So You Want to Learn Your First Fighting Game Character

If you’re new to fighting games, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the amount of information you’re presented with right off the bat. Typically in-game tutorials will frontload a lot of minutia about system mechanics without much indication of priority. Meanwhile, reference materials about specific characters often range from unhelpful in-game features like combo trials to user-generated guides that simply list all of a character’s moves in order, or jump straight into higher level strategy that could be hard to understand or execute. As a new player, it can be hard to know where to start.

For real though, don’t bother with combo trials right off the bat. The combos they feature often have difficult execution, and usually don’t correlate much with what the community considers effective. If you find practicing combos to be fun, they can be an interesting challenge, but by no means are they required to play at a basic level.

Let’s cut through that noise and think about a checklist of things to work on when picking up a character in a fighting game when you’re unfamiliar with the genre. This is gonna be very general and won’t apply to every game or every type of character. I’m mostly just familiar with skullgirls, guilty gear, and a tiny bit of blazblue and golden fantasia, and tend to play characters with big attacks who are effective at mid-range, so implicitly these tips are going to be tailored for that. However, I hope this will at the very least provide enough of a baseline to work off of for other games and character archetypes.

When you’re just familiarizing yourself with a game for the first time, here’s probably the most basic set of tools you can put together to form a cohesive gameplan:

The Super-Beginner Checklist

The following assumes you’re familiar with the most basic controls (what your buttons are called and their relative power/speed, how to move, how to block)

Find a solid anti-air move.

Without a consistent anti-air, it’s easy for your opponent to just jump over your other tools and hit you while you’re vulnerable. Landing anti-airs is often tricky, but just having the threat on your side may be enough to deter jump-ins. Typically good anti airs will be either fast attacks that hit right in front of your face, or slower, upward moving attacks that hit above and in front of you. In guilty gear games, forward + punch is a staple anti-air for all characters, and your character is invincible above the waist during the animation.

Most games will allow you to make the dummy in training mode jump, which is a great way to practice anti-air timing!

(Left to right) Es’ forward + B is relatively slow, but covers a wide space above her. Ramlethal’s forward + punch is only vulnerable close to the ground (where the blue-green boxes are). Ms. Fortune’s light punch has a fast start-up and can swat people out of the air in a pinch.

Look for a move to poke with.

Typically this will be a longer range attack you can use when your opponent is trying to approach on the ground or when you want to go on the offensive yourself. Often these moves will be a bit slow, but end up being mostly safe because of their long reach. Try to get a sense for the move’s effective range and do your best to stay there.

(Left to right) Ramlethal’s far slash is incredibly threatening in neutral due to its long reach and disjointed hitbox. Eliza’s down + light kick does little damage on its own, but is quite fast for its range and leads to a combo on hit.

Learn a simple combo off of your poke and anti-air.

It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. Just being able to convert an errant poke into a couple of hits is enough for now. Lots of games have their own take on a combo cancelling system, where weaker attacks naturally lead to stronger ones with fairly lenient timing. Ideally you want to knock your opponent down at the end, but if that’s not possible, pushing them really far away is also acceptable.

While you’re executing the combo, it’s important to pay special attention to whether you’re actually hitting the opponent and stop before you press a button that leaves you vulnerable when blocked. It sounds like goofy advice, but it’s often genuinely difficult to evaluate by the time the animation for your first attack is complete. In addition to the extra damage, the combo chain will also give you some time to react.

(Left to right) Due to the limited cancelling options in guilty gear strive, Ramlethal has trouble getting knockdowns off her pokes. However, her sword buttons push her opponent very far away, and lead to decent damage in the corner. Ky can juggle his opponent after an anti-air to make the option more threatening and leave them prone at his feet. Eliza’s down + light kick can easily combo into heavy kick, which both knocks them down and pushes them away. You can tell a game is good when even the basic stuff looks cool!

Remember: if you knock your opponent down, you can run up and try to hit them again as they get up to keep your momentum going!

