I still think Bison is a viable character, but very limited in general. And on a more personal level, I really want to stop using charge characters so much to improve my execution (my worst shortcomming as a fighting game player, easily). The most frustrating thing about being a Bison player in SFIV, is that while his character is such a buff cool looking evil dictator, he actually hits like my little sister. He has almost no comeback ability due to his combos all doing “blah” damage at best. You have to start out and finish strong for all of your wins.

Say you have full Revenge so your opponent obviously stops jumping at you in fear of j. mp’s to ultra (unless they’re Ryu or Chun and beat you in the air). If your opponent STOPS blocking and gives you a free combo, Bison does not have any good ones that can do very much more than 40%. It was fun at first to play hit-and-run, mosquito style every game, with some lk scissor kick cheese thrown in, but really the whole time in the back of my mind I was thinking, “I really wish I could PUNISH people better when they screw up!” Bison has HORRIBLY poor ability to punish mistakes in SFIV, especially compared to Sagat and Ryu. While Sagat and Ryu vs Bison are roughly even matchups IMO (which is part of what makes Bison still a viable character-doing so well against top tier), he cannot punish off of a trade or a single mistake nearly as well. After an arcade session where I got an 18 win streak and another 20 winstreak (that machine is set to kick the player off after winning 20), and realizing I had landed, MAYBE 2 ultras in 38 games because my opponents were smart enough not to jump at me much, I really got frustrated and wanted a character who had an easier time landing ultra.

EX Headstomp is almost completely obsolete now. If you can land it on your opponents regularly, your competition is not very strong at all. Also finding out how unsafe Bison’s mk crossup is on block against shotos didn’t help.

Enough of the bad news: I still think Bison is a worthwhile and fun character. St. RH by itself shuts down 99% of what Gief can do to you. Teleport is still beast. lk Scissor Kick is still great.

I’m at an awkward point right now where my Bison is still leaps and bounds better than my Viper, which is to be expected after the months I’ve invested in him, and the couple weeks I’ve been playing Viper.

So hopefully I can post in the next few days all of the random nuggets I have left for Bison, and then wish you guys the best with him. I hope there is still more to find out about Bison in SFIV, but after all these months with no big discoveries, and countless hours in training mode experimenting, I think this is one of the more “shallow” versions of M. Bison ever.

-Because of the input-”helper” system (I use the term *very* loosely) featured in SFIV, when using the old motions for Ultra, it is very easy to get a teleport instead.

Two tips help with that problem: a) Slow down. and b), charge back or downback, press forward, charge back again (doesn’t matter if it’s downback) and then press up-forward+KKK!. No more frustrating teleports!

-Psycho Crusher: This move is completely different than it was in any previous game. At first I thought it was utterly useless, but now that I have won a few games with it, I am glad to have it in my back pocket:

Use 1: Escape Corners: Bison has horrible anti-air abilities for when someone is jumping straight up in front of him, or jumps in deeply at him. If your back is to the corner, there is no way for you to use your trusty walk-backwards+Roundhouse kick. When waking up or getting jumped at and you have the meter to spare, EX psycho crusher is a much safer choice than any other special to escape corner pressure. If not, teleport is second best.

Use 2: That last, little, hit: Often times at fullscreen, your opponent will have 1 or 0 vitality, and you might have a small percentage more. EX Psycho travels fast, has 1 hit of armor to go through non-armor breaking fireballs to smack them, and will do good chip to finish the job.

Use 3: Combos This one was pretty obvious, right?

-Never use Bison’s super, pretty much ever, unless you are super cancelling into it, and even then, decide if the meter useage is worth it from a defensive standpoint. A good easy super cancel is cr. mk>scissor kick xx (cancel the first hit) super. Just press back forward one more time+k after the scissors, you don’t have to do the whole motion.

-To get around Blanka’s cheesy ultra, just wait until he goes into the air, comes down, and then DP+KKK teleport behind him a moment later. You can also trade your Roundhouse slide with his ultra after he has come down, if it will kill him and you have more life than him.

