Comebacks

Rooting for the underdog is often quite popular, and comebacks can also be popular. Not just in video games, but even within popular culture like action films and other media. Fighting games have always toyed with the underdog and comeback concepts in various ways with varying results, even to the point of implementing actual mechanics designed to promote comebacks. Whether it’s a fighting game or a fictional novel though, it can be implemented both the right way and the wrong way. In fighting games, the underdog is typically the low tier character who’s not favored in an array of matchups. This is why fighting game designers have always intentionally made some characters stronger than others, not just for variety in order to avoid homogeneity, but also to create the underdogs on purpose. Though in recent years with tier-balancing and comeback-mechanics the underdog could be anyone, or it could be no one at all. Still, pop-culture critics often point out that the Deus Ex Machina can completely ruin an otherwise enjoyable story, and the same is basically true for a fighting game's comeback-mechanic if implemented just as poorly.

Unlike with other forms of media though, the players of fighting games are experiencing the story as it unfolds, so poorly designed mechanics can not only lead to simple disappointment but also frustration and possibly community-wide disinterest in the game itself.

As an extreme example, the Touhou fighting game called Scarlet Weather Rhapsody had to patch an extremely poorly implemented come-back mechanic in order to fix it. Originally, supers could be done at the single push of a button while holding any direction. Therefore, it was too easy to option-select, or even just mash, on the super-button while blocking during situations where you’d either block or reversal. To exacerbate this even further, some supers were fairly safe or even unpunishable while still being incredibly powerful. They fixed this by making it so you could not be blocking before doing a super, and balanced the punishability and damage of some supers. But the point is that this was originally a bad idea that was made a bit less of a bad idea.

The key ingredient seems to be just how easy it is to rely on, contrast with how baitable/punishable it is by the opponent. The comeback is made more appealing when the underdog has to really work for a victory; hence this is why the Deus Ex Machina is not as appealing, there’s nothing attractive about a free win. It’s exciting when it seems like a player really deserved the win, but a letdown when it seems like the other player “got robbed” of a victory.

However, if a comeback mechanic is implemented around the idea that it not only has a very large risk-reward ratio (meaning, very high risk and balanced reward payout) but it’s also not particularly easy to pull off, then it’s not only justifiable when it happens but commendable when successful. That isn't to say it should be useless, but rather just keeping in mind that there needs to be room for skill from both players. It's skillful when an aggressor is able to bait out and punish an opponent's comeback-mechanic, but also skillful when an underdog can land a comeback-mechanic despite the low odds of actually being able to land it and the risk involved when failing to land it.

In my opinion, comeback-mechanics have the potential to be good and enjoyable. If you're not able to avoid getting hit by comeback-mechanics and you're getting owned up because of them then you need to step up your game, yet likewise if you're not able to land a comeback-mechanic and getting steamrolled because you continue to misuse them then you need to step up your game. However, the mechanic itself also needs to be implemented well for it to even be enjoyable in the first place.

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- Copyright © Xenozip.

Concepts

As time moves forward we are seeing more and more fighting games that add new kinds of system mechanics that affect gameflow. Some of these mechanics allow the player to manipulate the behavior of a character relative to other characters, or the game itself, in rather interesting ways.

There are fighting games where some characters have projectiles (fireballs) while other characters do not, but then we could say that is simply character diversity rather than system-mechnical/conceptual diversity. A board view of some examples can be seen in games like Arcana Heart and BlazBlue. Though it’s quite a bit more subtle in games like Street Fighter 4, you do see at least some differences between the cast outside of just normal and special moves. Things like SF4’s Adon getting up slightly faster than other characters, and Hakan having a set of moves that modify the behavior of his other moves, as well as characters universally being able to switch between Ultras. Certainly, almost every game tries to avoid homogenization of the cast by making characters unique, but what makes a character unique seems to be the trend that game designers are seeking the natural conclusion to. Or at least, in the past we have seen an extremely diverse character roster with very unique gameplay between characters, such as Capcom’s Vampire Savoir series, and that has seemingly inspired the next-gen to go even further with the general idea of “everyone is different but equal” (or at least kinda equal).

A more extreme example would be Arcana Heart 3 where the player is able to pick an Arcana which modifies a wide variety of things. Like, picking the Wind-element Arcana allows you to jump cancel some normal attack moves that are otherwise not jump cancelable, and gain additional movement options in the air, whereas picking the Luck arcana will instead boost your chances of getting random bonus counterhits on hits that would not have otherwise caused a counterhit. Even more radically is the Flower-arcana which basically makes it so your character can never be counterhit (nullifies in-bound counterhits). Games like Capcom vs SNK 2 and Melty Blood Actress Again have explored Grooves/Moons which change your movement options (among other things), yet Arcana Heart instead gives every character a dash unless they pick the Ice-element arcana which then causes your character to run when front-stepping.

