Fighting is Magic - Faustality!

[DavyinatogaEw, will you please just stop posting already so I can stop having to look at it?]

I wish Wright was tournament viable. You never see him outside of button checks

That's disappointing, because I've seen a couple in high-ranked matches on youtube, and he can rock so hard if you lead with him to get evidence, trigger Turnabout Mode, and swap him out.

I've never liked football (except for two-hand touch), it seems like such a pointlessly complex, obscure and impossible to learn sport with 90 years of evolution and combos and wikis full of analysis of the setups and strategies and plays and positions and oh god why.

Sounds about right. But hey, most fighters are at least set up to give players easy access to a comparable amount of moves no matter what character they play as. Every character in SSBB can smash upwards using the same command; almost every character in UMvC3 has a majority of their specials use a quarter-circle motion or Z motion; every character in SC5 can 8-way run, etc. Think of any ponygoon tourney as backyard flag football: you may not excel at it, but it's watered down enough that you can jump in quickly and still feel like you'll accomplish something.

And as Willsun pointed out, knowing key phrases and understanding the meta is different from being able to play the game well. This sounds just like any sports fan!

[Captain DinkyMusic brings wings to the mind,flight to the imagination,soul to the universe,and life to everything.]

That's disappointing, because I've seen a couple in high-ranked matches on youtube, and he can rock so hard if you lead with him to get evidence, trigger Turnabout Mode, and swap him out.

The problem is in a match, your opponent isnt going to just let him collect evidence. They will pressure him before hes able to get it, and that makes it very difficult and not viable in tournament play. Also, he no longer has invincible assists. They patched that out, which is something I definitely dont agree with because he isnt a game breaking character in the first place. They need to fix Wesker IMO.

Theres also the fact that you rely on luck to actually collect the correct pieces of evidence. In a highly competitive game like this, you want to minimize the luck factor as much as possible.

[Aurora]

They need to fix Wesker IMO.

Good luck getting Capcom to fix Wesker anytime soon unless they release more DLC!!

*takes off shades* *gets level 4 xfactor*

You will not survive.

[Yolostar]

You will not survive.

YOU ARE NOTHING TO ME!

[Contra Calculus]

YOU ARE NOTHING TO ME!

DO I FRIGHTEN YOU?

[republic]

DO I FRIGHTEN YOU?

The right to be a god...that right is now mine.

[Lazy]

^You see these last four posts? Chunkychat, every day.
That's not even an exaggeration, either.

[numsOic]

The only part it's missing is the unending awkward unbroken silences, but that's hard to convey in a post.

[inthestoMUNDO TOO FRIENDLY FOR YOU]

If most fighters were realistic in damage scaling, you'd have no fun.

BUSHIDO BLADE

That's also one of the things that confuse me of these fighters: no running. Coming from Melee and Soul Calibur...

Street Fighter is really the exception in this case. Most fighting games have running except Street Fighter. SF uses dashing instead, where pressing forward twice will give you fast movement, but for a set distance (rather than running where you keep going as long as you hold the second forward). Even then, SF was relatively late to adopt dashing, not introducing it until Street Fighter 3 in 1997 (yes Street Fighter Alpha 3 had it too, but only for one character).

Technically, the Marvel VS series also has dashing, but you can wavedash in those games, which is better than running anyway.

[Crunchy]

BUSHIDO BLADE

Counterpoint: Street Fighter 1. Holy crap how did they pull that piece of shit out of the gutter and transform it into something so fantastic?

[Willsun]

Just a general question for everybody because it's fun (and so I can secretly run intel on you all ), who is your absolute favorite fighter character and from what game? Remember now, this isn't an argument about who's actually the most powerful or useful fighter; your reason for your favorite can be that you just liked the character design or you think his/her super move gives you the chills when you see it unleashed.

Mine is Dudley from Street Fighter III: Third Strike. No surprise there from those who hear me talk about playing Third Strike, but I like him despite me being a total Chinese martial art nut. It's refreshing to see a character design for a (western) boxer that isn't the stereotypical slobbering, 'roided buffoon that Mike Tyson had the honor of setting. Not only that, but his play style has fit me very well over the years being a good rushdown character that hits like a semi truck and being quick and graceful for a heavier character. All his combos are flashy, and his moves are memorable for a fighter character (Cross Counter, throwing a rose as a taunt that also does damage). Best of all, he doesn't have an anime_as_fuck background story because he all he wants to do is get his car back that Gill stole. How uncouth to take a man's car!



