Touhou Hisoutensoku; abbreviated as 'Soku. 12.3 Project Touhou release - A truly awesome PC-only 2D fighter. Check on youtube for a bazzillion recordings; but hopefully try and find some with high quality online players.

Soku definately looks awesome. Are you a lover of 2D-2.5D fighting games in general?

There are so many fighters I want to learn. I am a major (classic) MK lover, and I haven't even played MK9 yet, which after a shitload of MK games I didn't bother trying I think MK9 needs my attention.

Further I would like to delve into certain fighting games fast for different reasons, like if the gameplay at high level is something I would like very much or not. Fighters that I would like and still are played in (big) offline tournies.
For Samourai Showdown IV I merely sparked interest for because the alleged best MK1 player plays mains that game now.

As of yet, I want to learn the follwing fighters to high level (from nooblevel, to some level in original SFIIs and Killer Instincts):

KI1, KI2, SSFIITurbo, SFIII, SSF4, SSIV and an anime fighting game like Soku.

I also would like to learn high level games to lesser interest:

Other SFs like the best considered Alpha/Zero whatever, as of yet not really known with those. I just stumbled upon Eternal Champions, eems pretty wicked for it's time (or for how it looks like, lol).
Best GuitlyGear game that I actully do have a premium interest for so that it could be mentioned on the first list. But I have tried a few times to get it running and gave up by failure.

That's what I can think of for now. I will try to find that fighting game that looks at face value like yours, but I think relies more on using specials, as like, in almost every moment. Looks like they are mostly spells, so I assume the characters are mostly kid/teen (lool..) witches.

I grew up with a friends who owned Super Nintendos; and thus I started out with Street Fighter 2. Loved that, and quickly got good enough such that my SNES-owning friends wouldn't play me any more. :( Back in the days before the inter-web.

Played SSF Alpha3 later on, and quite enjoyed that. These days we frequently play the original Should Calibur; and occasionally the newer one (SC5) and SSF4. We had an odd go at Marvel vs Capcom, but found it a bit silly.

I never really got in to Mortal combat as I always preferred the away-to-block mechanic rather than a key. (Soul Calibur is like this too, so I've got over that hatred) When it first debuted on the SNES it just wasnt terribly interesting. It tried to be dark and realistic, and (being the SNES) failed, IMHO, horribly.

After watching Genshiken; we got in to Guily Gear for a bit; but it never really stuck. My mainstay these days is Soku and continues to be.

If you're talking about Soku there - most of the characters are `yokai' - i.e. non-human, although a few are human. TBH though, if you've played any of the actual franchise - they are bullet hell shooters - physics is way out the window. If you want to see what they're like, you can see me playing level 5 (of 6) of TH7 - Perfect Cherry Blossom on lunatic mode. Both the character I am playing (Hakurei Reimu) and the level opponent (Konpaku Youmu) are playable in the fighter game.

Do you have secret moderator functions to use? :P

In short SFII I played in the arcades first, same for all the classic MKs. The classic MKs really needed to be played at the arcades, as all the ports has serious issues. And like with KI and KII, it's just not the same as on the arcade.

I saw MKs block button as a huge advancement in the sense that it was lame if you wanted to walk back, that lenghty whiffed moves of the opponent make you go in block stance.
From the beginning I did felt that holding back for block might be better for the instinct to back up. Thus increasing one's speed to block with holding back rather than using a button for it.

In that snip I am talking about a game that looks like Soku, but it's not. Way more usage of specials (spells mostly). I will find it. At least, when choosing the anime fighter, those two need be compared, but I feel there might just be better ones out there that I don´t know off.
And it´s hard to imagine seeing games for the first time to determine, what balance there is in the game, how the handling is at high level (does it suit me to that extent, to get good at the game).

That video hasn't downloaded fully yet, so I have to reply on that later.

I should acquire an arcade stick.

-JG

yes, arcade versions were better; although I remember all the crazy arcade modes SF2 had with characters being able to do unlimited fireballs and even in the middle of the air etc.

Block-as-back. What's this going backwards thing? :) Soku at least, if your opponent whiffs, you go and whack her good and hard. At a pro level, a whiff that lasts more than about a second will lose you probably 1/4 of your life-bar, and maybe as much as 2/3 if the opponent has a 5-card for you to eat under the right weather conditions!

