Street Fighter II skills... Is age a factor?

[Cauterize]

Wow! This thread has turned into something rather fantastic! Thank you all for your views and stories, theyre all a great read for many reasons. And to be honest with you all, im rather envious :P I think I was born 6 years too late (I was actually three weeks premature, but damn that isnt good enough!)

Seriously, it sounds like ive missed out on so much culture in such a short space of time. The arcades were really something my childhood lacked. Every summer I used to get so excited knowing we were going to the seaside as it finally meant I could play in the arcades. The Simpsons arcade game was usually the one I headed straight too being the age I was and it was fantastic. I loved it to pieces!

However fast forward to today and the arcade is quite obviously dead. There was once a time when the home consoles were nothing compared to the quality of the arcade. ports were coming out trying to recreate the arcade feel, but very little even came close.
Now its the other way round. Gaming is 'apparently' that good that you dont need to go down to the arcade anymore. You can play your friends online too so there is no need to leave the house. Where as this could be seen as a positive thing, the whole culture side to it all is missing! And its a real sad state of affairs really!
The arcades used to be something to look forward to. Now theyre flooded with rigged crane games and very few interesting games... This however is a debate for another time...

Anyways! Once the SFII finally comes here for PSN, I shall be challenging you all in hope that I can somehow reclaim part of this lost childhood! That video above is inspirational, gotta love the crowd too!

And on a final note, can someone please explain the charge moves in a bit of detail to me? I cant quite grasp how you can charge a spinning bird kick if you need to hold down...

[nakamura]

Well you can start the charge at any point. So if you are jumping and instantly hold charge it will be active and chance are when you land you can complete the move and use it.

For instance with Guile facing right...

Jump towards a character then immediately hold diagonally down and left. This will give you both charge points that Guile has. Start the combo in the air and use a second attack on the ground in the diagonally down left position, say a medium punch.
The charge will be ready to use either the Sonic Boom or the Flash Kick. Simply complete the motion for one of the moves and you have a little combo.

The reason I say hold down/back is that it will hit both charge points. The Sonic is hold away 2sec and press forward and punch. The Flash is hold down 2sec and press up then kick.

[Goemon]

I was about 13 when SF2 came out in the arcades and as others have mentioned you couldn't move in anything games related without seeing SF splashed all over the place! (Anyone remember Mean Machines video guide?)

It really was a unique, amazing time in gaming, I never saw arcades so rammed with people all playing SF2 (my local had like 10 machines)

I've often wondered if I'd lose the skills in SF as I got older, but even now I'm learning new techniques and pulling things off things that I couldn't do in the past.

It's really is how much you put in as to how much you get out.

What's really handly is most new versions have a training mode to practice combos and online as it is very important to play human opponents (a lot of people were kings of their own bedroom but going out into the real SFing world can be very different).

First thing you need to do is pick a character who you will stick with (at least for the time being).
Then practice their moves until you can pull them off regularly and under pressure
Then you start pacticing combos including your special moves

[Shozuki]

Im jealous! I feel ancient but sound like a baby in comparison to you lot. Getting to the point I love SF2 and hate it, Ok let me explain. I was too young to into the scene when it was going, I brought a Megadrive at the age of 6 and Mortal Kombat 3 was my first real foray into fighters. Things did change...

I brought the PS1 on release but didnt touch the thing until Tekken 2 came out, and I was in love. I played it for hours upon hours and got good with Kazuya and Lei. After Tekken I realised I loved fighting games and got into other off shoots like Bloody Roar (2 is my personal favourite).

Now I play lots of fighters, but generally struggle to get into 2D fighters unless they are called Garou: Mark of the Wolves or King of Fighters oddly. But as I said I love Street Fighter 2, it gave me so much pleasure indirectly. But I'm just absolute rubbish at it. Its odd but I just dont understand how to play it.

Still I brought SF2: Turbo HD Remix and appreciate it immensely but I cant grasp it in the same way I could Tekken or Virtua Fighter, hence I dont really play it as I just get destroyed over and over. I am eagerly awaiting Street Fighter IV though, looks the absolute business and seems to be a bit more user friendly then previous iterations. So much so my mates are even interested and they usually only play the super rated stuff i.e GTA, Gran Turismo etc (they dont really touch fighters... ).

I wish I could have had a slice of SF2, but I pin my hopes on SFIV now...

