Didn't see much discussion of it within the first page of topics in this section, so, I thought I'd take it upon myself to try and convert some people to the fine pastime of throwing some virtual hands. Here I'll mention what I think would help somebody who's on the fence about the genre open up and give it a try. I'm by no means the best out there, but I think I know enough to at least give somebody the tools to get started.
-Fundamental Stuff-
Foreword: Based on a suggestion, I'd like to add that SFV is the game I suggest starting on; the training mode options available to you are just too good to pass up, and while there are more advanced systems in play than something like SFII, you will not need these at a basic level to combat lower level opponents (or even somebody like myself)
I. The holy trinity
So, at the most basic, fundamental level, you can break this genre down to a sort of rock-paper-scissors sort of game. Your three basic tools are Attacking, Blocking, and Throwing.
In most situations, if your opponent is throwing out a lot of Attacks (or 'buttons', jargon for 'normal attack' that you will hear), Blocking is going to beat it. To block, hold back, or down-back relative to the opponent. Depending on the game and Attack used, you may suffer a small amount of damage (referred to as 'chip' damage), and in some games this can kill you, but do not stress it at first. You'll want to be blocking low. There are some things that you have to block high for, but we'll get to that. For now, just focus on blocking low since most attacks in any of these games can be blocked that way. Whether it's a normal kick, a flying uppercut or fireball, or even something fancy like a super attack, odds are you can weather it by just blocking. So get into a habit of holding down-back in between actions.
Now, what if you find yourself in a situation where you can't hit the other guy with anything? He's too patient, and he's just blocking everything. Well, the answer to that is the Throw. Throws are unblockable. In some games, they're done by holding forward or back and pressing a button (usually a heavy attack button; HP/HK in older SF, Heavy Slash in GG, etc.), and in a lot of contemporary games they're done with a button combination; usually your Light Punch (LP) and Light Kick (LK). In any case, the Throw is going to be what you use to punish an opponent who's being a little too patient for you. They deal decent damage (8-10 of these alone can kill an opponent in a lot of games), (generally) inflict good dizzy on the opponent (we'll get to that, too), and knock the opponent down. Knockdowns are one of the best things you can accomplish during a match, and you can bet a throw is going to scare your opponent straight.
So, what does the other guy start doing once you've scared him? He starts to Attack. See, in order to Throw, you actually have to be pretty close to the opponent to land it (else you'll leave yourself wide open; a whiff). In order for him to walk towards you, he has to be holding Forward on his stick. And he can't block while he's doing that. I know, I know, that sounds extremely basic; you can't hold forward and back together, but this is something that can easily be overlooked with all of the crazy stuff that can go on at such a fast pace. Anyway, if he's walking at you, he can't block your strikes, so throw some out. I'm talking stuff like pokes and sweeps. Your Medium and Heavy attacks that would generally be too slow and risky to just whip out otherwise.
This brings me to what I want to describe as a fundamental 'precept' or 'philosophy' in this genre; give the other guy a reason to do something, then exploit it. Turtle up to encourage the opponent to walk into his throw range, and stick a button out to punish him for even thinking about it. Get in his face and lay down some fast Lights to get him to wait it out, and throw him to the mat for being so indecisive. If you can start thinking about these games in this way, you're going to get pretty far pretty darn quickly.
Attacking beats Throwing beats Blocking beats Attacking etc
II. Footsies aka Neutral Game aka 'He's Just Standing There; MENACINGLY'
So you've got a good grasp over the general idea of what is supposed to beat what, and you're ready to get in there and bust some heads. Everything you just learned applies strictly once you're in the other guy's face, when all three of Attacking/Blocking/Throwing can be relevant at any given time. What happens when they're not? Well, that's where both players will be spending a majority of the match, and it all starts right here with this:
What the heck are you supposed to do at Round Start Distance? This is a very important thing to understand, so that you're not just aimlessly running about the screen without a gameplan. In general, there are a few different spacings you'll want to understand, and they describe the distance on the screen between both players. You've got round start distance; too far for throws and basically every attack, but too close to safely throw a fireball at the other guy (we'll get there). There's 3/4 screen, which is what you get when one (but not both) of the players takes a few steps back at round start; you can do basically whatever you want without fear of being punished here. And then there's fullscreen, wherein both players have their backs up to their respective walls. Nothing terribly exciting or relevant happens at fullscreen, at least not with full healthbars and a full timer.
Round Start Distance (or 'quarter screen', sometimes 1/4 screen) and 3/4 screen are the two most important spacings to know about at first. If you want to get in the other guy's face (you know, where most of your stuff is actually able to make contact), you need to know how to get there. Sometimes your character will have some sort of gimmick to muscle their way in, other times you'll be able to employ a dash for a burst of speed; sometimes you'll take one of the biggest fighting game gambles you can take and jump forward (a 'jump-in'). All of these have counters that are going leave you confused on the dirt, so most of the time it's going to be a battle of pixels and inches. The simple ways are often the best ways, and that's no exception with approaching.
