Evangelizing Street Fighter: A Crash Course

By M. Butler

Today's topic: how to get your gamer friends who don't do the fighting game thing in to 2-d fighting games like Street Fighter or Marvel vs. Capcom.  Read some words of advice from Butler after the jump...

Like many gamers my age, I grew up with the Street Fighter franchise.  Don't get me wrong, that isn't to say that I was any variety of good at it.  I wasn't allowed to play "violent" games growing up, so I could only play it at arcades and over at friends' houses, so my skills were mediocre at their best.  I happened to live with a friend in college, however, who had a love of the Street Fighter franchise that had persisted the entire time that 2-dimensional fighting games were becoming less and less dominant.  Since we shared a TV, this meant that when Street Fighter IV came out in 2009, I was going to be seeing a lot of it either way, so I may as well learn to play it.  This sparked a love of a game type I had long since thought I had lost interest that persists to this day.  The problem is that most people still don't give a shit about fighting games, and when they do, they're 3D fighters like Soul Calibur or the latest Mortal Kombat abortion , or those god-fucking-awful UFC games, and frankly, I find the mechanics too inscrutable to bother with, even with the coaching of those more experienced (though if someone wants to write a tutorial for 3-D fighters, step on up!).  But all the same, most of my friends are not interested in playing fighting games, even if video games are their thing.  But I have begun to train them, much as I was once trained.  Here are some hints for those jonesing to introduce their friends to the wonderful world of brawling in public thoroughfares if they're sick of playing incessant online Ryu/Ken-shoryuken-spam matches and just want their real friends to have a shot at some true fun.

Step 1: Choosing the Right Starter

Let me just start by saying that you can't just dump these steps on your friends all at once.  You've gotta ease in to that shit.  It won't happen overnight, but suggest working some SF mojo every now and again and just keep at it.  Now, onward! You will be tempted, no doubt, to begin your friends with one of the Marvel vs. Capcom titles, as they feature characters that anyone would have a familiarity with beyond knowing their name and the game they come from.  And who doesn't want to settle whether or not Spiderman could beat Wolverine's ass?  But hold off on that urge, because when you stop and think, those games are fast as hell, have some more complicated strategy facets, and there is simply more to explain.  No one likes gaming experiences starting with tedious explanation.  Start them off with Super Street Fighter IV.  You could play the original SFIV, but at this point with SSFIV's rebalances and the fact that all of the characters are unlocked from the start, I question why you would want to if you don't have to.

Step 2: Equip Thyself Properly

I won't be one of those purists that says that you absolutely must play fighting games with an arcade stick, as I realize only genuine devotees even contemplate owning them.  I will say that arcade sticks offer a significantly higher degree of precision than your average d-pad, particularly if you are playing on an Xbox, since the "d-pad" is just a joystick with a fancy cover and offers you all the same precision as if you were playing after consuming a half liter of cough syrup.  Playstation d-pads are pretty functional, but I can't stress enough how frustrated your friends will get if they try to play with controller joysticks.  Blocks won't go where they want, they will accidentally jump all over the damn place, and throw the controller down in frustration after two rounds.  Just use the d-pad, and you can avoid a lot of those nasty precision slip-ups.  Or you can just get a couple of arcade sticks.  You know, like a real man.

Step 3: Beginning the Fundamentals

Look, I won't lie, even though I bitch about people never picking anyone other than Ryu/Ken/sometimes Akuma in random matches, there are reasons that Ryu and Ken are far and away the favorite choices: their mechanics are fairly simple to get an initial handle on, and you can learn a handful of fairly non-complex strategies that tend to garner satisfactory results.  I start my friends out with Ryu, as the fact that more of his moves send opponents flying farther away can give newcomers a little more breathing room than Ken's more up close and personal variations, but proficiency with Ryu makes proficiency with Ken worlds easier.  The other main reason to use Ryu for beginners is that all of his moves are accomplished with quarter-circles (save the shoryuken), so once your friends have a handle on the hurricane kick and the hadouken, they'll probably be feeling good about themselves.  The shoryuken can be tougher for beginners to get a handle on, and another reason I recommend an arcade stick, but you can still pull it off with time.  You'll still be kicking their asses at this point, but they'll have the feeling of accomplishment that keeps them going (again, I am speaking from personal experience). With quarter circles and the shoryuken  motion taken care of, your cohorts now have the ability to perform well over half of the special moves in the game.

Step 4: Intermediate Mechanics

I can't stress enough the importance of not using handicaps and not "letting your friends win".  You play people better than you so that you can improve.  I can beat my friend who got me back in to the games every now and then, but he still womps me at least 5 times for each victory I squeeze out.  This is how you get better: figuring out where you're fucking up, then rectifying that shit.  So during step 3, don't be afraid to bust out super or ultra attacks, focus and EX attacks, throws etc. unexpectedly.  When your baffled friend asks "what the fuck just happened?" just explain it to them, and tell them how to avoid it.  Remember, I told you not to go easy on them, not to actively discourage their improvement by saying stupid bullshit like "dude, just figure out a way around it" while you keep wailing on them (I have borne witness to this style.  It ends in rage-quitting).  You know, don't do it all the time or your friends will get too pissed to continue, but bust specials every now and again so you can demonstrate how they're used.

Step 5: Rapidly Onward

Look, once you have the above bits nailed and your friends are still interested, I'll assume that you took it upon yourself at some point to explain charge based characters (start with Blanka or Guile, in my opinion) and the like, and hopefully at this point you have a crew that likes playing some SFIV every now and again.  This is when you hit them with Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (I wouldn't have to call it that unwieldy title if Capcom didn't release literally one million goddamn versions of Street Fighter II).  Nonetheless, all the of the same general rules apply, except your friends will notice A) a lot of shit like focus attacks and the throw command are gone and B) they are dying a lot faster.  SSFIITHDR is fast and way less forgiving, but at its core, what Street Fighter is all about in the first place.  Move on to this step when you're ready to start honing your friends' reflexes, as SFII is not nearly as forgiving of miscalculation as SFIV.

Wrapping Up

I won't say that you should wait until your friends are all the way to step 5 to introduce them to the Marvel Vs. Capcom franchise, simply make sure that they know the basics and that their reaction times are improving.  Then I'd basically say follow the same course with the MvC games.  Start with the most recent offering so that they can get used to the fundamentals (assists, swap out combos, etc.), as it is significantly slower than its predecessor (occasionally to a fault, as sometimes the game doesn't know when I want Dante to pop in for a second or bail out whoever is dying), then unleash upon them the fury that is MvC2.  You know, just so those now competent compadres don't get too complacent.

P.S.  Astute readers will point out that I have completely left out SFIII and all of the Alpha etc. titles.  Basically, I'm assuming that if you actually care about those titles to any significant degree at this point in time, you don't need my assistance (hell, they aren't even available on the current generation of consoles).  The CPU probably learned to fear you long ago.