SvC Chaos: SNK Vs Capcom/FAQ

General

Is SVC Chaos a game that I would like?

SvC Chaos's Good and Bad Things (You'll see this section on each character's page as well)

If you want to add more bad things, just do it.

Good Things:

Bad Things:

You love fighting games with a huge focus on knowledge checks Very fun to play casually (Easier than KOF2002 even though this is based off of 2003's engine) The game being broken makes it funny/unique The characters are very fun to learn as well Beautiful graphics and art direction in general Character endings are usually really detailed Capcom sprites are so good (SNK gave Demitri more love than Capcom itself!) No Morrigan Violent Ken's debut! Dan is a sub-boss! Unique dialogue before every fight The game has simple enough mechanics (Which any KOF player will be used to) HSDMs (AKA Exceeds) cost no meter Front Step gives the game an equivalent to Third Strike's Parry system FS allows most characters to be viable, even if they're bad

Geese (Too good) Dictator (Too bad) Goenitz is back (but you may like that anyways) The game is incredibly unbalanced The hitboxes are not okay No story mode, only arcade mode Backgrounds (subjective) Dhalsim's "stretching" sound effect This game is nothing compared to most SNK games No team battles or grooves, only classic 1v1 Most SNK characters were just copied and pasted from other games There are some unexpected characters here (Like Choi alone, Earthquake, Hugo, Tessa, etc.) It lacks some fan-favorite characters too (Like Benimaru, Haohmaru, Nakoruru, Leona, KoF Athena, Sakura, Blanka, E.Honda, Cammy, Zangief, etc.) Where are the grapplers? (We only have Hugo here)

Is SVC Chaos as broken as everyone says it is?

Very, very much so yes. This game is pretty much broken beyond repair and is not really competitively viable per se, but with Guard Cancel Front Step being the central mechanic of SVC Chaos, it helps to reduce a lot of issues with balancing the game has, albeit the learning curve is fairly steep. GCFS helps make matchups that are horrible without it otherwise become a lot more bearable. Almost everyone benefits from GCFS, but the case can be made that a very select few are awful even with it.

The game is broken, but if you like broken fighting games, you'll be right at home.

Any tips for a beginner?

• 1. Learn to Guard Cancel Front Step. Now.
• 1.5. It doesn't matter who you're up against, as long as you can GCFS then even the likes of Shin Akuma or Red Arremer are significantly more bearable and are not impossible.
• 2. Even if you suck at punishing after Guard Cancel Front Step, even a simple dash in grab is a viable punish if you are unable to do anything else. The opponent will not receive much damage, but they're still forced into a 50/50 mixup and will have to deal with you being closer to them than before.
• 3. You don't necessarily need Max Mode if your character doesn't benefit too greatly from it, so in those cases you don't need to conserve meter as much to obtain Max Mode.
• 4. Other characters who do need Max Mode, it is better to learn to conserve meter.
• 5. Red Arremer is not broken. He's annoying as hell, but he's garbage in close range and has very specific weaknesses most characters can exploit one way or another. RA players who just cycle minion summons over and over is also a sign that the player is a bad RA player, since he's vulnerable during minion summons.
• 6. Athena is not OP. She's extremely one note and easy to punish for the most part with an ounce of patience.
• 7. Play who you want to play. People complaining are just complaining.
• 8. SVC Chaos is a heavy matchup game in general. Matchups between characters vary wildly depending on who you play.
• 9. This game also focuses on three main aspects: zoning, punishes, and movement.

I really need someone to play! Who are the best characters to learn the game with?

The best beginner characters to use for SVC Chaos may be a little subjective, but here's a quick rundown of the easier characters to pick up and play for SVC Chaos specifically, while simultaneously not teaching bad habits:

