Wax on, right hand. Wax off, left hand.

By Markoazul

Welcome to the dojo.

Becoming a fighting game enthusiast it's easy, just repeat with me "I'm a fighting games fan" “om,om,om”. Voilá , by the power vested in me  by the holy planets federation I pronounce you casual fighting games fan.

Now... Seriously, to become a more than average takes more, remember the phrase "A minute to learn, but a lifetime to master”?, Fighting games are not the exception there are no magical recipes, We offer you this guide, is not a step by step guide with detailed references to all related topic consider it a map instead, it shows you the main points to reach from where you can do the rest. This post is the foundation and little more, it's a foundation for the foundation.


You are not Jordan (yes, THAT Jordan).

Every 100 years the stars and the cosmic forces get aligned, the era of Aquarius arrived and a very exceptional boy was born in our beloved Gaia; In our era this boy was Michael Jordan, an incredible skilled Basketball player, a perfect combination of discipline and physical and intellectual attributes, Jordan played basketball like nobody else has done and probably nobody will.

And the videogames dear “writer”?, ok, every discipline has its own Jordan, a guy that takes the sport, job, hobbie to new standards, in the case of fighting games the closer to this could be Daigo Umehara A.K.A. "The beast" , Ryan Hart an excellent player in multiple fighting games, Alex Valle the Peruvian storm a long time ago Daigo´s s rival, from an epoch when the Internet wasn't the versatile tool that it is today, Justin Wong with his analysis abilities at light speed, Tokido and his rituals to calm the nerves and chill out or "Infiltration" with his robotic weighting of pros and cons.


Dissecting the champions.

Daigo Umehara: a Japanese gamer (and accountant), fan of the Capcom games, especially the Street Fighter games, combines a sharp execution with an amazing knowing of its character, more than trying to know all the roster Umehara relies on his depth knowledge of his main to neutralize the adversaries.

Ryan Hart : a multi-games specialist, he has seen the matrix, he doesn't just see characters, but numeric and alphanumeric characters, data fluxes and energy patterns, he is a endoskeleton covered with living tissue, he is capable to move from one game to another taking all his knowledge and translating it into the new game, if that isn't then his secret must be a healthy life with strict rules.

Alex Valle : an old autodidact player he was capable of growing his game in a community not as powerful but as devoted as the Japanese, a God slayer and now a businessman in the FGC, he has an aggressive but not careless game style that adapts from one match to another, now in retirement.

Justin Wong: another analysis machine, he studies the characters and can see the big picture to understand the metagame and on that basis select the most lethal character, doesn't matter the learning curve he will tune it to be a killer machine, he can see the gold where others only see dust.

Tokido: Another japanese fighting games God, a relentless and perfectionist player that uses everything he can to achieve victory, data from players, characters, meditation and breath exercises and a capability to TOTALLY focus on the match to find his errors and the opponent´s in real time.

Infiltration: A devoted player, in a similar way to Ryan Hart he can switch his characters so to have the right tool for each, character and opponent, he is a head-hunter looking for potential winners, even more so, he finds the way to minimize weaknesses and maximize the advantages of a character almost transforming them to an entirely different version in his way of playing with them, doing crazy things, if you battle him you must expect the unexpected.



But none of these champions are Jordan, then what is the secret? to answer this lets read about Ryan Hart and his Healthy habits:

As any other discipline, playing videogames requires full attention, good reflexes and coordination, and it can't be achieved with a tired body and/or mind. Ryan Hart published on Twitter his own list called 20 HABITS FOR LEVELING UP ON ANY FIGHTING GAME.

1. Eat well and exercise. 
2. Sleep well and be organized. 
3. Connect with your local community. 
4. Discuss your in-game problems and progress. 
5. Attend offline/LAN events 
6. Understand your losses and your wins
7. Test your fresh creative ideas in a dummy environment (Training mode, VS CPU, etc), once confident, test them on a human opponent 
8. Choose a character that allows you to express yourself in the way you want 
9. Play for enjoyment 
10. Create your own things if you can, if not, try to learn how (combos, strategies, situational tech, etc. With this formula, eventually you become your own master) 
11. Create goals (no matter how small at first i.e I want to beat my local opponent, regular online sparring partner) 
12. Plan how to accomplish them 
13. When you don't know something, ask for advice (especially when you're just starting out) 
14. Once accomplished, create new goals (don't let go of your mind's progressive trail of focus) 
15. Read related forums, blogs, info sites to expand your knowledge 
16. Try to learn something new every day 
17. Perfect your execution through repetition 
18. Be infinitely inquisitive 
19. Always maintain an open mind 
20. Never give up

Lets discuss some of them and add others.

