Introduction

The most accepted revision after Super Turbo and Hyper Fighting

Characters

Terminology

Game Elements

Blocking

Holding away from your opponent on the controller while they are attacking results in your character defending their attack (blocking), and will take little to no damage. However, there are two blocking states, one standing, and one crouching.

Standing block (high block) will block your opponent's high attacks (including jumping attacks), while crouching block (low block) will block your opponent's low attacks (including sweeps, and some other crouching kicks). All attacks which are not specifically 'high' or 'low' attacks can be blocked either standing or crouching.

While blocking you cannot move or perform attacks, you must wait until the block has completed.

Normal Attacks

Pressing a button on the control panel results in a normal move. Punches are the top 3 buttons, kicks the bottom 3. Weaker normals are to the left, stronger to the right.

Normal attacks are your most basic offensive tools, and you should familiarise yourself with your character's normals as thoroughly as possible.

Some normal attacks only are available when holding particular directions on the stick, these are known as 'unique moves' or 'command normals'. An example is E.Honda's 'Hiza Geri' which is performed by holding left or right on the controller and pressing the Medium Kick button.

Special Attacks

Every character has 'special' attacks, which involve a series of controller movements and/or button presses. These will take some practice to get used to, but are very important tools. Generally, performing special moves using the weaker punch or kick buttons will do less damage or travel shorter distances, but be less punishable by your opponent.

Special moves inflict a small amount of damage to your opponent even when blocked.

Throws

If your opponent is blocking your attacks, Throws allow you to grab your opponent anyway and deal damage. Depending on your character, while near your opponent, holding left or right on the stick while pressing particular punch or kick buttons (usually hard punch) will perform a throw. Holding left results in the opponent being throw towards the left, and holding right will throw them to the right.

Some characters have holds rather than throws, they fill the same role but result in multiple smaller hits rather than one big throw.

Familiarise yourself with the ranges your throws/holds will work at, and how far away your opponent ends up afterwards.

System Info

Damage

Basic Elements

Life Meter

Life meters for both characters are displayed at the top of the screen. Every character initially has the same amount of life, which is 144 "hit points". Once this is depleted through being hit, thrown, or taking block damage, the character with 0 life loses the round. Both characters may be reduced to 0 life at the same time, in which case the round is a draw.

Stun/Dizzy

If a character is hit or thrown too often in quick succession, they are "stunned" or "dizzied". This results in a knockdown, followed by a considerable period of time where the character is unable to perform any actions and is at the mercy of their opponent. The state of characters' stun is not displayed.

Timer

Hyper Fighting is a timed game, and once time runs out the round is awarded to whichever character has more health. If health is even, the round is a draw.
The timer starts at 99 and counts down as real-world second.

Universal Abilities

Basic Movement: Walk, Jump, and Crouch
Blocking
Normal Attacks
Special Attacks
Throws
Reversals / Meaty Attacks

Movement

SF2 has very simple movement controls, with no dashes, rolls, or anything more complicated than a jump.

Pressing left or right on the controller while nothing else is happening moves the character left or right on the screen. Your character's backwards walking speed is slower than their forward speed. Some characters are faster than others.

Holding down on the controller causes your character to crouch. This lowers your character's body and can evade some moves, and is also important for blocking and some special moves.

Pressing up on the controller will make your character jump into the air. New attack options are available in the air, but no defensive options are present so it is dangerous to jump too much. Pressing up+left or up+right on the controller will jump left or jump right. Jumping is very useful for avoiding projectiles.

Advanced Strategy

Chain Cancelling into special moves

Chain cancelled normal attack strings cannot normally be comboed into special moves. For example, Boxer's cr.Jab XX Straight Rush will normally special cancel, but cr.Jab, cr.Jab will not. However, alternating between standing and crouching can reset the "chain state" and re-allow special cancelling. Continuing the previous example, Boxer's crouching Jab can be chained into standing Jab, thus allowing cr.Jab, cr.Jab, s.Jab XX Straight Rush to connect.
Strangely, even though Boxer's s.Short is not chain cancellable, it is possible to perform cr.Short, cr.Short, s.Short XX Straight Rush too (as a chain, not a link combo).

CPS1 Chains

Utilizing the CPS1 gaming engine to your advantage:

The first three editions of Street Fighter II (WW,CE,HF aka Turbo) were programmed with the CPS1 engine. There was an old glitch that was fixed in Super and Super Turbo that allowed for a number of rapid fire kicks to be linked into a punch and then further cancelled into your favorite special.

EX. Ken: 3x c.lk-> s.hp xx Hadoken (qcf+p)

How this works is beyond me, but I do know how to utilize the CPS1 chains, and here's how:

After hitting with the first three rapid fire kicks, let the pad, stick, whatever go back to neutral (so you are standing) and input lk+whichever punch you want with the same timing as the initial lk's. In the example above you would input c.lk..c.lk..c.lk.(neutral).s.lk+hp then just cancel into hadoken.

This is the just one of the ways to use CPS1 chains. You can use these to get high punches in when all you had time for was a low kick.

One more note, you can go from standing lk's to crouching punches; or from crouching lk's to standing punches. But curiously enough not vice versa, punches don't go to kicks, and standing kicks do not go to standing punches.

--Danthrasher

Here's a video description of CPS1 chains (CE used in the vid, but the process is identical for HF)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WzU3IXDOT0

TIER LIST

Top Tier

Mid Tier

Low Tier

M Bison

Guile

Ryu

Sagat

Ken

Chun Li

Blanka

Balrog

E Honda

Zangief

Vega

Dhalsim

Regional Differences

Please note that the Japanese versions are not the same as the American versions:

American Version	Japanese Version
Boxer character = Balrog	Boxer character = M.Bison
Claw character = Vega	Claw character = Balrog
Dictator character = M.Bison	Dictator character = Vega

References

Port Comparisons

Technical Details

SF2 Dizzies
Dizzy durations and limits and update
SF2 Hitboxes
SF2 Throwboxes
SF2 Random damage
Cheat codes & findings