Category: Fighting Games

Since the announcement that the fully-playable boxer would be joining Street Fighter V in Friday’s update, the hype for Balrog has been strong. Ibuki’s on her way too–but at the moment it’s Balrog’s time in the limelight, just how he likes it. If you’re gearing up to main the Crazy Buffalo, VesperArcade’s breakdown will serve you well: giving us an in-depth examination of what we know so far about Balrog’s normals, specials, V-system and more.

Balrog was the focus of the latest WinnerStaysOn Session in London, in which a number of players showcased what he’s capable of. The BEAST compiled a selection of potent and powerful combos from that footage.

You can also watch the full (nearly three-hour) WSO Session that provided that gameplay footage, if you don’t want to risk missing any details!

Sources: VesperArcade; The BEAST; Capcom Fighters

Do you like upsets? Because there were plenty to go around this year at the entry capped CEO Pokkén Tournament event. Before we get into that, let’s back up a bit.

The first time Japanese players touched down on American shores to play Pokkén, there was absolutely no reason to think anyone other then GO-1 would take Final Round. The game had just seen its console release and Japan had had a lengthy amount of time with the Arcade version. Go-1 would indeed walk away from Final Round victorious, but not without dropping rounds and games to PokkénArena mod AppleBoom in grand finals. Those losses, it seems, would be a premonition of things to come.

All the same, he returned to the states this past weekend as the “champion.” Though he has switched to Shadow Mewtwo now (after previously representing Suicune), once again, there was no reason to believe GO-1 wouldn’t make at least top 8. American players, for all their improvements, simply haven’t had the chance to test their game versus Japanese talent. Sponsored by HailMary, GO-1 is known and respected enough in Japan to have been invited to FujiONE’s televised Pokkén invitational. There’s also that little fact that he was, upon arrival, undefeated in the US.

So when he lost a decisive 0-2 to InC|Cyberman65’s Charizard in pools, there had to be the smallest fear that maybe he wouldn’t even make it out of pools. He dropped games to PG|ESAM along the way, but despite the rocky start, he did manage to claw his way out to top 32 losers side. He didn’t get much further–Circa|Cat Fight, still reeling from his own recent upset to South Flordia’s Kino, stood in front of him. In a emotional and close match, Cat Fight’s Chandelure threw everything at the Shadow Mewtwo in front of him, seemingly always one step behind the JP Vet, but never out. In the nail-biting finish, one unbelievably smart Overheat sealed GO-1’s fate.

GO-1 was out in 17th.

Abadango, the Japanese scene’s last hope, entered top 8 winners with a lot more momentum than his fellow countryman. The legendary Smash player is no stranger to playing Pokémon in fighting games, but here in Pokkén he opts for the zoning-heavy Chandelure. That momentum he was building, with notable wins over Milin and a tight 2-1 vs. Teejay, came to a screeching halt the moment he entered top 8. NG|Obscure’s Suicune wrecked him in a brutally fast 2-0. Obscure played in such a profoundly smart, aggressive, and disrespectful way that one must wonder if he was watching Abadango’s matches all tournament, taking notes on his habits. Every Blizzard, every Counter, every J.X connected like a raw read. It wasn’t close.

That’s just one loss, of course, and Abadango still wasn’t out. One more American awaited him: Coach Steve’s Garchomp. It was a perfect storm; Coach Steve is wildly smart, plays an underused character in the meta, and was already off the high of eliminating one of America’s best sponsored Pokkén players, Cat Fight. You can make the argument that maybe Abadango was caught off guard by Obscure’s aggressive style with a zoning character, but it should be understood by now that Coach Steve’s vortex heavy gameplay was the very definition of “aggressive.” Abadango wasn’t ready for it. Steve bulldozed him in a confident 2-0, ensuring that Japan would not crack into top 4.

