Simultaneous Fapping

FelineKI, Dammit, and MZK bringing that goodness. And the script just keeps getting better and better with more games and emulators supported.

Pleased to be enjoying Super Turbo.

^ Popout

---

- Copyright © Xenozip.

Fighting Game Mechanics

FYI: "dammit" mentions that "omni" had a post regarding Combat Systems.

- Blocking
- Airblocking
- Hitstop/Blockstop
- Hitstun/Blockstun
- Counter hits
- Ground recovery (bounces/rolls/slides)
- Air techs (air recovery)
- Launchers
- Juggles
- Gravity scaling
- Knockback scaling (hit/block)
- Hitstun/blockstun scaling
- Damage scaling
- Damage proration
- Damage reduction (self-input/mashing to reduce)
- Off the ground hits
- Off the ground limitation
- Wall bounce
- Wall bounce limitation
- Super jump
- Short jump
- Double jump
- Super short jump
- Neutral jump air control
- Run
- Dash/Backdash (sometimes with inv-frames)
- Airdash
- Rolling
- Dodging
- Guard meter (blocking gauge)
- Pushblock (advancing guard)
- Guard reversal
- Guard counter
- EX block (faultless defense/fortress defense)
- Timed block (Just defend/EX Guard)
- Reversals
- Throw invulnerability (after hitstun, blockstun, wakeup, reset/tech).
- Specials
- EX Specials
- Supers
- Revenge (rage/ultra)
- Special cancel
- Super cancel
- EX cancel (roman cancel/rapid cancel/focus attack cancel)
- Normals (stand/crouch/neutral-diagonal-jump)
- Command Normals
- Dashing normals
- Overheads / lows
- Sweeps (knockdown attacks)
- Standing knockdown attacks
- Airborne knockdown attacks
- Throws
- Holds (throws that drain life)
- Command throws/holds
- Comboable throws
- Normal chains
- Normal chain cancel limitation
- Gatling chain (target combos)
- Rekka (normal/special sequence)
- Renda
- Kara cancel
- Negative edge (button up specials)
- Teching throws (breaking/softening)
- Parrying
- Catch-counters (geese/karin)
- Absorbing (focus attack/ultimate guard)
- Bursts/Bombs (hitstun cancel stocks)
- Critical-Life bonus (damage/supers/defense)
- Custom combos (Cancels/speed/shadows/helpers)
- Power up moves (meter stocks/power/armor)
- Meter charging (generally a bad idea)
- Command throws
- Command supers (sequence inputs / sequence breakers)
- Super command throws
- Assists (calling characters with lifebars)
- Helpers (moves that become autonomous of the player, no life bar)
- Partner (tagging/controlling a second character)
- Stances (modes/weapons)
- Teams (pick more than one character
- Life regeneration (heal)
- Life steal (leech)
- Life drain (poison)
- Status effects (dizzy/freeze/locked-moves/slippery/slow/weak/vulnerable)
- Guard point (armor frames)
- Super armor (1-hit absorb, can be thrown)
- Hyper armor (all hit absorb, can't be thrown)
- Suction/Repulsion (wind/magnetism/ropes/grapples/ice/oil)
- Partial invulnerability (high/low/projectile/melee/throw)
- Activation/declaring (stocks/moves)
- Overheads/lows
- Unblockables
- Charge moves
- Button hold moves
- Held and released moves
- Timer-based moves (countdown)
- Timed moves (just frames)
- Move limits (gauge/stocks)
- Projectiles
- Projectile reflection/absorption/neutralization/push
- Character level (warzard/red-earth)
- Items (food/bombs -- samurai shodown)
- Meter items (gems -- Marvel/BBB/pocket fighter)

- Arcade
- Story
- Survival
- Challenge
- Time trial
- Training
- Lesson/tutorial
- Hitbox/Frame display
- Random select (holds character between rounds / randoms between rounds / picks opponents character between rounds)

---

- Copyright © Xenozip.

The Game

In the past, fighting game players dumped tons of money and time into fighting games at the arcade. Even if they are usually winning every day, they are still putting money into the machine each day that they play. Plus the cost of travel.

That weeded out a lot of players because those that lost would be sticking quarters into a machine and losing, and eventually realizing they are paying just to get steamrolled.

But for those that won, the important thing to remember is that they do not earn anything back either, they put money in with the full knowledge that they will not earn it back.

