SSF2 Boiling Oil – A New Challengers Vid by Bob Sagat

When we think about SF2 bonus stages, our minds immediately jump to the infamous car stage, or the wine(?) barrels, or even the console only brick stage, but what about the oil drum stage? It turns out that by positioning the drums just so, you can create setups that make just about anything possible.

highlights:
SSF2 M.Bison combos in and out of his Headstomp and strikes a nice mid-air pose at 0:59 , Ken manages to land 2 DPs in a sequence that technically doesn’t combo, but is completely inescapable at 1:11, Fei Long combos 3 Flame Kicks at 1:26 and Chun Li reveals a secret special move at 1:45

combos and editing by Bob Sagat

transcript:

00:14 – The recovery of Fei’s second Rekka is cancelled by him entering a fall state, since he slid off of the barrel.
Cammy’s hitstun animation manages to push him back in time before he falls. After that he simply links his cr.Short into st.Fierce, then cancels into 3 more Rekkas.
The third one is interrupted by Fei entering a fall state again, this time falling off completely. He still makes the third Rekka sound during his neutral jump Fierce.

00:17 – In this stage Vega can control the direction in which his opponent is hit, simply by holding the corresponding direction on the joystick. His jump back Short causes Ryu to slide towards him, giving him enough time to make it across the screen and back jump over Vega, who does a far st.Fierce into the first fireball.

00:21 – Sagat’s Tiger Knee gets interrupted by Vega’s cr.Jab. After this, Sagat does a simple combo while the barrel negates the push back.
Interestingly, Tiger Uppercuts and Shoto DPs travel horizontally when there’s a barrel on top of them.

00:24 – Ken does a meaty close Roundhouse as Guile kicks into it with a cr.Short. The barrel helps Ken to land early out of his air Tatsu to finish with a DP.

00:27 – Fei falls out of his Rekka and has enough time to do a late Roundhouse on his way down, then follows with a standard link combo into Flame Kick.

00:30 – Normally Vega can’t combo into his Claw Dive, but the j.Fierce hits at the same time as the flame from the barrel, causing no fire state or knockdown, but adds enough hitstun for the Claw Dive to connect. Similar to hitting an opponent at the same time as a projectile.
Air normals can be canceled by walljumps, allowing Vega to combo 3 jump attacks.

00:37 – Chun Li can do the same thing: headstomps can be canceled into themselves or other air normals, and all her air normals can be canceled by walljumping, allowing five jump attacks in one combo.

00:40 – Dhalsim can do a fake air teleport by teleporting from the top of a barrel. He will have a short ground recovery in mid air, allowing him to follow up with ground style attacks in mid air. When he does nothing, he falls like normal.

00:43 – Because the characters in bonus stages don’t automatically face each other, they can do crossups at will, making the opponent fly at them, when attacking in the opposite direction.

00:46 – Because Blanka is facing the opposite way, Sagat flies to the right. You can’t fall during hit stun, so he just moves over to the other barrel.
Presumably because Blanka touches something he can stand on, he comes out of his Upball recovery early.
Some special moves react in a weird way to landing on a barrel, by making the character do a little after hop, during which they can attack. Blanka uses this to combo two neutral jump Fierces.

00:49 – Fei Long faces the other way to make Vega move with him, then turns around and finishes the combo.

00:53 – Cammy uses the same principle. Interestingly, when positioned underneath a barrel, her Spiral Arrow skips the second hit and goes straight into the recovery.
Unfortunately, the recovery is too long for her to follow it up without interupting it.

00:57 – Blanka hits Sim out of his teleport with a very meaty Upball. You can’t fall during hitstun, so Blanka has time to follow up with a normal Blanka Ball afterwards.

00:59 – Bison cancels a standing Strong into Headstomp. The Strong is only visible for one frame before it’s canceled.
Sagat’s height and the position of the barrels push Bison back to where he came from. If the barrels are one pixel off, this combo is impossible.
Instead of going into a recovery pose, in this scenario Bison actually does the full Headstomp pose, then flies to the right where he quickly lands. He does a simple combo into another st.Strong canceled by Headstomp.
When Bison flies up and lands on the barrel, if he does nothing, he just has a long recovery, but if he immediately jumps, this recovery can be carried over into the startup of a jump normal, in this case Fierce, which explains the weird mid-air pose.

01:02 – In certain situations, Blanka’s Rainbow Roll doesn’t bounce back, but finishes its trajectory. Because he started the move so far below Sagat, he lands on the barrel in time to do some follow up hits.
For some reason, a point blank Upball on top of a barrel causes Blanka to fall down immediately and go into a little hop during which he can attack.