I'd like to point your attention to this round: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjZGcXE9FTE&t=3m43s

Why? Dudley is typically outmatched by Urien's defenses, but he manages to take this round with a perfect and demonstrate how much pressure Dudley can generate when he backs someone into a corner. Fujiwara and RX are known on Youtube as the best Japanese players of their respective characters (Dudley and Urien), so this match is really something.

Also, listen to his theme. It is a good house mix and makes you fight with class: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQAM7jew-jE

[Ashenai You're dorkin' up the skies, Twilight Sparkle.]

If we're just talking style and design and "cool factor", my favorite is Maxi, from Soul Calibur. I just really like all the cool acrobatics he does with his nunchucks. Plus, I really liked playing with him when I didn't yet know the first thing about fighting games: with Maxi, you can just mash buttons randomly and he'll end up doing something that looks awesome every time.

For actually playing, Cammy is definitely my favorite, because I'm a sucker for fast, mobile scrappers, and that's what she is in every game she's in.

[Lazy]

Just a general question for everybody because it's fun (and so I can secretly run intel on you all ), who is your absolute favorite fighter character and from what game?

Blazblue's Bang Shishigami.
He's got a varied moveset, he's fun, and since he's mostly a joke character, his attitude is ridiculously over the top-but he's not underpowered, like most.

THE MAGNIFICENT NINJA OF LOVE AND JUSTICE, BANG SHISHIGAMI IS HERE!
QUICKER THAN THE WIND AND AS STILL AS A FOREST! HOTTER THAN FLAMES AND MORE MAGNIFICENT THAN A MOUNTAIN!

Not to mention this just overrides the current music and plays at like double volume whenever he uses Fu Rin Ka Ran.
BANG BANG BANG BANG

[fensterawethome~!]

I actually enjoyed playing her more in brawl even though she was better in melee

[Jonathan AppleShing! Sparkle-sparkle.]

While he isn't exclusively a fighting game character, my favorite is Zero in both TvC and MvC3. Zero was just one of those characters that I grew up with. Mega Man X was the very first Mega Man game I had ever played, and this was way back when I was still in kindergarten. When X4 rolled around with Zero being fully playable, I tried him out and I fell in love with his fast-paced playstyle, and being able to use abilities you gained from the bosses through different button combinations, rather than having to switch between them. Whenever I replayed that game,I would almost always pick Zero.

So when it was announced that TvC was going to be released outside of Japan (a game I was interested in when it was still a Japanese exclusive at the time, even though I wasn't any good at fighting games then), and announced Zero as one of the new playable characters, I was pretty psyched. I planned on having him on my team regardless of where he placed on the tier list (and he actually turned out to be in the top tier.....didn't see that one coming). Personally, I found that his gameplay in the X series translated beautifully in Vs. series. His stamina isn't the best, but I still love playing as him. In TvC, I team him up with Doronjo, while in MvC3, I usually team him up with Tron and Taskmaster.

Here's a combo video because why not.

[RagnarWhat's older? Unicorns, or stars?]

Johnny, from Guilty Gear: Accent Core (and the other GG games, but I've never played them).



Johnny is the weakest character in the game.

- no worthwhile overheads, so he has no mixup
- he has no extra defensive options other than the basic block and backdash and so on, unlike nearly every other character in the game
- he needs to hit the other guy with a coin before he can do significant damage, and he only has eight of those; moreover, every time he uses the move that requires a coined opponent, he has to recoin them afterward
- since he needs to coin, this means he often has to sacrifice damage for a coin hit
- has a couple of 2-8 matchups
- high execution
- Low mobility unless you spend meter
- his moves are a little slow
- looks like a douchebag
- and that's because because he is one

But GG:AC is one of the most balanced fighters in existence, so Johnny isn't unplayable. He's just got considerable limitations that force the player to be patient and land more pokes using fewer tools. His flaws are interesting, and they go with his equally interesting advantages, like his ability to get awesome damage in the right circumstances and his surprisingly good pressure. There's nothin' like forcing the other guy to crouch in the corner forever while you jack up their guard gauge, especially when they slip up and then you chop off 80% of their health bar.
He's also voiced by Norio Wakamoto. I don't know why tier lists never take this into account.