At this point you ought to have enough tools to try actually fighting someone. However, you’ll probably notice some glaring holes after playing for a bit. Once you’ve played long enough to be comfortable using the previous set of tools, it’s time to go back to the lab and consider another set of goals to help round out what you have.

Acclimating to Your Character

In the previous checklist, you collected some very basic options that should apply to most characters. In this next section, you’ll start to refine your gameplan and develop a flowchart of actions specific to the one you want to play. At this stage, it might make sense to start looking at community resources such as dustloop or mizuumi, or just looking for character guides on youtube.

What follows is going to be a lot of information that will probably be a lot to process in one sitting. However, you don’t need to tackle all of this at once, just pay attention to where you’re having trouble and refer back to look for solutions as you need them.

Start thinking about what to do at different ranges.

When your only tool is a far-reaching poke like the one you selected earlier, you’re limited to a very specific range which might be difficult to stay at or may actually leave your character at a disadvantage. All characters will have a particular distance where they’re most effective, and will usually have lots of tools to help them get there and stay put. Look at your character’s moves and try to determine where they want to be on the screen relative to their opponent.

Typically characters will generally fall into a few categories: characters who are good at getting in their opponent’s face, characters who prefer to hang back and harry their opponents with projectiles and other far reaching moves, and characters who thrive in the middle ground between them. Of course, each group has tons of variety, and characters can often play different roles depending on who they’re fighting, the flow of a match, or what a player is most comfortable with.

If your character is specialized for dealing damage at close range (often called rushdown characters), try to find a fast attack you can use in your opponent’s face that will lead to a combo similar to the one you developed in the last section. Again, it doesn’t need to be flashy or anything, just something to convert your attack into some damage and a knockdown. At further ranges, look for tools that can help you get in on your opponent again.

Don’t give your opponents room to breathe for a second!

(Left to right) Giovanna can dash in with down + slash to catch her opponents off-guard, and convert into a knockdown with her special move sepultura. Further out, she can try to close the distance with trovao… however if your opponent sees it coming, they may be able to hit her and keep her away.

If you play characters with lots of projectiles and far-reaching moves (zoners), they’ll likely be most effective hanging back and making themselves difficult to approach. Try to get a feel for what a few of their projectiles do, and which ranges they’re safe to use. Your character might have a lot, so as always don’t feel obligated to learn everything at once. It’s fine to pick things up gradually as you recognize your blindspots.

Your character probably also has some kind of tool they can use to either push their opponent back or move themselves away- these are extra critical to learn, as they will be key to surviving close range engagements and getting back to the range where you’re most effective.

Remember, closing the distance is their problem!

(Left to right) Peacock can throw out bombs to make it hard to approach her on the ground, while waiting with item drop (center) for someone to try jumping over them. In a tight spot, BANG! is invulnerable and pushes the opponent back to the other side of the screen, where she can start throwing bombs again.

Other characters excel at a range part way between the others (mid-range). These characters tend to play different roles depending on who they’re fighting. They typically have a range advantage against rushdown characters and can play reactively while their opponents do all the work, whereas against more dedicated zoners, they usually have an advantage up close but need to work to get in. Often their tools will reflect their dual roles- many will have a simple projectile and long attacks in addition to some tools for approaching opponents from afar or close range moves that offer a good reward.

Most likely the poke you learned in the first section will still be one of their most consistent and rewarding options and can serve as the baseline for your developing gameplan. While you usually want to do your best to stay at about that range, it’s important to also have a fast, close range move that leads into a simple combo in your back pocket for when your opponent is too close. In addition, try sprinkling in projectiles when an opponent is reluctant to enter the range of your poke.

One of the most important things to pick up on is a sense for where the gaps in your opponent’s gameplan are. If they have trouble defending themselves in melee range, work to get up close. If they struggle at long range, hang back and punish their attempts to charge at you with your poke and any projectiles you have.

Adapt to your opponent and hit them at their weakest!

