Street Fighter Article
This article is a sort of journal detailing the progress of a noob to fighting games — also learning what is good about them.
After introduction, make a journal. for it not to be repetitive, have some intermission (e.g. gg strive, modding my stick, switching to leverless)
Try not to get too technical, but I'll also try not too be too verbose. Apologies to people with 0 video game experience.
Do a good job editing, people don't need to hear about all the nuances and intricate details; it's just not interesting for the majority of readers
Or do a two parter, one where I hate on fighting games, and the other the journal
super secret fighting
Intro
How I didn't grow up playing and loving fighting games
As far as I can remember, I have never liked fighting games. It all goes back to my childhood; I was born at a very young age I had had very little exposure to them as a kid. First, the internet at my parent's house was awful, second, we didn't have and video game consoles. This first issue meant that I usually had terrible experiences with any PvP titles, and as such I abhorred them, which is somewhat still of a trend today — I play video games to relax, not sweat. The second issue is a bigger one as it meant I had zero experience with any controller, and was only remotely competent with a keyboard. Since the majority of fighting games are played with a controller, this meant I had an additional barrier to entry into the fighting game scene. But not having a console also meant that there was no device where I could play together with my brother or sister.
My friends also weren't into fighting games. I remember once playing smash bros (no idea which one) with my brother, while waiting for our parents — they had dropped us off to some play room while busy. As we didn't have any consoles, we had no idea how to operate the controller. We also didn't have any idea how to play the game. We both thought it was ass, and left the console to play something else. I don't really remember playing any other fighting games during that time.
Right before coming to coming to Canada, in may 2017, a french streamer I followed — Benzaie — started playing some Street Fighter V (or SFV). After following a couple of streams, it looked cool, and I thought it would be a nice way to spend my summer. I got the game and started playing. Keyboard was not the way, so I busted out the old xbox360 controller, that I had only used once to play Dark Souls III at that point. I hate controllers, they are so small, and uncomfortable, so foreign to me as I had never really built any muscle memory with them. I would inadvertently press things I didn't want, and could not for the life of me perform the simplest motion input. I had to look down at my controller all the time to figure out which button was which. I played the campaign of SFV, which was ass, and abandoned the game after less than 7h.
Later in uni, I would occasionally be introduced to fighting games by friends. Less than a year after trying SFV, a friend from my frosh group showed me BlazBlue Centralfiction at his place — in the Princess towers (he had missed the deadline to apply to be in res). We played on keyboard, which I was familiar with and it was actually almost fun, mostly because he hasn't actually trying to body me, unlike all the other experiences I had had before and since. So I bought the game and we didn't even play once before that friend dropped out of uni, never to be seen again. I had a couple of other introduction to other titles, but it was usually me getting murdered by anyone who could hold a controller, while I didn't know (and wasn't told) who to do the most basic of actions like blocking. After that covid reduced my exposure to fighting games to zero. I then entered the work force, moved to Toronto, got married — as one can imagine, I didn't have much time to even think about fighting games. And I had made my mind up at this point; if I didn't like fighting games until then, I would probably never like them.
i hate controllers, I hate PvP
my exposure to fighting games; not knowing shit, jut getting destroyed.
why i was interested in sfV
played sfv – story mode and did practice for a couple of hours. never played matched. that was may 21st 2017.
My gripes with fighting games
Why I never tried to get into it
To recap from my upbringing and past experiences, I had never been introduced properly to a fighting game, I had no idea how they worked, and I hated using one of the main peripherals that they require. Those were all gripes that I had that would prevent me from trying a fighting game.
Anytime I would hear some talk about how they got into fighting games — or even a specific fighting game — the story was always along the lines of “I played it since I was a kid with [sibling/parent/friend] teaching me and I've loved it ever since”. From my perspective my issue was two folds: I hadn't had anyone to kindle this love for fighting games when I was young, and most everyone else has been playing for way-way longer than I could ever, which means most people would have a huge leg up on me. This wouldn't be an issue if fighting games were PvE, but they are by design mostly centred around PvP. So I thought that I had missed the boat; I would never be able to enjoy fighting games.