I'm going to add another rule for you right now since I touched on it; for now, never jump forward. Glue yourself to the floor. If you feel the need to jump, jump up or jump back; you give up both blocking and all control of your movement when you jump in, so make it a good habit to treat that tool with a lot of respect.
I used the term 'footsies' for this section's title, which is a broad term used to describe the small tricks and feints players are using at these awkward 'can't-quite-hit-him' distances. See, at 1/4 and 3/4 screen, none of your attacks are going to hit the other guy if you're both just standing there, but if the other guy's going to willingly walk into your striking range then you, my friend, are going to hit a sick sweep (crouch Hard Kick, usually) for some damage and a knockdown; giving you total supremacy of the horizontal plane. So, the other guy starts walking at you, you hit your sweep button, and you just whiffed hard and got swept yourself? What happened here? Well, footsies is a two-way street. See, if you want to hit him, you know he's got to get close to you. But what if he knows that? Well, then he can walk up, walk back out, and then punish your hair trigger reaction. This is, at its most basic level, a principle that is termed 'whiff punishing'. It is by far one of the most important things you can learn in one of these games, so put it right up there with our Rock-Paper-Scissors thinking. From round start distance or further, none of your buttons are going to hit the other guy, and neither are his going to hit you. Like in the last section, it's about giving your opponent a good reason to over-commit. Footsies is one of the deeper and most unavoidable things you're going to have to learn in order to play at a competent level, and I'll be leaving you with plenty of resources at the end of this for you to refer to.
III. Footsies cont.; You Need Only Trust Your Feelings
Alright, we just described a very basic interaction at the midscreen. You walk at him, you walk back, and you press sweep. You're going on faith that your sweep is going to connect. Do not count on reactions to carry you very far in this genre; it's not feasible, and that's fine! Not even the best, decades-long veterans have the ability punish 'on-reaction'. To have good footsies, you first want to form an understanding of what buttons are relevant at what distances on the screen. This will help you partition a lot of worthless information, and keep you from panicking and being as surprised. Players will refer to this as lightening up your 'mental stack'.
First and foremost; pick (or watch, if you don't have Street Fighter) Ryu. Every single character in every one of these games are all built on slight tweaks and variations on playing around Ryu's kit. Spend a few days or a week on this guy, and you will be much better prepared for whatever waifu you were planning on picking. At a baseline, Ryu has twelve Normal Attacks; Light Punch (LP), Medium Punch (MP), Heavy Punch (HP), Light Kick (LK), Medium Kick (MK), Heavy Kick (HK), and their six crouching inputs. He also (as of SFV) has three Command Normals; Forward+MP, Forward+HP, and Back+HK. In older games, characters also have six additional attacks that replace your standard standing ones when you're up close. That is a staggering amount of attacks, and that's not even including any of the exotic stuff like fireballs and flying uppercuts (things I've been holding off for a good reason; trust me). In order to ease the burden on yourself, all you really want to do is take any given button and get an idea of a few properties of the attack.
-What's the general 'shape' of the attack? (where does it hit)
-What's the 'speed' of the attack? (when does it hit)
-What's the 'risk' of the attack? (how open will it leave me)
If you do this quick inventory of Ryu's kit, you'll find that from the midscreen out, you'll only have a few relevant buttons; Standing HK (st.HK, for short) and Crouching HP (cr.HP) are anti-airs for different purposes. st.HP is a heavy straight that has a knack for stuffing or out-prioritizing the other guy's attacks. cr.HK is your sweep; a go-to for knockdowns. cr.MK is Ryu's classic poke, and you'll see this with cr.MP as well. Something that all of these moves have in common are the last two factors; these attacks trade their immense range and power for slow speed and large openings. If you throw one of these out and didn't read the opponent's intentions correctly, you may give them control of the screen for the next interaction. In a worst-case scenario, this got you hit. In general, these are not the kind of attacks you ought to be relying on when up close for these reasons.
The good news is that we've taken Ryu's baseline of twenty-four Normal Attacks, and condensed it into six situational answers. You'll want to think about your buttons like this. They are by far the most important part of your kit; for any character. Most of your kit is going to be so situational that you'll only apply it in very niche situations. Some moves will only be used as combo enders or combo filler. But in general you're going to want to identify a few attacks for midscreen out, and a few moves for being up close and establishing pressure.
To tie this back into the section title, the reason you want to do this is so that you can eliminate as much of the guesswork for yourself as possible. If you're Ryu fighting another Ryu and you're at round start distance, you know in general what to do if you suspect he wants to walk forward, jump, throw a fireball, and so on. Playing footsies is less about having reactions, and more about having a good guess as to what they might do based on the situation (distance to you, the timer, how much health you both have, how much super meter you both have, whether it's the final round or not; so much goes into how you'll make decisions that it's mind-boggling). If you're paying attention to how the other guy acts in certain situations, you may be able to exploit it. We can go back to the walk-in-walk-out example for this. If you walk back and forth in a small space on the screen just outside his sweep range, and you go in thinking to yourself 'alright, I'm looking for the sweep, I think he's gonna do it now' and hit your counter-sweep, then you're setting up a good gameplan with some good odds for success.
