Street Fighter 5 is right around the corner, and a lot of new players will be picking up the game for PlayStation 4 or PC. With so many new players getting into the fighting game scene, we thought this was a good time to start educating those players on basic and more advanced techniques. We’ve already covered the basics of learning to play Street Fighter 5, so this time around we’re going to talk about footsies.
In our previous article we discussed how new players tend to jump a lot and how getting out of that habit will help you win more games. Footsies is almost like the next step in that strategy. While you’re on the ground (not jumping) moving back and forth to gain positioning on your opponent, you employ footsies to attack your opponent and counterattack whatever they’re doing.
Let’s back up for a moment to better explain what footsies are. Every attack in the game has a hitbox. This is the invisible box that surrounds the attack and determines when it will make contact with the opponent or another attack. If the hitbox of the attack comes in contact with the hitbox of another attack or the hitbox of your opponent, the attack will hit.
While you’re moving forward and back trying to gain a better position on your opponent, stick out an attack that has good reach and can potentially interrupt your opponent’s next attack. For Ryu this would likely be his standing or crouching medium kick. You don’t necessarily need to hit with the attack, you’re just putting it out there so that if your opponent steps into that range, your attack will connect. Likewise, if the opponent tries to attack, your attack should interrupt their attack, scoring you a counter-hit.
In Street Fighter 4 one of Ryu’s main footsies tool was his crouching medium kick. If you want competitive play with Ryu, you’ll see that many players use crouching medium kick when it seems as though the attack is out of range. This is part of Ryu’s footies game with the goal to connect crouching medium kick and buffer a fireball motion so that if the attack connects, Ryu goes right into a fireball 2-in-1. If the attack misses, then the fireball doesn’t execute and you continue to move back and forth as you jockey for position.
You don’t just want to throw out any attack at random times. It’s important to pay close attention to your opponent’s movements and predict where they will be or when they will attack. Using Ryu as an example again, you want to use standing medium kick so that the tip of the attack makes contact with either the opponent or the opponent’s next attack. You need to watch as your opponent moves back and forth and predict where they will be when you use standing medium kick. You may not always predict correctly, but if you do the opponent will be forced to block your attack or it will hit them cleanly.
Positioning is extremely important in Street Fighter. You need to be in the proper position to knock an opponent out of the air with an anti-air attack, trapping an opponent in the corner can lead to huge combos, and it’s always nice to have plenty of room behind you if you need to back away. When you find yourself in a bad position, things can go downhill very fast. This even goes along with jumping as proper timing can net you a safe jump that your opponent can’t anti-air, but that’s a topic for another day.
Street Fighter 5 is due out for the PlayStation 4 and PC on February 16, 2016. We’ll have more on Street Fighter 5 in the coming weeks, but for now you can check out our beta coverage of Rashid, Birdie, Karin and more!
