1470: Fatal Fury Special \\ Axel Hawk arcade playthrough!
0Playing through Fatal Fury Special for NEOGEO MVS as Axel Hawk! Humble Bundle ROM in MAME w/ Unibios 4.
My Fatal Fury series playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZO3OPzPjIzMfj49YbFQU4mQM2PFggOvr
0:00 - start
0:33 - Andy Bogard
10:28 - Big Bear
17:26 - Tung Fu Rue
23:00 - Jubei Yamada
33:56 - Kim Kaphwan
38:53 - Cheng Sinzan
46:59 - Axel Hawk
49:57 - Laurence Blood
52:37 - Geese Howard
54:42 - Wolfgang Krauser
56:39 - ending, credits
58:52 - characters
59:42 - wrap!
I think I said at one point that Axel has just two special moves--Joe's fireball, and a charging rush punch--but I was forgetting he can supposedly mash P for a punch flurry; however, I only really got that to come out, sort of naturally, while still mashing P after the rush punch (hold db, then f+P).
Since his only longish-range non-dash attack is df+D (a heavy low punch), he seems intended as a turtle character! Which seemed to work for me, because I had a lot of fun just doing that. ^ _^ He's got a huge anti-air uppercut on df+C, which I pretty much completely failed to use--fortunately, only a few of the early opponents jumped in at me, really, so that didn't go as badly as it should have, and mostly I was able to fend people off with df+D, and go after them with jumping D when they seemed off-guard.
His fireball can be really effective, but seemingly as part of his turtle design, you can't pop up from turtling to throw a fireball, because it will activate the charging rush punch instead, and there's a good chance you'll get blocked and counter-attacked.
His jumps are slow but his jumping D seems pretty good, and will even hit twice, maybe if he gets in close enough with it or something; I was also often able to follow with another crouching D. Really satisfying to take someone out with those three crunching blows!
I struggled slightly with him against a few faster, ranged characters, especially Jubei Yamada--but kinda stomped the bosses! Each time Geese tried to Raging Storm one of my jump-ins, that D just smashed him! Which was hilarious because it would hit him right after his "Raging Storm" vocal cue triggered, so he'd be getting crushed by this huge descending double-hit while still yelling "Raging Storm!" ;^D
Taking a closer look at the cross-plane attacks, A+B jumps between planes, C+D is a strong attack that knocks the opponent to the other plane (or into the damaging background in Axel, Billy, and Laurence's stages; Axel's b+D throw apparently also does this), and each button does a different attack between planes, with forward and back on the stick modifying the attack to "short" and "back" versions, according to https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/neo/565656-fatal-fury-special/faqs/47969 ; the light attack buttons ("low") are faster leaps, and the heavy attack buttons ("high") are slower. The "short" and "back" versions MAY--based on my very clunky limited testing--not go the full distance to the opponent, so for my purposes I think I normally want to leave the stick in neutral before hitting a cross-plane attack button, which should then track the full way to the opponent. These attacks all count as overheads, apparently, which would mean they can't be blocked low.
(At the beginning I think I was mostly hitting B+C for cross-plane attacks for some reason, and sometimes that would register the faster B attack, other times the slower C attack--and I couldn't figure out why the speed was varying, esp. because all of Axel's attacks are punches, rather than the usual of B being a fast kick and C being a slow punch. Then later I forgot I'd been using B+C--which wasn't really right anyway--and just got totally confused. ; )
According to https://snk.fandom.com/wiki/Michael_Max#Story , the guy on the bike pacing Axel in the ending is Michael Max, a CPU opponent in the first Fatal Fury ("Fatal Fury: King of Fighters") and, apparently, Axel's student.
6/30/23
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