Gaming
Esports
How to play Street Fighter like a pro
Street Fighter is notorious for being one of the hardest fighting games to master. If you're looking to improve your skills, try these tips from the esports masters.
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Since its first hit arcades in 1987, the Street Fighter franchise has been known for its high skill ceiling. Easy to pick up, but hard to master, Street Fighter has evolved over the years with numerous characters, each with their own unique skills and fighting styles. Through every iteration of the legendary series, new mechanics have been introduced for players to grapple with.
As the game's legacy grew, players grew with it, honing their skills and devising bullet-proof strategies for grinding their opponents into the dirt. As such, it's gained a reputation for being one of the less beginner-friendly games for fighting game newbies to venture into. If you're reading this, you're probably already a fan, wondering just how you make it to the big leagues with the stars of the competitive scene. It's no easy road, but with a little help from the champs, you can get there.
01
Start small
But with Street Fighter 6, Capcom has made real efforts to make the game more welcoming. First, there's the new modern control system, which presents players with the option of using less complicated inputs, allowing them to achieve flashy combos in a shorter space of time. Of course, the Classic Controls system is still there and is considered by many to be the 'true' way to play. But for newbies, Modern Controls are a great way to find your feet.
In World Tour, you can be coached by legendary fighters
© Capcom
Street Fighter 6 also features robust single-player options. Arcade mode returns, as does practice modes, but there's also World Tour, a semi-open world campaign mode that teaches players the ropes through fights against AI opponents, even allowing them to collect the skills and movesets of legendary fighters who are placed as mentors along the way.
02
Face real opponents
Digging into these modes is the best way to get started in Street Fighter, but there's a long journey ahead of you if you want to play like a pro. Arcades and couch play aren't the norm for most players in this day and age, but if you can seek out those experiences, they'll vastly improve your enjoyment of the game and be key in building up your skills.
Street Fighter pros battle at Red Bull Gaming Sphere, Tokyo
© Jason Halayko/Red Bull Content Pool
"My first training tip is to play offline," says 2023 EVO Champion Amjad 'AngryBird' Al-Shalabi. "In this community, everyone can help each other."
"Play against other people and connect with them," adds Masato 'Bonchan' Takahashi, another Street Fighter pro, who earned the top spot at EVO in 2019. "I [used to go to] game centers to play in my free time, and occasionally I was personally invited by a pro to play. I didn't receive any coaching."
03
Pick your fighter
The first step to pursuing high levels of competitive play is to decide which character will be your main. Being adept at a variety of characters, our pros tend to choose the character that is considered the strongest in the meta.
"I decide my main character based on strength in the game, if my character is nerfed I'll go ahead and play another character," says AngryBird.
Street Fighter has a huge range of fighters to pick from
© Capcom
"I always think about the balance between my style and my win rate," adds Bonchan, stressing the importance of personal style.
The characters who are strongest will ebb and flow, and you’ll have to move with them to some degree. Even if you want an off-meta pocket pick or a main fan favourite that’s fallen out of favour in big tournaments, you’ll still need to understand the techniques behind the characters you’ll encounter most frequently.
04
Do your research
Street Fighter has a vibrant community online, and there are plenty of resources for players to use to improve their tactics, from YouTube tutorials to written guides (you can start with ours here). Street Fighter 6 has plenty of tools within the game itself to get to grips with its mechanics, from tutorials to World Tour. All will give you the basic foundations of the game, but there's no replacement for player vs player practice.
Heading online in Street Fighter is an intimidating prospect – we can't sugarcoat it, gamers have been grinding Street Fighter for decades and they've gotten very good at it. When taking on real-life opponents, be prepared to lose a lot. But it's only through failure that we can grow, and just like in life, the memory of loss only makes victory all the sweeter.
Put your time into Street Fighter 6's training room to improve your skills
© Capcom
Street Fighter star and former Evo champion Olivier 'Luffy' Hay puts it more succinctly than we ever could: "Losing is part of victory."
There'll always be someone better than you, and when they hand you a hiding, it’s up to you and nobody else to not just move on but analyse what went wrong, learn what you can take from the loss, and build on it. And it will happen. In fighting games, nobody ever stays on top for long – there’s a reason no one player won EVO’s Street Fighter competition twice during the Street Fighter V era.
"Always learn from your mistakes and surround yourself with good players," Luffy advises.
05
Stay focused
Skill and reflexes will only take you so far in competitive gaming. Gaining that edge, improving on that final five to 10 percent is all about mentality. Focus in-game, focus out of it. In that sense, fighting games are like any other sport, Luffy tells us.
"In the mental and the training aspects, [Street Fighter is] like a regular sport," he says. "We compete tons of times a year, we look at how to improve on our game after each game, every time, we study our opponents, we study our strengths and weaknesses. It's demanding as a sport, as we all want to be the best in the game we chose."
"I adapt to a new game by studying it inside and out, and then trying to understand the mechanics," adds AngryBird.
Angry Bird competes at EVO 2019
© Marv Watson/Red Bull Content Pool
Bonchan displays a similar level of commitment to learning each aspect of the game: "Every day, I'm just busy discovering and researching. No matter how much time I have, it's not enough, it's very hard."
If you’re showing promise in battles online and winning fight nights, in other words, you’re on the right path. But practice, practice, practice also means study, study, study. Don’t slack.
06
But remember you’re a product too
This can be a tricky one to grasp, but to make it as a professional gamer, you can’t bank on prize winnings paying the bills. You need other revenue streams, sponsorship, streaming and so on. As Emirati Street Fighter star Adel 'Big Bird' Anouche puts it: "Don't get frustrated, promote yourself well and have fun."
He should know: In 2016, he qualified for Red Bull Kumite the hard way through the last-chance qualifiers, but has since converted his success into something more permanent, and he's now an invited star and Capcom Pro Tour regular. No small part of that is down to his ability to build up an online following with his enthusiastic but also honest tweets about the FGC – win the crowd, and you'll win your freedom, as someone once told Russell Crowe. Time to start building your way toward Twitch partner status, we think.
07
Stay calm
This can be difficult to manage whilst staying focused, especially in a scene where pop-offs are practically encouraged, but keeping calm is an essential trait to have, according to Luffy. Of course, you can still let it out sometimes, but you need to be judicious about how you do it – and never lose sight of your goal by getting caught up in your emotions.
Luffy competes at Evo 2019
© Marv Watson/Red Bull Content Pool
"Any gamer rages, the taste of losing ain't fun," the French pro gamer admits. "Sometimes it’s good to let it out, The important part is to not lose control, and try to keep clear on your strategy."
08
Understand that being adaptable and never giving in are the same thing
Staying true to yourself and your main goal is all well and good, but all that good intent can go out the window the moment you run into a worthy adversary who counters every strategy you have. Part of that winning mentality is to keep going no matter what – but to do that means accepting that you have to think laterally, too, and wade out of your comfort zone to pull out that Evo Moment #37 matching comeback.
Perseverance is key to success in Street Fighter
© Capcom
"The ability to question myself and find the appropriate solution to the obstacle I'm facing is key," says Luffy. "Then I'm strong at quickly adapting during the game to my opponent's strategy and find a way to counter him. And lastly, I never give up!"
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