The thing is I didn't really care, as fighting games weren't anything special; there were plenty of other video game genre that I disliked and didn't play. All the above made it seem like I was pondering on fighting games for ages, but I really wasn't — this was all decided almost unconsciously in the background. I just went about my life, playing other stuff, and there was enough other stuff to keep me busy.
But at my busiest time is actually when I started thinking about fighting games.
Why I got interested again
What made me want to reconsider my opinion
Some of you might know that last year, I set out to purge my backlog of games that I owned but never played. All is detailed in “Cleared the backlog?: Humble Purge Act II”. Playing so many games, and finding that my preconceptions about some genres were wrong, made me think about fighting games again. Well, that's not the entire story; Marco — with whom I play games on the regular — had suggested we pickup a fighting game as our next shared game. I was staunchly opposed, for all the reason mentioned above, but at least he planted the seed. Or he watered it; some café resident had been involved in the fighting scene, and they just made it look so cool. I am of course speaking of Monocat, Montcrief and Scriptorium. I had followed their quests, especially the EVO one (that Crowdstrike plot-twist was just riveting), and maybe they had planted the seed. Monocat's article “I've Finally Played A Fighting Game”, apart from being an excellent read, was probably also a big influence. Although he talk about how he had liked and played Super Smash Bros since he was a kid — he's no like me fr fr — he also talks about how he thought other fighting games were out of his grasp. ““I could never learn those games, but they look really cool,” I think to myself.” & ““I wish I could play those games, but I have nobody to learn it with,” I think to myself.”, both excerpts from his article, really resonated with me — he's just like me fr fr. The final nail in the coffin was that youtube was listening to me, and I suddenly got a lot of recommended videos about Street Fighter 6. And arcade sticks. Arcade sticks looked fun, and it would completely negate my issues with regular controllers...
Street Fighter 5 (SFV)
So I got an arcade stick and booted up Street Fighter 5 again. I went into training mode — where you can just test your moves against a dummy or play against the computer — and started to get familiar with my stick, picking Cammy as I remembered not hating her last time I played. To my delight, I could now get a quarter circle forward input [EXPLAIN] almost 20% of the time if I focused. The lever felt nice and the buttons were alright. Most importantly, I was sorta having fun. So after a couple of hours, I left training mode and queued up in ranked matches — ranked is where you get put to fight against people of your level. I waited 10min and finally got my first match. I got destroyed. To be fair, there was no one at my level (at 0 League Points or LP), so I got matched with people which sorta knew what they were doing. Nevertheless, I had fun despite my 1 win 30 losses streak. But waiting for 10+min to get any matches was starting to get on my nerves, so I knew I was gonna get Street Fighter 6 (or SF6) as soon as it went on sale. In the meantime, I checked which character was in SF6 and which was in SFV, and started playing around with them. Thankfully, Cammy was in the base roaster or SF6 but so was Dhalsim, that I had just tried and enjoyed. SF6 became on sale literally the next day so I picked it up on Oct 29th. In total I had played 9 extra hours of SFV.
Street Fighter and fighting games
[explain fighting games and street fighter]
Before we get into Street Fighter 6 (or SF6), let's get a basic intro on the street fighter games and how they work.
round, match, set
characters
controls — modern controls vs classic controls
attacks, throws, specials, supers
in SF6 DI, DR, parry
SF6
What's different
MAKE AN ACTUAL JOURNAL — go by week
cammy redesign milk cannon/cannon strike joke [Edouard from the future of Dec 2025 here, I have no idea what the hell Edouard from the past meant here, nor do I recall the joke]
also encountered my first cheater, with 100% frame 1 DI counter. Using modern controls. On Ed. At rank rookie 3. Come on. And I still beat him even though I suck. [explain ranks sf6]
played it first on Oct 30th, became iron on Nov 3nd and Bronze on Nov 6th. Literally the next day, my first match made me reach silver, being the 10th win in a row.