This sort of customization or “choice” seems like an evolution to me because some concepts are quite old, yet not fully explored in the past until relatively recently. For example, the concept of Magnetism isn’t new, we’re talking thousands of years of knowing about magnetism. But it really depends on how game designers decide to execute the concept that makes it really noticeable.

As an example, Magneto is a character from the Marvel series that has been in comic books and the Capcom Marvel and Versus titles for a long time, and yet his ability to control Magnetism wouldn’t necessarily be blatantly obvious to those not already familiar with the character. When you simply look at the way he fights, he doesn’t appear any different from other characters. However, games like Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure attempted to explore the concept of magnetism with the character Mariah “poisoning” you with increasingly stronger magnetism, making many of her moves faster/stronger with bonuses to attack range and number of hits. It became more obvious what her power was, though it could be argued that each level of magnetism merely powered up her moves rather than modified their behavior. The concept of Magnetism was also explored in BlazBlue with the character Iron Tager also being able to “poison” the opponent with magnetism, which pulls you in closer to him when certain moves activate, which is seemingly rather potent for a grappler-type character who wants to be up close to the opponent.

Some things would appear to translate over to the Fighting Game genre rather naturally and easily, such as Ice Man of Marvel being able to freeze his opponents, while other abilities may need a little more thought put into it. Even though I mentioned Jojo’s Mariah, she’s somewhat of a special case. Many of the characters from the Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure series also had an array of interesting abilities in the Manga series that simply don’t appear particularly obvious in the Capcom game, if at all.

Summons and Helpers is also one of these concepts that I think could be explored further, to interesting effect. Characters like Zappa and Eddie from the Guilty Gear series have the ability to create an additional “character” on the screen and control them while still controlling themselves. In the same game, however, there are the characters Dizzy and Testament who can “summon” helpers, however these only act on their own, in other words it could be argued that these types of summons are nothing more than dynamic projectiles (or like “thinking” Fireballs). In a more narrow view, you could say that the assists that exist in Marvel vs Capcom 2 are just push-a-button-get-an-attack, in other words the assists are one-button fireballs themselves. The customization for assists in MvC2 is amazing and holds a lot of dynamic, but the actual output is simply push-button-fireball. The cool thing is though; I think players enjoy both the autonomous and the controllable types, which means greater possibility for flexible diversity. The reason that’s cool is because that gives way to possible hybridization or unique out-of-box thought, translating directly into the fighting game genre.

Personally, I always find it very interesting when a game incorporates fresh ideas that modify the behavior of normal play, and I hope to see more games in the future explore certain subjects.

What I hope to see even more of in the future is: character game-play customization, ability to modify game-play, and a broad exploration of secondary characters (summons/assists) that are teamed with the main character and either controllable or autonomous.


@Dammit wrote:
"I recall a post on some blog that matched up all the features with the first game/series that they appeared in. I'd like to see it again if anyone know about it. Ah, it was omni's page: http://lowfierce.blogspot.com/2009/01/combat-systems.html "

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- Copyright © Xenozip.

Stepping It

In fighting games there's a certain element that stands as an amorphous blob. Rather, the players themselves have to deal with the ever changing and ever non-changing flow of "the game" which we call challenge.

In almost all fighting games, one strives to maximize damage to the opponent while minimizing damage to their own character. Sounds like simple logic, but the reality of things is not nearly as simple, because when you are face to face with an opponent you need to deal with things like reaction and anticipation and sometimes even luck. Frankly, you can't know the best possible action at any given moment, because that may or may not be what your opponent will do or what they want you to think they'll do. In fact, your opponent is trying their hardest to be better than you, and so they are making sure that you don't know what's coming next. Thus, there's usually more than one option at your opponent's disposal that they're trying hard to implement in order to ensure that you don't get it right every time. After all, isn't that what you try to do.

Actually, some well-seasoned players willingly sacrifice damage in order to lead in to ideal mixup/rushdown/pressure situations. So sometimes it's a really good idea to not maximize damage to the opponent in order to capitalize on human weakness.

Just take a look at any Tool-Assisted "Speed Run" of a fighting game and compare that to actual human matches, then it should be obvious to anyone why no one plays like that. Sure it'd be sweet to be right all the time, but we're human.

Situation: Let's assume you've been spotted on life and given a lead where the opponent has been knocked down and must stand directly up. This is such an ideal situation to anyone familiar with the genre that it needs barely any explanation. The words "Rush that shit down" should suffice. But I will elaborate in saying that in the grand spectrum of things you have the potential to hit from multiple different directions of your choosing, which makes the opponent have to either correctly block high-right(6), high-left(4), low right(3), low-left(1), or do an unblockable move such as a throw. This is a concept that I personally tend to call the 5-way. In a lot of games, you can't react to it. You might plainly think that if the player does a crossup you can just block the other way, which is only true if that's all your opponent ever does, but it's definitely not the case if your opponent switches between the 5 options to the point where you can not react or predict which way you need to block (or not block). You might then rely on trying reversals or other defensive/offensive options to try to get out of this so-called (in recent years) "vortex".