(Left to right) Ky’s far slash outranges many other characters’ normal moves and gives him a huge advantage scoring hits on opponents taking risks in their own gameplans. Down + kick is a fast, close range move he can use to score a knockdown on an aggressive opponent. Stun edge lets him antagonize opponents into trying to approach.

Find a move for getting out of defense.

The in-game tutorial probably told you how to block, and hopefully you’ve been developing that skill… but alas, you can’t block forever. Playing too passively means you’re probably letting your opponent stay on offence for longer than is strictly necessary, which means over time you’ll take extra hits and won’t be able to run your own offensive gameplan. In addition, defaulting to blocking means you’re vulnerable to throws.

Because of all this, it’s important to learn to identify the gaps in your opponent’s offence -primarily, which moves leave them vulnerable after being blocked, or which moves have especially long wind ups- and pick a fast, close range move to counterattack with so you can try to get back on offense yourself.

Some characters may also have dedicated reversal moves. These are often fully invulnerable during their start-up, allowing you to break through even the tiniest gaps in offense that regular moves couldn’t. However, this comes at a price: they’re often very unsafe when blocked, and thus opponents will try to bait them out so they can counterattack. In addition, these moves often require a resource to use, usually your super meter. Use them carefully and don’t be predictable!

Additional defensive options will vary from game to game, but a common one in games with overwhelming offense is the pushblock. To pushblock, you usually have to press a combination of buttons while blocking (such as any two punches in skullgirls, any two buttons that aren’t dust in guilty gear, or A and B in blazblue). This will send your opponent backwards and make it difficult for them to continue their offense. If you’re clever and a bit lucky, you may even be able to get them to whiff their next attack, giving you a free pass to start running your own offense!

Most games have several other universal defensive abilities available to all characters, so be sure to try them out and look for where they’re most effective.

Having a consistent way to break through the gaps in your opponent’s offense will deter them from trying to scam you into playing another round of defense and force them to vary their offense and take more risks.

(Left to right) Ramlethal’s down + kick is a fast move that leads to a knockdown at close range, making it very strong as a defensive option. Sol Badguy’s volcanic viper is invulnerable during its startup, allowing him to escape defense easily. Ms. Fortune uses skullgirls’ version of pushblock to shove Parasoul away in order to create space to counterattack.

Let’s talk about what you can do in the air.

So far I’ve been focusing on developing the grounded options your character has, but there’s a whole second dimension to consider up there!

As I alluded to in the discussion about anti-airs, jumping in at your opponent with an attack can be an incredibly effective tactic. It can bypass most of their reliable grounded options and puts them in a situation where they have to commit to a risky anti-air or get stuck blocking your follow up attacks. It’s often possible to combo a jump-in into a close range combo to increase your reward. When looking for a good jump-in move, you usually want to pick one that’s either very fast or very big, and has a hitbox that extends below your character. In certain games, characters may have an air dash which lets them do jump-ins incredibly quickly and close to the ground to catch their opponents off-guard.

The air can also be your escape route… though it’s often a risky one. If your opponent has you pinned in a corner, you can try to wait for a gap in their offence and jump over them to get out. This is especially relevant to zoners and mid-range characters when faced with a more aggressive opponent. However, if the other player can see this coming, it’s likely you’ll get hit with an anti-air instead.

You can also look for an air to air option. If you can guess that your opponent wants to jump, either because they want to try a jump-in or because they want to escape your own offensive pressure, you can try to beat them to it and hit them out of the air yourself. Good air to air moves usually either have very long lateral reach or hit somewhat above your character.