Even with tournaments, you must take into account that you (or they) would need to assume the player has a realistic chance at placing top three to earn anything. If they do not have a chance at top three then they're really just paying for the entry fee, and playing for no other reason than themselves. Thus, it's easy to say most players are not competing to earn money.

The reason to keep doing it is because of competition and growth. It's a hobby, and an addictive one. Since the beginning of competitive fighting games it's always been about learning to counter the opponent. If you fight a player abusing [x] tactic it becomes a fun and interesting challenge to learn to beat it. What is the [y] the player needs to do in order to counter the opponent's [x] tactic. When you see it in videos it might not be entertaining, but so what -- those players aren't there to entertain you, they are there to entertain themselves. What that "cheap tactic" is doing is helping the community by forcing everyone to level up and fight harder. It's all about setting a bar and having your opponent beat it, or finding some one else who raised the bar even higher so that you could try and beat it.

One might think it's an asshole move to pick top tiers or run the clock for wins, but nothing says "step up your game" better than a loss, because that was your quarter that just went down the drain. It gets the point across, because next time you don't want to lose. If you don't like watching it then don't watch it, if you don't like fighting it then don't fight it, you're only forced to do so if you actually want to win a tournament; in which case you must deal with it in order to face the reality of competition. That's just how it is. A "cheap" tactic is an invitation to counter it, it's an invitation for competition.

These days, in the era of console gaming, online play, and boundless recorded match videos at everyone's fingertips it's easy to get disillusioned. You may not feel like playing a particular game or against a particular person just because something rubs you the wrong way and you think it's "cheap". It is truly a convenient privilege to be able to pick and choose from dozens of opponents at a whim any time of the day, where as without online you'd be stuck with only a handful of players that live in your immediate area and only at specific times when you and they are available.

A lot of tactics that average players would have gotten destroyed by if they never encountered it before are in videos now for all to see. A lot of combos they never would have figured out on your own are recorded both in TACVs and match videos. But it is not just there to entertain you, it is also there to educate you. Information flows in large quantities very quickly, so the game evolves extremely fast. It raises the bar that much higher, that much faster. A lot of those would-be players that, back in the day, lost too many quarters and quit before they began can now see where they went wrong. A lot of players that couldn't figure it out on their own now have a helping hand. A big one.

So let's face reality: tournaments for fighting games, even today, do not rely on spectators because there are none. The spectators are the players. Tournament prizes consist pretty much entirely from entry fees from the tournament. We support our own community, the players themselves, no one else. The videos that people put out aren't there for entertainment, the players are playing for themselves and sharing it with the world to bring others in. Casual online play is there to branch out and bring more players in. Games with easy execution and simple game mechanics and simple combos are there to bring more players in. It might all be seen as spoonfeeding and a disconnection from the days when we were shoulder to shoulder and shoving quarters into a machine, but it's all there to help, not hurt.

No one is forcing anyone, and no one is playing for the sake of anyone else. It's all for the love of the game(s) and ourselves.

---

- Copyright © Xenozip.

More Boxes (Alpha)

^ Popout

---

- Copyright © Xenozip.

RE: Vampire Boxes

Things are looking more on the up and up for older 2D fighting games.

Fortunately, SFA3, another 2D Fighting Game by Capcom, has been implemented into the Lua script that runs in FBA-RR and Mame-RR for displaying hitboxes.

There's also a chance that Jojo's, yet another 2D Fighting Game by Capcom, might also be implemented.

For me it's amazing to see the inner-workings of these games that people have played for years and years. The major intricacies of footsies becoming actually visible right before you.

It's shocking and exciting because the visual sprites don't always match up with the game's hitboxes. A great example is what we see in the thumbnail on this blog; Lilith MK has her leg no where near the actual hitbox. The real hitbox that interacts with the opponent is drastically lower than her sprite's leg appears. Just glancing at the image to the right, you can very clearly see that the attack-box (red) is quite a bit lower than Lilith's extended leg. Imagine for a moment that you can not see her hitbox and only her sprite (like normal gameplay) for round one, but the second round you could only see her hitboxes and not her sprite. I'm certain it would put things in perspective.

While many players can learn the game through trial and error, actually seeing what is really going on can drastically change the way we think, and therefor play.

Personally I always get blown away by how cross-ups appear in-game with hitboxes overlayed onto the sprites. It also gets me giddy to see basic anti-airs used at a pixel's distance.
^ Popout

---

- Copyright © Xenozip.