Eat, sleep well and exercise: Maybe some guys you know eat a half ton of junk food, and they play well, better than you, but...  Are they PRO? If your answer is yes you are in front of a gifted, if it is no, probably this person is ruining his/her possible better performance because those bad habits.

Community: The Japanese players have a lot of practice on the arcades not only online or at their homes, the interaction with other players help them to improve their performance. A local  environment is always richer because of the immediate feedback from your training pals.

Constant training: sounds obvious? Could be but as the same as in physical sports as in e-sports training 40 minutes one day and the next do a marathon of 14 hours is not consistent. The myth of prodigious people who get into a discipline and master it in an instant is only that "a myth", it is true that some people can improve really fast but it is also true that they need to train to maintain a level.

Focused practice: Don't enter the training mode without clear goals, unless you are warming, obviously your goal is “Git Gud”, but it's better when you have a clear idea of what to improve, training without a plan is an wrong strategy, if you only train the defensive moves but forget to strengthen your offensive it'll be notorious in your results, an unbalanced fighter, this is a very common mistake, some points to work on your training routines are:

• Combo execution.
• Know the boxes (hit and hurt).
• Neutralize a specific foes move.
• Practice anti-airs.
• Practice punishes.
• Parrys.

RTFM

p,p,p,p,p,lease, please, please

Know your game: Please RTFM, do the tutorials, understand them, the more accurately you do it the more you avoid going back, knowing your game implies a lot of reading, reflection, practice and more reading.

Know your characters: Know your set of moves, best and worth matches (don't get influenced by tiers, they are relative and do not reflect the reality with accuracy).

Record and study your matches: When you lose a match, the recording will show what you did wrong so you can correct it, and what you did right but still can be improved, knowing why
you win is as important as knowing why you lose.

Get out of your fishbowl: When possible assist to local tournaments or travel to take part, it will help you drive the nerves when in front of a crowd, it's not the same your safe room than a big place full of unknown people.

The ideal control: Are you a pad or joystick fan, some pseudo players still discuss this topic as if it were more important than actually is, important? yes, important enough to lose time discussing about this on the forums? NO.

Many champions use the original control pad that comes bundled with the console, others buy a professional joystick or some use their own hand crafted unique joystick. Use whatever is more comfortable for you

Don't marry a character: It's nice and fun to be faithful to your election, but  is it right? the pro players have their favorites characters but don't hesitate to switch to another if they cant get satisfactory results, the consequences of not switching characters is to deal with the nerfs or a character that has too many hard matches.

Don't rely on the gorgeous moves: Another serious  mistake is to only learn the special moves before knowing their normals, some Pro players like Snake Eyes rely a great part of his game plan in his tactics of attack with normals, he is a Zangief player a very difficult character, the spinning pile driver SPD is his most impressive special move, tons of damage that can change the tide in a match, usually people base their game plan only thinking about the moment to connect an SPD.

But the Snake eyes's strategy is very different, he gets close to the adversary, slowly keeping safe from the attacks and often trading damage with his standing fierce and standing medium kick, the adversary is so worried trying to keep Zangief away to avoid a SPD that ignore the damage caused by the "little" attacks, sometimes Snake Eyes drains more energy from this attacks than from the SPD, sometimes he doesn't execute any SPD during all the match!, successful strategy.

That looks so simple, but the truth is just a few players can do it, lets list the ingredients of this recipe:

1.- An almost perfect knowledge of his character moves (damage, extension, frames)
2.- Impeccable execution SE almost never fails combos.
3.- Reading of the opponent's ability, strategy and weaknesses
4.- Know the adversary's character.
5.- Use of  the metagame.