(Left to right) Eliza dominates the air game with her wide, sweeping aerial attacks. Jump light kick is fast and difficult to react to if she uses her air dash to jump in. Jump heavy punch is slower, but covers a huge range below her. Both attacks easily convert into her standard combos. Jump medium kick excels as an air to air because of its long reach, and can be used with her air dash to jump in from almost across the screen. However, it’s a little bit tricky to convert that hit into more damage

Developing Offense

Until this point, much of this checklist has been focusing on keeping you alive and developing a flowchart to cycle through in “neutral,” the state of the game where neither player has had an opportunity to really go on offense and both of you are scrambling for a clean hit. Having a good head for what to do in neutral is one of the most important skills to develop, since it ties together everything else in your arsenal. Playing neutral effectively lets you take your turn on offense more frequently and lets you avoid situations where you’re stuck on defense. However, at this point you’ll likely struggle to do damage when you do get to play offense before things decay back to neutral, and as a result have to come out ahead in neutral a lot in order to win a match.

In the next sections, we’re going to focus on improving your offensive play so you don’t have to spend so much time sweating it in neutral. Once again, it’s not necessary to digest this all at once. Feel free to pick and choose things to work on as you get comfortable.

Look for a more damaging combo to use when you get a hit.

You still don’t really need anything flashy. If the game has a combo cancelling system, just running through your buttons from weak to strong, using a special move, and optionally using a super if you have the resources is enough. You usually want to prioritize consistent execution over damage, but pushing yourself a bit and learning a combo that does significantly more damage, starts from a move that’s easier to land, or ends in a knockdown will often have a big impact on your gameplay. Additionally, most games will attenuate the damage of moves the further they are into a combo, so returns diminish on long combos quickly.

Gradually you’ll also get a sense for your character’s combo theory- that is, how their moves naturally interact with and chain into each other, and be able to tune your go-to combos with your own improvements over time.

(Top: A set of beginner combos for Eliza on Mizuumi. Bottom: The same for Ramlethal on Dustloop) Community resources like the mizuumi and dustloop wikis have loads of sample combos you can try, usually organized by difficulty. However, you’ll want to get used to reading their notation first: the numbers represent the position of the control stick relative to a numberpad on a keyboard, so 5 is a neutral position, 6 is forward, 214 is a quarter circle back, etc. This may seem unintuitive on first blush, but once you get used to it it makes things easy to communicate quickly, consistently and across language barriers.

If your character is a projectile-based zoner, you can choose instead to further specialize by learning some more complicated projectile patterns that will make it even harder for your opponents to approach you, and nickel and dime them to death as they try to advance and get hit. In addition, most projectiles will do a small amount of damage even to blocking opponents. In this way you can get most of your damage output from the range where you’re strongest.

Practicing combos as a newcomer can sometimes take a long time, so make sure to take breaks if you’re getting frustrated or your hands are getting tired! Fighting games can put a lot of strain on your hands and wrists, so it’s important to pace yourself so you don’t get hurt.

Make your opponent guess when they’re on defense.

Once you’re on offense, it’s important to have a plan to stay there as long as possible. I’ve alluded to the most straightforward way to do this a few times already: knock your opponent down, and then try to hit them when they get up. If they don’t block or do some kind of reversal, you’ll get to run through your combo again for free without having to win another neutral scenario. And of course, if your combo ends in a knockdown, then you can potentially keep cycling through it forever.

However, even if your opponent does block your attack, you still have the advantage. Your character most likely has lots of tools for creating “mix-ups,” scenarios where you can threaten your opponent with several options at once. Often these will be hard or impossible to react to by design, so the defender has to guess ahead of time which of your moves to defend against.

Most characters will have one type of mixup they’re especially suited for, so consider what moves yours has and try to determine what they’re specialized in.

This is typically the area where rushdown characters are at their most powerful, and many can easily overwhelm their opponents with the threat of enough options at once to make their heads spin!