Vampire Boxes

The 2D fighting game Vampire Savior has had very little organized documentation for quite some time, but that is quickly changing.

Bellreisa has been kind enough to host a VSav wiki over at Mizuumi which has been collecting a good amount of information as time goes on. There's still some missing data that has yet to be transcribed, but it's coming along quickly. In the meantime there's GameFAQs for character movelists, and for framedata there's a mirror in Japanese and a mirror translated in English of the shu180sx data site.

Additionally, Felineki over at the RandomSelect forum has discovered the memory addresses for hitboxes in the arcade emulation of the game. Because of that data, MZ over at TASVideos was able to implement a Lua script into their build of Mame-RR and FBA-RR (which was updated by MZ to be able to run Lua scripts) that allowed us to see the hitboxes while playing the game. More information about what the boxes are and where to get the emulators and script can be found: here.

Naturally, I encourage anyone to help transcribe data onto the wiki, as help is appreciated. If you know anything about a particular character, that's cool, but if not then anything would help: move list, frame data, hitbox screen captures, whatever.

In the mean time, please enjoy some videos.


^ Popout


^ Popout

---

- Copyright © Xenozip.

Samurai Throdown

The subject of throws, and how to avoid them, in SS5Sp has been the topic of some discussion lately. Throws in 5Sp are a little awkward compared to other Fighting Games, since there are a number of eccentricities about 5Sp that make it unique relative to other Fighters.

First of all, most fighting games have either throw teching or throw softening, while Samurai Shodown has neither. Second, in Samurai Shodown if the opponent was not in a throwable state when the throw was input it results in a passive action (a hop) rather than a throw whiff. That generally makes throws quite valuable, especially since all normal throws have 3F startup and even auto-guard during the startup. However, there's quite a few ways to avoid being thrown in the first place. I'll go over the specifics of each one after this little quick-list:

- Jump
- Ducking: 2D
- Hopping: 4D, 6D
- Backdash
- Throw-invulnerable move
- *Rolls: 1D, 3D
- *UOH: BC
- *Airborne Normal

But first, 5Sp has 17F throw invulnerability after blocking, being hit, or waking up off the ground (from being knocked down). That means during that time you have about a quarter of a second real-time before you become vulnerable to throws.

Most fighting games grant a period of throw-invulnerability status after hitstun, blockstun, and on wakeup: as seen here. But if you notice though, Samurai Shodown grants significantly more than any other game listed.

It also does not have any throw invulnerability off a reset. A reset meaning: knocked out of the air by a non-knockdown move. Such as being anti-aired or air-to-aired with a normal that hits you but places you back on your feet rather than knocking you down. This is important because both landing recovery and reset recovery are mostly identical, and therefor vulnerable to throws if left uncanceled.

Now for the explanations:
- Jumping. Jumps have zero startup animation. You transition from the ground to the air on the first frame of a jump. Therefor you are invulnerable to throws from the first frame of a jump input. However, not all jumps are created equal, some jumps are more floaty and more punishable than others, and they all have a cancelable landing recovery.

- Rejumps and Landing Recovery. This is important because while there is no jump startup, there is a cancelable recovery state on landing from a jump or from being reset. The amount of recovery time varies from character to character, however this can be canceled into any action including another jump. But, you can not simply hold up in order to cancel the recovery into a rejump. You must press the input once you have landed rather than before. If timed right this can avoid normal throws and even meaty command throws.

- Ducking. The 2D action has upperbody invulnerability (ducks under mids and highs) and is invulnerable to throws for 21F, starting instantly. After that window there is a special-cancelable window and a recovery window (4F and 7F respectively) where you can be thrown. This is generally the most ideal throw-bait, because your character is stationary during it. Thus, if the opponent attempts to throw during your laying-down state they will whiff a grab instead of a hop, which has a rather long punishable whiff animation. Other anti-throws (hops/jumps/etc) usually cause the opponent to whiff a hop (6D) instead of whiffing a throw, but 2D has a large throw invulnerability period that can bait out an actual throw whiff.

- Hopping. The 4D and 6D movements have lower body invulnerability (dodge lows), are instantly throw invulnerable, and remain throw-invulnerable until landing. They are also special-cancelable on landing. This is less ideal than the 2D action for baiting throws because you are instantly airborne during these hops, which means if the opponent attempts a throw after you've left the ground they will not whiff a grab, instead they will whiff their own hop (either 4D or 6D). They will only whiff a grab if you were on the ground when they input it, but you hopped during their 3F throw startup window. However, this action is still valuable in the sense that hops avoid lows (but vulnerable to mids/highs), while the 2D action is vulnerable to lows (but avoids mids/highs).