Click here to view video.

[DavyinatogaEw, will you please just stop posting already so I can stop having to look at it?]

Link from Soul Caliber II was such a cheapass with his easily accessible knockback moves to ring out anyone no matter what side of the edge he was on. One of my favorite things to do in SC2 was Link mirror matches with my brothers to see who could ring out the other one first.

For real fighting, it's a tossup between Talim from SCII and Pikachu from Melee. I like fast characters that can pressure, since I'm horrible at reacting to opponents and usually don't care enough to really learn game meta.

[WeeksI feel overcome with the need to get funky!]

<-- deadliest move in the game

Peach is absolute fun to play and a decent character competitively. I entered my first Brawl tournament with her. I like the ability to drive my opponents crazy, and Peach's repertoire (which includes FLOATING BACK FROM THE BRINK OF DEATH, slapping your opponent's face, turnips and the occasional bomb or lazer sword ) more than meets my requirements. Plus she fights like she just doesn't give a feather. Lala lala laala~

In close second:



Smash's Marth is a fucking badass and I will have it no other way. It helps that I am a Fire Emblem fan. He's just so darned elegant, and pretty high ranking in both Melee and Brawl to boot.

Now guess who I'll be playing in this game.

[Jonathan AppleShing! Sparkle-sparkle.]

Peach is absolute fun to play and a decent character competitively. I entered my first Brawl tournament with her. I like the ability to drive my opponents crazy, and Peach's repertoire (which includes FLOATING BACK FROM THE BRINK OF DEATH, slapping your opponent's face, turnips and the occasional bomb or lazer sword ) more than meets my requirements. Plus she fights like she just doesn't give a feather. Lala lala laala~

Indeed. She's my best character in Brawl. Couldn't quite get the hang of her in Melee though.

[Lhet]

I liked Amaterasu a lot in MVC3. Great mobility and a you could get really creative with the weapon switching. Another favorite, though it's a style rather than a character, was boxing from Rumble Fighter. That game was pretty slow, and only had basic attack strings, blocks, and throws. This meant everybody had perfect execution and there were no mixups, so all you really could do was adjust your delay and throw. Boxing style was special in that it allowed a ton of delay in it's main attack string, so using it taught me a lot of fighting game timing basics.

[Willsun]

Johnny, from Guilty Gear: Accent Core (and the other GG games, but I've never played them).

Man, I was all up about learning Johnny from my friend in my small foray into Guilty Gear. I only had my friend teach me for a day but I've forgotten everything because I never kept up with playing it since I had no readily available system or online mode in which to play it on. At least I can at least get what's going on in most Guilty Gear matches and it was interesting to look up Iaido when I was searching for things on Johnny.

Smash's Marth is a fucking badass and I will have it no other way. It helps that I am a Fire Emblem fan. He's just so darned elegant, and pretty high ranking in both Melee and Brawl to boot.

Man I started learning to play Melee's Marth in the proceeding months leading up to Brawl's release (I still like the 64 version best) and of course I'm hit with all his dumb nerfs and his strange new B neutral. I still hate Brawl to this day because it's nothing more than a party game where people build custom stages where it's all just a pit of spikes and everything's floaty and slow and people choose the most ill-fitting background music.

Also in addition to posting your favorite fighter of all time while we pass the time to whenever the next update is, I invite people to post questions about fighting terminology that may be confusing. Me and any other knowledgeable fighting game lovers can help answer stuff as well as post it up on the new Glossary of Terms located right below my OP! I think I might have killed a post or two in the process, but hey there you go. I'm not going to write every fighting term possible, but I think I covered some of the more common terms thrown around that I feel most players would like to know. Feel free to correct me or update me on things you think I wrote incorrectly. And don't be afraid to ask about anything you feel is "obvious" but you just never had cleared up for you.

[Lazy]

Oh, about move inputs...
There's a method using numbers that's a lot more convenient to refer to moves/specials with, since saying "forward/down/down-forward heavy" is a clunky way to describe inputs and gets really, really irritating when describing whole combos/hitstrings.