Neither Abadango nor GO-1 faced the eventual tournament winner, Circa|Sui Master. Sui Master has recently shared his own hour long set versus Japan’s Azazel with the world, showing that he is indeed actively preparing for the numerous Japanese players coming to Evo. It’s also no secret that the Florida scene is working to establish itself as the strongest Pokkén scene in the world, evidenced by their repeated appearance at every major tournament in the US. Though Florida represented a sizable chunk of top 32, the losses obtained by Japanese players came from New York, New Jersey, and Georgia. The arcade gap has been closed. We are now, as a scene, strong enough to defend our own tournaments confidently.

The race for the Evo crown, and the World’s crown on Nintendo’s own official tour, just got interesting.

Source: Pokémon Company International Twitch

In the build-up to actually releasing some tangible information about their new platform fighter, Wavedash Games have continued their special dev vlog series, which discusses their immediate plans going forward as a studio as well as their thinking behind tuning and balancing a game for competitive play. In this episode, Creative Director Jason Rice talks about recent addition to the Wavedash Games team, Adam “Strong Bad” Oliver and how his knowledge and experience making Project M would transfer over into making Wavedash Games’ platform fighter the best it can be. Along with this, Jason talks about the basic outline of what a game designer does when they are actually trying to develop a fighting game.

Strong Bad joins the team as a character designer, bringing over the skills he cultivated during the development of Project M to hopefully make the cast of this new game as interesting and diverse as possible. Also, due to his history as a tournament organizer, his input will be vital when Wavedash is developing its bespoke tournament settings, which will work both online and off.

Source: Wavedash Games

Editor’s note: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the writer and do not reflect Shoryuken as a whole.

Community Effort Orlando has come and gone, and directly following the event’s Street Fighter V competition, we were treated to something we were all both hoping for (and expecting) when we heard of an incoming announcement. We have now not only seen Balrog’s official Street Fighter V trailer, but we also know he will be joining the cast at the same time as Ibuki on July 1st.

I can’t speak for everyone, but when that trailer rolled, I was most definitely throwing my wallet at my laptop for Capcom to take money that I don’t necessarily need to pay since I have enough Fight Money in-game to pay for him anyway. As someone who held Balrog as a sometimes main, sometimes secondary in Street Fighter IV, he has been the DLC character I have most anticipated since he was announced, and his trailer didn’t disappoint.

Directly following the trailer, Joey “Mr. Wizard” Cuellar announced on Twitter that both Balrog and Ibuki would be tournament legal at Evo, which is set to begin on July 15–exactly two weeks after the characters join the cast. Evo isn’t the only event to make such an announcement, as Nagata Lock II has also announced that both will be tournament legal at Fight for the 6ix, a Red Bull Proving Grounds event on July 9th in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

And while the euphoria of the announcement of the characters has put us into overdrive, eventually the honeymoon period will end, and we will start asking the obvious question that’s going to be on everyone’s tongues in the upcoming weeks: What effect will this ruling have on the results of Evo?

It was certainly unexpected for the Evo staff to allow a newly-released character, let alone two, to be included in the tournament. Just last year, Evolution did not allow Ryu, Roy, and Lucas to be played in Super Smash Brothers for Wii U, with Evolution starting July 17th, and with the characters being released by Nintendo on June 14th. This is a much larger gap of time when compared to Balrog and Ibuki this time around. While the Smash characters were mainly banned due to licensing issues with Nintendo at the time, there was of course fear from some in the Smash community surrounding their use at an event as large as Evo so soon after they dropped.

With new DLC characters, there are often worries that they will completely alter the metagame that has developed and affect the results of tournaments shortly after their release. This worry has been so widespread that Mr. Wizard previously had a ruling that stated that Ibuki would be allowed at the tournament only if she was released a month before the event. After some time passed, Cuellar decided to ask fans and players to choose whether or not to allow Ibuki to participate in the tournament, should she be released late. With overwhelming support from the community, he chose to make her legal for play, and by extension, Balrog, as he is included in the same title update.