- Backdash. The 44 action is bufferable and instantly throw invulnerable. It also has about 3F of full-body invulnerability on startup. It is also air-special cancelable while airborn and ground-special cancelable on landing. However, it should be noted that despite being bufferable there is always a 1-2F suki on landing from a jump or reset before a backdash will begin. This is unique only to backdashes and only on landing from a jump or reset. It also means that backdashes when buffered correctly will always avoid normal throws, but they can be grabbed by meaty command throws due to the backdash suki. Backdashes are quite valuable for avoiding normals throws in general due to the prebuffer window. But it suffers the same issue as hops in the sense that it won't bait out a throw whiff as well as a duck (2D).

- Throw-invulnerable moves. Some special moves gain the property of being throw-invulnerable. This is entirely character specific and may or may not have anything to do with other forms of invulnerability or ground/air-state. A good example would be Yoshitora's 236B (Mid-Nadeshiko) which is not hit/projectile invulnerable or airborn, but it is throw invulnerable on startup. Likewise Yoshitora's 623AB (Heavy-Shirayuri) is hit-invulnerable on startup but not throw invulnerable.

- Rolls. The 1D and 3D actions are 3F full invulnerability on startup. During this time they can avoid throws by virtue of total-invincibility. However, the forward roll is quite vulnerable to throws any time after the startup invulnerability wears off. On the other hand, the backwards roll is slightly better at avoiding throws by virtue of it moving away from the opponent, potentially outside of throw range. Still, forward rolls are probably the least ideal method of avoiding throws while backwards rolls are decent due to the early special-cancel-ability.

- UOH. The B+C action is usually airborne after the third frame, except for some characters like Haohmaru/Charlotte/Gaira/etc. Though, if your character does leave the ground within 3F then it can be useful for avoiding throws in some situations while still granting the potential of hitting the opponent as a nice option select.

- Airborne Normal. There are character specific moves that become airborne rather quickly. For example, 5C for Amakusa, Sogetsu, Suija, etc. They are usually not throw invulnerable on the first few frames, but after the startup occurs they have the same benefit of UOH's in that they become airborne and attack at the same time.

Mina is special in that her jumping arrow attacks incur a 7F uncancelable recovery on landing. This is a true-uncancelable period for Mina's air arrows, however she can block during this uncancelable time (EG. she can perform no action other than blocking). This only effects her air arrows, not her jumping kicks or unarmed attacks or empty jumps.

---

Bottom line (tl;dr version):
2D is your best bet for baiting throws. Perfectly timed rejumps is your best bet for avoiding meaty command grabs on landing. Backdashes are bufferable and therefor your best bet for avoiding normal throws in most situations (but not for avoiding meaty command throws). To avoid getting hit out of anti-throws it's important to vary what you do, for example ducks and hops have upperbody and lowerbody invulnerability respectively.

On landing: Backdashing always has a 1-2F suki on landing, regardless of anything. The D actions and anything other action have a 0-1F suki randomly. Rejumps never have any suki period.

---

- Copyright © Xenozip.

Evo 2010 Stream

Top 8 for all games. Live! Let's go!
- http://www.ustream.tv/channel/leveluplive/v3

---

- Copyright © Xenozip.

Evolution 2010

Evo Championship Series, World Finals 2010 in Las Vegas NV.

- http://g4tv.com/evo
- http://evo2k.com/live/
- http://www.stickam.com/evo2k

Stickam Popout: http://bit.ly/asEufe

I hope everyone has fun, and I wish my friends good luck.

---

- Copyright © Xenozip.

Diablo One

This post won't be about Fighting Games.

Well, I admit I have fond memories of Diablo 1 and 2. But, in retrospect, I actually liked Diablo 1 more. I'll also admit they were sad times, but special times.

The music: Town, Catacombs, Caves, Hell.

Well I don't think I need to elaborate. Can anyone even remember the D2 music right now? D1 music was amazing. The Cats and Caves alone practically make me giddy. IMO D1 did everything right in terms of atmosphere and aesthetics and tactical gameplay.