IV. Putting It Together; Fireballs and Dragon Punches
Alright, I've danced around these two for a while now, and this is probably as good a time as any to address it. When you first turned your go-to fight game on and tried to sit down and learn it, odds are you went to whatever Challenge Mode your game has. From the beginning they have you do your character's special attacks. These are distinct from Normal Attacks in that they require some combination of the stick and a button. For characters like Ryu, you've got traditional motion inputs like the fireball (quarter-circle-forward+Punch). For some like Bison or Guile, you've got charge inputs where you hold the stick in a direction for a period of time to 'charge' the attack, then push it in a different (generally opposite) direction and hit a button.
If you struggle with performing these attacks, I want you to think of the stick on your fightstick or pad like a tenkey on a keyboard. 5 is the resting position, 2 would be crouching, 1 &4 would be blocking (if you're facing right), and 6 is walking forward. 9, for all intents and purposes, does not exist to you. If you're hitting 9, you're (probably) doing something incorrect at this stage. So, to do that fancy fireball, push the stick down, then without releasing it roll it to 3 (down-forward), and finally to 6 (forward). If you did this correctly, Ryu should crouch for a bit, and you'll wind up walking forward. Practice doing this for a bit. Once you feel like you've got the hang of it go ahead and tack on a Punch input after the motion is completed. If your motion was swift enough (and, really, it doesn't have to be lightning fast), and your punch was inputted after, you'll get the fireball. If you get a crouching punch, then you hit punch too early. And, if you get a standing attack, you either hit it too late or your motion was too slow. Use these things to troubleshoot your inputs until you can find it.
The next input is going to be a little tougher, but don't sweat it. It's the Dragon Punch (Shoryuken) motion, which looks kind of like a Z. All you're essentially doing is hitting forward, then doing a fireball motion, then hitting a punch. Forward, to down, to down forward. If you want, you can hold forward to just walk for a little while, then do a fireball while walking. If you did it right, you'll notice that you got a DP. Just try and speed it up until you've got the initial forward input nice and quick. You can tap forward then do the fireball motion, or you can do it all without breaking the motion. Whatever suits you.
That's the technical garbage for this section out of the way. Sometimes you have to get technical and into the nitty-gritty; it can be boring, but you'll thank yourself for having done it.
So, the Fireball and the Dragon Punch. These two are genius in that they were built to compliment one another. The Fireball (especially Light Punch Fireball) gives you sole control over everything in front of you on the lower half of the screen. After a long windup period, Ryu is free to walk in behind the fireball and close some free screen real estate without fear of the opponent challenging him. Unless they throw their own fireball to clash with yours, their only options are going to be to take it on the chin (not ideal), jump up to avoid it (less ideal), or just block the thing. Once that initial windup period is over, Ryu is free to take whatever amount of space on the screen that he's able to before the opponent recovers. That long windup period ('startup', is the term you'll hear for this) can be exploited, however, and this is the only time I want you to consider jumping in as an input that even exists. Jumping Heavy attacks are some of the biggest death dealers in fighting games. They do comical amounts of damage, stun the opponent long enough to combo into your heaviest ground buttons, which themselves can be combo'd into special attacks.
The answer to this is so beautifully simple, and it's the dragon punch. This attack is lightning fast, not sharing that same startup vulnerability as the fireball. On top of that, it has invincibility frames during a good chunk of its relatively short startup period. If you've played Dark Souls, you know how rolling gives you those? Well, imagine if that also had a gigantic fuck-off hitbox on it, did 1/10th of the boss's HP, and put him into his vulnerable state where you could punish him further. Yes, it really does do all of these things. You may have guessed (or known), but the tradeoff here is that the dragon punch is, like a jump-in, one of the biggest gambles you can take. If you guess incorrectly, you're going to be locked in a very lengthy recovery animation, vulnerable for a functional eternity while the opponent prepares to style on you hard once you land. This thing can miss. It can also just be straight up blocked (remember how great blocking is; do not forget that). If your DP whiffs, you're going to feel it.
Alright, so, we've got the fireball, and the dragon punch. But how can we put these together? Well, like the walk-in-walk-out-sweep, we can do the same thing with these. In the midscreen, we can walk around, throw a few fireballs, and when we think we've got the opponent eager to jump, instead of throwing that one extra fireball, we can wait a second and just do a DP. See, jumping in is one of those very few things that you can reliably react to if you're expecting it. So try and put yourself in those situations. Something I heard long ago was 'throw one less fireball than you think you have to'. Like using our movement and Normals to get our opponent to move the way we want them to, the same can be done with fireballs and dragon punches.