-Chun Li is one of the few characters in the game I have found simply cannot be hit with j. mp’s at all, all of her air-to-airs beat our jumping strong.

-You can throw Dhalsim out of his ultra startup.

-Learning the timing for cr. lk x3 >Scissor kick (which is a LINK combo) is absolutely crucial. It’s his best low poke string, and later on you will be mixing up Focus attack dash cancels with either a throw or this link combo. If you can’t get it to come out regularly, chances are you are mashing or pressing the lk’s too fast. Watch Bison’s sprite, and press lk as soon as you see his animation finish.

-I haven’t found anything character-specific for Bison vs. Ryu yet. I changed my mind after playing a lot more games of SFIV, I think the matchup is a 5-5 tossup and only the skill of the players are involved. Just play safe and poke and fly around.

Comming soon: Match videos, Combo breakdowns.

For example, in Super Turbo, M. Bison was at disadvantage on every scissor kick on block. However, looking at The Bison Frame Data sheet provided by DS, we can see that light kick scissors is neutral on block.

What does this mean? Obviously it means that M. Bison recovers from the move on the exact same frame the opponent recovers from blockstun. But now the Bison player has a charge and what in chess would be referred to as “tempo”, or initiative.

The easiest choice is to wait for the opponent to try to poke, and then punish with a special, super, or ultra of your choice. Also using the frame data, we can see that cr. short will come out in a speedy 3 frames(!), which can then be comboed into another lk scissor!

Some ideas after a blocked lk scissor:

-(wait to see opponent try to counter)>Ultra
-Bait DP, combo of your choice (cr. mk>scissors safest)
-cr. mk, scissor
-cr. lk, st. mk (don’t use against Balrog unless you like eating headbutt>ultra)
-standing Roundhouse!
-headstomp or EX Headstomp to cheese crouchers or to stuff jump attempts
-EX scissors through normal fireball
-Teleport away!

Moves where Bison has advantage upon block (+frame advantage):
Headstomp punch followup (+9!!!)
EX Headstomp punch followup (+10!!!)
close lp (+4)
close lk (+3)
cr. mp (+3)
far lk (+3)
close mk (+2)
far lp (+2)
cr. lp (+2)
cr. lk (+1)

Neutral on block:
lk scissors
far mp

Obviously though, games are played by humans, not robotic frame-by-frame computer programs, so frame data is just a useful tool to answer “what beats what if executed perfectly, or how does this situation play out if I’m even off by a frame?” and other questions.

For more useful info on how to actually read and take advantage of frame data (I am still learning this myself), check out Buktooth’s Frame Data Trainer

That cheesyness out of the way, let’s get to business.  This blog is about Streetfighter IV, M. Bison (in it!) and my exploits thereof.  Let me give you some of my fighting game background so you can see the perspective this blog is comming from:

I have been a competitive Super Streetfighter 2 Turbo (ST for short) player since around February of 2007.  I have been an active member of shoryuken.com forums since 2001 so I have been aware and interested in the competitive aspects of fighting games for a long time, but it was not until then that I was able to join/build up a local scene so I could play a fighting game with the express purpose of getting as good as possible at it.

Prior to this, my main competition was scrubbing it as a kid in various SF and SNK games at the arcade, and actually making a somewhat decent name for myself (Airthrow) on kaillera playing randoms in KOF 98 and KOF 2002.  I still am pretty decent at KOF, and will always have been an SNK player first, but for tournament purposes I think Streetfighter is one of the best fighting game series of all time.

You can find some videos of me playing ST on my youtube account, though all of those videos are pretty old and even in ST I am a dictator player instead of a boxer player now.