I thought I had to check my ego, and therefore decided to switch to Dhalsim. I sucked and thought my ego was in check but I just had to make sure. I queued up in ranked and did my 10 placement matches with him. I lost 6 and won the last 4, after I had gotten a feel for the character. My wins were still mostly flukes were I used a very easy flow chart to play. If opponent standing –> s.hk or c.hp if jumping back s.hp if crouching wait until they aren't. Did they close the gap? teleport back or grab. That flow chart wasn't really good, and with the gameplay being so different from Cammy, I had a hard time doing what I wanted to do.
[add flow chart]
Despite this and my 6 losses, the game decided to put me in silver 4 7300LP? right off the bat, which makes no sense. I wasn't even at that level with my main, which I had played with for over a week. Well I kept going and you'll never guess what happened, I went 0-2 thirty times in a row with the character I had played for 2h on SFV and 5min on sf6. That was very reminiscent from my previous time spent with fighting games. It was frustrating because I often times lost so badly that I didn't learn anything.
So I abandoned Dhalsim for now, and went back to Cammy which was Silver 1. I lost a bunch because I didn't really belong in Silver yet. Up until then I had only been using normals, because I couldn't do any motion input. I learned to do the quarter circle consistently and unlocked Cammy's spiral arrow. Using it in “combos” allowed me to climb to Silver 3.
[add gif Spiral arrow]
I got kinda stuck there, so I learner how to do the double quarter circle input, unlocking Cammy's supers. This allowed me to get to Silver 4-5 and I got really stuck there. I could usually win against people of my rank 50-55% of the time, but I was never put with people of my rank. Not sure if there just isn't a ton of people in north america, but the game kept putting me with people who were already in Gold, and have 1000-1200 LPs more than me. Against those, I could only win 35-40% of the time. I could train to get better — learning combos in training grounds or leaning to actually anti-air properly — but it seemed more fun to just play more. So I grinded for two days to get to gold. There was a fucking Akuma modern player that I kept getting paired up with, who was already gold 1. He always did the same things but I could stop him due to my lack of game knowledge.
first rage quitter, i was gonna win the set, we was in my critical art and about to die and the AKI just rage quited.
gold nov17th cammy after terrible grind. Hard stuck there because suck.
Aparte
Worst take ever incoming I've replayed chivalry 2 again and while playing duels, I realised it's actually a fighting game.
Back to the progress
need execution
need timing explain frames
while doing a couple of drills I also played casuals for the first time, taking the pressure away
I went back to ranked on Nov 21st and after a tiny session made it to Gold 2. Won both times against my nemesis, modern Akuma hard stuck gold 1 as well.
###
Back to sf6
I was super close to Gold 3 when I got a horrible losing streak and decided to take a little break from ranked. I went to training mode and practiced my execution. There we still a couple of times in the heat of the moment where my supers juts didn't come out. And I also had a hard time anti-airing. Cammy's cannon spike input is pretty tough for me (forward, down, down-forward) and it just took too much processing to use it during matches. So I instead did the much simple back medium punch. The timing was tricky but I got it eventually. I didn't just stay in training mode, I would track my progress by going into casual matches.
playing against people better than me
starting to recognise my error.
Dec 8 Gold 3
Little treat
One thing that I forgot to mention is how loud my fighting stick is. The one I have, the 8-bitdo, is not silent at all. Thankfully, you can modify your stick (also called “mod”), and I decided to replace the buttons I was mashing on the regular. I would also replace the lever, which was particularly loud due to it very clicky switches. The buttons would not be that much of a loss, as I didn't feel any particular way about them, but the lever — apart from its loudness — felt nice. In any case, after doing some research, I took advantage of black friday to order some part of of the chinese website from qanba, which was 20USD cheaper than the US website.