V. "I hit the DP! (or a throw, or a sweep for that matter)...what now?"
Well, first off, on top of taking off a respectable chunk of their lifebar with one attack, you've also knocked the other guy down. We've talked about how good knockdowns are, but now we can go into why. With a knockdown, you're (mostly) free to walk right up to the other guy and get right in his face. If you're letting him stand up for free, then you may as well just back up to round start distance and give him his freedom of movement back. See, when you're knocked down, you lose access to everything. Movement (mostly) and attacking are both out the window. You can only stand up. Sometimes, in some games, you have some degree of control over how early and where on the screen you stand up, but you are never getting up for free. With a knockdown, you can enforce a situation termed 'oki' (or 'okizeme' in moonspeak); or just 'the wakeup game'. Like being at midscreen, we can force the opponent to react in ways that are easier to predict. When we throw a fireball, we're telling the other guy "hey either get out of the way of this thing and let me walk in, or just eat it idk". When we want to walk up throw we're telling them "you'd better press a button or I'm knocking you down". We're betting on them calling us out so that we can punish appropriately. 'Waking up' from a knockdown can be treated the same way.
A 'meaty attack' is an attack that is timed to be sticking out and on top of an opponent as they're fully risen. See, while knocked down, the player is invulnerable. Nothing can hit them. In some games you can pick them up with attacks, but there are generally limits on how long this can go on for before you have to land a hard knockdown. You have to be very deliberate in your attack timing because of this. Strike too early, and you'll just whiff. Too late, and the other guy can just mash a light. I honestly didn't want to get this technical here, because really it doesn't matter until you get down to move-by-move situations, but it may help to illustrate this with frame data and hitboxes.
The 'active' portion is what we're concerned about here. Again, most of you reading probably already understand this much, but those two frames represent 2/60th or 1/30th of a second. It's a pretty strict time to have to adhere to. We want to time our attack so that those frames are what the opponent has to stand up into. It's like you're basically getting an attack in on them for free. If they're smart, they're going to wake up and block. This should be your standard when knocked down. Just crouch block as you're standing. Hold down-back while you rise, and if they stuck something on top of you, you'll just block it. Again, I didn't want you to have to get into frame data this early, but it's necessary for understanding what attack to commit your oki to. See, each attack in the game has a value for how much stun it inflicts on the other guy when they block it, or get hit by it. This is termed 'advantage'. If you're expecting the other guy to block, you want to be throwing out buttons that have good advantage. What is 'good' is determined by the game. In Street Fighter V, the fastest normal attacks are 3f in speed. Meaning anything that is -3, -2, or -1 on block is considered 'safe'. 0 is dead even. If you both mashed your 3f button here, you'd 'trade' by smacking one another. If you're plus, then you can commit to attacks that have higher startup periods, but higher on-hit reward. If the opponent tried mashing, they'll eat your heavier attack for it. Tekken 7 is a game in where 'safe' moves are generally as 'slow' as -13. That's a spooky number in SF, but again, it all depends on the game.
So, what you'll want to do is find whatever buttons of yours give the best frame advantage on block. If you want to be fancy, find something that has a good balance of on-hit and on-block advantage. All of this data is online or on companion apps, and many good games these days are implementing this data into menus or even UI elements in training (V has a beautiful display for this). Anyway, pick that button, and force the opponent to stand up into it. If they respected it, you'll be plus, and in a great situation up close to do basically whatever you want unchallenged. And then you're right back to Attack > Block > Throw.
The wakeup game gets interesting in that the opponent does have some ways to mess with you. That Dragon Punch can actually be used during wakeup, and if there was a riskier move than Dragon Punch it'd be Wakeup Dragon Punch. It's a good way to tell you 'fuck off, get away', but again, it's blockable. Give your opponent a reason to want to do this. Knock them down, shuffle back and forth over their character and make them nervous. Don't give them an attack and throw them when they stand; put them right back on the ground. There are plenty of ways to get the other guy itching to throw one of these (and their lifebar) away for free.
VI. It's 1:3X AM and I'm Pretty Tired; Here Are Some Resources
I really do want to keep going, but I started this later than I wanted, and can always pick it up if anybody has questions. Honestly I'd be willing to bet that there are far more experienced people than myself here who just don't know there are others here, so, feel free to chime in. In the meantime, I'll leave you with the very tools I used to learn all of this stuff. If you got this far, a little more reading from vastly more (that is to say, at all) professional sources isn't going to hurt. Or it might, but then that just comes with this genre that I love.
'From Masher to Master; the Educated Enthusiast's Fighting Game Primer' One of the best resources one could have as an intro to this genre. If you liked all of this, then the Primer is going to blow your mind.
Sonic Hurricane: The Footsie Handbook Short chapters covering specific situations that you will run into; and how to answer them. Take it one element at a time. Once you've got a couple of these under your belt as a starting point, you'll have a strong foundation to work off of. All sorts of companion videos in there, too.
Core-A-Gaming: 'Why Button Mashing Doesn't Work' If you want some more concrete reasons to kick the habit of mashing, just watch this.
Core-A-Gaming: 'Playing Fast and Slow' Something to help with the 'mental stack' I'd touched on
Sajam: 'Setting Up Whiff Punishes & Checking Dashes'
Sajam: Buffering & Pokes: Creating a Dangerous Rotation of Neutral Options | What Tutorials Don't Teach
Sajam Talks Strategy: Building an Offensive Gameplan, The Frame Data Doesn't Tell the Whole Story
Juicebox's Explanation of Footsies Personally, this was the first thing I saw that gave me that 'wait that's how you do it?' sort of moment. Essential viewing.