Now, onto SFIV:

My first experience playing the game was the beta arcade Viewlix cabinet that Capcom setup for play at Evo 2008. The lines for these machines were SWAMPED, and I was either too busy with my ST tournaments and casual play/practice or I just was too exhausted to wait up to an hour just to get one turn at a game I didn’t know how to play. Being a boxer player back then, the only two games I got in were with Balrog, and I lost both due to trying to use ST tactics with him. This is impossible due to how much slower Boxer is in SFIV than ST, and things like d/f kickrush>throw trick not existing in the game, and the timing on all of the combos being radically different even if the notation was the same. Needless to say my impression of the game was very hesitant, but I knew I would wait for a wider arcade release before passing judgement. My friend Paul Lee got a huge win streak at Evo with Rufus, so I was expecting him to be broken as hell. Oh, how naive we are when a game just comes out.

Fast forward a bit, and Narrows bowling alley in Tacoma gets an SFIV cabinet, and people organize Monday Night Fights. Huge crowds gather to play the game, and the rotation takes roughly 45 minutes before you get another turn. But this is with all Seattle local fighting game scenesters, so it’s hilarious and worth the wait. I have real trouble adapting to IV’s nuances though. For one, this cabinet is FAR, FAR from ideal. It has a hybrid American/Japanese control scheme where it has a Happ joystick and a curved Japanese button layout, but with Happ buttons. Also, the stick and buttons are EXTREMELY far away from each other, so it feels very hard to coordinate buttons with stick movements at first. Plus the sticks just aren’t that great.

At Tacoma Narrows I think my highest legit winstreak is still maybe 5 or 6, not bad but not good either.

Skip ahead a bit, and now Console SFIV has been out since February 17th for two weeks or so. I requested the 17-20th off from work, taking two extra days off of my normal work week so I could practice for the tournament on the 20th. With my custom Sanwa stick and an SFIV TE stick at my disposal, I finally learn a few combos, stop using Akuma, and focus on Bison Bison Bison, so that I can be comfortable with my character come tournament time.

I get a few bread and butters down such as cr. mk>scissors, J. Rh, cr. jab, st. lk, cr. mk, scissors, and a few others, learn to abuse the HELL out of EX Headstomp for extreeeeme amounts of invincibility, cheese damage, and priority, and also learn how to run the heck away with Devil’s Reverse and teleports. I go into the tournament pretty confident.

I did decently, making it to tie for 7th out of a 32 man tournament where a lot of the top 8 had more experience with the game than I had, due to not being able to justify spending $60 a night on SFIV at the arcade anymore. I also learned a lot about Dictator on the fly as far as what makes him different from his ST encarnation:

Zangief Matchup: This matchup is harder in some ways, easier than others when compared to ST. In SFIV, it seems ridiculously easier for Gief to throw you than ever, if he blocks any of your jabs or light kicks at all, he gets reversal SPD effortlessly. Also unlike ST, Bison slide loses to lariat, which goes against all of my ST instincts. Punishing lariats with headstomp is still the same, but cr. mk seems more dangerous to throw. Spam st. RH to snuff…everything short of greenhand.

Ryu matchup: It is MUCH more hazardous in SFIV to jump at Ryu than it ever was in ST. I have experienced things that I find ridiculous, like meaty crossing up Ryu on wakeup, trading with my jump in with one of his attacks (it came out too fast to register which one), me bouncing away, and then him getting a free ultra juggle. This is a completely ridiculous situation for me as an SFII player, where I should be rewarded well with little risk for deep-dish crossing up Ryu, but there you go. I feel like Ryu punishes harder than Bison when they do exchanges in this game, giving Ryu a hefty edge, but maybe I am missing something.

Guile: I don’t think this matchup is the same because I think that SFIV characters start a bit farther away from each other than in ST. For example IMMEDIATELY after “Round 1, FIGHT!” in ST, if Bison hits St. RH and Guile sonic booms, Bison will either kick Gilly cleanly out of it, or at worst, trade hits where they both stagger away from each other, but Bison does more damage in the exchange.