That said, thinking of balance; Soku has had 11 revisions to it to balance it since it first came out; and that was based on an expansion pack to TH 10.3 Hisouten (Scarlet Weather Rhapsody); which itself had many balancing packs. It is an incredibly balanced game, and it has a *huge* skill range. To play the pros online (I am not a pro) you need to be able to react in about 13frames tops (the game runs at 60fps, so that's just under 0.22seconds).

If you want a try at that, check out http://getyourwebsitehere.com/jswb/rttest01.html and see what you get. I tend to average about 0.25. Of course, reading things coming at you in a beat-em-up, you tend to have slightly more context than said website; but soku is fast enough that there's not a huge difference...

Here's an example of Ryu acting on the previous quick jab by Ken (just let Ken have second jab for picture puposes). This is the biggest distance btw, between the characters for this to happen. So any closer it also happens like so in the picture. When the distance is greater, Ryu would keep on walking backwards.



Ryu is simply walking backwards untill Ken makes a move. I reckon high level players use this to zone their opponent instead of zoning by moving themselves alone, lol.

I love difficult games, I am certainly a massochist when it comes to that. PCB is definitely up in my ally. It reminds me of Ikaruga, not that I played that much or any similar games. Unless I would count black and white Asteroid, Crystal Quest and to a lesser extent maybe UN Squadron for Snes.

My clicking average was about 0.24, and my button press about 0.23.

yeah, my point was why you were going _backwards_ at this distance :)

Me playing tenshi again online in a slightly laggy match (you can see several times I WTF to myself when a combo doesn't come out due to a combination of lag and/or mis-input. Naturally the replay doesn't show the lag, you just have to imagine...) The final whiff gains my opponent Tenshi's divine punishment...

Tenshi shows off Scarlet Weather Rapture

As you can see, soku fights are fast and furious (even when lag means your inputs/combing drop, and hence you mash simpler moves more) that was 2 rounds in 100seconds from the actual start...

I also started with Street Fighter II. These days I stick to Namco's fighters (Tekken and Soul Calibur,) because Capcom's just been churning out the same crap lately. I've been working on my Soku Skills, though, and need to go back and finish getting the MK9 trophies.

My locally owned game store has an MK2 arcade machine, which I kinda still suck at...

As to respond to your point which I do not fully get other than maybe that you mean `Why WOULD you walk back at that distance?`. The only relevance I can give on that distance, is that you have to keep moving as to most people's opinion. Myself I love to stand idle in for ex. MKII.

Remember that I said that that is the max distance for it to happen. Any distance closer up to being right next to your opponent it also works.
And ofcourse at hitting distance and just outside that distance, I see walk interrupt as a flaw by having block asigned to holding/pressing back.

The only good thing with asinging back to block, is this extra feature that one can zone his own character in relation to his opponent, by moving (ofcourse here better said cancel the movement) that opponent.

Shade, do you know what version it is? Likely it's US 3.1.

Offtopic, is there a thread where everybody tells where they are from? Not that I will be in luck knowing there's a MKII cabinet somewhere near me, though. :( :(

If you mean my point; there were two points:

1) at that distance in your SF2 image, you'd want to be going forward rather than back anyway. I suspect that holds true of pretty much any fighter where you aren't a newbie.

2) In soku whilst back is block, it is only on hit contact; i.e. for any whiff at any range, back is just move away. [Again, not that you would want to do without good reason if you are good] If you look at the ending point where my opponent uses one of Patchouli's reversal spell-cards in a poorly judged effort to counter one of my attacks, you see me as Tenshi walk backwards (i.e. it doesn't block) slightly whilst the whiffing attack is gong on to get an optimal position to [severely] punish.


And yes, there was a thread for new members to post details about themselves in off-topic, you can try and dig it out if you want.

@1

It could very well be a distance for fireball trap, ie slow fireball to fast fireball.

It varies to the mechanics of the game, really.

@2

Obviously this is the way I want backblocking to work. So +1 for Soku.

I'm a counter maniac. That's one of the reasons I stand idle, I am that good to counter 95% of the things the opponent throws upon me on reaction. Sadly my play style never went along with online play (imagine DC been played with a delay as small being 30ms, doing S1 TA no rock challenge..).

