Author: John "Zidiane" Silvia

Street Fighter characters have a long history between their various main game story modes, manga, anime, and crossover appearances. It’s nice to take a break from competition and the current games to take a trip down memory lane, seeing where some of our favorite characters came from.

First up is Violent Ken, a character that is fairly popular–despite not appearing in any main Street Fighter games. We go over his two main appearances, as well as a look at what inspired Violent Ken as a concept in the first place.

We also have history lesson on Gen, one of the best examples of a character struggling to redeem themselves in the franchise. Gen’s struggle with his health, his past, and his relationship with the ones he cares about are actually quite engaging.

Our next old man fighter is Oro, one of the odder characters in the series. Despite not making it out of Street Fighter III in any serious way, he has a strong and memorable presence in the series.

To top off this list we have Makoto, another SFIII character. Makoto did make it past her debut title, giving her more chances to build up a history for herself.

Source: History behind the warrior

Top players taking on handicaps or challenges while playing casually is nothing new. Most of the time it’s just a fun way to entertain, playing the game in a crazy and unexpected way. Smash specifically is an interesting case–as the only way to play it competitively is by turning items off, which sometimes seems like a challenge in itself to casual players.

TSM|ZeRo, one of the best Smash 4 players in the world right now, took to netplay to test his “Solomar”–that is, Olimar without any Pikmin-involved moves–against random opponents. High level players getting frustrated with For Glory players has been seen before, but it usually isn’t self-inflicted frustration! Check the video to see ZeRo struggling to maintain composure in online sets.

Source: ZeRo

Even though it seems that the NetherRealm Studios team is moving on to other projects, the MK community seems determined to support their game with or without developer support. Combo videos and community content are of course just one way a scene sticks around, but they are without a doubt enjoyable. So, let’s get into the roundup for today.

First up we have a user who’s been consistently uploading Mortal Kombat content since the balance patch, TrueUnderDawgGaming. He’s got a few different high percent combo tutorials for us, including Cutthroat Kano, Ravenous Mileena, as well as a high percent no meter Grandmaster Sub Zero tutorial.

Up next we have a compilation combo video, featuring Mileena. This video goes through all of her variations, featuring different confirms and combo routes for each.

To round out today’s roundup we have two montages, featuring highlights, comebacks, vortexes, and popoffs from real matches.

Sources: TrueUnderDawgGaming; Super; Mr Possessive

Street Fighter II will never stop being a conversation topic, simply due to it’s status as our first taste of what we know today as a “fighting game.” While usually people looking back on Street Fighter II look back to Super Turbo, it–of course–wasn’t the only version to hit arcades or grace home consoles.

Today, jmcrofts takes a look back at one of the versions prior to ST, Hyper Fighting. This review is similar to the one he did for Vampire Savior, in that he breaks down the basics of the game before walking us through some replays to analyze what the game is all about.

Source: jmcrofts

A large aspect of playing a fighting game competitively is ensuring that your opponent has as few options to retaliate as possible. A lot of the best tech for various characters revolve around setting up a scenario that the opponent has to deal with, without any easy solution aside from blocking and guessing correctly. Safe jumps are just one example of this tech, and essentially set the opponent up to block an overhead while leaving the attacker free to block if the defender tries to reversal.

Here, we have YouTuber Corkscrew_Blow compiling a list of similar set-ups with every character. The video claims to contain safe jumps against all 3 frame reversals, but that’s not quite right; what you see are set-ups that appear to be overheads, meant instead to bait reversals. The calling card of a safe jump is forcing the opponent to block, but be safe on reversal–while these set-ups will whiff and not actually hit overhead. It’s a good tech video, nonetheless.

Source: Corkscrew_Blow

Every one of us remembers the first time we started really playing fighting games. Casual play is fine, but once you cross that threshold into competitive fighting games, there’s no going back. It completely changes the way you think about the game from that point on, and that feeling sticks with us for a long time.

Red Bull, putting in a lot of work to give the FGC the attention it desires, has put together this short compilation of interviews of people who have been playing Street Fighter since Street Fighter II. The landscape of the game and the genre is so different form those days, it’s really encouraging to hear about how far we’ve come as a whole.

Source: Red Bull eSports

Every one of us remembers the first time we started really playing fighting games. Casual play is fine, but once you cross that threshold into competitive fighting games, there’s no going back. It completely changes the way you think about the game from that point on, and that feeling sticks with us for a long time.

Red Bull, putting in a lot of work to give the FGC the attention it desires, has put together this short compilation of interviews of people who have been playing Street Fighter since Street Fighter II. The landscape of the game and the genre is so different form those days, it’s really encouraging to hear about how far we’ve come as a whole.

Source: Red Bull eSports