move to Help & Newbies if you like. Wasn't sure where this would go since it was more of a gameplay question.

I just got Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max for PSP yesterday, and played it for a few hours. I realize that I'm not going to become a superstar overnight at a game with some fairly complex mechanics (not to mention something like 40 fighters, each with different moves), but I was dying horribly. Over and over. I played with Ryu, and despite knowing his 4 basic moves and being able to do them fairly consistently, I used well over 25 continues and had only gotten to 7 out of 10 fights in arcade mode. A few fights were quite easy for me, but Chun-Li and Charlie in particular were brutal. I don't yet know the big combos that you have to charge up your combo bar for, but I expected I'd at least find the easiest game mode to be beatable with relative ease instead of nearly impossible, even though I haven't really grown up playing fighting games.

I welcome any tips to improve. Some things I've noticed are that I can't block any low kicks (I suppose I could counter or jump; I have to learn when to do that and when not to), I seem to get countered *a lot*, and I don't do much damage with my special attacks. I tended to have the most problem with faster characters instead of slower ones. I'm sure the controls have something to do with it (the default controls are to have high punch and high kick on the shoulder buttons, plus I don't like the PSP's thumb stick or d-pad nearly as much as the d-pads on the SNES and Gameboy, the other consoles I've played fighting games on). Should I consider remapping the high punch and kick buttons, or just learn to use the shoulder buttons effectively? Is there more to using high/medium/low attacks than just "use the attack at the height your opponent isn't blocking?" Is there any way to anticipate what to move? When is it useful to counter? When do counters work, and when are they resisted or blocked, because I haven't found much of a pattern to that.

Lots of questions here; any help is welcome

[Shadowe]

did you try gamefaqs?

[djpretzel]

Playing against the computer is totally different from playing against a real person, because once you find weaknesses in the AI, they're consistent, whereas a real person would (hopefully) adapt, rather quickly in most cases.

I haven't played MAX as much as I've played the PS2 anthology, DC, and PSX ports, but in general, SFA AI is very bad at getting up from being knocked down. There's a window between when they recover and stand-up where you can almost always fake them out, delay just a bit, and catch them with an uppercut or myriad other moves.

Also key to the game, and most SF games in general, is the concept of air superiority and timing; weak moves might suck, but if they've got air superiority, that's better than nothing, etc. Basics like that should be good enough to take down the AI, once you get a handle on them.

Real people are another story...

[Devyn]

I haven't played that version, but here are a few things about Street Fighter that you must know:

Don't rely too heavily on special moves.

Don't try to combo where you can't do a combo.

Don't use just fierce attacks. There are times when you can't fit a fierce attack in, but a jab will work.

Change up the speed of your fireballs. Another good trick is to throw a fireball at the right time and pummel the enemy midair when the enemy jumps over the fireball.

Sometimes walking up to the enemy and executing a standing punch or kick will get the job done. You don't always have to jump or sweep.

[Sag Ee Mana]

Reminds me the first time I played Street Fighter 2 on Super Nintendo.

I could beat the mighty M.Bison (Vega jap)only with Chun-Li, using the wall jump and kicking the boss when he was near from me.

Funny...

And now I think I can fight vs Akuma.

Great saga.

[Triad Orion]

It's been years since I've played a Street Fighter game, but Megadave's advice is pretty much a solid base of the basics. Special moves can help win a match, but they won't win it for you on their own. As for the special bar thing, that's completely lost on me. Last SF game I played was II.

SF games require lots of experimenting to get right, so don't be discouraged. Just keep hammering away and mess around with it. And look at it this way: on the PSP, you never run out of quarters. XD

[Sag Ee Mana]

Usually when you play against cusual gamers, the first thing they do in the fight is moving backwards, maybe till the corner, they feel like in a safe place.

Skilled players will fastly try to attack (for some people, it's because they want the first attack bonus, I know some guys like this >_<).

Now I think... It'd be really fun to play an online Street Fighter.

Maybe I'll try it ^^

[CC Ricers]

Skilled fighters also look for patterns and repetition in more novice fighters. The pros will try to use their characters in less-conventional says.