-Fundamental Stuff-
Foreword: Based on a suggestion, I'd like to add that SFV is the game I suggest starting on; the training mode options available to you are just too good to pass up, and while there are more advanced systems in play than something like SFII, you will not need these at a basic level to combat lower level opponents (or even somebody like myself)
I. The holy trinity
So, at the most basic, fundamental level, you can break this genre down to a sort of rock-paper-scissors sort of game. Your three basic tools are Attacking, Blocking, and Throwing.
In most situations, if your opponent is throwing out a lot of Attacks (or 'buttons', jargon for 'normal attack' that you will hear), Blocking is going to beat it. To block, hold back, or down-back relative to the opponent. Depending on the game and Attack used, you may suffer a small amount of damage (referred to as 'chip' damage), and in some games this can kill you, but do not stress it at first. You'll want to be blocking low. There are some things that you have to block high for, but we'll get to that. For now, just focus on blocking low since most attacks in any of these games can be blocked that way. Whether it's a normal kick, a flying uppercut or fireball, or even something fancy like a super attack, odds are you can weather it by just blocking. So get into a habit of holding down-back in between actions.
Now, what if you find yourself in a situation where you can't hit the other guy with anything? He's too patient, and he's just blocking everything. Well, the answer to that is the Throw. Throws are unblockable. In some games, they're done by holding forward or back and pressing a button (usually a heavy attack button; HP/HK in older SF, Heavy Slash in GG, etc.), and in a lot of contemporary games they're done with a button combination; usually your Light Punch (LP) and Light Kick (LK). In any case, the Throw is going to be what you use to punish an opponent who's being a little too patient for you. They deal decent damage (8-10 of these alone can kill an opponent in a lot of games), (generally) inflict good dizzy on the opponent (we'll get to that, too), and knock the opponent down. Knockdowns are one of the best things you can accomplish during a match, and you can bet a throw is going to scare your opponent straight.
So, what does the other guy start doing once you've scared him? He starts to Attack. See, in order to Throw, you actually have to be pretty close to the opponent to land it (else you'll leave yourself wide open; a whiff). In order for him to walk towards you, he has to be holding Forward on his stick. And he can't block while he's doing that. I know, I know, that sounds extremely basic; you can't hold forward and back together, but this is something that can easily be overlooked with all of the crazy stuff that can go on at such a fast pace. Anyway, if he's walking at you, he can't block your strikes, so throw some out. I'm talking stuff like pokes and sweeps. Your Medium and Heavy attacks that would generally be too slow and risky to just whip out otherwise.
This brings me to what I want to describe as a fundamental 'precept' or 'philosophy' in this genre; give the other guy a reason to do something, then exploit it. Turtle up to encourage the opponent to walk into his throw range, and stick a button out to punish him for even thinking about it. Get in his face and lay down some fast Lights to get him to wait it out, and throw him to the mat for being so indecisive. If you can start thinking about these games in this way, you're going to get pretty far pretty darn quickly.
Attacking beats Throwing beats Blocking beats Attacking etc
II. Footsies aka Neutral Game aka 'He's Just Standing There; MENACINGLY'
So you've got a good grasp over the general idea of what is supposed to beat what, and you're ready to get in there and bust some heads. Everything you just learned applies strictly once you're in the other guy's face, when all three of Attacking/Blocking/Throwing can be relevant at any given time. What happens when they're not? Well, that's where both players will be spending a majority of the match, and it all starts right here with this:
What the heck are you supposed to do at Round Start Distance? This is a very important thing to understand, so that you're not just aimlessly running about the screen without a gameplan. In general, there are a few different spacings you'll want to understand, and they describe the distance on the screen between both players. You've got round start distance; too far for throws and basically every attack, but too close to safely throw a fireball at the other guy (we'll get there). There's 3/4 screen, which is what you get when one (but not both) of the players takes a few steps back at round start; you can do basically whatever you want without fear of being punished here. And then there's fullscreen, wherein both players have their backs up to their respective walls. Nothing terribly exciting or relevant happens at fullscreen, at least not with full healthbars and a full timer.
Round Start Distance (or 'quarter screen', sometimes 1/4 screen) and 3/4 screen are the two most important spacings to know about at first. If you want to get in the other guy's face (you know, where most of your stuff is actually able to make contact), you need to know how to get there. Sometimes your character will have some sort of gimmick to muscle their way in, other times you'll be able to employ a dash for a burst of speed; sometimes you'll take one of the biggest fighting game gambles you can take and jump forward (a 'jump-in'). All of these have counters that are going leave you confused on the dirt, so most of the time it's going to be a battle of pixels and inches. The simple ways are often the best ways, and that's no exception with approaching.
I'm going to add another rule for you right now since I touched on it; for now, never jump forward. Glue yourself to the floor. If you feel the need to jump, jump up or jump back; you give up both blocking and all control of your movement when you jump in, so make it a good habit to treat that tool with a lot of respect.
