In honor of VF5 R.E.V.O, I'm going to teach you basic Virtua Fighter offense.

I’m seeing a lot of people in the fighting game community get curious about Virtua Fighter 5 now that it finally has decent netplay coming via the re-release VF5: R.E.V.O., and I’m really happy to see it! Virtua Fighter 4 and 5 were games ahead of their time, in that they are hardcore competitive fighting games, deliberately made for a serious competitive environment, at a time when not many gamers in the Western world needed or wanted that. (I was active in the tournament VF4 and 5 community in the 2000s, and this makes me very old indeed.) So it’s been largely ignored by the scene that finally started to flourish when Street Fighter 4 came out in the late 2000s.

But this time, with the rollback PC port VF5: REVO, people seem kinda into it! I’m seeing Youtubers dig into it, guide videos going around. (I mean Sega paid a bunch of high-profile FGC people but, also, alternatively, get paid boys) There’s a lot of excitement and that’s really encouraging! Perhaps the new VF has fostered some of that excitement for the old game, but I’ll take what I can get because I think VF5 Final Showdown, the base game all these re-releases are built upon, is pretty much perfect.

In the spirit of seeing new players take up VF5, I want to talk about very basic offense without getting overly technical. (I am going to use numpad notation, though, and talk a little frames. P is Punch, K is Kick, G is Guard.) I will not bring up every single possible offensive/defensive option for the theoretical situation I describe. My goal here is to give you a taste of VF, not shove the entire printed menu down your throat.

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Have you seen these guide videos Sega’s been putting out? No matter the character, no matter their fighting style, they all lead with the move 6P. Why is this one move so important for every single player to know, first thing?

6P is a fast mid attack. The standing jab 5P is every character's fastest attack and also a vital technique, but it hits high, at the head level. This means there are a lot of ways to slip underneath it, most notably the crouching jab 2P.

Unlike in 2D games, mid attacks, which hit a foe who’s crouching (this is an “overhead” in Street Fighter etc), are plentiful and the cornerstone of offense. The fast mid punch, often an elbow strike, reaches a powerful balance between speed and strength: it comes out quickly to effectively counter-punch slower strikes, it hits opponents who try to crouch, and should it hit, if often sets us up for a second strike.

Let’s look at Sarah’s simple 6P elbow. Why Sarah? Because I've played a lot of Sarah, and the kind of setup-oriented offense I'm about to describe is her specialty. Should we land this move, it has an easy follow-up (6P, K) that does a little bit more damage and gets a knockdown. However, if the opponent blocks 6P and we continue with the kick follow-up, we are wide open for a big hit. We must be certain that the first hit will connect before we press the button for the second. That's called a hit confirm, and it's a core fighting game skill.

But personally, I rarely use 6P,K. This is because when you land a counter hit with 6P, you’re actually in a great situation to try and hit your opponent even harder by guessing their next action and pre-emptively countering them. This “advantage” state is the bread and butter of Virtua Fighter offense.

I will try not to count frames for very long, but on counter hit Sarah’s 6P gives us a +7 frame advantage: we act 7 frames before the opponent. (You can, if you like, think of frame advantage as like "initiative" in a turn-based battle, but measured in real time.) The fastest jab in the game is 11 frames fast. Long story short, this means that if we immediately use another quick mid attack– in this case, one that hits in 17 frames or less– and the opponent is foolish enough to try an attack of their own here, we always hit. In 2D fighter terms we call this “frame trapping” the opponent; they’ll be punished badly if they attack, so they’re forced onto the defensive.

There are many ways to push the advantage in VF, but I’m going to stick to the main two options you want your opponent thinking about: a mid attack or a throw.

50/50: The Mid

First let’s look at the option of a using second mid attack after landing that 6P, assuming the opponent doesn’t care and mashes buttons anyway (a safe bet against a casual player). Sarah has a ton of other quick mid attacks, and this is where she wants to start setting up her kick game with moves like 6K, a fast knee strike, or 4K or 8K which set up her Flamingo stance for a threatening mix-up with some dangerous kicks.

If the opponent is committed to mashing even after you've counter-hit them, you don't have to go much further than landing quick mids over and over again until they give up and start blocking. Poke, poke, poke. You'll be surprised how far this alone takes you online.

