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GAF: Can /you/ do a Dragon Punch motion?

Been playing fighting games for years, but still haven't looked into playing grapplers because of SPD motions. Could anyone who regularly plays grapplers/Zangief can go more into that motion? Are there shortcuts, is it an actual 360 motion, and where can the motion begin and end?

DP motion is difficult enough and still something I can be a little slow to execute when actually needed.

It isn't actually 360 you need to do for SPD. What I do (and would assume pretty much everyone who plays grapplers) is pressing punch when you hit up-back direction. That should work in all games.
 
I used to cheat by doing a double fireball motion, but once my super meter filled up I would have to stop otherwise I'd end up wasting my super.
 
I've been able to pull it off, but never particularly reliably. I think the key distinction is that the fireball is a clear roll from one direction to the next one along, whereas the dragon punch requires you to make a 90 degree shift in direction without hitting the intervening down-forward on the way.
 
When SF2 first came out I called Capcom headquarters and talked to a nice guy who gave me the entire moveset over the phone for a few characters, Ryu and Ken especially. I never had a problem doing the move.
 
Those kids who can't do DPs would have their heads exploding trying to do the motion for Geese's Raging Storm.

(Down+Back, HCB, Down+Forward, Punch)
 
This is going to sound nerdy as shit, but whatever. I used to box. The motion is like stepping forward and then shifting your weight, pushing from you leg and then transferring that force to an uppercut. When I explain the input in that way people usually get it.
 
Could never do it when I tried just pressing F, D, DF.

Now I just do F, DF, D, DF as a single smooth motion and that works in every recent fighter I've played. I dunno if that's how you're "supposed" to do it, but I suspect it's valid because most command lists notate it as a "Z" motion these days and the motion I use kinda makes a Z.
 
When Street Fighter Turbo was released the SNES my friends and I got into it big time. None of us could dragon punch at first. I spent a weekend practicing the shit out of it.

The look on their faces when I did a wake-up DP made it all worth it.
 
On a dpad, pretty easily. On an arcade stick it's much harder for me. I've always felt like I've missed something when it comes to arcade sticks because I never got the hang of them and always found it easier to do everything with a regular dpad controller.
 
It isn't that hard to do.

What is hard to do? Pretzels.
umZk7.jpg
What an unnecessary motion... glad that's dead.
 
I had trouble for years, then my best friend (who is a whiz at fighters), told me to just walk forward and do a hadouken motion while walking forward... now I can get it right nearly every time.

Charge moves on the other hand, forget it. Especially the supers.
 
Yes, pretty easily using a Dpad. But using the analog stick or playing on an arcade machine is harder, but I can still do it.

you got some skills there! that's actually alot like my friend, who can pull it off at will with the Dpad.

just the opposite for me. the arcades was where i learned to play and really comfortable pulling off a dragon punch on a cab.
 
It took me until ps1 port of xmen vs street fighter to practice the motion. Before I was just auto piloting and button mashing except for mortal kombat and killer instinct.
 
I loved playing against Ken in SNES´s SF2. I lowered his health enough so that he started doing SoRyuken´s nonstop and timed my own so we both SoRyuKen´d at the same time against each other and neither of us would get hit due to the move´s high priority. I also loved doing the weak version to go through Fireballs when playing against friends, they would always freak out the first time seeing that and say I was cheating XD

I can also do it with an arcade stick, though not as reliably as with a DPad, specially to the left.
 
Yes I can dragon punch.

I can even do the soul steal motion from castlevania symphony of the night which is basically a pretzel.
←→↘↓↙←→ + [ATTACK]
 
Since '92.

But honestly, I'm sick of it. There is no practical reason for the complication except that it is now an accepted legacy of the fighting genre.
Soul Calibur and Smash have the right idea about how hard the controls should be. Skill should not be about twitchy fingers and just frame links.
 
It took me about 10 years of casual fighting game playing to get it down. I don't think I did a single one in arcade SF2 nor on SNES. By Dreamcast I could do some moves and was the 2nd best MvC2 player in my local arcade.
 
What I can't do, or have a lot of trouble doing is canceling into a dragon punch. Sakura for example my brain doesn't want me to do c.mk into DP when playing online.
 
Of course, to be able to play any FG you need the basics,
qcf, qcb, hcf and hcb. and f,d,df
360s and 720s is what separates the men from the boys.
 
Yep. I may be out of practice, but I can still do a DP when I need to (when facing right anyway lol).

It's still a pretty unintuitive motion though and I don't blame people who are new to fighters messing it up.
 
Forward, down, down-forward + a button, usually a punch. Apparently, for most people not familiar with fighting games this motion is just incredibly jarring to people. With time, newcomers could learn and master the fireball motion but the dragon punch is like alien lingo. Why is that? I see it with kids--the same kids I work with (I volunteer at a community center) that are super 'talented' in games like Minecraft or NBA live can't seem to comprehend the dragon punch.

So I wanted to ask, GAF: can any of you do it, and do it efficiently? If not, why do you feel as if it's hard? With all the tutorials that fighting games have now, if the person learning can't do a DP motion are they...a lost cause?

As someone who actually learned the motions of the moves in the arcade when Street Fighter 2 was brand new, it's hard for me to accept that these motions are really that difficult to grasp. All it takes is a little practice.
Also, what I used to tell people that were first learning the game was to try to envision a "Z" and do that as a motion instead of thinking too hard about forward, down, down/forward. That usually did the trick.

Also, with the shortcuts added to current fighting games (starting with SF4 I think), it's become even easier due to how lenient they are due to having control pads in mind. Now, instead of forward, down, down/forward you can just hit down/foward twice. Or, alternatively just buy a Hitbox, or use a modified stick that has the hitbox layout instead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xZ7YF16td8
 
Those zig zags confuse the shit out of lots of people. Once you realize it's just forward, then a half circle from the bottom it clicks.
 
I can do SRK pad or arcade no problem.

The pretzel I don't know since I don't play KoF. Just a little bit of the new one and haven't had many problems with it.

Now, I still have to see someone do Saki's Critical Heart attack from Arcana Heart 3.

632146A+B [+] 2A 2B 5B 5C 5E 2E 5D 5B 5C 8C 2C 5E
 
On an arcade stick it's easy. For the last motion you can jam the stick into the corner (if you have a square gate).

Even if you're not using a stick though, you can do forward -> down -> forward and it will read your input as a DP. Most games aren't strict about the last "down-forward diagonal" motion.
 
Like many others have said, I can do the DP motion because I play fighting games. If you want to play fighting games, you're going to have to get used to it pretty quickly since it is the presumptive input of reversals in almost every fighting game. Indeed, a lot of people complain about how obtuse it is but the fact is that that's kind of the point; if you need a reversal, it's probably true that nothing else will do so the input needs to be on the right balance of obscure and doable, which the DP motion is. After about a month of playing fighting games I was able to do them reliably.

The input motion that I've grown to hate the most over the years is BlazBlue's 6428 (right left down up) super motion. I don't know who thought that it was a good idea to make Sonic the Hedgehog's level select cheat the motion for a reversal super, especially since 8'll make you jump and you need to do the move on the ground.

Yes I can dragon punch.

I can even do the soul steal motion from castlevania symphony of the night which is basically a pretzel.
←→↘↓↙←→ + [ATTACK]
This is actually a fairly common motion if you take the initial 4 off of it.
 
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