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At first I wouldn't call myself a beginner at Street Fighter. I put down many of my hard earned coins at the bowling alley up the road from me on Street Fighter II, playing against kids my age, and guys much older. I wouldn't say either that I was an expert either. I was good, but not enough to gloat about. I had it for the Sega Genesis too, putting in many weekends at home against the kids in my neighborhood. Guile and Ken were my two favorite characters to use. 

And that was it. I stopped. I never played any of the Alphas, I never played III, or any of the Marvel vs. Capcoms. I wasn't much into any other fighting game since then either. I tried Tekken, DOA, and Soul Calibur sure, but not enough to really dedicate a lot of time to. 

I bought SF IV when it came out because it seemed like a hearkening to the old days. Good ol' fashioned 2D platform with updated graphics, new characters along with most of the old ones, and killer combos and ultra combos. But alas, it was too difficult for me (cry me a river right??). I couldn't, at the time, justify spending the time and energy into playing. I lost my touch with Guile, and Ken, and I didn't much care to try to pick it up.

Super Street Fighter IV just came out, which I bought with the intention of mastering it once again. Sometimes when things get too difficult I don't bother playing. OR I keep playing, stall my progress in order to master all the tricks, the trades, and ins and outs of the game and then take it to the next level (which is what I mostly do anyway). So I'm beginning a multi-piece story on my chronicles of SSF IV. 

(cue techno heavy metal intro music here)

Welcome to my Chronicles! of Super Street Fighter IV. 

Anyway, with a bevy of characters to choose from now, it's getting to be difficult. I'm kind of sick of Guile now, so I tried Ken, but Ken got too boring. So I started looking elsewhere. I'm not really into the charging-special attack characters like Guile, Blanka, DeeJay or Chun-Li. 

I seem to be into characters that kick a lot, so some of my favorites are Juri (she's such a bad ass…for a robot) , Fei Long and Cammy. Guy got me interested, because I loved Final Fight back in the day too, but I don't think I'm going to continue with him. I want to master ONE character in the start. Once I do and start demolishing the CPU, and maybe online, then I can maybe go back and start up a back up character. So those are the ones I'm trying to pick. 

It took me a while to realize how to do the armor break maneuvers and the Ultra Combo (It's not "hit punch three times", it's "hit all punch buttons together"…I'm such a moron). I just found those out today and I'm kind of excited. More stuff for me to discover! 

Anyway, I'm playing through the game on Very Easy, and spending time in the training room. I know Very Easy is a cake walk (it is, really) but I want to master my character's (whomever they may be) moves and attacks before I start pushing it to the next level. Guides don't really help me, so I won't be purchasing one. I learn on my own better sometimes. So I'm playing through the story modes with those characters, and trying my best to master them. I haven't dedicated myself to playing a fighting game like this for 10 years, so give me a bit. I moved the buttons around so that my heavy attacks are on the face buttons instead of R1 and R2 (I got it for the PS3 because the D-Pad is much better, and so's the analog in my opinion). I don't know why, but I think that works best for me. 

So I guess I'll stop here, save the rest for my next update. I hope to have locked down a character by then, and update my progress, see how well I'm doing. I'm hoping too that maybe if someone who's interested in playing SSFIV and hasn't played a fighting game before, or is just like me and a little rusty can stumble across this and maybe learn a thing or two to help them get started. OR, if an expert stumbles along, and can give me some good advice, that'd be nice too! 

 

Coming soon…part II…will he ever man up and set the difficulty to medium??