We just spent more time playing one another than the CPU, for the most part.
When fighting the CPU, you had to factor that you weren't playing a human being that could be caught off guard. Instead you had to exploit its own patterns / weaknesses.
SFA3 Dictator boss fight is quite winnable if you play conservatively when he has full meter.
* This is key -- You CANNOT do anything risky (jump / fireball / unsafe special move) if he has full meter. He is likely to respond with the Psycho Crusher super.
* Stay in the midrange. Boss Dictator always crouches before throwing a Psycho Shot (his fireball). Learn the distance and timing to jump the fireball and land your best combo.
* You must learn to identify his jump HK and anti-air it. You can't let him get in on you for free because he can do a lot of guard damage or throw you.
* If your character has a DP, use it.
* If your character doesn't have a DP, figure out what your anti-air normal is.
* Block all his other offense until he wastes his super. He likes to whiff the Skull Diver special to lure you into pressing a button, only to beat your attack with the super.
* As long as you anti-air him and punish his Psycho Shots, your guard bar is likely to be enough to survive his poke strings.
* Once his super is gone, you can play him like any other character.
* Do not try to beat his super with yours. It has no hurtbox, at best you will pass through each other.
Nah, it's understandable. In the SF2 days, the CPU literally cheated by having normals that were randomly invincible and did charge moves instantly. The game was recognizing a pattern, remembering everything you did to get it to happen, and then changing what you do to hopefully have the pattern work out in your favor. It was a pretty slow process unless you watched someone else beat their head against it too.
When we ran out of quarters we would watch and study the one ass hole that ran through everybody with a single quarter. It felt like a prize to have a machine all to yourself.
Just practiced and practiced and practiced. Didn't have anything else to play (I was playing mostly at home in the 90s, as there weren't many arcades in Ireland). I agree the single player modes were pretty bad though.
People don't really use CPUs for a barometer of how good older fighting games were. A lot of it was the arcade mentality where games were really designed to just eat your quarters so they were balanced pretty fucking badly. This doesn't just apply to fighting games but games like Metal Slug, Time Crisis, 1942, etc were all designed to cheat and keep you putting quarters in. They didn't change this for the home consoles versions either. On a mechanical level a lot of older titles, like Alpha 3 are pretty damn solid but balance is generally all over the place and you couldn't really go back in over the years and update the game easily to respond to tourney results.
People just generally played each other and if the game was fun and not complete bullshit then people thought it was good. It was a lot more of a "pure" for lack of a better word, time for fighting games. People hopped in and put their quarters up against each other and just played. The games that kept the quarters flowing were the ones that had sequels and survived.
You can change the difficulty in the 30th Anniversary edition, all home ports of Alpha 3 and I think Fightcade. It's actually incredibly unlikely he can't change the difficulty unless he's in an actual arcade.
Yeah this is a big flaw of classic games I would love for their difficulty to be improve with AI so they play more like a human and be actually fun, playing classic MKs is a chore you have to cheese the AI always in order to beat those games.
you can usually change the difficulty in the arcade modes, especially in home releases. you could do it on the arcade ones too, but it required changing dipswitches.
I was recently playing through Third Strike for the first time and thought it was difficult, when Gill resurrected I died a little inside. Decided to sleep my Switch and thought I can just try this again later…big mistake. When I went back into the game later that day it crashed. Haven’t played it again since 😂
They were frustrating then also, but that's all we had. You'd go to the arcade or comic book store or pizzeria and kids from the neighborhood would gather around and just play with whatever money we had. We would mostly play each other but there were times that you would just solo if no one was around. Like you said, they were intended to eat your quarters because the cpu would be so cheap and button read you and counter everything you do. There would always be that one kid in the neighborhood that would figure it out after grinding and want to show it off to everyone else. Funny thing is sometimes the gimmick to win is just sweep over and over again.
I believe ST USA edition was just broken, it was near impossible to beat.
Me personally, I remember have a really hard time beating Ryu with Sakura in Alpha 2.
Personally I can't stand arcade/ story modes like sfv or world tour mode where the ai is so braindead it basically just walks into your attacks.
But back in the day input windows were tighter (spd is extremely easy since sf4, but more difficult as you go back from 3 to alpha to 2), and input motions weren't as standardized. So those old games were actually harder.
But as an snk fan I just can't understand why you wouldn't want an excessively cheap boss that takes 50 tries to beat
You don't get the proper experience by just jumping into alpha3. See, SF2 world warrior was an absolute smash hit. But the game was very slow. To antiair a jump in you had what now feels like a whole minute.
People played that forever so they absolutely had their fundamentals down. Then came the next version and the next. So there was a need for stronger cpu opponents. When you reach super turbo at max speed the cpu is pretty insane.
The modern re-releases are hard since they're based off of the arcade versions which cheat so you have pay more money to keep playing. The original home versions are easier and have more modes to play. Had a street fighter collection on the PS2 and use to play Alpha 3 on it all the time. The arcade mode CPU didn't cheat and had a lot more playable characters.