The buttons were almost a breeze to remove and install, apart from some very flimsy metal bits on some, but the lever was another story. The original lever for the 8-bitdo uses an unconventional pin connector on the circuit board. My savior was Dinodrax Chronicles with his two videos: Qanba Gravity Silent Joystick 5 pin Harness and Installing Qanba Gravity Silent Joystick into 8BitDo Arcade Stick.
The change of lever was a bit less dramatic then I originally thought. The new lever was silent, and therefore had less audio feedback for my inputs, but also had a shorter throw. The throw is the distance you need to move the switch to register an input. This means that this lever is a bit faster, but also requires more precision. I had a bit more issues getting my supers to come out, but otherwise, there was not much change.
back to ranking
took a little break where I would only train in casual, and I enjoyed playing with people whose level was above mine. went back to do some ranked, to see if I could reach gold 4, and I met my old nemesis again, the modern akuma, tafar, with a “Friendly Rivalry” tag. He had not changed his stategy one bit. He was still opening the round the same way, and spamming the same move. This time, there was absolutely no shot he would beat me. It was nice to see how much I had progressed in this time. I was able to deal with everything he threw at me fairly easily. Ngl, it was also nice to see that he was stuck in Gold, and had barely progressed.
I climbed pretty fast, and while I dropped a couple of super inputs because I was still getting used to the new lever, I started using some hooligan combinations on oki to great success.
Got to gold 4 on dec 14th after two ranked sessions — with 47h total in the game.
On december 15th I got to Gold 5, and it was great to see that now I didn't really come in a game with a strict gameplan. The match would start, and I would play passivly trying to figure out what my opponent was doing. I would then take the low hanging fruit, and punish the easy stuff, like frequent jump-ins, DIs, abusing heavy moves. I had a very easy counter for each but that usually allowed me to win games. I also noticed that people would one and done me more often, instead of doing the full set.
Played world tour, meh.
Plat 1 on Dec 17th after two games. Only means I'm in the top 35% of players. I'm still very happy about that considering I am an actual noob when it comes to fighting games.
Before actually continuing ranked I need to fix some glaring flaws in my gameplay. For my level:
I have decent reactions, and I'm now ok at anti-airing, and checking random drive rushes.
My oki is ok (ha ha)
Obviously I get knowledge checked a bunch, but knowledge will come with time. For now I play more on the safe side to mitigate this
Because it was working until
My neutral is pretty bad
I have zero hit confirm. Most of my damage comes from punishing people who do random DPs, specials or super.
I have zero combos. I have my punish combo that I can cancel out to a super, but I can usally only get it out after catching my opponents with a DI, reacting to a DI. I also have awful timing and execution in general.
I don't use a core mechanic of the game at all: drive rush.
Can't fix everything, and it wouldn't be wise to try to do so, so I'll just pick my battles. Trying to use my pinky more: get better at DI reactions and can incorporate DR easier. Learn one easy hit confirm combo route. Learn one anti air combo.
trying to get Marco to play it too —> transition to gg strive with image (not biased at all)
Guilty Gear Strive
dec 19th
I play it every couple of days, I have a lot of fun, but only play against one opponent, Marco. We both suck equally.
—> how it's different from sf6
go through everything until end
after novelty wore off, sf6 clears
SF6 – More tournament and Leverless
dec ? – Before I could do anything, I saw that there was an online tournament being held in-game; I had nothing to lose so I signed up. The tournament was league separated, and since I had just made it to Platinum, I would be most likely faced with opponents stronger than I was. Well such was life. The time came and in the end, I actually made it to second place! There were only 5 entries but you know, still.
I won my first match against a Guile, a character I usually have trouble with, and got murdered by a Ken afterwards. I was not expecting to win anything, so I'm still happy with the result, but I'm still a bit frustrated that I couldn't even get one round against the Ken.
Soon after I realised; for now, I don't really crave to play anything else but fighting games.
