From: el27166@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Eu-Ming Lee)
Subject: SFII: Freezing the game without Guile's help
Keywords: sf2 freeze
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 08:34:23 GMT

I've had the game freeze up on me a couple of times before.  It's not the
same as the Guile freeze or even the one in which Guile freezes his
opponent.  I'm talking about, I'm playing the computer and someone joins
in and the game freezes.

I don't know if this is reproduceable, but if anyone would really care to
investigate, I noted the exact move I was doing and the circumstances just
in case someone would try to reproduce it.

I was playing Blanka on the right side and fighting Balrog.  The round was
just beginning, and I was charged up for the ball.  My friend had dropped
hit credit in already.  Exactly when the round started, I did a ball, and
at the exact same time, my friend pushed the player 1 button to join in.
The nice blue words, "Here comes a new challenger!" flashed across the
screen... but that's all that happened.  The game froze and the words
just kept flashing on the frozen screen.  Since the circumstances were
very explicit, I suppose someone could experiment and tell me if this
is reproduceable or not.

As a side note, I have a relatively decent explanation of how standing
razor kicks and other funny quirks happen.  It's not a bug in the software,
but rather the hardware.  Let me explain what happened a few weeks ago
at our arcade.

The joysticks broke; that's nothing new.  But they broke in a very
special way.  It seemed that the switch for moving right got stuck, so
that your character was always moving right.  Now any other normal
person would have gotten the attendant to fix the problem, but no, I
had to try out some new moves with the weird joystick.  When I pushed
the joystick to the left, my character would still move right.  As a
result, I could be walking forward and still be charged for the sonic
boom, ball, etc.  So I played a few games where I would walk forward
and suddenly throw a boom or ball.  Here's the move, if anyone's
interested:

On the left side of opponent:
O-   (you're walking right since the switch is stuck, but you're charged!)
O    (this will throw a boom or ball to the right if the opponent is there)

On the right side of opponent:
O
O-  Throws a boom or ball to the left.  You're always charged up for it :)

With this newly discovered knowledge, I finally figured out why Guile's
standing razor kicks and such occur, but are not reproduceable:  They're
the result of sticky switches!  SF2 has a tendency to take the signals
from the buttons when they are pressed AND depressed.  In fact, the
roundhouse button is broken on one of the machines here, and only works
when you let go of it.  If you press it and keep it held, it won't work,
but if you let go, the roundhouse comes out.  Makes magic throws more
challenging, but now impossible :)

Anyway, it makes sense that the Capcom would design the joystick switches
the same way.  I've noticed that jerky joystick motions for razor kicks
and such work better than leaving the joystick in the position.  So what
happens when you do a standing razor kick?

  /
O    You charge up for a razor kick, but the 'down' switch gets stuck

- O  Then you move forward, throw a boom, or whatever.

 /   O
O   /  You jerk the joystick back to back defense or jump up.
       The jerky motion of your moves dislodges the stuck switch and voila!
       Instant razor kick!

For me the standing razor happens almost invariably in one certain instance:
I throw a slow boom, walk forward a bit and then forward sweep.  Instead of
a forward sweep, a razor kick will come out.  It's gotten to the point 
where I almost expect it to happen :)

I guess it's up to someone to design a SF2 game with four directional
buttons rather than a joystick!  Think of all the interesting possibilities!
Guile would be awful, but then again, he may be no match for Blanka.
Wow, a game with ten buttons... intense.

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