• Guile: Other than the weird input issue regarding charge moves, Guile is a fantastic turtle with easy combos and simple gameplay who also doesn't have to rely on meter management nearly as much as some other characters. He holds his own really well with good buttons too, and since he's difficult to open up, he's pretty straight-forward.
• Iori: One of the KOF poster boys, and perhaps the character to learn KOF with, Iori is just as well suited to teach you some of the basics in SVC Chaos, minus the removal of hops. His move list is pretty well rounded with some emphasis on rushdown. Orochi Iori is also an okay pick, but he's significantly faster and may be difficult controlling space with if you're not used to his speed.
• Ken: A more aggressive shoto character with really easy combos to work with. Ken isn't a threat tier list wise, but still, you likely know how to play him already, leaving little in the way of new info to learn about him in SVC.
• Kim: Pure rushdown character who, while arguably not as strong as he is in KOF2002 especially because of the lack of hops, has some of the easiest but most damaging combos in the game, good supers, and usually faces zero issue getting in and laying pressure on the opponent. He has some difficult tech that is just as rewarding, but you don't need it.
• Kyo: Not the easiest character in the game with a large variety of mixups and a lot of combo potential, but Kyo is made with SNK design philosophy in mind. He'll teach you pretty well how to hit confirm combos, executing them, spacing, knowing when to use jump-ins, movement, etc. Also great for learning KOF with.
• Ryu: The basics of basics shoto with an emphasis on zoning. Very easy to work with toolkit and easy combos to teach you the fundamentals. Chances are too, you already know how to play Ryu as well, leaving less work you have to put in to learn how he is in SVC.
• Terry: Incredibly simple character who really just needs to charge in, buttons blazing. Very meter hungry but has several safe special moves, great frame data to continue his momentum, easy combos, and is rewarding for so little work.

Technical

Where can I play this game?

Everyone plays SVC Chaos on Fightcade with the Plus and Super Plus roms. You can easily find the Fightcade website to download the client here, but you will need to find the rom separate. It uses the Final Burn Neo emulator with rollback netcode.

Is there a training mode?

You will either need to load the game using cheats like with Uni-Bios, or by loading the game in AES Mode to use the in-game training mode. Either or is fine.

Is there a way to view hitboxes?

Both SVC Chaos and King of Fighters 2003 share the same engine, so you can flip a couple dipswitches in order to enable the hitboxes. All that needs to be done is to, for example in Uni-Bios, to flip the DIP1-2 dipswitch (or DIP1-4 for 2003), and there the hitboxes are enabled and viewable. This is far from ideal, however, as it's fairly confusing to look at the boxes.

• In both games, the boxes are only indicated by 4 corner borders with a tiny indent in all 4, but the lines connecting the corners like a box are completely invisible.
• They also suggest that the pushbox never changes and remains a single rectangle the entire time.
• Throw hitboxes are not viewable at all for either normal throws or command grabs.
• Projectiles have two hitboxes but are both the same color, making it unclear what the hitboxes are.
• Lastly, there are solitary hitboxes for the heads.

• In 2003's case, all the boxes are white, making them obnoxious to distinguish.
• In SVC's case, there are both black and green boxes, with a pushbox that flashes between blue and white.

• In some attacks, there are flashing purple hitboxes.

It's better than 2003 as there is some indication to the different hitboxes, but it remains unclear what each color and what each box represents that you cannot simply look at it from a glance. And if you want clean rips of the hitboxes, the plus mark in the center of the character at the bottom of the hitboxes cannot be turned off. It's something at least, but not particularly user-friendly, either. It would be easier to use a hitbox viewer for SVC with clearly color coded hitboxes like Green, Blue, Red, that don't also fluctuate, but one does not appear to exist at the moment.

I'm struggling to do charge moves consistently, or they don't come out at all. What gives?

SVC Chaos, like the King of Fighters series, has 30 frame charge windows for charge motions so they charge in half a second, in other words. Thing is, you may find that your charge motions aren't coming out at all, even though you don't struggle with it in other games. That is because SVC's input reading specifically with charge motions is a little weird. In order to remedy this, before letting go of charge, you usually need to move the stick to either only down or back and then you press the opposite direction and the attack will come out.

• If you hold down back as Guile, you're charging both Sonic Boom and Flash Kick.

• If you want Sonic Boom, after the charge briefly move the stick up to back and then press forward punch and Sonic Boom will come out without error.
• If you want Flash Kick, same rule applies only this time you press down before hitting up.

These combos are impossible to perform. How do I improve my execution?

SVC Chaos, while not a King of Fighters game, still shares several elements of its gameplay and the engine with other KOF titles, meaning in order to improve at doing combos, you have to learn how to execute KOF combos, most notably Max Mode combo execution in KOF2002. This may seem impossible, but there's several shortcuts to it:

Esoterics Regarding Frame Data and Inputs:

• Jumps have 4 frames of startup across all characters. Not all jumps are equal in other aspects, but they all have little startup.

• Athena has 5 frames startup, and Mars People has 3 frame startup instead.