SE knows about the trend to think that the most dangerous of Zangief is the SPD and use this on his favor, creates the trap and conducts the victim there, when the opponent watches the life bar ... It's too late and the SPD NEVER came out!. only feint to keep control (will discuss this latter in deepness).
By the way, SE also plays with Akuma, in a more "traditional" style, just for the most  difficult foes against whom Zangief would be in disadvantage. (Don't marry with the character).

Know His/her worst match:
Every character according to its weaknesses has enemies that are harder to beat, VG the grappler in disadvantage against the little martial artist who moves like a squirrel with energy drinks, (Justin Wong constantly changes character depending on his adversaries election to give them a really hard time).

The worst match knowledge also applies to the player, some people consider some characters abusive, annoying or broken and hate to fight against them, the classic example the SFIV Blanka WITH HIS SET OF GIMMICKS and shouts, Blanka is a low tier character but the mentioned attributes make him an annoying opponent and this is an advantage for Blanka players, it's a fact around the game that incise on the match development and thus the results.
The available information on the Internet about a character or player it's also a useful source, it reveals posible strategies against players.

Players that do not use a secondary character are sometimes neutralized because they can't switch to other fighter, other are known for their aggressive or defensive game style and this helps their opponents to elaborate a game plan customized against them.

Knowing some other data about the character such as stamina, stun, ..... Helps to tip the balance to your favor.

The body language sometimes gives clues about your adversary's mood, the knocking of buttons, head movements, touch the nose, scratch the head or/and chin , those signals give clues for knowing if an adversary is about to break.

Metagaming

Ok, so now you know the game from A to Z, but ¿what about all that happens around ?, The established rules are there, you have learned them, but what if we bend that rules, don't break just bend it, on my side of course.

Have you ever noticed that the guy who always give you trouble at the arcade always chooses the left side? He always waits for you to select your character before he/she does?

That's the metagame, the rules beyond the game, according to the wikipedia:

Metagaming is any strategy, action or method used in a game which transcends a prescribed rule set, uses external factors to affect the game, or goes beyond the supposed limits or environment set by the game.


About the tactics and the strategy.

 Strategy: its the set of detailed systematically coordinated and planified actions for a determined goal.

Tactics: the method utilized to achieve the objective which is part of a general purpose, it adjusts constantly if necessary depending on the obstacles.

Summarizing, the execution of tactics according to every circumstance allows to develop the strategy.

Imagine a match on which  you know your adversary and his main character, also knows he doesn't uses a second character, so prepare yourself selecting their worst match character to counter attack, his/her character is fast and can attack you from far with projectiles, it's not easy to grapple and if  you  corner him/her, can jump away to escape from you. According to this you know that a possible strategy is the patient game, wait for the moment to attack in an almost completely secure way, minimizing the energy loss. So when the timer runs away your energy loss will be inferior to his/her.

You start configuring your strategy knowing some facts.

• You have concluded that you must avoid jumps because its preferable to absorb damage of projectiles than the damage of an anti air response (Tactic).
• One single attack from your character causes a bigger damage than several attacks from your foe (Tactic), so you only need 2 or 3 attacks successful to get the life lead and generate enough pressure to change his/her strategy. 
• Do some feint forward jumps that actually will be neutral jumps, just to know the possible responses and to read patterns (Tactic), don´t concede any advantage by jumping forward.
• You are ready to lose the first round only for study (strategy) and see how your opponent reacts, what starter move he uses, plays defensive, aggressive or neutral.
• You've been practising in the training mode and know that if you are too close to the opponent you can interchange damage with the anti air attack so you  jump only  if very close to the foe (TACTIC). 
• Also know that if you knock down him/her close to the corner, will try to escape the corner so prepare to intercept the escape. either with anti air, an air to air move or a grab to get it back to the corner (TACTIC).

UFFFF seems like a lot for a simple match dont it? it's going to be hard  in the beginning but as the time passes and keep practicing it´ll become natural for you to adapt your tactics on the fly to complement your strategy, after the match either win or lose, you´ll have get feedback to adjust your strategy and even discard some tactics that weren´t useful.

After  all this you are not a 1/10 Jordan yet, maybe you are not a gifted for video games, but  these tools can help you to refine your tactics and define strategies for your gaming.

Keep training, waxing and washing ;)