Common types of mixup include:

Strike/throw

This is more or less the canonical mixup. Almost every character in every fighting game will have some way to execute this. Strikes (regular attacks) will connect if your opponent isn’t blocking, and throws will connect if they are. If you hit an opponent and they block it, they have to decide between preparing to block your next attack, or preparing to deal with a throw by teching it or trying to jump. Strike/throw mixups can come in a few forms:

• Low/throw — low attacks can only be blocked while crouching, while throws can only be teched when standing. Similarly, trying to jump out of a throw also leaves your opponent vulnerable to a low attack as they wind up for the jump.
• Frame traps — sometimes using certain combinations of attacks will leave a gap large enough for your opponent to stop blocking and start an attack, but not enough for it to actually hit you. Sprinkling these into your offense will pressure your opponent to be more passive when defending, and open them up to being thrown.
• Tick throws — hitting your opponent with a light attack and then instead of attacking again, running in to throw them. Tick throws are often hard to see coming and will make your opponent second guess themselves while blocking. These can be used in conjunction with frame traps to great effect!
• Command throws — These are unblockable special moves that have properties similar to throws but with the additional caveat that they can’t be teched and must be avoided with a jump. In addition, they also usually have some other factor that makes them intimidating, such as being easy to combo after, replenishing a character-specific resource, or just doing an absurd, terrifying amount of damage. While not a mixup on their own, they’re great for getting in your opponent’s head and making them reluctant to block your other options.

(Left to right) Nagoriyuki is adept with strike/throw mixups. His special move kamuriyuki drops him directly in front of his opponent and has very little recovery, allowing him to follow with either a fast button like close slash, or his command throw.

High/low

High attacks must be blocked while standing, while low attacks must be blocked while crouching. This is one of the more intuitive ways to mix someone up, since it’s baked into the basic mechanics of blocking, but many characters will have limited avenues for high attacks, or those avenues will be slow enough to easily see coming. Here’s a few common types of high/low mixup:

• Jump-ins — many aerial attacks will hit high, which is yet another reason jump-ins can be deadly. Varying between jumping in with an air attack and waiting until you’ve landed to attack with a low is a powerful way to keep people guessing.
• Standing overheads — typically overheads are only a threat when your opponent is jumping, so many players will default to crouch blocking when their opponent is on the ground, and standing up whenever they jump. However, certain characters may have high-hitting attacks they can use on the ground, often in the form of special moves.
• Standing lows — usually low attacks are only a threat when the opponent is crouching, however, very occasionally characters will have a low attack they can use while standing, which can easily catch people off guard.
• Hoverdashing — a few characters like Morrigan in vampire savior or I-no in guilty gear have a dash that takes them airborne, which allows them to cycle lightning fast between low attacks on the ground and high attacks in the air.

(Left to right) I-no’s hoverdash lets her take to the air and use her overhead attacks quickly. However, she can also drop out of the air just as suddenly and use a low attack like stroke the big tree instead.

Left/right

Especially common in games with fast air movement, left/right mixups (often called cross-ups) force your opponent to guess which side you’re attacking from. They can only defend one! Common types of left/right mixups include:

• Jump-ins — at certain spacings, it’s sometimes possible for jump-ins to be ambiguous about which side of the opponent they’re hitting. Additionally, if your character has an air dash, they can choose between jumping over an opponent to hit them from behind, and dashing backwards in their air to hit them from the front instead.
• Cross-unders — if an attack leaves an opponent airborne, it may be possible to dash under them and hit them from the other side. This is often especially useful in situations where you’re in the corner, since you can turn around quickly and corner them instead!
• Teleports — many zoner characters are equipped with a teleport ability that lets them appear either in various positions around their opponent. While they’ll usually be using these to escape an opponent closing in, they can also be used to hit people from behind or above when they’re not looking for it.

Peacock’s move The Hole Idea lets her choose between teleporting backwards, teleporting directly in front of her opponent, or directly behind them. This lets her get crossups on unsuspecting players and use the opportunity to escape quickly. In combination with calling an assist, it can lead to some nasty mixups.

Often one of your mixup options will lead to less damage than the other or be very risky to attempt. However, just throwing it out every so often anyway to remind your opponent that you have it is often enough to make them second guess themselves and open themselves up to your more damaging or consistent options. Every tactic you have at your disposal makes every other tactic more powerful!