Because of this, there are an overwhelmingly large number of players that will mash an attack button in this situation, or hold up to jump, or try and execute a reversal, anything to "get out of having to block correctly". One might think the reason for this to be obvious: if you can't react then you have to guess, so guess away!

But none of these mashy options actually work in the long run, they typically end in fail initially or the risk/reward outweighs them in the end. Making it a bad idea.

However, there's quite a lot more going on than just that, in addition to the prospect of having to "deal with it" there's also the consideration that the setup is not free at all. Meaning, you can't just put yourself in the position to land the 5-way just because you pressed a button at the start of a match, rather you have to work for it. So that leads also to the argument that if you think it's bullshit to have to deal with a mixup, then don't get yourself in the position where you have to deal with it in the first place.

The 5-way is not guaranteed success because the opponent has a correct action to prevent damage, but the 5-way is in itself a potential reward for putting the opponent in that disadvantageous situation. Like saying: "I deserve this mixup, because I put you there.". While it's not guaranteed that you earn damage off it, the reward for good midrange is the potential to capitalize.

This leads to the concept of midrange, and how do you put the opponent at such a disadvantage that you can land the 5-way (or lesser-number ways thereof), or on the flipside to avoid the 5-way yourself. I've talked about this sort of concept from hither to far, but something that came up along those lines was "what happens next?". What this question actually plays out to is following general gameflow per each step successfully, and then stopping -- the trick here is that the player doesn't know it, or knows it and doesn't know how to move forward. Basically: intuitive failure.

In order to understand this concept however, you must learn the "No, you can't do that" (concept). This is a concept opposite of the 5-way, wherein the 5-way means there is no correct answer but to guess. The opposite being that there is a correct answer but you're forced to choose that option.

As said previously, a lot of players will mash in hopes that it works out of them, knowing that they can't block correctly. What your "nope" job is: "to knock it out of them". So hence the "no you can't do that" concept. To use an example, a SF4 player might knock the opponent down and do a safe jump to avoid a potential reversal uppercut. As seen with SF4 Ryu doing a sweep, then using an immediate jump roundhouse, it's safe because if the opponent reversal uppercut then Ryu can land and block but if the opponent doesn't reversal uppercut then they have to deal with the Ryu j.HK. This is the most blatant example of "no you can't do that", in the sense that: no, you can not mash out a reversal uppercut in this situation, it always fails.

Now granted this also falls along the lines of option selects which automatically choose the right/best option for you, or mindgames where the opponent is put in a position where every option he chooses ends in failure/damage, but to me it's simple because the opponent should never do the wrong thing so it's really a "no, don't" situation. I other words: just deal with it, and you won't get hit. Another way of putting it would be "here I am doing this, and if you don't take the right action you'll get hit, but I also have something else I can do instead -- deal".

This could also be seen as a process of elimination. This brings us to the point of what happens next. Well, the goal of minimizing self-damage while maximizing opponent-damage involves being right more than your opponent. In order to be right, you either have to be very lucky, very intuitive/psychic, and/or go through the process of elimination by taking advantage of the bad habits your opponent has while not faltering with your own set of bad habits.

What that means is stepping it up. Enforcing good habits. In the (glorious) example of pressuring your opponent into the corner, and instilling so much fear into them that they will not even attempt to poke with an attack in order to keep you out because they are afraid of the psychic dp (or some such other), the next step is: the ballpark is yours. Hit them with a high, throw them, do a low when you expect them to block high, jab them when you think they will try to throw break/tech, etc. At that point you've successfully gotten into their head and dominated: you're right, because everything running across their mind is wrong.

Your opponent is afraid to do anything because anything they do seems to lead to failure, you've done the process of elimination so much that they see each action as failure and take no action, but when they are afraid to do anything their inaction leaves them open to abuse, shenanigans, tomfoolery -- they are an open oyster.

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- Copyright © Xenozip.

Mizuumi

Just as a general FYI, the Mizuumi hub has gotten an overhaul and is currently in great shape.

My entire experience with IaMP, and lately other games, has been based around my years spent with Mizuumi. I'm glad to see it changing, improving, and expanding. I highly recommend checking it out of if you're into netplay and/or poverty, and certainly for IaMP.

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- Copyright © Xenozip.

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.

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- 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)

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- 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.

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- Copyright © Xenozip.

More Boxes (Alpha)

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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.
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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.


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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.

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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.

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- Copyright © Xenozip.

Evo 2010 Stream

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

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- 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.

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- 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'.

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- 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).

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- Copyright © Xenozip.