Basic Strategy

Basic Rules/Mechanics Rounds

Each battle on this game consists of a fight of (up to) 3 rounds between you, and your opponent (A "friend" or the CPU). At the beginning of the round, each player's life is full. This bar, in fact, is made of two bars: A yellow one, and a red one. The red one will only go down once the yellow one go away. The first player to take the life of his/her opponent to zero, wins the round. The first player to win 2 of the 3 rounds, wins the match.

The Controls

Attack Buttons - The buttons on the arcade have the traditional Neo Geo style:

A and B - The Light Punch(LP) and Kick(LK), respectively.
C and D - The Hard/Heavy Punch(HP) and Kick(HK), respectively.

In general, the Light attacks are less powerful, but they're faster, and the Hard/Heavy attacks are more powerful, but, in general, slower than the Light attacks.
If you're used to the Capcom style (With 3 buttons for punch and kick), I'm sorry, but the Neo Geo games don't use 6 buttons.

(Important note: I'll most of the time, use LP instead of A, LK instead of B, and there we go, mainly for the Capcom players, because the Neo Geo players are already used to the ABCD layout.)

Moving Your Character

The Joystick - Moving with the Joystick is something simple. If you press left, your character will move to the left, and if you press to the right, your character will move to the right. Simple. But it's not just that. You need to know that here we don't use left and right. We use BACKWARD and FORWARD here. So how can I know where is backward and forward? Simple:

If your character is facing to the right (that means the side of the second player), then pressing left on the joystick means backward, and pressing right on the joystick means forward.
If your character is facing to the left (that means the side of the first player), then pressing left on the joystick means forward, and pressing right on the joystick means backward.

Blocking

With the Joystick - To block an attack, a player must hold backwards before/at the same time the opponent attacks (Before is better), otherwise, you'll just move away from the opponent. If a player blocks while standing, he can block middle, high, and air attacks (But you'll be vulnerable to low attacks). The block can be used while crouching, and this stance will block the low and middle attacks (But you'll be vulnerable to the air attacks, and the ground overhead attacks). Some high attacks can miss against certain crouching characters (Like Choi, the smallest character in the game).

Guard Meter

Well, every successful block will decrease your Guard Meter (The green meter). It can be refilled slowly if you don't block any attacks. The Guard Crush happens when a character blocks too much, which makes the character stunned for a little time, leaving him/her wide open for any combo. After the Guard Crush, the Guard Meter is refilled. You can refill your Guard Meter by doing a CD counter as well.