All the monster were cool in D1. They all had personality and it was really noir, twisted, and awesome. Some monsters were carried over to D2 like Balrogs and Goatmen and Skeleton/Zombie. But what happened to Cave Vipers, Hidden, Bats, Lightning Demons, Succubus, Hell Knight, Winged Demons, etc etc etc. The Harlots in D2 are a poor excuse for Succubi.

I have seriously always wanted D2 to have another act that brought back all the D1 monsters and maps, just one act with everything from D1. Even if we say D2 improved gameplay, I can only say I liked D1 more due to the environment it created. Some one out there really needs to make an add-on or hack or something that brings this dream to a reality.

So anyway, I'll reminisce a bit about some of the finer points.

I remember that you'd get to a point where collecting and selling items was more or less worthless. You'd do a hell/hell run, pick up relevant armor and weapons, then after identifying it you'd just drop it in town. It really didn't matter what it was or what it was worth, money was useless because even just a couple of the armors you just dropped was worth more than your inventory could hold, and the items were worthless unless they had better stats what what you had on.

There was one time that Griswold rolled the absolute best possible armor, perfect stats. Of course it was not difficult to flood my inventory with the maximum about of 5k gold stacks possible. And, I could not buy the armor, because it cost more than I could hold. Actually, more accurately, It was worth a stack or two less but because the armor is a 2x3 space I couldn't buy it anyway. So the best armor in the game had to drop, it couldn't actually be bought at Griswold even though it could spawn there.

Eventually the speedrunners figured out the RNG in the game, because of that they could get anything they wanted to drop, and they could get any type of map/monster they wanted to spawn. It basically had to do with your system's clock, so at the right time (or by modifying your date/time) you could kill a monster and have the desired item.

D2 is easy. I'm sorry but it is. With D1 there was something extremely exhilarating about walking down into the Cats or Caves and having to pay attention to your every footstep, as you might very well die at any given moment. Who can count how many times my heart skipped a beat when I saw a Storm Rider or Pit Viper pack coming towards me and my back was pinned. I never really liked the "difficulty" in D2 where the monsters gained more health and resistances as time went on, which did not make them harder at all, it just made them take longer to kill. But I'm more use to the difficulty in Fighters and RTS where increasing the difficulty made the AI play smarter (hello ST AI), not just increase life/defense/damage.

I remember one time where in hell/hell myself and another Rogue player somehow spawned four types of Succubi monsters. We had Soul Burners, Hell Spawn, Snow Witches, and the generic Succubus. Not really sure how it was possible, but I can tell you it was ridiculously rare. The significance of this was not only did we have to strategically place ourselves around every corner in order to do projectile-on-projectile battle with map coverage, but when we entered a large open space there were multi-colored sparkly Bloodstars and blood and tits and ass and moans EVERYWHERE. It was awesome.

I think I may have had one of the first level 40 Rogues on battle.net, though that doesn't really mean anything other than /sadlife.

Duping and hacking and massive amounts of playing eventually led to the best possible items in the game being easily accessible. Ironically, many of the popularized items weren't actually the best possible items.

Duping and hacking also gave rise to the decay of public games. But that also gave rise to cliques where a player would become friends with like-minded players and play with only them on a regular basis.

D1 was the first game that made me appreciate not actually playing the game, for several reasons.

First, when you get to hell/caves and hell/hell you run into monsters that are immune to all three elements, so as a Mage your only option for killing them was to Stone Curse them and summon a Golem. That led you you just standing there watching your Golem punch away at a group of frozen monsters, and if they ever became unfrozen you'd zip around with teleport to avoid being gang banged. Prolly sounds boring as hell, but I came to appreciate it.

Second, regarding the aforementioned cliques, it was a lot more fun at the end of D1's lifespan to just sit around chatting on b.net. For me, it was also to the point of meeting up with people offline. Though times changed and people either went back to IRC or on to other social networking gizmos (heh, I remember when ICQ was popularized during the D1 days).

Third, replaying the Mage made me love Hydra for the same reason of cast-it-and-leave-it. As much as I was/am thoroughly obsessed with D2 Assassins there will always be a special place in my heart for skeleton-Necromancers (or summoners in general) and anything anywhere that lets me cast a minion and let it rock house while I sit around doing nothing. Hydra eventually became my favorite spell in any game, next to Chain Lighting (in any game).