Remember to roll as you recover, using the punch. It's the best way to get a breather in traditional SF games, where you cannot just super-jump away from danger. Stronger punches would make you roll farther.

If you are having problems with the PSP's d-pad, double-tape a quarter to it. It will help smooth out circular motions.

[kamoh]

There are vast repositories of Street Fighter information online. Shoryuken.com and Sirlin.net should give you at least a starting point, but a lot of that literature is for more complex play...it sounds like you need to know the rules and they'd be teaching you how to defend against a Sicilian (failure analogy, I know).

Anyways, PSP is shit. Trying to play Street Fighter on a controller is hard enough, but on a handheld? That's pretty brutal. I just get by playing emulated because the keyboard is able to replicate the general feel of an arcade board (but not the stick), so I think your big problem is the unintuitive control scheme, and not necessarily that you automatically suck at the game.

EDIT: Forgot about the roll...I can air recover but not roll...Alpha 3 is freaking awesome...

[GhaleonNow]

If you want to take SF remotely seriously, do not play on a handheld. It's not a bad thing if you just want to get good at playing against the comp and having fun, but to learn about the game on anything but the most basic level, you'd want to be playing on the MAME Alpha 3 (the Playstation 2 collection is better than the handheld, but still not the "true" version -- A3 tourney scene is dead so it really doesn't matter I guess).

While you're starting from the beginning, getting a good stick (Hori products are the best out-of-the-box, relatively cheap solutions) is key for most players (almost no one plays pad at high-level).

Just play humans if you have someone else into the game (on computer, a custom-made networking program called GGPO recently came out that is supporting more and more fighters, like Alpha 2 and Vamp Savior so far), or find people in your state/area through da Internet if you really want to learn fast.

www.shoryuken.com/forums is your best bet to learn about all aspects of a Street Fighter (beginning + advanced) and 2-D fighters in general.

Don't use gamefaqs or other message boards aside from a quick movelist, unless you know the poster is a tournament player (e.g. well-known MK player Shock's UMK3 combo guide). You'll mostly just be taking large amounts of backwards steps for every tidbit of good. Even on SRK most of the today's posters are not great players, but there are a lot of old, comprehensive threads for each game.

Sorry if this is all way more than you really wanted to know or care about

[Liontamer]

Study video of the Street Fighter masters at work: http://www.vgfrequency.com/?p=252

IMO, you'll be all set once you watch that.

[I-n-j-i-n]

I find a trend that in 2D fighting games, you need to get the hang of specials/super moves to best the AI. Keep jumping, comboing then doing the big combo to finish. Or just spam the same move until the AI relents.

While with human players, it's actually almost preferable to keep it entirely to parries, up/down guessing games and poke attacks. Pokes (+ a few gimme supers) apparently rule tournament play too. In every fighting game not named Guilty Gear or Marvel vs Capcom.

[Kanthos]

I'm doing significantly better just by paying attention to the comments about air superiority and not relying on special moves too much. I still need to figure out throws, rolls and air recovery and start using combos and special moves. At any rate, I'm starting to get better, so I just need to go play more so I start figuring out strategies and working in more combos.

I have no intention of being a top-ranked tournament player; I'm just interested in being able to hold my own against the AI and human players, should I have the opportunity to play anyone.

[Katsurugi]

Alpha 3 is a good game. The Max version has puts the game into widescreen and adds a couple of characters, right? I can't really directly relate anything, but I have played a lot of Alpha 3 before. Sometimes Capcom adjusts some things from version to version which make some significant difference even if it's technically the same game by name (i.e. Alpha 2 vs. Alpha 2 Gold).

But with any Street Fighter game, you have to really get used to the animations of each move and the hit boxes. Familiarize yourself with how far and how fast each move takes to execute. In general, faster moves are safer as other people cannot poke back when you're retracting your punch or kick into your normal stance. However, they're usually very short in range and don't do too much damage. Stronger moves are slower, do more damage and also tend to knock down your opponent. I think a very good example of animations and hit boxes would be overheads. Typically, they're attacks that target high, rather than low. Blocking low all the time is probably a good advice most of the time as it protects you from mid and low attacks. If someone uses an overhead while you are blocking low, you're going to take damage. Recognizing an overhead would allow you to move from a low block to a normal blocking stance and not take damage. It's mainly reflex though when you're on the receiving end. But you can use it on people who block a lot to keep them on their toes. When I think of an overhead, it would be Ken's, f. MK.