Advanced Strategy

Mechanic	Notes
Dash	Something basic, but advanced anyway. To use this just press (To dash forwards) or (To dash backwards). Your character will do an quick dash/running animation, and this looks simple, but it's not only that. You can attack or use any special move while dashing forward, but not backwards (Mostly characters with air special moves can do this), but don't abuse this feature. You can jump while dashing too, and the character will jump higher with this (See the High Jump section for more details).
Autoguard attacks (Aka Armor Attacks)	Autoguard is when a character automatically blocks an attack while performing a Command/Special move. Most of the moves that have this feature don't make the character go to the blocking animation, but a brief pause happens instead, and then the move continues. Like in the normal block, triggering the Autoguard makes the Guard Crush gauge go down.
The Super Meter/Bar	Any character's meter starts on the level 1 at the beginning of the match. You can fill it up when one of those things occur: If you take damage (Excluding the regular throw's damage); If you use any special move; If you use any normal attack that hits your opponent; If you make an attack that is blocked (excluding the Super and exceed moves); If your opponent successfully taunts you (Gives you something like a quarter of one level, I think). The meter will decrease if some of this things occur: If you use a Normal Throw(A+B or C+D) that misses (Costs a quarter of one level, I think); If you use the GCFS (Guard Cancel Frontstep) with (Costs about 20% of one level); If you use the GCFS (Guard Cancel Frontstep) with A+B (Costs about 60% of one level); If you use a Guard Cancel Attack (See below); If you use a Super Move (Costs one level).
Guard Cancel Attack (GCA) (aka CD counter for the KoF players)	To perform this, just press The HP(C button) and HK(D button) while blocking any attack. It costs one level of the Super Meter, so use with caution. When you do the input while blocking, your character does an attack (Like the CD on the KoF series) that knocks your opponent across the screen. It doesn't do any damage, but it'll refill your Guard Crush Gauge (Which is useful in case you're feeling pressured). You can normal cancel the attack if it hits or if it's blocked (Mainly used to get meter, or to charge some Supers).
Guard Cancel Frontstep (GCFS)	This is probably the most important thing in this game(You'll see it a lot on high level matches), so you need to learn this technique. There are 2 ways to use it(But you'll pick the second one): First Way: Do while blocking, it's like a dash, and it's kinda harder to do while blocking(It's strange to stop holding back), but you can save the Super Meter if you master this(As I said, this costs about 20% of one level). Second Way: Press LK(B button), and HP(C button) while blocking. It's easier to do while blocking, because you don't have to worry about the directionals to use this. As I said before, this costs about 60% of one level. A good choice for beginners(But it will be ignored on higher levels).
High Jump	Any fighter can perform two different jumps: The regular jump (Just press up on the joystick), and the High Jump. To do this jump, quickly move the joystick down and then up (This works with up-forward and up-backwards as well; ), or do a forward dash (), and then just jump (Works with the GCFS too). If you do that, your character will jump higher than average. Although the engine used in the game is KoF-based, there is no short hop (Which is sad).
Throws/Throw Escapes	In this game, each character has at least 2 throws with different combinations, and in case you don't know, throws are unblockable. The first is A+B (The two Light attacks), which throws your opponent forward. The second one is C+D (The two Heavy attacks), which sends your opponent backwards. Just go to someplace near the opponent and press one of those two (Some characters can do command throws, but let's use only those two now). You can escape from those throw too. How? I can only say one thing: It's hard. To escape from a throw, you need to press the exact combination made with the throw (Note: You can't do that with Command throws, you won't need to do a 360 motion to escape from Hugo's Exceed. It would be unfair for Hugo, and most characters as well) immediately after the animation begins. If a player used LP(A button) and LK(B button) on a throw, the other player must use the same buttons (And only them) in order to escape the throw (You can use cheats too, but cheats are wrong).
MAXIMUM Mode	This one is, without any doubt, the most important thing in this game (It is just one of the things that make it broken, along with the GCFS). When the Super Meter reaches level 3, the gauge will show the word "MAXIMUM" and will start flashing. At this time, the meter will be red, and the bar begins to decrease. You can cancel/supercancel some moves at this time, so this mode is made to do combos(Sadly, not any character can do MAXIMUM Mode combos... R.I.P Sagat and Earthquake). If you perform any move that "drains" the meter (Go to "The Super Meter" section for details), the gauge will decrease as well. During the MAXIMUM mode, you can use a move that decreases the meter even if you don't have enough power left (For example, doing a Super move when you have only 1% of the bar). After the bar reaches zero, the Gauge will revert to the normal and almost boring Gauge. Once this gauge is empty, it will go back to the level 2, and you have to gain more power afterwards. If the round ends, and you're on the MAXIMUM Mode, the gauge will go back to level 2 as well. If you refill it again, you can go back to the MAXIMUM Mode anyway.
Exceed Moves	Exceeds are like Super Moves, but you won't need any meter to use it. The requirement to use this are: The name of the character needs to be flashing. This will only happen with you when you lose your first bar(The yellow one), and you have only the red one. There's something important in the Exceeds: You can only use them once on the match (No, not on the round, it's on the match itself, which means, if you use any Exceed on the first round, you cannot use it on the round 2 or 3, so USE WITH CAUTION!!!!).
Recovery Roll	This is something easy, and good to begginers. It's a normal thing on the KoF series, so if you're used to it, it's a good progress. But if you don't know, just press A+B at the same time you land (If you're in a knockdown state). This allows your character to recover on their feet quickly instead of being knocked down. You can even punish the opponent on certain situations.
Move buffering	This is something tricky, but important. This strategy allows Super/Special/Exceed moves to come out with a different input(Sometimes it can be hard), and can make you get near your opponent after doing the move. A nice example is dashing in the middle of the input, for example... Let's use Ryu's Shinkuu Hadouken. You probably know the input,right?(If you don't know, which can be rare, here it is - (2x)+P). Now let's try to add a dash in the middle of the input. How? Just do this input: , , +P (Works with GCF too). You got it? If not, just practice with another move/character (It works with every character, and almost all of the Super/Special moves in the game, so you have many choices, but can be hard with some characters).