• Like KOF, SVC Chaos has a 4-frame rule whenever you press a button: after pressing it, the game waits 4 frames to check if you press (or let go of) any directions before finalizing the input.

• An example would be if you press st.A as Iori. If you press A by itself, after 4 frames the game will register the input as st.A.
• In the same scenario, if you press st.A, but then press forwards during the 4 frame window, as long as forward is still held by the end of the 4 frames, the game will register the input as Iori's f.A command normal.
• The reverse also applies: if you press f.A as Iori, but then let go of forwards before the 4 frame window is up, the game will register the input as st.A.

• Essentially, you press a button, the game waits 4 frames to check if any directions are pushed, and after the fourth frame registers the input.

Button Holding:

• A technique that is used by several KOF players, new or veteran, button holding is when you hold a button during motions and/or combos. It has a few notable uses:

• Lets you buffer special moves before the cancel window to guarantee it comes out
• Buffering wakeup DPs as you're getting up from a knockdown
• Button holding during a combo in order to negate special moves

Motion Shortcuts:

You might wonder, "These super input motions are ridiculously long. How does anyone perform them?" In actuality, the input reader is quite lenient in KOF games (except for KOF2003, which SVC shares the same engine with ironically enough), and SVC Chaos is no different. If you're struggling with these motions, there are shortcuts and other workarounds.

• The Orochinagi input (qcb~hcf) or Ranbu input (qcf~hcb) can both be executed in two different ways:

• qcb~hcf > qcb~qcb~f (and vice versa for qcf~hcb)
• qcb~hcf > qcb~qcf (and vice versa for qcf~hcb)

• In other words, you do not need to hit the diagonals in a half circle motion
• When performing hcf or hcb, all the game really cares about is checking that you hit (b, d, f) or (f, d, b) respectively

Other Execution Tips:

• This isn't Street Fighter. You DO NOT need links in your combos. Overly relying on links instead of chains will likely lead you to dropping combos and getting you killed.
• Focus on practicing your light confirms, especially off of low hitting chains such as cr.B, cr.B, cr.A. Using a mid hitting crouch light to start combos defeats the whole purpose for most characters.
• Jump-ins must hit deep in order for them to combo. Unlike other fighting games, where you can hit the opponent's head and they remain in hitstun for a while, giving you plenty of time to follow up, in KOF jump attacks almost always have very little hitstun, meaning you must learn to time your jump-ins to hit deeper than normal.
• The game may read a qcf motion as a dp input, mainly when you're doing a combo with a command normal.

• Say you are Geese, and you do this combo: cl.C > f.D > qcf+A, but instead of '96-Reppu Ken, you get Geese's DP because of the forward input from f.D
• In order to prevent this issue (if it happens to you), you can simply press up-forward while performing the qcf input, essentially a Tiger Knee input. This will override the DP input and thus give you the qcf input instead.

• A trick known as longcuts exists in KOF to help make some parts of combos or super cancels easier. The most notable one is a DP longcut.

• In some combos, you may need to cancel DP right away but the following motion is really long (for example, qcb~hcf). It is possible to do naturally but you need to be very quick.
• Instead, you can do the DP motion as this: hcb~f + P and then afterwards, to finish the super input, qcf + P since you already buffered part of the motion with the longcut

• The best way to think of KOF combos is to think of them like a rhythm where the following inputs/cancels are registered right as they connect with the opponent with some leniency, not after they connect. In other words, these act as chains, not links. A couple links exist in SVC Chaos and KOF, but for the most part you do not need to use them in combos.

Miscellaneous

What does the tier list for this game look like?

Lichmassacre's Tier List:

• Note: Tiers are mostly ordered within themselves. Tiers are not sorted by letters or numbers, as I do not think that would accurately reflect the game's meta. The matchup heavy nature of it, on top of general broken stuff and GCFS, makes even the low tiers have a chance of winning. I would argue only bottom 5 is unviable.