Thus, we are left with the metagame concern. With learning matchups proving a cumbersome task at times, it’s scary to think that two relatively unknown characters could allow random players to steal matches from players who should know better, and possibly take everyone’s fight money. But let’s reason out why this isn’t likely to happen.

1. Balrog and Ibuki will be far too fresh to be viable at Evolution

That’s right, I’m saying it. Simply put, we will not have enough time in the lab to figure out all the intricacies that could make these two characters powerful. While Balrog has always been more straightforward to play, and may take less time to master, Ibuki certainly suffers from intricate inputs and design mechanics. Some people may have some working knowledge of the characters, and may want to test their mettle with them at Evolution, but that will not change the fact that they have far less time to work with them than they have had with other characters. Thus players who find themselves playing against a Balrog or an Ibuki may actually be wise to feel more confident than scared, since their opponent will only be playing 14 day-old characters with 14 day-old tech against their characters with 150 day-old tech at most, and 78 day-old tech at least. The numbers game will likely prove insurmountable for early adopters of the two new characters.

2. The top pros are likely to play it safe

Yes folks, please put your dreams of seeing Sako and PR Balrog in Evolution grand finals rocking their trademark characters into your side pocket for 2017. That is not likely to happen. With the large field and large prize pool this time around, top players, especially sponsored ones, are likely not to risk their entire tournament on a brand new character that they have yet to test in any serious event. With the fight to reach the pinnacle at Evolution in Street Fighter V to be littered with 4000 bodies this year, not a single pro will want to take that battle to losers bracket early. By throwing caution to the side and playing a shiny new character, they are giving themselves ample opportunity to do just that. With a marathon awaiting those who find themselves in losers early, anyone who winds up there will likely be exhausted by the time they even hit top 128, let alone top 8. While you may be able to watch them play the characters in casuals and at salty suites, I would not be looking for them on the main stage.

3. Saving it for Nationals doesn’t work anymore

If you’ve ever read Seth Killian’s Domination 101 articles, you are surely familiar with STSFN (Save That Stuff For Nationals). One of the most notable efforts of this was Alex Valle in Street Fighter Alpha 2, back in 1996, when some players nowadays were not even conceived (I promise, I won’t tell you to get off of my lawn yet.) Valle had discovered a glitch, which was later coined as the Valle CC, where he could activate a Custom Combo and make it unblockable. This was almost a completely foolproof route to glory. He, however, had one miscalculation: John Choi. Over the course of grand finals, Choi managed to figure out the glitch, and how to counter it, leading to his own victory.

This was in an age before the Internet had really taken off, and YouTube didn’t exist; this was in an age before broadband online matches and Twitch streams. Even without these wellsprings of information, having hidden tech didn’t guarantee Valle the championship. Nowadays, hiding tech is almost impossible, with multiple people collaborating on all corners of the Earth, and everyone sharing things nearly instantly. The likelihood of someone developing Balrog or Ibuki tech under the radar to debut at Evolution is close to nil. Whatever they have discovered is likely to already have been discovered, posted, and scrutinized for proper counters. Even if that were the case…

4. The top players are not likely to fall for new tech

While people will likely counter with Kusoru’s performance in Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 using Rocket Raccoon/Viewtiful Joe/Frank West, it is highly unlikely such a thing will happen in a 1 vs. 1 fighter. I hearken back to the Valle CC example. What seemed like a nearly broken tech in the hands of Valle was ultimately defeated by Choi. Top players have the mental acumen and comprehensive intelligence to overcome newly discovered obstacles. As argued in point number 2, the players who will likely be playing Balrog or Ibuki will be lesser known, lesser caliber players who are not expected to place highly in the event to begin with. Even if they shock a pro with their play, said pro is likely to adapt very quickly to what they are seeing, and counter it.