This was also the first game that made me appreciate patches. The company may or may not have known they would get the game absolutely right on the first try. But, with thousands or millions or w/e of players scrutinizing and criticizing every single imaginable aspect of the game, patches really helped. Any one who has ever complained about anything in a game at all better not complain about patches, ever. Something that stands out to me was how the yellow zombies called Black Death could permanently reduce your maximum health, and how scrolls use to cause the spell to occur instantly and in multiplayer yet the effects were not seen by other players (which meant you could spam Chain Lighting scrolls and no one could see you cast or the lightning that came from it, things would just suddenly start dying).

When you play D1 you break your mouse. I broke several. I'm not exaggerating. Every action required a click, so unlike D2 where you could hold the mouse button, you had to click for every single attack in D1.

Fortunately my brother created a hack on request to make actions auto-fire. Thus, I played the game again as you can see in this playlist. Years had gone by since I played D1 last, and absolutely countless amounts of D2 hours have come in between, and I still fell in love with D1 all over again. Auto-fire helped though, I surely wouldn't have played it if not for that, so special thanks goes out to my bro'.

---

- Copyright © Xenozip.

GameFAQs

I would like for some one to explain to me the stigma and decline regarding fighting game FAQs on GameFAQs.

I'm aware that their forums are polluted with casual scrubs and youtube-level idiocy. However, what I'd like to know is why this effects anything. Lots of places have scrubby and retarded comments (hi YouTube and EventHubs), but why does this get in the way of content? It's free access and a fairly well moderated knowledge base.

Whenever I try out a new fighting game I'd at least like an accurate and comprehensive move list before I play. Honestly I sometimes won't play if I don't have at least that. In the past, Wiki's were not the places to go because they were often defunct and neglected, but I could always count on a FAQ. What baffled me was that lately I've been noticing FAQs getting rather skimpy or non-existent, and this is for games that I figured were ancient enough to have tons of FAQs with ridiculously comprehensive information.

Fighters aren't the only ones by the way, FPS/RTS/Diablo communities treated GameFAQs similarly and although I was deeply involved in each of the aforementioned communities I never understood the stigma regarding GameFAQs. I just don't see why the users or forums have anything to do with sharing information to literally anyone with an internet connection.

Again this isn't about newer games like SF4 mind you, these players have been around since the dawn of fighters and have played the games that have zero content on GameFAQs. But I will daresay it's slightly hypocritical for the fighting game community to be desperately reaching out to the SF4+ scrubs in an attempt to boost the genre, meanwhile turning a cold shoulder to GameFAQs and just about any other game (hi MeltyBlood haters).

---

- Copyright © Xenozip.

Hitbox Stuff

Ibuki: http://bit.ly/a0N8ze

So apparently some one has been working on a hack for Mame to display hitboxes in SF3:3S.

Well I'm all over that. It may be that I've spent the most time playing 3S than any other Fighting Game, so it's rather exciting to me.

Also, I created a playlist for all my hitbox videos: Hitbox Viewer Videos. You may or may not care for the games therein, but I think the videos provide a few things to relish in, even if you don't care for the games: disillusioning visuals, proof of concept, cool music.

Let us reflect on my personal favorite Alice Margatroid. The visuals, the concept, the music -- and keep in mind, she's not even top tier.

We've seen hitboxes for SF2, SFA3, and VHunter, among other oldschool fighting games. Now we're looking at a game that's over a decade old yet is still considered staple, Third Strike. With the advent of hitbox data revealed for SSF4 things were set aflutter. I hope more people can appreciate this sort of thing these days, and hopefully reflect on what those rectangles actually mean in the grand scheme of things, past and present.

Yay.

---

- Copyright © Xenozip.

Juri Math

You can pretty much ignore this post.
--

Considering -4 or worse to be unsafe:

O n.LP
X n.MP
X n.HP
O n.LK
X n.MK
X n.HK
O LP
O MP
X HP
O LK
X MK
X HK
O c.LP
O c.MP
X c.HP
O c.LK
X c.MK
X c.HK
O f+MK

10/19 (52.63%)

O Fuhajin
O Fuhajin (store)
O Fuhajin (release)
O Fuhajin EX 1
O Fuhajin EX 2
O Fuhajin EX 3
O Shikusen LK
O Shikusen MK
X Shikusen HK
X Senpusha LK
X Senpusha MK
X Senpusha HK
X Senpusha EX

5/13 (38.46%) [15/32 (46.87%)]

X Super
N Ultra 1
X Ultra 2

17/34 (50%)

Not 90%.