I used the term 'footsies' for this section's title, which is a broad term used to describe the small tricks and feints players are using at these awkward 'can't-quite-hit-him' distances. See, at 1/4 and 3/4 screen, none of your attacks are going to hit the other guy if you're both just standing there, but if the other guy's going to willingly walk into your striking range then you, my friend, are going to hit a sick sweep (crouch Hard Kick, usually) for some damage and a knockdown; giving you total supremacy of the horizontal plane. So, the other guy starts walking at you, you hit your sweep button, and you just whiffed hard and got swept yourself? What happened here? Well, footsies is a two-way street. See, if you want to hit him, you know he's got to get close to you. But what if he knows that? Well, then he can walk up, walk back out, and then punish your hair trigger reaction. This is, at its most basic level, a principle that is termed 'whiff punishing'. It is by far one of the most important things you can learn in one of these games, so put it right up there with our Rock-Paper-Scissors thinking. From round start distance or further, none of your buttons are going to hit the other guy, and neither are his going to hit you. Like in the last section, it's about giving your opponent a good reason to over-commit. Footsies is one of the deeper and most unavoidable things you're going to have to learn in order to play at a competent level, and I'll be leaving you with plenty of resources at the end of this for you to refer to.
III. Footsies cont.; You Need Only Trust Your Feelings
Alright, we just described a very basic interaction at the midscreen. You walk at him, you walk back, and you press sweep. You're going on faith that your sweep is going to connect. Do not count on reactions to carry you very far in this genre; it's not feasible, and that's fine! Not even the best, decades-long veterans have the ability punish 'on-reaction'. To have good footsies, you first want to form an understanding of what buttons are relevant at what distances on the screen. This will help you partition a lot of worthless information, and keep you from panicking and being as surprised. Players will refer to this as lightening up your 'mental stack'.
First and foremost; pick (or watch, if you don't have Street Fighter) Ryu. Every single character in every one of these games are all built on slight tweaks and variations on playing around Ryu's kit. Spend a few days or a week on this guy, and you will be much better prepared for whatever waifu you were planning on picking. At a baseline, Ryu has twelve Normal Attacks; Light Punch (LP), Medium Punch (MP), Heavy Punch (HP), Light Kick (LK), Medium Kick (MK), Heavy Kick (HK), and their six crouching inputs. He also (as of SFV) has three Command Normals; Forward+MP, Forward+HP, and Back+HK. In older games, characters also have six additional attacks that replace your standard standing ones when you're up close. That is a staggering amount of attacks, and that's not even including any of the exotic stuff like fireballs and flying uppercuts (things I've been holding off for a good reason; trust me). In order to ease the burden on yourself, all you really want to do is take any given button and get an idea of a few properties of the attack.
-What's the general 'shape' of the attack? (where does it hit)
-What's the 'speed' of the attack? (when does it hit)
-What's the 'risk' of the attack? (how open will it leave me)
If you do this quick inventory of Ryu's kit, you'll find that from the midscreen out, you'll only have a few relevant buttons; Standing HK (st.HK, for short) and Crouching HP (cr.HP) are anti-airs for different purposes. st.HP is a heavy straight that has a knack for stuffing or out-prioritizing the other guy's attacks. cr.HK is your sweep; a go-to for knockdowns. cr.MK is Ryu's classic poke, and you'll see this with cr.MP as well. Something that all of these moves have in common are the last two factors; these attacks trade their immense range and power for slow speed and large openings. If you throw one of these out and didn't read the opponent's intentions correctly, you may give them control of the screen for the next interaction. In a worst-case scenario, this got you hit. In general, these are not the kind of attacks you ought to be relying on when up close for these reasons.
The good news is that we've taken Ryu's baseline of twenty-four Normal Attacks, and condensed it into six situational answers. You'll want to think about your buttons like this. They are by far the most important part of your kit; for any character. Most of your kit is going to be so situational that you'll only apply it in very niche situations. Some moves will only be used as combo enders or combo filler. But in general you're going to want to identify a few attacks for midscreen out, and a few moves for being up close and establishing pressure.
To tie this back into the section title, the reason you want to do this is so that you can eliminate as much of the guesswork for yourself as possible. If you're Ryu fighting another Ryu and you're at round start distance, you know in general what to do if you suspect he wants to walk forward, jump, throw a fireball, and so on. Playing footsies is less about having reactions, and more about having a good guess as to what they might do based on the situation (distance to you, the timer, how much health you both have, how much super meter you both have, whether it's the final round or not; so much goes into how you'll make decisions that it's mind-boggling). If you're paying attention to how the other guy acts in certain situations, you may be able to exploit it. We can go back to the walk-in-walk-out example for this. If you walk back and forth in a small space on the screen just outside his sweep range, and you go in thinking to yourself 'alright, I'm looking for the sweep, I think he's gonna do it now' and hit your counter-sweep, then you're setting up a good gameplan with some good odds for success.