Upper Tiers

Lower Tiers

God Tier (SS) -- Self-explanatory. Will crush the entire game even if you remove their infinites because they have no flaws and can do everything. Geese Zero Demigod (S+) -- They still have a couple very minor flaws that can be taken advantage of, however unlikely. They are still very much broken. Demitri Shin Akuma Orochi Iori Top (S) -- Able to hold themselves together very well, even against the god tiers. Also the most consistent, reliable characters in the cast (other than the God tiers). Mesh very well with the system mechanics with robust tools perfect for SVC's flow, though they still have clear cut weaknesses. Tessa Red Arremer Violent Ken Chun-Li Kim Mars People Very Strong (A) -- They do the one thing they're good at incredibly well, and fit the game's pace comfortably. They still need some practice though, as they're not dynamic/can't do everything. Will still struggle in some matchups, but as a whole are pretty straightforward in a good way. Guile Terry Akuma Goenitz Solid (B+) -- The upper-mid tier, more or less. On the same level as the characters below this tier, but are a little more consistent with some slightly better tools. Mr. Karate Shiki Kyo Iori

Pretty Good (B) -- The mid tier characters. Regardless of who you pick in this tier, they will hold their own just well enough that they pose no serious setback. They will have to put up a fight against the god tiers, although those matchups are still winnable. Not amazing, but not awful. They will do just fine in the right hands. Mai Serious Mr. Karate Sagat Ryu Maybe (C) -- In theory, these characters can do quite well, but will take a lot of game knowledge, practice, patience, and player skill to truly shine. As is, some factor or another holds them back too much for them to be reliable. Kasumi Choi Earthquake Ryo Non-Threat (D) -- Will pose no threat, except to the absolute worst characters. Lacking serious polish and tools that make them too vanilla in a broken fighting game. They have some stuff to work with so it's not the end of the world, so they can catch new players off-guard. Athena Dhalsim Ken Balrog Trash (E) -- These guys suck. Will be forced to rely on the one or two good tools they have, but even Guard Cancel Front Step can't save them. Vega Genjuro M. Bison Dan Pick Someone Else (F) -- Not the worst character in the game, but he's still tied for it with Dan and M. Bison. He can do a lot of good punishes with GCFS, but the amount of energy you have to burn and the knowledge you need to accumulate for almost nothing back makes the grind not worth it. Ranked this low only because in the context of all bosses being allowed, Hugo gets it extremely rough against good players. Hugo

Old(?) Tier List made by Redarts, before late 2020:

Tier	Notes
God Tier -- (The "brokeniest" characters in the game, and no, they are not tournament banned, because the game is broken by itself)	Geese (Stop using him, we don't like to see cl.HP > f+HK infinites in a match.) Zero (He is tied with Geese, and has a huge amount of options for any matchup.)
Near God Tier -- (Broken as well, but has not enough level to be a "God".)	Orochi Iori #Shin Akuma (A stronger Akuma with infinite meter can't be broken, right?)
Top Tier -- (Those are just the "unfair" characters)	Demitri (FIRE! DEMON'S CRADLE!) #Red Arremer (Freaking zoning/unblockable movement character. He can just swarm the entire screen with minions. Some characters can counter it too.) Mars People (The damn unblockable teleport) Violent Ken Tessa (Strongest non-boss character.) Chun Li Guile Terry Goenitz (Koko desu ka?)
Upper mid -- (The Upper Mid guys are probably the coolest characters to play in my opinion, as they are not that unfair, and not that bad to play)	Kim (Braindead.) Kyo Iori Shiki Mai #Serious/Shin Mr. Karate (He could be higher on the list, because he is a boss character - Say that to Athena -, but... He needs to be on MAXIMUM Mode to do his things. Oh, he can't cancel normals too, and has almost no damage on his specials, making him almost useless outside of MAXIMUM Mode.) Mr. Karate
Mid tier -- (The "fair" guys. It's kinda hard to work with them sometimes, but they can be strong on the right hands)	Ryu Akuma (Same as Choi.) Choi (Annoying to fight against, but if he takes one or two combos he dies.) Earthquake Dhalsim Sagat Ryo Ken
Low tier -- (The hypest characters in the world. Why? Win with one of them, and you'll see how hype it is. Low tier matches in SvC can be pretty cool too, but it will rarely happen, because everyone loves SvC Geese)	Kasumi Genjuro #Athena (Weakest boss Hype!) Claw Boxer Hugo Dan (Yup, not the weakest this time.) Dictador (Almost tied with Dan, probably.)

Note: Characters with a # are selectable only on console versions of the game or the super plus romhack. I'm not sure if this tier list can be accepted(I'm updating it from time to time, and I'll try to make sure that this Tier List is as accurate as possible. I think that the Low Tier part is okay), but anyway. Some Low Tier chars can win against characters from higher tiers, because what matters is the player, not the character(Well, the problem is just... The game is just broken). For the console-only characters, it's just my opinion on where they are located.