:Dead:

But I am a very realistic person, I know my MKII and UMK3 skills are in the Top 20 of the world for sure, but my guess on narrowing that down I would guess I am at least Top 3. This on keyboard, altough along the ride of me getting at my level, I always at least went through my mind how I would do the same things on stick. But surely I would need real stick practise before it would be around my kb level..

If anyone wants to play SFII CE or Hyper Fighting....stop by my place and put some quarters in my arcade machine ;)

Sadly, it's a bit far. :(

I think classic DC was only 15fps, or 66ms/frame. Therefore 30ms delay would hardly be noticeable. Compare that to modern games are 60fps; so e.g. soku with delay 30ms is almost two frames. That's not good; but sadly in reality, a delay of only 30ms on a link is incredibly good. Most games have a lag of 5-6 frames. - i.e. between 80 and 100ms. Much worse going from EU to US due to speed of light, etc :(

Very humble person too. :P

I thought I was pretty awesome before I played online; then I realised I was totally crap.

We use arcade sticks for soul calibur. Sticks seem (IMHO) too slow for soku, so we use (wired) gamepads which feel faster on response. Some people actually play soku on keyboard (pretty horrific IMHO with 6 action keys plus 8-way direction input, but each to their own).

I tried searching Soku for Mame, couldn't find it. Now I hope it doesn't get played on some emulator I never get working.

Yea I know I got to put the money where my mouth is. I tried to be humble in saying that I THINK I have it in me to topple your throne. :P

I have to disagree, altough DC uses buffering input here in there, too many things are to precise to handle when doing for ex that S1 TA no rock challenge. Really, the slightest delay would f it up already.

I have always been a sprite watcher. I always await certain frames, and by each those frame the # of that frame.
It is so hard wired, that online I often slip back into that while I don't want to. resulting always being just late with a connection of 40ms.
After playing some certain amount of online play, I adapted to learn myself a 2 style, that works really good online. But I don't like to play that style, as I need to do way more patternized "mashing" of the foremost thing(s) to do in a given situation.
Ofcourse offline I would also make use of anticipation, but online anticipation is key, while it isn't offline, especially when someone stands idle and does nothing untill the opponent does something. :P

I am pretty aware of my own attention span(s) during play. They obviously work by it's intensity, in some wave/sine form.
And that's where I have learned pretty well to put accordingly a wave that consist of playing on anticipation and playing on reaction.
So when concentration wave hits a low on the attention span I go to high of anticipation. And when the concentration hits a high, I accordingly hit a high reactional play (and thus low on anticipation).
Ofcourse when playing, it goes by heart.

It's fun to play with this with that link you gave.

And I really would like a stick to play my Mame games. As Imo in the end, everything I do must be able to be done on an original cabinet as well.

If there was no internetzZ I would be no 1 for sure. As I had deadly secrets on knowledge. Ofcourse I would only be number 1 in the very firrst tourney, as after that they know my secrets. :P

No; Soku runs on windows XP or later. If you do not have a windows box, you need VM-Ware, Parallels (pay-ware emulators that work perfectly for the problem) or Wine (freeware; which works, although there are a few glitches - you can play net games).

Shade and Jon God both have it running in Wine (I believe); I paid for parallels myself. One of them might post wine instructions... Although it really isn't too difficult.

Err.. You assumed that I had a mac, right? Seems 99% of the people here do!

So basicly I only need to find the game.

But it struck me that this Lion inbuild recording function must be from an apple OS. Probably named Lion.. Anyways, this is ofcourse a problem as to recording.


I really like to observe my own mind when using that reaction speed link. I don't like to anticipate, but this one time I found it a fun idea when I was messing around with something similar years ago. It was on a computer in passage from some university here. After a few tries, I lucked it to click it on 0.0 ms. I just had to leave it like that, just for the small chance a person noticing gets a mindfuck for half a sec, lol.

There was the if there in my original quote. Actually, I had presumed from your earlier posts you were actually a Windows user (along with the not having RtDC when it would be so easy to get on the Mac).

That shouldn't be much trouble. Note that Soku is an expansion for Hisouten (TH10.3) so you need to download both. If you really can't find them, PM me, and I might be able to help. English translation and patches can be downloaded from here if the version you download is not already up-to-date and translated.

Ah, with 'box' you meant computer. :P Didn't get that.

Thanks for the link.