Look at your numberpad.
Imagine a character standing in the middle of it facing right. Each number corresponds to a direction-6 is forwards, 4 is backward, 3 is diagonally down and forwards, etc. And 5, being in the middle, represents no input, or neutral.
So the standard hadouken stick input of a quarter circle forwards is 236.

That's directions. Typically, most button presses are represented by letters. This is easy with games like Fighting is Magic and Blazblue that go from light to heavy(plus magic/drive).
Light=A
Medium=B
Heavy=C
Magic=D

And jumping is J. (Attacks while jumping can be shown with a j next to the input.)

So you can quickly describe combos, like the standard light-medium-heavy-launcher into air light-medium-heavy we've seen in Fighting is Magic like:
5A>5B>5C>3C>J>jA>jB>jC

[Grilox]

Gosh I hate that number system. I prefer the QCF/HCF method.

QCF: Quartercircle Forward. (As in, down to front) (QCB is its opposite, Quartercircle Back.)
HCF: Half Circle Forward. (As in, back to front.) (HCB is its opposite, Half Circle Back.)
DP: Dragon Punch. (As in, the command for Shoryuken, Forward-Down-DownForward.)
RDP: Reverse Dragon Punch. (That is, Back-Down-DownBack)
360: Spinny spinny spinny (Zangief's Spinning Piledriver, for instance.)

And that's the jist of it. For one-button stuff, it's just f+wk, b+fk, d+sp, etc. (K and P being punch and kick, W, S, and F being Weak, Strong, and Fierce, which are the three usual grades of attack power when it comes to what button you push. If the game doesn't use that many buttons, then it could be something like qcf+C or whatever button you push)

As for my favorite fighting game character, it's gotta be Beatrice in Ougon Musou Kyoku.
(Though maybe Virgilia, since she can summon Odin. Hmmmm.)

My second favorite is probably Taokaka from Blazblue (Which is a game some people have actually played.)


She goes super fast, like ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM but without being the biggest jerk ever like Vega.

She's also the successor to Bang Shishigami's ninja techniques. Yes that's the ending I say is canon, shut up.

[Lazy]

See, I don't like QCF/HCF partially because it doesn't apply to all button inputs, but mostly because it's harder for me to visualize. With the numbers, I can easily visualize the direction because it makes me think of the numpad numbers which actually are each physically facing a direction on a 2D plane, but with letters, it takes a second to click because I need to stop and think of the direction that letter stands for. Especially for things like DP, where the input might not cause a DP-type move while another move with a different input could be.
360's hella easier, though.

And I would buy a game based entirely around Tao/Bang's exploits saving the world like a cheesy action movie and eating meat buns.

[Willsun]

See, I don't like QCF/HCF partially because it doesn't apply to all button inputs,

That's....what I was going to say about your number pad system. DP is 623 but then it becomes 421 if you're on the right side. It only works when you assume everyone's talking about standing on the left (1P) side. Saying "forward" becomes relative and works no matter what side you're standing on. It's also clunky because I used it to describe what a DP is in full, but that's because I was explaining it in the glossary for anyone who might not know what it is. The only other times I would type out "forward" would be in describing combos with command moves, and even then saying forward is a lot easier to understand than saying "Dudley's chain combo is 6+MK, MK, HP."

I mean, just look what happens when comparing a Dudley's bread and butter combo:

Down+HK, HCF+MK, MK xx QCFx2+P

vs.

2+HK, 41236+MK, MK xx 236236+P

A half-circle forward becomes a smattering of numbers you'd need to figure out, and it becomes 63214 on the right side. Honestly, when you say these things out loud in real life, the number pad system sounds way too confusing.

"To do Dudley's Machine Gun Blow, you press four-one-two-three-six with any punch."

[numsOic]

Guys, you're clearly aching for a fighting game thread in Fence Post.

[RagnarWhat's older? Unicorns, or stars?]

I just use the number system of move notation because I spent a bunch of time on dustloop.com and now it just makes sense to me. When I see QCF x2 I have to think about it for a second, but when I see 236236 I know what it means intuitively.

