Street Fighter 4 Secrets

What is it?

I know I have a lot of visitors to my site and listeners of the podcast that are thirsty for Street Fighter 4 knowledge, so this is what I got for you guys.  As far as I know, it’s the first of its kind and if this is a success, there will be many more to come in the future.  This is the best way out there right now to accelerate your knowledge of the game and really become the best player possible.

It’s called Street Fighter 4 Secrets: Volume I and it features Ed Ma, one of Southern California’s best (if not THE BEST) Street Fighter 4 players.  It’s a super in-depth talk we had about his innovative Ken play style as well as some of the more technical aspects of Street Fighter 4 such as:

• frame advantage and how it’s used
• Focus back dashes
• exactly how Ultra startup works

What makes this special?

A couple of years ago, when I was trying my best to climb the ranks in the Family Fun Arcade Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike community, one of the things I thought was extremely unique, not to mention beneficial, was the talks that we would all have about 3rd Strike at Denny’s after a long night of playing.  We’d get to FFA at 8PM and play until 4AM and then sit at Denny’s for another two or three hours talking about 3rd Strike and the matches we had that night.

I learned more about 3rd Strike from these talks with established top players including Ed Ma than I have from any other source.  They were so helpful to me, I always thought that people in other parts of the country and the world would have benefitted from hearing these talks as well, but there was never really an opportunity to do so before now.

Now I’m in a position where I can bring one of the greatest minds in Street Fighter 4 to the community in a brand new way and talk with him for over 70+ minutes about the way he thinks about the game so you can get a better understanding of the game.

So that’s the spirit and the history behind Street Fighter 4 secrets, but how will it help you as a player?

By listening to Ed talk about the mechanics of SF4 as well as his tactics, secrets and techniques, you’ll be able to apply it to your own game and discover and develop your own techniques using Ed’s thought processes.

Who is this for?

One of the things I noticed last weekend while I was in Virginia for Sinsation Fight Club was that almost nobody over there was having the types of in-depth technical conversations about SF4 that we were having over here in Southern California.  There seems to be a lack of discussion and information about the technical details that separate the good players from the great players and that’s what we spend a lot of time discussing in this interview.

If you’re not having these types of discussions already in your existing Street Fighter community, this is your chance to get a taste of just how deep the rabbit hole goes. 

This talk is geared toward both beginning players as well as mid-level players who are trying their best to level up.  As a beginner, you will have an early head start against everyone who hasn’t listened to this talk as well as have a gain some insight into the Top Player perspective, which you can benefit from for as long as you’re playing Street Fighter.  Even if you’re really new and don’t quite grasp everything that Ed talks about, there is still plenty you WILL learn and understand that you didn’t before.

If you’re an experienced Street Fighter player, but new to Street Fighter 4, you will also benefit from listening to this because it’s all laid out there for you and you don’t have to discover it on your own!  Ed has spent countless hours playing and finding these things out since he began playing in August and what he found has been paying off in spades so far in tournaments.

Here are the results from the first Ranking Battle season at Arcade Infinity here in SoCal.  The Ranking Battle season was a series of six tournaments held over the past few months where Top 8 placers win points based on their performance.  First place gets you 8, second gets you 7, etc.  You can see that Ed and I ended up with the most points overall and that Ed was the only player to win more than once in the season.  Had he not been messing around with Dhalsim and Zangief during the fourth and fifth tournaments (#1.4 and #1.5), there’s no doubt in my mind that he would have had more points than me because he slaughtered me both times we played in grand finals!

The bottom line is that Ed knows his stuff and players of all skill levels can benefit from listening to this.

Download Free Samples

Here are three free tracks from the album:

1.  Introduction
5.  Safe Jump-Ins
7.  Using Frame Data to Your Advantage

(right click and select Save Target As…)

Listen to some clips from all the tracks:

Here is a list of the topics that are covered in Street Fighter 4 Secrets Volume 1:

Track 1:

• Ed’s Street Fighter background history
• Ed’s tournament experience
• Ed’s FFA 3rd Strike experience and how it let to SF4
• the importance of traveling to tournaments

Track 2:

• what attracts Ed to SF4
• Ed’s unique approach to exploring moves in the game

Track 3:

• how Ed developed his innovative Ken playstyle
• integrating frame data into your game
• discovering move counters and understanding why they work

Track 4:

• how countering Ultras with Ultras works
• exactly how startup frames work
• why you can jump over the startups of Ultras

Track 5:

• the basic idea of a safe jump-in
• safe jump-in setups and the options involved

Track 6:

• how back dash invincibility works
• the difference between regular back dashes and Focus back dashes
• dealing with crossups with dashes

Track 7:

• why is frame advantage important and how is it best utilized?
• scenarios for using frame advantage
• the move Ed bases a lot of his gameplay around because of the frame advantage it gives
• getting super in-depth with frame advantage example situations
• using frame advantage with counter hit setups
• frame advantage-based sequences depending on what you think your opponent will do

Track 8:

• explanation of why Ken’s F + MK is so good
• sequences and setups that Ed uses F + MK for
• followup situations after F + MK

Track 9:

• integrating Ken’s kara throw
• kara throw setups
• using the kara throw to create situations that you can punish on reaction

Track 10:

• using EX Hurricane Kick effectively
• ground and air EX Hurricane Kick frame advantage
• setting up the ground EX Hurricane Kick
• understanding the post-EX Hurricane Kick decision-making process
• putting it all together with frame advantage and guessing games

Track 11:

• using the air EX Hurricane Kick effectively
• changing the arc of your jump with the air EX Hurricane Kick
• options after hitting the crossup air EX Hurricane Kick
• differences in frame data between Ryu and Ken

Track 12:

• attacking Rufus safely even against EX Messiah Kick through frame data
• what this means for your game and why it’s important
• how to find moves that you can stick out safely

In addition to these 12 tracks, there are also two bonus tracks that are downloadable separately.  Those two deal with the way Ed approaches the Ken vs. Sagat and Ken vs. Balrog matches.

Is this all Ken stuff?

No, Ed is a Ken specialist and this interview is based around Ed’s groundbreaking Ken playstyle, but even if you don’t play Ken, there is still plenty to learn from Ed because of the in-depth technical discussion that only he can provide.  As you can see from the list of topics, it’s about 50% Ken stuff, 50% non-character specific game knowledge that can be applied to any character.

How is this different from the two podcasts Ed was on?
The episodes of the podcast that Ed was on (Denjin Video Podcast #4 and Street Fighter Podcast #8) were pretty much just me and Ed having a regular Street Fighter conversation, not really going into super depth about anything.  Episode #8 has a great talk about frame data, but our level of understanding back then compared to now was nothing!  This talk with Ed is jam packed with so much Street Fighter 4 knowledge, those that hear it, study it and take it all in will definitely have a leg up on the competition.

I tried my best to ask as many in-depth technical questions as possible to try and really get in Ed’s head and figure out how he thinks about the game and I’m really pleased with what came out of it.

Why not put this out for free?

There comes a point where you have to make a decision about how seriously you are about playing Street Fighter.  Is this just something you do for kicks on the weekend or are you actively trying to get better and compete against the best?  There’s no right or wrong answer, but if you fall into the latter category, then this is just an investment you should make, just like buying a PS3/Xbox, a joystick and the game itself is an investment.  Think of this as what you’d buy in place of that crappy SF4 guide that Prima put out.  Besides, I already wrote and gave you a Street Fighter 4 guide anyway. 

I also had to decide how seriously I was going to take this Street Fighter stuff and I decided that I wanted to go for it 100% full time.  That means that at some point I would have to create a way for me to make a real living out of all this stuff and this was one of the best ways I could think of to do so.  If this project is a success, you can be sure that I’ll be able to bring more Street Fighter educational projects to the community in the future.

At 99 cents a track, I don’t think it’s going to break anybody’s bank and if you buy the whole thing it’s only $9.99 through iTunes or $8.99 through Amazon.  There really is no difference, so you might as well buy it through Amazon, but since I am such an Apple fanboy I really like to see my work on iTunes.

Plus, the tracks are in MP3 format and don’t have any DRM on them so you can download them and burn CDs of this for friends or other players in the community and they’ll work on ANY MP3 player, not just iPods and iTunes.

Enough!  How do I get it?

You can buy it on iTunes for $0.99 per track or $9.99 for the entire album:

Or you can buy it on Amazon for $0.99 per track or $8.99 for the entire album.

For those that live outside the USA

Unfortunately, purchasing through Amazon is not available to people who live outside the USA.  Sorry about that, I didn’t know that was how it was until after I announced it.    Also, it’s only available on iTunes for people who live in the US, Canada, Australia/New Zealand, UK, European Union and Japan.  When I was getting the distribution for this project straightened out, I thought I had pretty much everyone covered, but I was wrong.  So if you are having trouble buying Street Fighter 4 Secrets, please send me an email: gootecks *AT* gootecks *DOTCOM* and we will figure something out, probably using Paypal.  I apologize for the inconvenience. 

So if you’re ready to take your Street Fighter 4 game to the next level then don’t wait, jump on this chance now because the sooner you do, the faster you’ll have a better understanding of the game and the quicker you’ll be beating everyone on your block, around the country and soon the world!

If you have any questions, please send me an email: gootecks *AT* gootecks *DOTCOM*