Fighting Game Concepts & Fundamentals Thread

[Sonero]

A long time ago Justin Wong used to write for Eventhubs. Either in one of his articles or in an interview (I'll dig it up later) he said that all fighting games were basically the same. That made me very curious because it was a completely different take on playing fighting games than the general wisdom at the time.  This thread is to explore videos and discuss fundamental parts of fighting game. The hope is to have videos, articles and hopefully discussion that helps you improve overall. Instead of looking at a specific (say throwing somebody), you read and watch relevant info on those types of interactions to help yourself improve.

 

This thread won't have videos exclusive to any one game or series. As I fill it out, and as I hope you guys help, we can take videos that discuss the aspects of fighting games that are universal and can be extrapolated to other games. If the Street Fighter approach to spacing doesn't help you, maybe looking at it through a Tekken lense will.

 

Years ago I was playing Soul Calibur 4 at my friends house. I entered a random lounge with Mitsurugi and was just running the table with by forcing people into a 50/50 between Mitsurugi's 2K (which was a low that lead to a knockdown) and throw as they woke up. This probably frustrated a bunch of unsuspecting people on end, made my friend laughed as I explained it, and gave me a massive giggle at the silliness of the situation (yes yes, they could've just crouch blocked but hey, conditioning and all that jazz..and bopping them on the head with a standing B so they quit their crouching, leave me alone, we're thinking conceptually here).

 

That is the general idea.

 

The first post is the Footsies Handbook. This is full of short sentences of elements of playing footsies. Maj went through the trouble of  finding examples for everything too. Any time you feel you have a problem with your ground game, this is where you should go to see what you can add to your game that you may be lacking.

 

I'll try, and hope you guys do as well, add a description of what is contained in the video or article. That way people can have an idea on their way to looking for material:

 

https://sonichurricane.com/?page_id=1702

 

Next video is on applying safe pressure. It uses SF4 as it main game to explain the concepts. What's great about it is the breakdown of some things you should be paying attention to as you pressure people:

 

 

[Sonero]

Brain F talking about shimmies. He goes over the cycle of decisions you make on wake up in SF5  (block meaty, tech throw etc). he also discusses why not every situation where you have frame advantage is the same as far as shimmying and pressure goes.

 

 

This one talks about Devil Jin Fundamentals (and by extension tekken ones). In discussing Devil Jin, it goes into a discussion of restricting movement and why it makes characters powerful.

 

 

[Sonero]

The old man Highlandfireball AKA Total Sagat giving a good run down on some of the basics of tossing fireballs. This focuses on Sagat but the ideas are present in a lot of other games.

 

 

[GetTheTables]

Here is a vid that helped me a lot when I was trying to wrap my head around SF (specifically 5). You hear and read a lot about footsies: what it is, what it isn't, how to do it, etc.  This is one of the most accessible definitions I found that also illustrates why it can be a very simple concept to explain but is actually very complex to implement in matches.

 

It touches on the mental aspects of footsies and player interaction that are important to FGs in general. And in sort of a second hand way shows how you can really leverage training mode to experiment with and practice things that aren't just combos.

 

 

[KingTubb]

A quick vid on "turns" by Floe

 

[DoctaMario]

I agree with Justin that fighting games are mostly the same. A lot of it is space control with your character's moves, knowing your character so well that you can bust out their options without thinking about it, and knowing which of those options is the best option given matchups/situations/etc. 

 

But getting to that point can take a long long time. 

[KingTubb]

46 minutes ago, DoctaMario said:

I agree with Justin that fighting games are mostly the same.

The man went to grand finals in Street Fighter EX2 at combo breaker last year playing ryu only  using sweep, forward, fireball and super. 

 

You can feel the salt pouring out of this video with all the other players who actually play this game:

It's a glowing example that true fundamentals are gonna make you great at most games 

Edited October 20, 2020 by KingTubb

[Psychoblue]

  

 

Using the power of applied behavior analysis to learn those minute long combos.  

[DoctaMario]

3 hours ago, KingTubb said:

The man went to grand finals in Street Fighter EX2 at combo breaker last year playing ryu only  using sweep, forward, fireball and super. 

 

You can feel the salt pouring out of this video with all the other players who actually play this game:

It's a glowing example that true fundamentals are gonna make you great at most games 

Playing SamSho5Sp really buffed up my fundamentals, but even before that, I went through a period of a few months where I played nothing but Ryu in this Korean SF4 mobile game (it had pay to win super buff characters but I was just using an A tier Ryu) and it really made my fundamentals improve because most of the time I was facing people with characters that could 4 shot me so everything had to count.

 

I've beaten people who were probably better overall players than me just because my fundamentals and spacing were better than theirs. I feel fortunate to have grown up in a time when most fighting games really only offered largely fundamentals rather than games that emphasize subsystems and big combos. I think that's why a lot of newer players take so long to learn the footsies stuff, because there's so much else to learn. 

 

Playing Ryu mirrors is a really great way to improve fundamentals because in most SF games, he has an answer to everything, it's just not always the most overwhelmingly great answer. 

 

Speaking of fundamentals, did anyone play that Footsies! game? It was fun, although my phone really played it sluggishly after awhile. :(

Edited October 20, 2020 by DoctaMario

[M A R T I A N]

These just kinda belong here. 

 

Various analysis of concepts within fighting game culture:

 

And these are more an analysis of actual concepts in fighting games themselves:

 

 

 

 

Honestly, this guy has so many videos that I feel like are staples, it would be obnoxious to post them all. But I feel these are some of the more important ones to watch. 

 

Easily my favorite fighting game channel, and one of my favorites period. His style, presentation and ability to thoughtfully explain and dissect fighting game concepts is pretty much untouchable.