[vertigo]

the elephant fiasco

Yeh, I think Cauterize just wasn't there at the right time. I was 10 when it came out, used to get to the arcade as much as possible and play whatever version was going, usually a blackbelt one. Favourite version is Super Turbo because of the great character balance and option to use Super characters. It's a shame that the Hyper Anniversary version doesn't support the CPU choosing anything other than Super Turbo version characters.
Used to play it on SNES but got fed up with it because I could tell the difference and then would only play it in the arcade until 2001 when I got hold of my own CPS2 version. Sold it after that and would love it back but money and space don't permit.
SF2 has to be one of the top 3 greatest and most influential games ever made though. It virtually rescued the arcades for a few years, spawned some very good and very bad clones and was responsible for a whole subculture. It also got me in a lot of trouble coz I'd draw SF2 flickbooks in the corners of my school books It's easy to underestimate the impact unless you were there at the time.

[buster_broon]

wasnt the blackbelt version a hacked version where you could do air dragon punches and fireballs

if i remember rightly you could also send out multiple fireballs and dragon punch across the screen, i'm sure i had that for my double pro fighter and wild card </whistles>

**After searching Youtube, i was right**

[randombs]

Lol blackbelt edition. There were tons, weren't there? The blackbelt we're on about is the arcade one, though. Although I think if you ask around, the chances are most people will have a different blackbelt edition they used to play. Our local blackbelt edition was Champion Edition with funky stuff like Ryu/Ken having super-slow LP fireballs, MP fireballs that were quite fast and went diagonally upwards and HP fireballs that were very fast and went diagonally downwards.

There was one I played where the fireballs would bob up and down, and where Blanka and Chun-Li both had fireballs (do a fireball motion and Chun would do hundred-foot kick and a fireball would come out, Blanka would do the electricity and a sonic boom would come out).

My favourite, just for pure madness, was the one at the local kebab shop where the two fighters would float up the screen at the start of the round and if you did a fireball they'd say the dragon punch line instead, and dragon punches would also chuck out about three fireballs

[Kongster]

Press 1P during the round and you can change characters just like that lol

[Goemon]

Yea, I remember Rainbow edition too.
All had messed up moves, I'm sure this version allowed you to change character on the fly by pressing the start button.

The vid above looks like the SNES version running through a Game Genie/Action Replay.

Rainbow edition:



LOL at Guile's heat seaking Sonic Booms

[vertigo]

Yeh pressing start to change characters, always fun There were some guys around the arcade at my school that got really good at using it as a mid-round tactic, combo you with one character then quickly flick to another to take advantage of it.
And don't forget the versions with no charge on the charge moves meaning you could climb the screen with Guile multiple times then do an air throw just before time over and even though Guile had landed the CPU character would fly through tons of screens for ages before finally landing. Am I the only one who remembers that?
I've not found the main pirate one we used to play on MAME yet, don't think it's been dumped coz I've tried all of them and they're not quite right.

[Shoju]

When the Japanese SNES version of SF2 World Warrior first came out it was selling for ?100 in import shops. Graphically it was far from arcade perfect, animation wasn't as good and music and sound were also cut down. Later versions improved though particularly Super SF2 which looked and sounded noticeably better than the World Warrior edition.

The Megadrive first got Champion edition with the bosses playable. I didn't get to play it as much but it seemed to animate better than the initial SNES version and I think the cart had more memory.

[nakamura]

Wasnt the MD version as 24 mbit cart? The Snes SF2 turbo was 16 i think.

Anyway the MD one was pretty good. You wouldnt complain owning it. As for Super SF2 I never took to it so much. Some of the contact point were different and the music and sound wasnt as good for me.

[randombs]

MD was 24mb, SNES was 20mb, but the MD one was Turbo just like the SNES. Basically, SNES owners got SF2, SF2 Turbo and SSF2, we just got SF2 Turbo and SSF2.

I believe it was due to the Nintendo licensing that they couldn't call it Turbo on MD as well, so it was called Special Champion Edition instead, which probably didn't help things much!

Not sure why they didn't just call it Hyper Fighting, but the SNES one says Hyper Fighting underneath the SF2 Turbo title anyway, so that was probably also nabbed by Ninty?

What also helped to confuse people was that initially it was going to be standard Champion Edition and I remember previews of the game with early screenshots (anyone remember BRANKA?) of the Champion Edition build.

Oh, and just in case anyone need any further encouragement to click the above link:



superlols

[nakamura]

Thats it Billy you have just refreshed the 32mbit card in my brain! (well it feels like a small one nowadays!)

And yes it was the agreement with Nintendo that only the Snes has SF2 Turbo but they were both the same title. I was a snes man and couldn't bare the fact of it on the MD.

[randombs]

lol those were the days, eh, getting pissed off when the same game appeared on another console, and looking at the capcom/square boycotts for DMC4 and FF, seems nothing's changed