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And with that, while there can never be any certainties in life, I truly believe that we will not be seeing any Balrogs or Ibukis cracking top 8 this year. How their tech develops over the course of a year could dictate how they fare in 2017, but I certainly don’t expect them to turn any heads so soon after their release. I, however, welcome anyone with the fortitude to play them at Evo to try to surprise me, and would gladly owe said person a beverage should they do so.

We’ve talked about doing training mode, and a fundamental part of your practice should be execution. Execution is one of the most basic points of playing a fighting game. You need to be able to control your character on will–move the way you want to, guard when you need to, and convert hits into a knockdown or a favorable situation as necessary. This is certainly not easy, but there’s one goal you should have when practicing execution:

You should to be able to do what you want, when you want.

I’ve received comments on my play for my execution. But to be honest, I’m not winning any execution exhibitions any time soon. The only reason it looks good is that during matches, I do the things I’m confident I can execute.

Consider a tournament set. You bait someone’s reversal successfully–what kind of punish should you do?

1. Your basic combo
2. A pretty decent punish–not the best punish, but better than the basic combo
3. An optimized punish specifically for that reversal

The answer?

Whatever you know you can confidently perform at that moment. Ideally, if we’re theory fighting, you want to go with the third combo. That type of punish would deal the most damage and lead to the most rewarding follow-up situation. But if you can only execute the third combo 50 percent of the time, and the second one 80 percent of the time, you should go with the second one in that particular situation.

Nerves also factor into execution.

Let’s say I actually have the third combo down about 80 or 90 percent of the time, but it’s still somewhat difficult, or requires some special motion. If I’m especially nervous (and this happens!) I’ll choose to do something easier, rather than something optimal, solely because I know I won’t drop it. I’m sure you can think of a time where you watched a strong player do something that clearly was not optimal in a tournament situation. It might have seemed odd, but they wanted the certainty of completing the conversion.

So, how would you go about practicing execution?

Common advice I’ve heard is “practice until you get whatever you’re working on x out of 10 times in a row.” If we treat this like a test, we’re aiming for at least a C, or a 7 out of 10. This is fine as an end goal, but if you can’t execute the entire sequence, then you’ll need a method in order to finish the combo in the first place.

I’ll use Guilty Gear Xrd as an example. Millia’s standard BNB is pretty simple, but for someone who’s trying to increase their conversion ability, they have to learn how to do jump kick > instant airdash > jump kick. Let’s look at an example combo:

• Throw > Standing K > Jump K > instant airdash Jump > Jump S > Jump H > land Standing K > Jump K > Jump S > Jump D > Double Jump > Airdash > Jump K > Jump P > Jump H

At first glance, this is a pretty long combo; it has many inputs, and also involves movement. First, I would group the combo into chunks. If you watch a recording of any combo, usually there is some sort of rhythm: some hits, then a pause, then some more hits. After watching a video of the above combo, I would group it as such:

• Throw > Standing K > Jump K airdash JKSH > land Standing K > Jump KSD airdash JKPH

This is much easier to digest. This is the same as the first combo. The main difference is that any parts of the combo that are strung together are placed together, so that it’s easier to remember.

Next, you want to figure out your problem point. Again, Millia’s standard BNB combo is quite easy, and the second half of the combo is essentially her BNB. So the actual part you want to practice is:

• [Throw > Standing K > Jump K airdash JKSH]

This is the part I would focus on, and think about the previous, general advice, “Practice it until you hit it x times out of 10.”

Finally, put it all together. In actual practice, this can vary. If you have problems with everything, but learned how to do it all separately, then you’re going to have to practice going from pain point to pain point. In this example, you’re already comfortable with the second half, so you’re going to have to get comfortable with moving from something challenging to something easy–following that same goal of successfully completing the combo with a high success rate. Once you hit your target, you can try to use your new combo in matches!

So as a quick review:

• Review the sequence you want to learn
• Make that sequence as easy to digest as possible by grouping parts of the sequence together
• Practice each of these groups individually until you can land them consistently
• Put them all together
• Try it in a match!