After doing that, you can move onto priorities of one move versus another or as the Pretzel said before, superiority. I find that the shoto's (Ryu/Ken/Akuma) j. FP has a fair priority over other moves and even some anti-airs. The range isn't too good compared to the j. RH, but it's more reliable. Priority doesn't just extend to regular moves, but also special moves and super moves as well. Traditionally, the dragon punch has the highest priority so you can't really touch anyone during the upswing of the dragon punch. Some adjustments have been made to it so it isn't as dominating as before, but it's still a very effective move. Take note of this while playing as or playing against a character that has one.

Alpha 3 in general is slower than your typical Street Fighter game. Characters kind of float in the air a bit longer than they should and are still vulnerable to be hit again. The game just lends itself to air juggling. If you're good at knowing where your hit boxes are, you should be able to do this with ease, if only 2 or 3 hits. Alpha counters, air recoveries, command throws, etc. Those are all in the mechanics of the game. Air recoveries are somewhat useful at times, but don't get into the habit of using them all the time. Falling on the ground is perfectly fine at times since your opponent can potentially hit you again after you recover. I typically use throws to crack the shell of any turtle or to just mix things up. If someone is in the corner and blocking, you can technically walk up to them and throw them. Of course this happens more in human players than computers, but it's definitely a situation that pops up. Another reason to introduce throws is to get around alpha counters. Some characters are more jumpy than others (Chun Li, Bison, Vega) or players might simply use jump in attacks a lot. To stop them, you can typically alpha counter. But check the flip side of this situation, if you were the one jumping in, and they were the one countering, you would be the one getting punished. To get around the counter, I would suggest to mix in an empty jump into them and then throw. They would be expecting an attack and attempting to counter, but there's nothing to counter if they don't go into their block animation.

[BardicKnowledge]

The only thing I can add to the discussion is that once you get an idea of the basics and can follow through with what Katsurugi has explained, realize that some of the moves with high priority don't look like the logical move in a given situation.

The best example I can think of off of the top of my head is Guy's crouching MP, which is a great anti-air counter (combo it into his throw). It doesn't make sense, but it works. Many other characters have "awkward" moves like that, and _that's_ where sites like shoryuken come in handy.

[Broken]

Hmm, cool thread. In an effort to add something that has not already been said....

try looking for footage of your game on youtube/ google.video. There will either be tournament footage or footage of people just beating up on CPU players.

Secondly, if you're just trying to get decent at SF in general. I'd suggest taking a step back and learning an older game in the series such as Super Turbo because that is kind of the de facto standard of SF games and that's where a lot of the Alpha series games get their basic mechanics from.

You mentioned that you're trying to figure out how to learn the more game specific techniques such as air recovery and rolling too, so I'd suggest just looking at a generic faq in gamefaqs for the button commands. I also remember there being an excellent guide on the basic systems in SFA3 (arcade) written for Shoryuken.com. If I can find it, I'll post it.

And finally, just play a hell of a lot. That seems to be the most effective method for getting good at these games. Don't worry about how many continues it takes you.

[Fritz the Cat]

Yeah, SF is a game you need a joystick for. It just doesn't feel right otherwise.

[Arek the Absolute]

Not sure if this has been said or not, but here is a very simple *yet very helpful* tip:

Playing against humans is way different than playing against AI.

I will take my Garou experience for example. I can hold my own against humans in Garou reall well, but I can't even beat stage 4 in arcade mode anymore.

If you want to play against humans, do not play against AI. It will teach you very bad habits that will get you punished later on, and vice versa.

[Fritz the Cat]

Or to put it another way, don't play just against AI.

[Rad McRadderson]

Learn how to control space, thats the number one step to learning how not to suck at SF2. Pretty much every good 2d fighting game is about controlling space.