From: el27166@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (This Space for Rent)
Subject: History of SF2 at UIUC (continued)
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 18:33:52 GMT

The Age of Keep Away
---------------------
Eventually, there was a respond to all of the ticking.  Rather than
let players get close to you, you had to keep them far away from you.
Instead of blocking when people jump in, you did a special move which
would trade hits or at least keep the evil tickers away.  The best
characters because the ones best at keeping people away.

These characters were Guile and Dhalsim.  I started playing Guile
and dabbled in Dhalsim because I knew of his noogie-to-death tick.
BTW, I discovered the noogie to death tick by trying to play Dhalsim
like Chun Li.  Strong punch, throw.  It's just about the same timing.
I kept it a secret from evil Dhalsim players until later on.

But for a long time, Guile and Dhalsim could dominate a machine.
If Chun Li couldn't jump in on Guile when he was charged for a
razor, then it was impossible to get in the throws.  Same goes for
Dhalsim.

I knew Dhalsim would be devastating because I knew that if Dhalsim
could do so well keeping you away, and if you got close to tick,
Dhalsim could noogie you to death, there would be no conceivable way
to beat him!

Dhalsim and Guile soon made Ken and Ryu obsolete with their new
fighting tactics.

I even changed my fighting style with Chun Li.  She became an
annoying foot sweep, walk under and throw type of character.  She
would never jump over and throw characters anymore.  It was
particularly devastating against Ken/Ryu players who could not
hit that forward sweep with any of their moves.

Eventually, I started playing Guile more, and Chun Li less.  I
continued to dabble in Dhalsim.

The Age of Combos
-----------------
In order to stay competitive against Guile and Dhalsim, people
developed combos with Ken and Ryu first.  The easiest combo was:
aerical roundhouse, short short short short kick.  This would
be enough to dizzy you if you didn't block the first hit.  And
if the Ken/Ryu player was good, he'd hit and possibly restun you
with a fierce/jab dragon punch combo.  Nasty.

One day, I read about Guile's Fierce, strong, razor kick combo.
So faithfully, I tried it out.  Hey!  It worked great!  After a
little thought into the matter, I came up with combos for Chun Li,
Blanka, and Honda.  Combos really gave Blanka new life against
Guile, so I started playing Blanka in order to beat the keep away
players (Guile and Dhalsim).

Eventually, Blanka became VERY dominant over the machine.  Since
I learned Blanka late in the game, I didn't play Blanka quite the
same way as other Blanka players learned to play him.  Others stuck
to a keep away strategy, using Blanka's long reach.  I used Blanka's
fast attacks, and fast jumps to counter, by reflex, any of my
opponent's moves.  And if you tried to walk under and throw at the
wrong time, you'd be dizzied by a combo, and most likely killed by
another combo.  It made life tough for Guile, that's for certain.

At least those Guile vs. Dhalsim wars became less frequent when
Blanka was on the machine.

The Age of the Magic Throw
---------------------------
Eventually, Quinn DID figure out how to beat Blanka using Guile,
and it became the same boring kind of game as Guile vs. Dhalsim.
I won't go into details, but if played to perfection, Guile does
have an advantage over Blanka.

I was about to give up playing the game, since I liked to play
aggressively with Chun Li, Guile, and Blanka, and the new waiting
game was very tedious.  However, I read Terrence Lee's post about
the magic throw and decided to give it a try.

After a few experiments, Quinn and I were both able to do it.
We had fun dazzling the folks with our new found bug.  But soon,
rumors of SF2-CE surfaced and we eagerly anticipated its appearance
at Space Port, the local arcade.

-- 
Eu-Ming Lee (aka CyberGeek)                      el27166@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu
"Nobody told me there'd be .sigs like these."
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