Suggestion for the glossary (from Dustloop):

Oki or Okizeme: Attacking someone while they are waking up. The goal is to safely apply pressure or a mixup to maximize your advantage and chances of scoring another combo, while minimizing your chances of eating a reversal Dragon Punch, throw, or super.

[Lhet]

I honestly don't care either way as for directional inputs, 236 is slightly better than qcf and dp is slightly better than 623. I prefer LMH(S) over abc because it feels less arbitrary and I'm more used to reading it.
Both of those issues I don't really care about, and can read either way. The biggest thing for me is readability in combos. jFK cFP SH.LP EWGF cFP SH.FP is really hard to read. Mostly the lack of clear separation and the multiple abbreviations of move names (I know EWGF is kinda a special case but still). I don't mind the j and c, though 2 is a bit easier to read. For that particular combo I'd prefer: jHKs -> 2HP -> 214LP -> 6523MP -> 2HP -> 214HP (I think it's the same)

[AramekYour MRI results have shown total infection to now be approximately one fifth of the full mass of the tissue."So you're saying..."Your brain is about 20% tumor.]

Welp, now this thread looks like math. Are you all happy? Are you happy bringing math all up in here? In this place? This was a happy place, and now you got math all over. All over everything. In here. Math.

[RagnarWhat's older? Unicorns, or stars?]

Fighting games are like RPGs. NUMBERS EVERYWHERE. Regardless of notation.

[Ashenai You're dorkin' up the skies, Twilight Sparkle.]

But... we haven't even started talking about frame data yet

[Grilox]

I think we really do need a fighting game thread so I can talk about zoning and chip damage and all that fun stuff.

[Marcturus]

This was a happy place, and now you got math all over.

Math can be fun and magical.

[fensterawethome~!]

What are all these numbers and words? All I understand is pictures of brightly colored ponies.

[Willsun]

It's perfectly fine to talk about fighting terms and learning things here in preparation for Fighting is Magic. If you guys want to talk in-depth about a separate fighting game and set up matches for those in that other thread, that's fine. I asked for favorite characters because we can compare them to how FiM characters are looking to turn out, and I'm hoping to help out people who are interested in FiM but aren't avid players of fighting games.

[blasmeisterIt is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world.]

I'm hoping to help out people who are interested in FiM but aren't avid players of fighting games.

So far all you guys are doing is convincing me that I'm going to lose and lose hard when this tournament comes round. My experience with fighting games is on such a lower level compared to you lot - I'm at the 'look in the instruction booklet on how to do a Shor-yu-ken before the match and be happy if I can do one in less than 4 attempts' level

[WeeksI feel overcome with the need to get funky!]

Man I started learning to play Melee's Marth in the proceeding months leading up to Brawl's release (I still like the 64 version best) and of course I'm hit with all his dumb nerfs and his strange new B neutral.

And he's still ranked 5th among 38 characters.

But I prefer Melee Marth, it's who I played with most of the time.

[Aurora]

My favorite characters in Brawl are Game and Watch and Ike.

The team I left while I played Marvel a while ago was Nova/Sentinel/Spencer. Nova is pretty great but I'm basically using the team as a learning crutch.

[Crunchy]

Willsun, I looked at your Fighting Game Glossary at the begining of the thread and should mention a couple things.

While its not a huge deal, it says that Continuum Shift is the latest version of Blazblue. Thing is that CS is now two versions out of date, with Continuum Shift Extend being the newest. Id just hate to see someone new to the series get themselves a copy of CS and figure out later that they wasted their money on the old thing.

Also, you have a thing saying what a Reset is, but without mentioning that its purpose is to reset damage scaling. If you dont know what damage scaling is, doing a reset sounds like a big risk for no reward.

Otherwise a great beginner FAQ.

[DarkMatter]

I guess if we're all saying our best characters in fighting games I'll join in too!

I'm not that well versed in fighting games but when I comes to Smash Bros. I was best with Kirby in the original, Peach in Melee, and a bunch of characters in Brawl (though it's probably Peach... and maybe Ness and Lucas... and a whole bunch, really I can't decide).

Street Fighter III: Third Strike I'm best with Chun-Li and Oro. In SSF4 I seem to be best with Cammy (but I'm not very good at the game at all). My team in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 hasn't really been settled but I'm pretty fond of the random match-up of Tron/Nemesis/Firebrand.