But if you’re absolutely certain that your opponent is going to mash buttons, there’s a hard bet you can make for maximum damage in a single strike: 3K, the Dragon Smash Cannon. This is a launcher move that starts an air combo. Even a simple juggle (here's one: 3P,K, 1K) will do major damage, and if you learn something more in-depth, you can really obliterate the opponent’s life bar as shown in the video above. Of course, there risk and reward are involved here: if the opponent blocks the Dragon Smash Cannon they can land a major punish of their own on you. Smaller strikes, like the ones mentioned above, are safe even when blocked but turn the advantage over to the opponent and place you on the defensive. That’s the invisible turn-taking that experienced fighting game players understand instinctively.

But it isn't exactly smart play to mash at disadvantage like in the example video, and players who do so are easily dealt with and deserve what they get. How do we trick a smart player?

50/50: The Throw

Let’s flip the point of view here and think from the point of view of your opponent on defense, the one who just got hit in the gut with an elbow strike. It’s pretty obvious from the thought process that I have described thus far that the attacker is going to push their advantage with a mid attack. If I, as the defender, can't punch back, is there anything we can do about this but wait for the next attack and block? Yes, actually, and that’s the beauty of VF: depending on what we expect the opponent to do, there’s always an answer.

The easiest way to deal with an incoming mid attack is the humble sidestep. Simply tapping up or down will dodge the kind of quick straight-line mid attacks we’ve been talking about and earn the defender a precious sliver of time to take the initiative and make an attack of their own.

If, after landing that first elbow strike, we think our opponent is going to sidestep, or even just continue to block, we can instead try a throw. Throws are faster than almost all strikes, and they always catch a player who is standing blocking, as well as grabbing opponents out of their sidestep. If your opponent is unwilling to leave an opening for your strikes— or if you’ve frozen your opponent in fear— it’s time to start throwing.

But there’s a big catch here. In Virtua Fighter, throws lose to all attacks for a counter hit. Remember the situation we had before, where the opponent mashes buttons no matter what? That beats throws. It’s a risky tactic— just like using a combo launcher— but if you’re absolutely certain that a player is going to throw, you can make them pay for it with a big strike. Refuse to accept their mental conditioning and clobber them! Or guess wrong and get hit by another mid.

The more conventional and less risky way to beat a throw is to crouch: when you see them reach out at nothing, that means they’re wide open and you can land a quick counter-attack or even a throw of your own. Of course, this leaves us open to mid strikes, and as I’ll get to in a moment, that’s the circle of life.

An adage for Virtua Fighter and for life is that you should never try and throw somebody who never blocks in the first place.

The circle

The beauty of it all is that our theoretical opponent can only choose to guard against one, but not both, of our attacks. If they try to crouch under a throw or punch through it, the mid attack hits them. If they try to dodge or block the mid attack, the throw hits them. We set up this situation to force the opponent to make a choice. And when we get that opportunity, we try to read their mind and act accordingly. This is the foundation of getting into the opponent’s head.

There are many, many other ways to attack and defend in Virtua Fighter. Relevant to our example, there are spinning attacks that beat sidesteps, and there are throws that grab only crouching opponents. With the right prediction, you can break out of a throw. There’s even a very tricky and powerful method to defend against a mid and a throw at the same time, one every advanced player has to learn.

But what I’ve described is a core situation you’re going to be in over and over again. Understanding it is an important foundation that you can build upon later as you create your own play style, which can be as simple or as fancy as you want it to be.

The best thing about VF is the freedom and room given for player expression, the way two different players can play one character completely differently. When VF5 REVO comes out in a month or so, I think a lot of advanced fighting game players are going to find it very refreshing and very rewarding.

But remember: just like Street Fighter starts with the low medium kick (into Drive Rush, if you like), Virtua Fighter starts with the elbow.

Thanks for reading this far! The Gamesoft Robo Fun Club is a solo labor of love that depends entirely on paid subscriptions from readers to exist. If you enjoyed this piece and you'd like to see more, I'd love to see you become a regular or paid subscriber. Paid subscribers get exclusive posts. Thanks for reading the pitch and hope to see you subscribe!