01:05 – The last part of Dee Jay’s slide doesn’t knock down. Vega punches into it and gets pulled in close, making it possible for Dee Jay to hit him with a reversed Machine Gun Uppercut.
Normally the MGU can’t be comboed from. If Dee Jay doesn’t mash it, it doesn’t fall either -the first and last hit can be done airborne- but the middle hits cause the move to be interrupted by a fall. This gives him just enough time to do a neutral jump Roundhouse.

01:07 – When Vega does a Clawroll off of a barrel, he stays right next to it. Again, Vega has the power to control the opponent’s direction in this stage, so he uses this to pull Zangief in.
For some reason you can only combo two of Vega’s ground normals. After that, it’s impossible to hit anything again. (At least in time for it to combo, the game just doesn’t allow it. Early hitstun deterioriation?)

01: 09 – Sagat does a Low Tiger Shot into Fei’s waiting close Fierce. Then Fei shows him why he’s the master of links.

01:11 – Dhalsim interrupts Ken’s Jab Hadouken with a Short Slide, so Ken can get ready for a Strong DP. Sim does a st.Strong into the fireball and gets hit at the same time as the DP, which moves horizontally, because it started underneath a barrel. Duh.
A glitch is triggered which moves Sim up in the air and somehow interrupts his hitstun animation, causing him to fall.
Ken recovers in time to hit him with a Fierce DP before he hits the ground. Technically this doesn’t combo, but it is entirely inescapable. Sim goes straight into a falling state after the hitstun is over, denying him a chance to “air” teleport out of the way. Drills start up too slow and he is still in the air when the DP hits. He also isn’t invulnerable, since he’s technically not in an air recovery state, he can still do moves. And of course, the DP is invincible.
In the best case scenario, Sim would have stayed on the ground and stayed in hitstun, allowing the DP to combo, but as far as I can tell, the glitch is triggered a 100% of the time in this stage.

01:14 – A simple double fireball setup, similar to the Ryu one at 00:17, with Vega pulling the opponent closer.

01:16 – Hitting the barrel with the Sky High Claw allows Vega to do a meaty setup with it.
Just like Blanka, he goes into a little hop, that he uses to combo into a jump attack, then land in time to cancel some crouching attacks into another Wall Dive, which pushes Sim into the flame for the last hit.

01:19 – Just like Cammy’s Spiral Arrow, Fei Long’s Flame Kick skips the second hit, going straight into the recovery. Luckily, the Flame Kick’s recovery is the elusive third hit, making it easier to combo from.
Sim hits into the first hit with a far Fierce and gets sucked in, because Fei is facing the other way.

01:22 – Zangief is stuck in mid air because of a needlessly complicated setup, which I’d rather show you in this video.
One thing I can tell you about it, is that there’s a certain possible distance between barrels where a character can walk over the gap without falling, but when he jumps onto it, he falls right in. When the other character happens to be standing right next to the falling character, they get sucked through them to the other side for some reason, presumably from getting their collision boxes entangled or something. Anyway…
In this stage, whether a ground normal is considered close or far isn’t dictated by the distance between you and your opponent, but by how close you are to a barrel. Because of this, Ken can be right next to Gief and still do a far Roundhouse and cancel it into a Fierce DP, which normally wouldn’t hit, because he’d be too far away.

01:24 – Dee Jay does a Dread Kick, which gets interrupted by Chun. What’s interesting about this combo is that apparently, his close Roundhouse can hit twice. Normally the first hit pushes the opponent too far away for the second hit to connect.

01:26 – Kind of the same concept as the earlier Fei/Sim combo, except boxed in, so there’s no push back of any kind, allowing for far more Flame Kicks to be used.

01:30 – Blanka does an Upball into the barrel, so it hits as meaty as possible, allowing him some time to charge the next Upball. Because he’s underneath the barrel and Honda and the corner block him from getting out, he lands instantly to do a cr.Forward into another Upball. This time he extends his charge time by linking his second cr.Forward into a cr.Short, which he then cancels into the last Upball.

01:35 – Chun pushes Gief to the right by looking in the wrong direction. His hitbox is too wide to escape the headstomps under the barrel and Chun wants to fly forward, but is blocked by the third barrel, giving her an infinite. This combo was banned in all SSF2 tournament play.

soundtrack: Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold – Cammy Theme

released today, August 3rd, 2012