Fighting games - Cancels: Which games are good to learn/practice them, gamespeed options

[BerryTogart]

I recently did put a bit of my little spare time into SFA2 Gold on the Saturn and started to look a bit more into cancels.
There are a couple of things I wonder about:

For those who have more or less "mastered" cancels in fighting games: How does gamespeed affect your performance?
Personally I ironically have a much easier time to perform basic cancels (Ryu standing MK into Fireball/Hurricane, etc.) on Turbo2 than on "Normal"
After experimenting in practice mode a bit I found that Arcade Mode doesn't even offer the choice between Turbo1 and 2 (It felt like Turbo1?)

Which are good games to practice cancelling?
Regarding ease of execution and/or guided training modes

How does input lag affect cancelling
From a timing standpoint it shouldn't make much of a difference if you only consider your own combo and no reactions to your opponent. (at the worst the combo would have the same button timings but a "delayed" execution.)
Main interest: Do you do your cancels "visually aided" (look when the hit animation is visible) or are you "auto performing" them and actually wouldn't need to look at the screen timing wise?

When do you start to charge for cancels with charge characters?
E.g.: Charlie. I have a very hard time performing Cross up MK, cr.LP, cr.LK xx MK Flash Kick
Do you start charging down as soon as the jumping animation starts?

Gamepad use
For the moment I use the Saturn pad for practice - does it all come down to personal preference or are some concepts in fighting games generally harder to apply on gamepad/stick?

 

[100proof]

For those who have more or less "mastered" cancels in fighting games: How does gamespeed affect your performance?
Personally I ironically have a much easier time to perform basic cancels (Ryu standing MK into Fireball/Hurricane, etc.) on Turbo2 than on "Normal"
After experimenting in practice mode a bit I found that Arcade Mode doesn't even offer the choice between Turbo1 and 2 (It felt like Turbo1?)

If you plan on using Ryu, cancelling off his crouching buttons will generally be easier as a) his crouching buttons tend to have more horizontal range which makes them better to use in most neutral situations and b) since fireball and hurricane kick both start at a down position, it's easier to execute when you're already there. To answer your question, you should always practice on whatever the game's default speed is online/in tournament settings. Even if your only interest is self-improvement (and you don't care about being able to beat other people), the vast majority of people play games at the default turbo speed (which is generally the highest one in a given game) and if you learn at a slower speed and ever want to play others, you'll be putting yourself at a severe disadvantage for no other reason than stubbornness.

Which are good games to practice cancelling?

My recommendation would be Super Turbo. Partially because it's my game of choice but mostly because original SF2 has the tightest input restrictions and cancelling windows of the series. Hence, if you get good there, you'll be perfectly fine playing any Street Fighter game.

How does input lag affect cancelling

Cancelling windows aren't tight enough for a 1 or 2-frame input lag to make any real difference for the average player. Links and hit-confirming are a different story but you've got a ways to go before worrying about that.

Main interest: Do you do your cancels "visually aided" (look when the hit animation is visible) or are you "auto performing" them and actually wouldn't need to look at the screen timing wise?

Not entirely sure the question you're asking so I'll answer both. As far as performing them, it's purely a matter of learning timing. My hands know exactly when to perform a motion to get a cancel regardless of video or audio cues.

If by "visually aided", you mean only doing them when you know they'll hit (also known as hit-confirms), that depends on the situation and the game. Generally, I won't do any cancel that will leave me vulnerable to a guaranteed punish unless I can hit-confirm it (example: Guile cr. MP x Flash Kick). Unless a button has a huge cancel window (Chun cr. mk and Ken cr. MP in Third Strike are the first two that come to mind), you have to use some tricks to hit-confirm buttons (negative edge, plinking, whiff punishing, etc.). Personally, I'm too old and don't have the reflexes anymore to do crazy hit confirms so I generally only cancel stuff when I know it's 99% safe on block or the hit confirm is easy (off dizzies, crush counters in SF5, FADCs in SF4, throwing out buttons outside of range to whiff punish). In most games, I largely stick to safe block strings.

When do you start to charge for cancels with charge characters?

<Avengers Hulk meme> You wanna know my secret? I'm always charging. </meme>

If you use charge characters, you should almost always be holding down-back. However, rather than sitting like a bump on a log waiting for people to jump/make some other kind of mistake, the key to effectively using charge characters is to hide your charges within other actions.

The most common example of this is using normals. Guile has a number of normal moves in Super Turbo (b+LK, b/f+MK, far s. RH, etc.) that will actually move him around the screen. Since you only have to be holding down/back for 60 frames in Super Turbo, you can throw out one of those moves at the right range and by the time the animation is complete (including frames spent blocking/being hit by the opponent), you'll either already have a charge ready or be within 15-20 frames (a quarter of a second) away from having a full charge ready. This also gives you time to watch your opponent's reaction and either use one of your two charged moves (flash kick if they jumped toward you, sonic boom if they blocked/were hit by your button for pressure) or to use an appropriately ranged button to start the guessing all over again. There's a number of other tricks (holding charges by doing a d/u move with up-back instead of up or doing a b/f move with down-forward instead of forward in limited situations, charge partitioning in 3rd Strike which allows for multiple chariot tackle juggles by Urien and dash up charged moves, sneaking neutral buttons in to charge combos, etc.).

The biggest thing is that whenever you perform any function (jumping, throwing out a button, performing a move), you should immediately revert to down/back to begin your next charge.

Gamepad use
For the moment I use the Saturn pad for practice - does it all come down to personal preference or are some concepts in fighting games generally harder to apply on gamepad/stick?

All comes down to personal preference. Most great players play on a stick but as arcades have more or less died, there are a lot of great pad players now too. If you're familiar with one method, there will always be an adjustment period to move to a different style but I will always tell people to play on stick.

The Saturn pad remains one of the best pads ever for this kinda thing though.

 

[Neorebel]

I'm nowhere near a 'master' so I can't answer for a lot of these questions, but for a quick recommendation I would try Capcom Vs SNK 2, I thought canceling was very easy in that game particularly. Also, just my opinion - I have no idea how anyone plays fighting games with anything other than a good arcade stick like a Hori or something. It seems very difficult to play the game properly with a pad, imo. I guess with a Saturn pad you have a good quality D-pad at least and a 3x3 button configuration

 

[BerryTogart]

awesome feedback

Thank you very much for this in depth feedback to my questions - much appreciated.

Thx for your input too Neorebel.

 

[GohanX]

Listen to 100proof, he's a beast at fighting games. I think he has whooped my ass at every game we've ever played except for Super SF2, probably due to the timing differences between that game and Super Turbo as he mentioned. I'm pretty good at CE and Super but never really learned how to play at the faster speeds of ST.