Knocking down an opponent and hitting them when they get up is one of many ways to keep your momentum on offense. However, depending on the game, it might not actually be the best one. In games like guilty gear, it’s very easy to force someone to deal with a mixup after a knockdown because they’re totally locked in place. In other games such as Blazblue or Skullgirls, a player can decide to roll in a particular direction while recovering, which makes them much harder to pin down in this way.

A common way to deal with this is by relying on “resets” instead of knockdowns. A reset happens when you chain a combo directly into a mixup instead of using a knockdown first, or seemingly drop a combo prematurely, only to immediately start it again. Resets are usually very hard to see coming if you’re not prepared and can easily get incredibly complicated. Additionally, the damage of each move in a combo will get attenuated over time, and using a reset refreshes your damage to full.

If you’re playing a game like skullgirls or marvel vs. capcom where resets are king, try to identify places in your combos where you can easily slip them in. Going for an air throw or cross-under after a launcher is a powerful option, as is dropping out of the air after an aerial combo.

Learn conversions off of throws and more types of stray hits

Now that you know how to get more reward off your turns playing offense, it’s time to look for other ways to to be able to get started in the first place. You probably know a few situations where it’s easy to get a combo- for instance, off of the poke you picked up way back at the beginning, off an attack you use to get out of defense, or off of your preferred mixup route. However, chances are you’ll graze the other player with lots of different moves in neutral that don’t transition easily into the combos you’re already comfortable doing. In addition, some mixup options like throws or slow overhead attacks might have similar problems.

Due to how combo cancelling systems work, you can usually get a simple combo off of most stray hits, but it can be hard to remember individual conversions off of all of your other attacks at once. Often it’s a good idea to pick a couple moves you use a lot in neutral to start and learn combos off of others as you get comfortable. Sometimes characters also have options that are good for covering multiple types of conversion as well, so pay attention to both universal mechanics and community suggestions!

(Left to right) Eliza’s special move signature attack can bounce opponents off the side of the screen and deposit them at her feet, allowing for consistent conversions from air-to-air pokes and throws. Eliza’s down + medium kick can scoop up prone opponents once per combo, which allows her to easily convert off of air throws, her command throw, and wall bounces.

In guilty gear and blazblue, the roman cancel and rapid cancel systems are specialized to help with this. Using an RC after a move that has limited follow ups returns you to a resting state instantly and lets you start again with a move that’s easier to combo off of.

Throws are often difficult to capitalize on because they usually drop your opponent directly into a knockdown or even knock them away too fast to catch them through normal means. However, there are often more difficult or resource intensive ways to convert them into combos anyway. In skullgirls for instance, most characters have a chain of attacks they can use to catch the opponent before they slide too far and can link into further combo chains easily. In guilty gear, roman cancels can usually be used to follow up after a throw in exchange for some super meter.

Further study

If you’ve made it this far and are comfortable with the previous topics, congratulations! You’re doing incredibly well! It’s not a stretch to say that you’re not a beginner anymore, in fact, you’re playing at a solid, intermediate level that will help you keep up with most casual players and likely give you a strong head start when you go to pick up another game in the future.

However, the skill ceiling for fighting games is functionally endless, and there’s always new skills and knowledge to pick up if you’re looking to improve. Here’s a few tips that will help get you an edge as you fight progressively stronger opponents.

Option Selects and Buffering

The human brain can only react to things so fast, which is why mixups are so powerful. However, it’s often possible to make the computer do the quick thinking for you in a pinch and avoid having to guess. The following options can usually be done reflexively without having to think after a bit of practice.

On defense, you can quickly switch between guarding against the opponent’s fastest option and guarding against a slower one to pre-empt most mixups. However, if your opponent knows you’re doing this, there are various ways to bait this out and punish you for it.

