arcade

Pro tip: A Quick 2-Hit Combo for Guile in Street Fighter 2

Today, I'm going to share one a quick-'n'-easy two hit combo with Street Fighter's Guile.

First, you're going to want to hold Back on the controller to charge for the Sonic Boom. Then press Forward and Weak punch to throw it.

Keep holding Forward to walk toward your opponent, trailing your projectile, after it hits,

follow it up with a Fierce Punch.

Done right, you'll be able to hit your opponent with both of them for a quick 2-hit combo!

And, if you can back your opponent in the corner he won't slide back so far when the initial hit smacks him, giving him less time to recover and avoid the second hit.

Since this is kind of tough to show the timing in picture form, I've created an animated .gif here(4.5MB) that shows it in action.

Oh, and it also works for Street Fighter 4.

Pro tip: Secret Characters in X-Men Vs. Street Fighter part one

In some of the Capcom-branded fighting games, the rigmarole you have to go through to select a secret character can be quite complicated. But it isn't always.

Take X-Men vs. Street Fighter, for example.

All you have to do is go to the top row of fighters, any of them will do.

And then press Up on the joystick.

And Akuma is yours for the choosing!

What could be simpler?

Pro tip: Crazy Taxi driving techniques

Crazy Taxi is kind of a tough game. Mostly because if you play the arcade game, you have no indication of how to perform the advanced techniques that you need to know to be successful at the game.

But that's what I'm here for.

You need to know 4 techniques to be a successful cabbie.

1. The Crazy Dash - The idea is to shift into Drive and then immediately stomp on the gas. The timing is a little tough to get without a demonstration, but pulled off successfully, you'll immediately rocket to top speed. You can do this at any time, even while you're driving. Also, if you're at a stop, and you do the Crazy Dash, but immediately put the car into Reverse, you'll go full-speed backwards.

2. The Limiter Cut - Once you get going at top speed with the Crazy Dash, you'll notice that your car will start to vibrate. When that happens you want to throw the car into Reverse, then Drive, and then hit the Gas, with the same timing as the Crazy Dash. This will give you a burst of speed that lets you go faster than your top speed for a couple of seconds.

3. The Crazy Drift - While you're driving, put the car into Reverse and then into Drive while turning a direction. You'll easily slide around corners. Let go of everything and do a Crazy Dash to recover.

4. The Crazy Stop - Do the Crazy Dash, but hit Reverse and the Brake instead of Drive and the Gas. You'll manage to stop much faster.

Here's a video I prepared of me performing all 4 of these techniques on the Dreamcast version Crazy Box challenge rank S-S. I'm a little out of practice at the game, but I think you'll get the idea.

Pro tip: getting turned into a frog in Ghosts 'n Goblins

The Ghosts 'n Goblins games are hard. But if you're looking to jack up the challenge for some reason, you could find one of the many tombstones in the game and just start chucking weapons into it. Eventually

This... thing will appear, which will shoot a sparkly cloud at you, and if it hits,

Arthur gets turned into a frog for a few seconds, making him less maneuverable and unable to throw his weapon.

Yeah, come to think of it, I'm not sure why you'd want to do that on purpose.

And no, this doesn't work on the NES version of the game.

Pro tip: Dealing with 'Left-handed' joysticks: the crossover method

You might be wondering what I mean by a 'Left-Handed' joystick. Most joysticks that you'll find are set up with the stick on the left and the buttons on the right. Like my fighting stick here.

But (very) occasionally, you'll find an arcade machine set up the other way around, with the buttons on the left and the joystick on the right. They're actually getting to be so rare that I couldn't find one to take a picture of, so we'll just use the magic of image manipulation to pretend.

Now, you could just grab the stick with your right hand and mash the buttons with your left, but I find that after years of doing it the other way, that it's not really that easy.

So what I like to do is to cross my hands so that each one is hitting the controls that it's used to

Sure, it might look a little silly, but believe me, it works a whole lot better than trying to retrain your hands.

Pro tip: Move canceling in Street Fighter II

This one's a little more advanced, but nontheless very important if you want to be any good at the Street Fighter games.

The idea is to do one move, and before the animation completes, you do another move for Big Damage(tm). The easiest way to show this is with Ken. You want to lead off with a Strong Punch, then immediately press Forward, Down, Down-Forward + Strong Punch. If you do it fast enough (and it does take quick fingers) then you'll hit once with the punch, and then three times with your Dragon Punch for a four-hit combo!

Which is kind of tough to see in static picture form, so I've made an animated .gif you can check out here(2.3 MB, watch out, dial-up users!).

There are lots of moves that can be canceled like this, way too many to list here, so have fun finding them!

Oh, and this also works for Street Fighter IV.

Pro tip: control the frog during the demo of Frogger

Frogger is one of those games that just about everyone's heard something about. There's just something appealing about making a frog, who can't swim somehow, cross a road and a river to make it to his home.

And, if you let the title screen sit there long enough, like in most arcade games, you get a non-interactive demo of the game.

But!

It's only non-interactive until the frog onscreen gets to the final row of logs/turtles before the opposite side of the screen.

Once the frog gets there you can use the joystick to gain control!

Though you can't do much, you can still play a tiny sliver of the game for free, that's fun, right?

Pro tip: doubling your firepower in Galaga

In Galaga you have these enemy bugs that take two hits to destroy.

They're the only ones in the game with a tertiary attack, instead of shooting or running into you, they can fire a tractor beam.

If they hit you with the beam, they'll capture your ship, and then attack you with it, it's dirty pool.

But!

If you can shoot down the enemy bug without damaging your ship, then you get yours back, and it's grafted onto your ship, doubling your firepower.

The downside is that now you're a much bigger target, and have two of your ships in play at the same time.

Is the tradeoff worth it? You'll have to decide that.

Just make sure that you don't let your last ship get tractored. That's a pretty lame way to lose the game.

Pro tip: taking corners faster in Pac-Man

Take a look at this screen shot from Pac-Man.

Specifically look up at the pink monster, you'll notice that its eyes (which indicate which direction it's moving) are angled down when it's not quite to the intersection yet. Now, take a closer look at the game boundaries.

The boundaries are rounded, which might just seem like an aesthetic choice on the part of the designers, but it's also a tool you can use. Taking a cue from the monsters you should try to press the direction you want to go before you get to the intersections. That way you can round the corner a fraction of a second faster than you would if you waited until you were in the middle of the intersection.

And in those higher levels, a fraction of a second can mean the difference between clearing the maze and putting in another quarter to start over from the beginning.

Pro tip: extra bonus points

At the end of each stage in Super Mario Bros. you get 50 points for each unit of time that you have left on the clock when you finish a stage.

But, let's say that you go to your favorite X-4 stage (the big castles)

You make your way to Bowser and bide your time a little bit (this works best if you're fiery and can get him out of the way)

And then hit the axe then the timer hits 000 seconds.

The result? When you visit the mushroom retainer the clock starts counting down from 999 time units back down to zero.

Giving you 49950 points instead of whatever amount you would have had, had you just gone for it.

And this trick is arcade only, I'm afraid.

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