[If you're new to this blog series, try starting at the beginning.]
Q: What is a combo? A: Any series of attacks that cannot be blocked (or otherwise evaded) if the first hit connects.
The above video is an amazing example of some of the combos possible in Street Fighter 2. Note that, once the first hit connects, every successive hit is also guaranteed to connect. This is true regardless of who the opponent is, or what buttons they press. Remember: there is no escape from the combo if you get hit!
Combos are powerful because they allow you to get the most out of a successful hit. Think about it this way: if two players are equally good, but one knows combos and one does not, who will win?
Well...if the two players are equally skilled, they'll get to hit each other an equal number of times. However, the player doing combos will do much more damage with every hit than the other player will. Result? The player who knows how to do combos will win. Usually in a fairly spectacular fashion.
The key point to making combos work for you is being able to land that first hit. Generally, this is done either by poking at the opponent during the course of the fight, or by performing mixups. Mixups are one of the best ways to land combos, and these two things taken together form a large part of high level play.
One of the great things about Super Street Fighter II Turbo: HD Remix - besides the name - is the fact that it's basically two games in one. Not only do you get an arcade perfect version of ST, complete with the option to use the original graphics and sound...but you also get access to the new Remixed mode, in which small tweaks to the characters help to even out the balance.
I know you guys are excited to see what some of these new gameplay changes could mean. And what better way to show that off than a combo video?! Behold:
Some of these combos may look a little scary, but rest assured - these same combos can be done in the original game! Well, except for a few minor details, that is. Two of these clips are possible in their entirety in the original ST. The rest all show off at least one thing that was not possible in the original game...and no, it's not the moves that hit backwards. Believe it or not, that happened in the original game as well!
The first person to correctly post which clips show off new stuff - and what that new stuff is - gets a cookie. :)
I hope you guys enjoy the video! It was a lot of fun making it. If you like it, you might want to check out some of the combo videos I made before coming to Capcom, such as this one and this one.
Also, I'd like to give a big shout-out to Rey Jimenez, Seth Killian, and Kevin Converse for their help on the video. Finally, I'd like to give a very special and heart-felt thank you to Majestros, of http://www.sonichurricane.com/ fame. He's been a great friend, a huge help, and a constant source of inspiration.
When your opponent blocks an attack, they become stuck in the blocking animation for a short period of time. During this time, they are unable to move, attack, jump, or do anything else. This is called block-stun.
When you hit an opponent in the face with a move, pretty much the same thing happens. While the opponent is recovering from being hit, they cannot move, attack, jump, or even block! This is called hit-stun.
Your opponent rarely recovers from being hit at exactly the same time that you finish your attack. One character usually recovers first. If you are the one to recover before your opponent does, we say that you have frame advantage. When the opponent is the one to recover first, however, we say that you have frame disadvantage.
In the diagram above, you can see that Ryu recovers 6 frames before Dhalsim does. His crouching strong is finished once the recovery frames are over, but Dhalsim is still locked in hit-stun at that point. Basically, this means that Ryu has frame advantage in this situation. He can start acting 6 frames before Dhalsim can.
To communicate this information quickly, people usually express frame advantage as a number, using "+" or "-" to indicate advantage or disadvantage. For example, we might say that Ryu's crouching strong is "+6 on hit," meaning that Ryu recovers 6 frames before his opponent does.
But why that "on hit" part? The numbers are usually different when a move is blocked vs. when it hits, which is why you'll see expressions like "-5 on block," "+2 on hit", and "+7 on crouching hit." It's not necessary to memorize all the numbers, but understanding the concept of frame advantage and disadvantage is important.
For example, if you do a move that is -5 on block (and your opponent blocks it), they will recover 5 frames before you do. That gives them 5 frames to attack, where you can't do anything to respond! Worse, If they have any moves with less than 5 frames of startup, they can use them at this point to hit you for free. Remember, you're stuck recovering for 5 frames, so if their move will hit before that, you won't be able to block it..
[Note: The frame data found in this entry was taken from NKI's translation of T.Akiba's page.]
A frame is one cycle in which the game updates everything on screen. Most fighting games run at 60 frames per second, which means they update the screen 60 times each second. Because this value is basically fixed, frames can also be used as a measurement of time:
1 FRAME = 1/60TH OF A SECOND.
This is a useful way to talk about various things related to Street Fighter. For example, when I say that Ryu's far standing roundhouse animates in 32 frames (on the lowest speed setting), I mean it takes about half a second to complete.
By talking about frames, we can analyze (at a very low level) everything that is going on at different parts of the move. For example, most moves can be broken into three pieces:
- Startup Frames: how long it takes before the move starts hitting - Active Frames: how long the move remains out and hitting - Recovery Frames: how long the move takes to recover
So, when I say that Ryu's standing roundhouse has 3 frames of startup, I mean it takes 3/60ths of a second before the move is able to hit the opponent. When I say it has 17 frames of recovery, I mean it takes 17/60ths of a second for him to recover from doing it.
[Note: The names in the video below may seem confusing to some readers. In the original Japanese version, the character on the left was named Vega, and the character on the right was named Balrog. The names got shuffled around a bit when the game came to America. To avoid confusion, I will refer to them as Dictator and Claw, respectively.]
What exactly happened in this video? Why did Taira, playing Dictator, keep getting hit by Claw's wall dive attack? Couldn't he just block?
The short answer is: no, he couldn't.
What you're seeing happen here is the very simplest form of mixup that exists in Street Fighter: the left / right mixup. Although simple, it is incredibly deadly; the Dictator player has no way to tell which side (left / right) the Claw player will end up on, and so he has to guess which way to block. If he guesses wrong, he is knocked down, and the situation repeats itself. If he guesses wrong a couple of times in a row, he is dead. And that is exactly what happened here.
There are many different kinds of mixups, and each one presents it's own lethal guessing game (of the RSP 2.0 variety). Most are much more complicated than this one, but the basic principle remains the same. They are extremely powerful, because they create a guessing game where the Risk / Reward ratio heavily favors the attacking player. Consider the Claw mixup above - he risks virtually nothing, while standing to gain a substantial amount of damage and a knockdown. The risk / reward on this exchange is extremely high.
In addition to left / right mixups, there are also high / low mixups, throw / counter-throw mixups, reversal / reversal-bait mixups, fast / slow / fake fireball mixups, and some that make use of multiples of these at once. I'll be discussing all of these in greater detail as the blog goes on.