IV. Putting It Together; Fireballs and Dragon Punches
Alright, I've danced around these two for a while now, and this is probably as good a time as any to address it. When you first turned your go-to fight game on and tried to sit down and learn it, odds are you went to whatever Challenge Mode your game has. From the beginning they have you do your character's special attacks. These are distinct from Normal Attacks in that they require some combination of the stick and a button. For characters like Ryu, you've got traditional motion inputs like the fireball (quarter-circle-forward+Punch). For some like Bison or Guile, you've got charge inputs where you hold the stick in a direction for a period of time to 'charge' the attack, then push it in a different (generally opposite) direction and hit a button.
If you struggle with performing these attacks, I want you to think of the stick on your fightstick or pad like a tenkey on a keyboard. 5 is the resting position, 2 would be crouching, 1 &4 would be blocking (if you're facing right), and 6 is walking forward. 9, for all intents and purposes, does not exist to you. If you're hitting 9, you're (probably) doing something incorrect at this stage. So, to do that fancy fireball, push the stick down, then without releasing it roll it to 3 (down-forward), and finally to 6 (forward). If you did this correctly, Ryu should crouch for a bit, and you'll wind up walking forward. Practice doing this for a bit. Once you feel like you've got the hang of it go ahead and tack on a Punch input after the motion is completed. If your motion was swift enough (and, really, it doesn't have to be lightning fast), and your punch was inputted after, you'll get the fireball. If you get a crouching punch, then you hit punch too early. And, if you get a standing attack, you either hit it too late or your motion was too slow. Use these things to troubleshoot your inputs until you can find it.
The next input is going to be a little tougher, but don't sweat it. It's the Dragon Punch (Shoryuken) motion, which looks kind of like a Z. All you're essentially doing is hitting forward, then doing a fireball motion, then hitting a punch. Forward, to down, to down forward. If you want, you can hold forward to just walk for a little while, then do a fireball while walking. If you did it right, you'll notice that you got a DP. Just try and speed it up until you've got the initial forward input nice and quick. You can tap forward then do the fireball motion, or you can do it all without breaking the motion. Whatever suits you.
That's the technical garbage for this section out of the way. Sometimes you have to get technical and into the nitty-gritty; it can be boring, but you'll thank yourself for having done it.
So, the Fireball and the Dragon Punch. These two are genius in that they were built to compliment one another. The Fireball (especially Light Punch Fireball) gives you sole control over everything in front of you on the lower half of the screen. After a long windup period, Ryu is free to walk in behind the fireball and close some free screen real estate without fear of the opponent challenging him. Unless they throw their own fireball to clash with yours, their only options are going to be to take it on the chin (not ideal), jump up to avoid it (less ideal), or just block the thing. Once that initial windup period is over, Ryu is free to take whatever amount of space on the screen that he's able to before the opponent recovers. That long windup period ('startup', is the term you'll hear for this) can be exploited, however, and this is the only time I want you to consider jumping in as an input that even exists. Jumping Heavy attacks are some of the biggest death dealers in fighting games. They do comical amounts of damage, stun the opponent long enough to combo into your heaviest ground buttons, which themselves can be combo'd into special attacks.
The answer to this is so beautifully simple, and it's the dragon punch. This attack is lightning fast, not sharing that same startup vulnerability as the fireball. On top of that, it has invincibility frames during a good chunk of its relatively short startup period. If you've played Dark Souls, you know how rolling gives you those? Well, imagine if that also had a gigantic fuck-off hitbox on it, did 1/10th of the boss's HP, and put him into his vulnerable state where you could punish him further. Yes, it really does do all of these things. You may have guessed (or known), but the tradeoff here is that the dragon punch is, like a jump-in, one of the biggest gambles you can take. If you guess incorrectly, you're going to be locked in a very lengthy recovery animation, vulnerable for a functional eternity while the opponent prepares to style on you hard once you land. This thing can miss. It can also just be straight up blocked (remember how great blocking is; do not forget that). If your DP whiffs, you're going to feel it.
Alright, so, we've got the fireball, and the dragon punch. But how can we put these together? Well, like the walk-in-walk-out-sweep, we can do the same thing with these. In the midscreen, we can walk around, throw a few fireballs, and when we think we've got the opponent eager to jump, instead of throwing that one extra fireball, we can wait a second and just do a DP. See, jumping in is one of those very few things that you can reliably react to if you're expecting it. So try and put yourself in those situations. Something I heard long ago was 'throw one less fireball than you think you have to'. Like using our movement and Normals to get our opponent to move the way we want them to, the same can be done with fireballs and dragon punches.
V. "I hit the DP! (or a throw, or a sweep for that matter)...what now?"
Well, first off, on top of taking off a respectable chunk of their lifebar with one attack, you've also knocked the other guy down. We've talked about how good knockdowns are, but now we can go into why. With a knockdown, you're (mostly) free to walk right up to the other guy and get right in his face. If you're letting him stand up for free, then you may as well just back up to round start distance and give him his freedom of movement back. See, when you're knocked down, you lose access to everything. Movement (mostly) and attacking are both out the window. You can only stand up. Sometimes, in some games, you have some degree of control over how early and where on the screen you stand up, but you are never getting up for free. With a knockdown, you can enforce a situation termed 'oki' (or 'okizeme' in moonspeak); or just 'the wakeup game'. Like being at midscreen, we can force the opponent to react in ways that are easier to predict. When we throw a fireball, we're telling the other guy "hey either get out of the way of this thing and let me walk in, or just eat it idk". When we want to walk up throw we're telling them "you'd better press a button or I'm knocking you down". We're betting on them calling us out so that we can punish appropriately. 'Waking up' from a knockdown can be treated the same way.
