=========================================== SEGA VIRTUA FIGHTER 2 OPTION SELECT by GodEater =========================================== DISCLAIMER ---------- This guide is for private and personal use only. It can only be reproduced electronically / placed on a web page or site as long as it is unaltered, with this disclaimer and the copyright notice appearing in full. Any information used from this document, quoted or not, should have this author's name somewhere clearly as acknowledgement. Feel free to distribute between others, but this guide is not to be used for profitable/promotional purposes; this includes being used by publishers of magazines, guides, books, etc. or being incorporated into magazines, etc. in ANY way. VF2 OPTION SELECT ================= Making the P+G throw more effective ----------------------------------- Aside from clean inputs and established gameplans one of the things that continually separates excellent players from being just good ones is knowledge and application of knowledge. Excellent players know the system off by heart and use that knowledge to control every controllable variable. They exploit the game system to its maximum limit and when you come upon these people you just can't get your mind around how they play. They seem to have armed themselves expressly against you. In the later days of VF2 everyone and their mother knew to jam on P+G to attempt a throw escape when they did something wrong. This lead to a few interesting side games such as crouch dashing under the throw reversal attempt or the KG feint (retracting a high kick to foil the throw). Usually what it lead to was the lack of use of the P+G throw, favoring the command throws which were inescapable and usually did more power. But in some situations, for some characters, the P+G throw was the best option. In VF2 any Shun player looking to capitalize on power and combo potential would attempt to drink. The problem of course was that Shun's "Dances with Punches" throw was escapable. Trying to throw from guaranteed situations usually got you reversed. The trick when playing Shun and drafting for a drink was to exploit unconventional throw situations. This could be very hard to set up and take advantage of. But option select gave many possibilities to the Shun (or any character) player that wanted to make use of their P+G throw. Here is a quick breakdown. P+G (no stick input) doubles as a high punch. P+G plus a stick input will double as any punch variant that is allowable for that character. The easiest example is d+P+G. Shun gets a low punch or a high throw. For Shun, the importance of this is huge. If, any time The person playing Shun hits d+P+G every time they might do a low punch they stand an equal chance of getting a very powerful throw off. The importance of doing this is not just getting a surprise throw off but you stand a chance of reversing a throw at the same time. And that is very important. The P+G/standing punch is very important for the Shun (and any character) player when he finds himself in the position to throw or Punch interrupt. You've succesfully blocked Sarah's Elbow Knee and the only thing that has a chance of hitting her is a PK counter. Under old flow charts you could attempt a throw and maybe get it or try for the PK counter. In high end option select you actually get three options and all of them double as a throw. The first two options being with the exact same input but one carries on after. P+G,K - This will either get you your P+G throw or a PK counter. If you have a cancelable high kick you can senbon into a throw. The either option is to crouch dash into a low punch but the low punch being inputed as P+G. I recommend crouchdashing since that negates the possibility of a throw escape on your opponent's part. You will crouch dash under their whiffed high punch. At worst you get a low punch and that sets up flow charting options. At best, a throw. A Shun player cannot retract the high kick in a PK situation so the best bet for that character would be P+G, P; a throw or double punch. Shun can then begin flowcharting if he desires. This sort of outlook can be approached everytime you would input a single punch or the beginning of one in a series. If you feel like comboing towards your opponent as a means of controlling available space, why not insert a possible throw in there as well? You never know. This can be especially effective if you are up against a bodycheck happy Akira. Uses outside of the P+G: Maximizing options ------------------------------------------- One of the prime reasons for doing senbon's outside of ticking and combos was for its power to control available space. The PKG sequence represented an attack that was largely uncounterable and carried the potential for damaging followups. However strict control over the amount of space is only part of the game. Just because you can extend your fighters presence through an attack that does no damage is no reason why you shouldn't be seeking to extend the influence of that attack. Option select takes care of that. It allows the simple PKG to always be doing more than advancing and controlling space. Take Wolf for example. Say he's matching up against his opponent and is standing not too far away but far enough away to not be much of a threat. Wolf can do a simple PKG to advance in closer to the opponent and then begin to implement his infighting game plan but another approach would be to input the PKG just slightly different. By inputing a half circle motion (b,db,d,df,f) and then PKG Wolf gets a sudden bonus. He gets an advancing punch with no recovery or depending on what his opponent has done, a twirl and hurl with a guaranteed pounce at the end. And sometimes what your opponent is doing is totally key. They might choose the exact moment you input your commands to step forward and put them in throw range. For a character like Wolf who has such a massive throw range this is a key advantage. As well as space control, it works anytime you have the opportunity for a PK counter. Maybe you'll get the counter and a pounce but maybe you'll decimate their entire life bar in 2.5 seconds. This didn't end with Wolf either. Jeff's b+P+G could be option selected into a standing PKG attempt. Akira made out like a bandit with his any of his command P+G throws. His forward pushing break guard throw could become PKG, his Surprise Exchange could as well; also each throw, if the command part was inputed incorrectly would also double as a standard P+G throw. Most people tend to view option select in the light of low punches from counter attempts (Akira's G, d+P) or an elbow from a failed Clothesline throw from a Bryant but the reality extended far beyond that. A P+G throw attempt without taking option select into consideration was a poor weapon. Knowing that you can P+G throw from a crouch can improve your odds of getting that throw immediately, knowing that command throws that failed took the animation of a high punch can lead to a gameplan that allows for the maximum rewards spawning from a minimum of commands. The ultimate point of maximizing the use of available option select is that, for good or bad, it is present in the game and it is not a bug. Using it will only afford you opportunities that were previously unavailable to you. You can escape sudden P+G throws without even trying, you can get P+G throws is very weird situations, a Wolf player suddenly gets a powerful throw out of nowhere and always seems to "know" where to throw or where to PK counter. In any situation. The psychological edge gets transferred over to you as soon as this begins to happen. And as soon as that happens your winning streaks will increase naturally. [end of document]