##
dec ? – Grand Prix need to win 20 battle hub battles grinded
Dec 24th – leverless is just goated. felt natural from the get go. my quarter circle input was as consistent but even faster, and same for my double quarter circle; I could react to stuff and just snipe people from across the stage. movement is unparalleled, where it felt clunky with a joystick, this is fast and responsive. I only really have to work on the dragon punch input and I should be good to go. My finger positioning was garbage on the right side even on the stick so I'm taking the opportunity to fix that as well, before too much damage is done. That was all after less than a day on it. Bass guitar helps [SEE HOW LONG IT TAKES TO BE AS CONFORTABLE AS WITH STICK] It is a bit unfortunate that I picked it up right before a tournament but that's life.
dec ? – I finally got to the grand prix and immediately lost my games against a modern blanka. sucks to suck.
jan 4th to 12th – on cruise, couldn't train even though I was itching to
win tournament after boat Jan 12th, while still feeling nauseous (there were only 3 people there)
back to ranked jan 15th — 12 win streak much better, all the plat I face make obvious mistake that I am able to punish. I still can't anti-air, and while I'm not getting punish for it, it will for sure catch up to me.
Jan 20th — feeling tired of sf6, when thinking about it, but playing it I still get as much fun. I am also not visibly improving, and my anti-air has gone to the shitter. I am great at checking DI's though. My plan is maybe to get to diamond, and then try to get good with another character. For now thinking of Manon, or Kimberly.
Jan 21st — picked up manon, and it is apparent that I don't have the fundamentals down. Even with a character I absolutely don't know, I should be able to best people in silver. It's not the case. Also silver player are doing combo incorporating drive-rush cancels, what the fuck. I'm having fun with a more grappler character. Why did I pick Manon? well she's french. She's actually the second ever playable character from france in street fighter, the first one being Remy in 3rd strike. I didn't want any charge character. Also I wanted a character that was different from Cammy — Kimberly being way to similar. AKI looked really cool, and I am also a big fan of poison in video games (only the purple kind though) but she is way too difficult execution-wise. I was thinking of playing a shoto, but none of them, barring maybe Terry, inspired me — but Terry is a DLC.
I will do my best to actually learn her properly without repeating the errors of my youth.
Jan 22nd — Go through the placement matches, and got to silver. I forgot how much of a DI-fest silver was and was constantly getting DI'ed after poking with my crMk, HK or HP. I think I could easily reach gold, especially with win streaks, but it wouldn't be because I play well, but because my opponents play particularly badly. I want to take my time learning Manon properly.
Jan 23rd — no fucking way, I can just tap parry to get a DR cancel? what the hell, it's explained nowhere and is super easy. Before I had to do [forward, parry, forward] all fast enough to be in the cancel window 2-3 frames (8-9 frames with the games buffer) 150 milliseconds. I played a bit of cammy again, and I think the neutral game I have to play with Mannon helped.
Jan 24th – played ranked with Manon, I got to Gold 2
Jan 25th – booted up the game to play in the Phase 6 tournament, got paired up with a Master rank player for my first game. ggs got eliminated right away.
Jan 26th – didn't play Manon yesterday, but today I played a couple more ranked and got to platinum 1, the same rank as Cammy. It's hard to say if I'm better with Cammy or Manon. I have better instincts with Cammy, probably because I have played her for 80h at this point, but I actually have drills that I practice with Manon and have a gameplan that works pretty well. With Cammy it's all about vibes.
Jan 27th – I keep getting destroyed in matches. I know I suck but it is still demoralising. I haven't seen any results from my drills yet (after two days, how shocking)
Jan – 30th – took some time off the game, I was initially gonna take much longer but my finger slipped and I booted the game (oops). I switched to Cammy as I was a bit tired of Manon. There was a tournament today. Got paired up with a Master rank player for my first game. ggs got eliminated right away. I still had fun playing Cammy and I'm definitely still better with her than with Manon. But then I still suck at both.