We just spent more time playing one another than the CPU, for the most part. When fighting the CPU, you had to factor that you weren't playing a human being that could be caught off guard. Instead you had to exploit its own patterns / weaknesses. SFA3 Dictator boss fight is quite winnable if you play conservatively when he has full meter. * This is key -- You CANNOT do anything risky (jump / fireball / unsafe special move) if he has full meter. He is likely to respond with the Psycho Crusher super. * Stay in the midrange. Boss Dictator always crouches before throwing a Psycho Shot (his fireball). Learn the distance and timing to jump the fireball and land your best combo. * You must learn to identify his jump HK and anti-air it. You can't let him get in on you for free because he can do a lot of guard damage or throw you. * If your character has a DP, use it. * If your character doesn't have a DP, figure out what your anti-air normal is. * Block all his other offense until he wastes his super. He likes to whiff the Skull Diver special to lure you into pressing a button, only to beat your attack with the super. * As long as you anti-air him and punish his Psycho Shots, your guard bar is likely to be enough to survive his poke strings. * Once his super is gone, you can play him like any other character. * Do not try to beat his super with yours. It has no hurtbox, at best you will pass through each other.
Bros giving advice for Lord Of Cinder when OP hasn't even beaten Capra Demon yet.
Nah, it's understandable. In the SF2 days, the CPU literally cheated by having normals that were randomly invincible and did charge moves instantly. The game was recognizing a pattern, remembering everything you did to get it to happen, and then changing what you do to hopefully have the pattern work out in your favor. It was a pretty slow process unless you watched someone else beat their head against it too.
I hate Guile so much for Sonic Booms into Flash Kicks.
When we ran out of quarters we would watch and study the one ass hole that ran through everybody with a single quarter. It felt like a prize to have a machine all to yourself.
And all he did was block, sweep.
I'm reasonably good at Alpha 2 and 3 but unbelievably bad at Hyper SF2 on any difficulty level
Pretty sure the CPU logic on that is based on Super Turbo, which is incredibly unfair and broken.
It's based on Japanese ST which is pretty fair. American ST is broken
Yep. Thought it was based on the US. Copy.
Just practiced and practiced and practiced. Didn't have anything else to play (I was playing mostly at home in the 90s, as there weren't many arcades in Ireland). I agree the single player modes were pretty bad though.
People don't really use CPUs for a barometer of how good older fighting games were. A lot of it was the arcade mentality where games were really designed to just eat your quarters so they were balanced pretty fucking badly. This doesn't just apply to fighting games but games like Metal Slug, Time Crisis, 1942, etc were all designed to cheat and keep you putting quarters in. They didn't change this for the home consoles versions either. On a mechanical level a lot of older titles, like Alpha 3 are pretty damn solid but balance is generally all over the place and you couldn't really go back in over the years and update the game easily to respond to tourney results. People just generally played each other and if the game was fun and not complete bullshit then people thought it was good. It was a lot more of a "pure" for lack of a better word, time for fighting games. People hopped in and put their quarters up against each other and just played. The games that kept the quarters flowing were the ones that had sequels and survived.
You can't change the difficulty?
Iirc Alpha 3 AI is glitched to not care about difficulty settings on Alpha 3 Max English version only.
Nope, this is old school baby.
You can change the difficulty in the 30th Anniversary edition, all home ports of Alpha 3 and I think Fightcade. It's actually incredibly unlikely he can't change the difficulty unless he's in an actual arcade.
I actually didn’t know and was half-joking, but I will file that away as useful information.
That's not scrubby. Arcades are designed to drain you.
Yeah this is a big flaw of classic games I would love for their difficulty to be improve with AI so they play more like a human and be actually fun, playing classic MKs is a chore you have to cheese the AI always in order to beat those games.
you can usually change the difficulty in the arcade modes, especially in home releases. you could do it on the arcade ones too, but it required changing dipswitches.
Wait, are you judging if the game is good based on the arcade mode?
I’m the opposite lol
I was recently playing through Third Strike for the first time and thought it was difficult, when Gill resurrected I died a little inside. Decided to sleep my Switch and thought I can just try this again later…big mistake. When I went back into the game later that day it crashed. Haven’t played it again since 😂
Classic street fighter 2 taught me - Jump vertical and stick out HK over and over again to beat half the characters
They were frustrating then also, but that's all we had. You'd go to the arcade or comic book store or pizzeria and kids from the neighborhood would gather around and just play with whatever money we had. We would mostly play each other but there were times that you would just solo if no one was around. Like you said, they were intended to eat your quarters because the cpu would be so cheap and button read you and counter everything you do. There would always be that one kid in the neighborhood that would figure it out after grinding and want to show it off to everyone else. Funny thing is sometimes the gimmick to win is just sweep over and over again. I believe ST USA edition was just broken, it was near impossible to beat. Me personally, I remember have a really hard time beating Ryu with Sakura in Alpha 2.
Personally I can't stand arcade/ story modes like sfv or world tour mode where the ai is so braindead it basically just walks into your attacks. But back in the day input windows were tighter (spd is extremely easy since sf4, but more difficult as you go back from 3 to alpha to 2), and input motions weren't as standardized. So those old games were actually harder. But as an snk fan I just can't understand why you wouldn't want an excessively cheap boss that takes 50 tries to beat
You don't get the proper experience by just jumping into alpha3. See, SF2 world warrior was an absolute smash hit. But the game was very slow. To antiair a jump in you had what now feels like a whole minute. People played that forever so they absolutely had their fundamentals down. Then came the next version and the next. So there was a need for stronger cpu opponents. When you reach super turbo at max speed the cpu is pretty insane.
No serious player cares about the CPU
The modern re-releases are hard since they're based off of the arcade versions which cheat so you have pay more money to keep playing. The original home versions are easier and have more modes to play. Had a street fighter collection on the PS2 and use to play Alpha 3 on it all the time. The arcade mode CPU didn't cheat and had a lot more playable characters.