A 'meaty attack' is an attack that is timed to be sticking out and on top of an opponent as they're fully risen. See, while knocked down, the player is invulnerable. Nothing can hit them. In some games you can pick them up with attacks, but there are generally limits on how long this can go on for before you have to land a hard knockdown. You have to be very deliberate in your attack timing because of this. Strike too early, and you'll just whiff. Too late, and the other guy can just mash a light. I honestly didn't want to get this technical here, because really it doesn't matter until you get down to move-by-move situations, but it may help to illustrate this with frame data and hitboxes.
The 'active' portion is what we're concerned about here. Again, most of you reading probably already understand this much, but those two frames represent 2/60th or 1/30th of a second. It's a pretty strict time to have to adhere to. We want to time our attack so that those frames are what the opponent has to stand up into. It's like you're basically getting an attack in on them for free. If they're smart, they're going to wake up and block. This should be your standard when knocked down. Just crouch block as you're standing. Hold down-back while you rise, and if they stuck something on top of you, you'll just block it. Again, I didn't want you to have to get into frame data this early, but it's necessary for understanding what attack to commit your oki to. See, each attack in the game has a value for how much stun it inflicts on the other guy when they block it, or get hit by it. This is termed 'advantage'. If you're expecting the other guy to block, you want to be throwing out buttons that have good advantage. What is 'good' is determined by the game. In Street Fighter V, the fastest normal attacks are 3f in speed. Meaning anything that is -3, -2, or -1 on block is considered 'safe'. 0 is dead even. If you both mashed your 3f button here, you'd 'trade' by smacking one another. If you're plus, then you can commit to attacks that have higher startup periods, but higher on-hit reward. If the opponent tried mashing, they'll eat your heavier attack for it. Tekken 7 is a game in where 'safe' moves are generally as 'slow' as -13. That's a spooky number in SF, but again, it all depends on the game.
So, what you'll want to do is find whatever buttons of yours give the best frame advantage on block. If you want to be fancy, find something that has a good balance of on-hit and on-block advantage. All of this data is online or on companion apps, and many good games these days are implementing this data into menus or even UI elements in training (V has a beautiful display for this). Anyway, pick that button, and force the opponent to stand up into it. If they respected it, you'll be plus, and in a great situation up close to do basically whatever you want unchallenged. And then you're right back to Attack > Block > Throw.
The wakeup game gets interesting in that the opponent does have some ways to mess with you. That Dragon Punch can actually be used during wakeup, and if there was a riskier move than Dragon Punch it'd be Wakeup Dragon Punch. It's a good way to tell you 'fuck off, get away', but again, it's blockable. Give your opponent a reason to want to do this. Knock them down, shuffle back and forth over their character and make them nervous. Don't give them an attack and throw them when they stand; put them right back on the ground. There are plenty of ways to get the other guy itching to throw one of these (and their lifebar) away for free.
VI. It's 1:3X AM and I'm Pretty Tired; Here Are Some Resources
I really do want to keep going, but I started this later than I wanted, and can always pick it up if anybody has questions. Honestly I'd be willing to bet that there are far more experienced people than myself here who just don't know there are others here, so, feel free to chime in. In the meantime, I'll leave you with the very tools I used to learn all of this stuff. If you got this far, a little more reading from vastly more (that is to say, at all) professional sources isn't going to hurt. Or it might, but then that just comes with this genre that I love.
'From Masher to Master; the Educated Enthusiast's Fighting Game Primer' One of the best resources one could have as an intro to this genre. If you liked all of this, then the Primer is going to blow your mind.
Sonic Hurricane: The Footsie Handbook Short chapters covering specific situations that you will run into; and how to answer them. Take it one element at a time. Once you've got a couple of these under your belt as a starting point, you'll have a strong foundation to work off of. All sorts of companion videos in there, too.
Core-A-Gaming: 'Why Button Mashing Doesn't Work' If you want some more concrete reasons to kick the habit of mashing, just watch this.
Core-A-Gaming: 'Playing Fast and Slow' Something to help with the 'mental stack' I'd touched on
Sajam: 'Setting Up Whiff Punishes & Checking Dashes'
Sajam: Buffering & Pokes: Creating a Dangerous Rotation of Neutral Options | What Tutorials Don't Teach
Sajam Talks Strategy: Building an Offensive Gameplan, The Frame Data Doesn't Tell the Whole Story
Juicebox's Explanation of Footsies Personally, this was the first thing I saw that gave me that 'wait that's how you do it?' sort of moment. Essential viewing.
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