Jan – 31st played some more Cammy and Manon nothing new
Feb 1st – I've only played Cammy, I can feel my brain expanding. I've somehow improved 2folds overnight. I am slowly but maybe surely climbing with Cammy to Plat 2. I need better execution and to use drive rush to make it easy. I think I've been playing the game wrong, but I am starting to see the light. I'm thinking of taking every character in the game to plat and also keeping playing Cammy. It will help my execution and I will understand better when it's my turn to pommel them.
Feb 9th – nevermind, I took a week break and I am small-brained again. The Mai update is here, and 80% of my matches were against her. That physicx is insane though People playing this new character are really banking on the unfamiliar match-up effect; I destroyed some people that I had no right to be in plat; and plat isn't even that good.
I haven't felt the urge to play since, it might finally be over. I am moving on to a new obsession.
March 13 — nevermind, I'm back. I've played a bit of Cammy, but I don't really jive with the charcter rn. I had been playing a bit of fatal fury beta and had fun, but it just made me see the flaws of SF6: the low forward drive rush meta is really tiring. It's not even hard to do and you get rewarded with a full combo. It's not really fun. I went back to Manon and it feels pretty good. Left her at gold 5, but only did casual games to get back in the bath.
March 14 — Maining Manon who is back in plat
March 15 — plat 2, the highest rank I have every reached with any character. This technically makes top 37.31% (or better than 62.69% of player). There are so many thing I can't do that would make me instantly better. I am also very prone to getting fucked up by gimmicky player. In casual, where I can experiment until I find something to beat them after 3-4 games. Ranked only gives you 1 match to figure out your opponent.
April 15th — plat 3, again highest rank I've ever reached. A month on the dot since the last rank-up. It also doesn't feel like I made it by the skin of my teeth. I feel like I belong there, but absolutely not any higher. I played a lot in casual just to improve and experiment without the stress of ranked and loss of LPs. I don't used drive rush at all, and my neutral is still pressing almost random buttons. I have a lot of trouble with doing double quarter circles forward on the P2 side of the screen. At least I got my anti airs down, I punish almost every jump-ins. I somehow all managed to be able to do basic confirms even if I didn't really practice? Sometimes I get fucked cause they blocked or are too far though. I really need to get some combo downs, because even when I can punish, I absolutely need to DR to get any kind of follow up with manon. I also need to use MP and cr.MP more often. cr.MK is my whiff punish of choice, but it's not special cancellable so I get nothing. I also need to do more command grabs in neutral. Still, I'm now top 33.11%. Not much different than top 37.31% but we take it nonetheless. I'm kinda itching to play someone new (and also top-tier as Manon is at the very least in the bottom 8, and arguably bottom 5 — even if at my level it hardly matters), but I'm not quite done with her yet. I do get the hate for throw loops now.
April 16 — I had such a good time. I went back to casual and got paired against a diamond 4 terry, I beat the shit out of him every time three games in a row before he rage quitted. I then fought a plat 5 Deejay — i wrecked him too. My anti-airs were on point, I was hit confirming most of my jabs, I cycled through my options well, punished everyone for not respecting my command grabs, and didn't drop a single combo. It felt good, and after a solid 8-10 games, and beating 3 opponents to a bloody pulp, I just closed the game. Nirvana.
[Edouard from the future of Dec 2025 again; I played SF6 pretty consistently until May 28th maining Manon. Even if she was mid-low tier, she kept getting nerfed while other characters that were way stronger (Ryu) were getting massive buffs. Not fun. Tried a couple other characters mostly Terry, but it didn't stick. I last booted up the game to play in June]
Third Strike
fightcade
[Edouard from the future of Dec 2025 again again; I did start playing some 3rd strike with the rest of the gang, playing Hugo, but that game didn't really grab me that hard. This was after I was done with SF6, and I think I've gotten everything I wanted out of fighting games for this year. I am not someone who obsessed over a game, trying to get better and better. I'm more of a casual gamer.]