Delay tech to beat strike/throw

• Strike/throw mixups are threatening because it’s impossible to defend against both at the same time. However, the strike option is often much quicker than the throw, so you can block for a moment before standing and teching, or jumping.
• To punish an opponent doing this, you can often just walk up and walk back or walk up and jump. Teching a throw that doesn’t come means they’ll be stuck in a whiffed throw animation themselves, leaving them open to an easy punish. If they jump, you can anti-air them or follow them with an air to air or air throw.

Fuzzy guard to beat high/low

• Similar to above, if an opponent can hit you with a quick series of high and low attacks, it’s possible to defend against both by figuring out which option is faster and blocking that direction, and then transitioning to blocking the other after a moment
• Beating an opponent using a fuzzy guard depends on messing up their timing. Delay your faster option to hit them while they’re changing their guard direction.

Up-back to beat high/throw

• Holding up + back on your controller (colloquially, upbacking or chickenblocking) is a super easy way to deal with both high attacks and throws. If your opponent chains into a high attack, you’re already blocking it, and if they go for a throw, you’ll jump automatically and make them whiff. It’s also incredibly easy, there’s no timing or muscle memory involved at all. Try this against characters whose moveset is weighted more towards strong overhead options.
• While this is very easy to do, it’s also very easy to beat. A fast low attack will usually hit them out of their wind-up of their jump. Failing that, jumping with them and doing an air throw is also a strong option.

You can also use this kind of thinking to augment your offense as well. If you’re trying to control space with a poking move in neutral, but you’re not sure if it will hit, many games will let you input the next move you would want to use afterwards (the next hit in the combo if it does connect, a special move, etc) and only execute it if the first move connected or was blocked. This can help you threaten with stronger, less safe moves in neutral without having to worry as much about whiffing them and getting punished for it. However, since you’ll still do the follow up when blocked, this is a tool that has to be used with caution.

Matchup Minutia

By now, you probably know of a handful of things your character can do that are very hard or unintuitive to counter. Unfortunately, many of your opponents at a higher level will come at you with similar tools that their own characters have which you’ll have to be prepared for. In many cases, you might be able to adapt on your own over time, but sometimes particularly nasty setups may require you to look for solutions outside of a match.

One place to start is by looking up guides people have made about how to play the characters you’re having trouble with, or asking friends who are more familiar with them. If you can understand what your opponent wants and what the properties of their moves are, you can use that to inform the way you respond to them in actual matches.

Training mode is another powerful resource. If you can replicate a situation you have trouble with and record it to the training mode dummy, you can practice different options to counter it. In the process, you also might learn something about how the situation looks from the other perspective as well.

Community resources

The following are community-run, often exhaustive reference guides for general fighting game concepts and specific data about games and characters:

Dustloop — wiki for guilty gear, blazblue, and other first party titles by arc system works

Mizuumi — wiki for skullgirls and various anime games like melty blood and under-night

Dream cancel — wiki for games by snk like king of fighters and last blade

Fighting game glossary — a reference guide for fighting game jargon with many examples

In the early days of organized fighting game communities, the going maxim was “Save That Shit For Nationals!” That is to say, to play your cards close to your chest and refuse to explain the techniques you know to other players in the hopes of catching someone unawares in a tournament.

In the modern era, this mentality is generally recognized for the unsportsmanlike behavior it really is. When people are open about details like how characters work or how to use advanced techniques, it fosters a more amiable atmosphere that benefits everyone. When you explain your character’s weaknesses and strengths to a friend, that means they’ll be more likely to reciprocate when you have questions down the line. It’s also crucial to catching new players up on the fundamental concepts that underpin these games so we’ll never be in short supply of close matches and strong opponents.

Let’s all get stronger together!!

Image sources:

Dustloop - Guilty Gear Strive (character images)

Mizuumi - Skullgirls (character images)

“Defense in Skullgirls,” by Sydoh (pushblock example)

Information Sources:

Dustloop, Mizuumi

Sajam, especially his series “Sajam talks general fighting game strategy”

Angelopportunity, in particular this video very directly inspired the points in the Super-Beginner Checklist