If we consider -4 or better to be safe it becomes 10/32 (31.25%) or 12/34 (35.29%)

Though I still stand by the argument that a character can still be brainless if all of their moves were unsafe except for their one or two overpowered and mashable moves, because that's all you need. For example, if a character had nothing safe except c.LK and an overhead then you'd spend the match looking for ways to land short short super or overhead mixups. If nothing Storm had was safe except j.HP and Hail you could still mash j.HP for meter and spam hails or simply use her as a battery for other characters, not exactly rocket science. If nothing SFA2 Rose had was safe except c.MP you could still mash the hell out of that move, again it's not complicated. Same goes for a lot of characters, like Claw's c.MP. IMO

---

- Copyright © Xenozip.

Low Tier

You can't change who you are so easily, so you might as well get comfortable with it.

That's not an easy philosophy to maintain, but it's an easy one to respect. IMO it also applies to gaming. In the past, people have argued about tiers, and the question of why people pick high/low tier characters arises from time to time. Even with a competitive nature, not everyone will make it a point to pick the best character. It seems that most people choose characters based on what interests them on a personal level.

That's probably a good thing. I think it's better that you should devote time and effort into getting good with a character that meshes well with you, rather than wasting your time trying to force yourself to get good with a character that just doesn't suit you.

Why? Well because if everyone played Sagat, the ones who aren't comfortable with Sagat are going to lose to people who are comfortable with him, when these same people losing might have won with a character that fits them better. It's easy for some one like me to say "I suck with Sagat", because I do, and that's why I don't pick him.

The characters that I naturally gravitate towards have changed from when I was younger, so it's not as though people can't or don't change. But I think change is best left up to time.

Still, it's impossible to deny the fact that bad matchups exist in most games. And being at a severe handicap against an opponent who's about as good as you are is really no fun. That's why having more than one character to choose from can make things go more smoothly than they would if you limit yourself to a single character.

---

- Copyright © Xenozip.

Thinking Ahead

Sometimes one should question how well you are able see yourself when you play.

There's an aspect of most competitive games that involves looking through the opponent's eyes. Not literally, but preemptively examining the situation from their point of view and "see" what the opponent is looking for in your game. This isn't a mind game, nor is this a mixup, it is simply an aspect of competition that I can only refer to as "thinking ahead".

For example, if you notice that the opponent has a blind-spot or weakness in their midrange game then you might start specifically looking for it in the future, in order to take advantage of it. To elaborate, let's say you notice an opponent's fireball leaves a huge gap in their game, so you might wait for them to toss out a fireball or perhaps wait for a situation where they might toss out a fireball in order to jump in at them. Another example would be; you might notice the opponent has a blind spot or weakness from the knees down, so you do low pokes as much as possible to both take advantage of that weakness and to bait them into jumping which you can anti-air.

Now look at it on the flipside. Did the person with a weak fireball/leg really realize that their fireball/leg left them at such a huge disadvantage, one has to question. Because that person is you. You need to consider your own potential weaknesses because everyone has them.

Everyone gets hit by something eventually, in all of fighting game history there is no one that gets double perfects 100% of the time against everyone. We all get hit. Those moments that you do get hit, you have to analyze why you got hit. A lot of the time it's a wrong guess in a mixup situation. Sometimes it's a bad play in a mindgame situation. But I believe that most of the time: your own damage comes from your own lack of foresight about yourself.

This is, in fact, why I actually even bother recording match videos and posting them on my youtube channel. Clearly it's not for the views/comments/ratings/fame/whatever because I don't get any of that and I don't give a shitdick about that either. It's more because I always watch them. Every last one. And I pay close attention. The first time I did it I only watched myself and only paid attention to what I was doing. But shortly thereafter I realized how tunnel visioned that was, and why I was the one getting hit. It was blatantly obvious that I was not looking at things from the opponent's point of view. In retrospect I could very obviously see that my opponent was waiting for or fishing for a certain situation that would lead to me getting hit. I actually started rooting for the bad guy, to fuck that shit up.

So all I can really say is that I highly recommend the practice of reviewing yourself whenever possible. Nothing feels more liberating -- at least to me -- than visually seeing and realizing "oh, that's why I lost, I didn't look at it that way.". And strengthening up for the future.

Admittedly, doing this in the heat of battle can lead to further tunnelvision, but I believe that in the long run it helps tremendously.

---

- Copyright © Xenozip.