This meta-game doesn’t exist in SFIV. Also Bison’s heavy st. RH no longer hits a ducking Gilly…I will have to analyze the match more. I think Bison rapes more in SFIV in this matchup than ST, simply because Gilly does crap damage and because EX headstomp punishes booms for FAT damage. Also, when Guile does the 2 hit cr. RH, after blocking the first hit you can either ULTRA the heck out of him, or stuff the second hit with cr. lk, which is good to know. The matchup seems heaps easier in this game just because you can SADC booms from a distance if Guile doesn’t Guilty Gear it and chase after it.

Sagat: Recovers amazingly well from tiger shots to Tiger Uppercut you for trying to headstomp him. I get the feeling that good Sagats will be very difficult to get around, but I definitely need to study this matchup.

Boxer/Balrog: I think the proper way to play this is probably to run away, but that sure hasn’t worked for me against a good boxer player locally. All of Boxer’s moves seem to break armor, so saving attacks don’t work well at all, his rushes are all super fast and I’m not sure whether scissors consistently beats them or if it’s a tossup based on timing. Because of Dic’s crap horizontal range on his ultra it’s very hard to punish Rog for poking. I feel like boxer has the definite advantage, especially with retarded things like buffalo headbutt> ultra which rapes all my floaty jumps. I definitely would like advice on this match.

Blanka: I hate fighting blanka more than any other REAL character in all of fighting games (HDR Akuma is not a real character). His bite throw has ridiculous magical properties in every game. In SFIV he seems easy enough to handle with bison though. Jab beats even EX horizontal blanka ball(? WHY?)… electricity beats EX and regular headstomp admittedly. This matchup is probably roughly even I would think, pretty fun to play actually.

E. Honda: in HDR fighting Honda with Dictator is only moderately worse an experience than going to the dentist and getting a root canal while the dental assistant randomly kicks you in the balls at varying intervals. There was no intelligent way to go about it: Try for a crossup combo and if you land, you should win. If Honda isn’t an idiot and blocks properly, he will command throw you and probably win. The onus is on Dictator to actually do something, because Honda can just sit on jab headbutt all day and enjoy the nice weather on the fighting stage. The only surefire move you have that beats his is jab psycho crusher against headbutts, however you have to do yours psychically because if he headbutts first your startup is too slow to beat him out, in which case you will eat at least 3 more chips for your mistake, or worse.

This matchup seems much easier in SFIV possibly due to a more complex game engine, or maybe I am just fighting sucky random online Hondas. Time will tell.

Today was a progressive day skill wise simply because I actually bothered to learn how to do my combos off of saving attacks. I knew there was a trick to saving attack> dash forward>(insert normal attack)> Scissors or Psycho crusher, but I actually bothered to learn them:

Charge your saving attack, and either input the dash motion as you hit the opponent (to hit confirm), or just input the dash when you see Bison step forward for the saving attack. Only input the dash command ONCE, then immediately hold back. Since you buffered the dash, as soon as Bison lands the SA, he will dash, and by that time you will nearly have your charge, then do either st. fierce, low forward, or cr. jabx2>cr. MK and then Scissor kick.

On top of the scissor kick, in ANY combo (saving attack or not) you can cancel the first hit into his super. However, the player has to consider that in most cases, having stocks of EX meter for Headstomps is almost better than the damage from the super. So consider:

-Will the super in this situation really decide the match, or should I save my EX for later rounds?
-Will the super impede my defensive options on wakeup later?
-Do I need an EX move to trade or beat an opponent’s EX move?

I would say in most cases the Super is worth it for damage alone, but I can also imagine situations where I would keep the meter for insurance policy in later rounds. Sometimes you really NEED to do multiple EX headstomps in a row.

In summary by far my most powerful character right now is Bison, and I am having a blast using him. I think his pokes are amazing, his runaway game is actually better than Akuma’s, his super and Ultra are great, and he has realistic and fun combos. He can be played both aggressively and defensively when needed.

to learn:

Are there better Saving attack combos that don’t take any meter? What is the biggest damage crossup combo Bison has? Which matchups does he RAPE in, and which does he have the toughest time in? What uses do his neutral jump normals have?

Provided by the IT training and IT trainingteam at computer training teams.