Alright, today I really wanted to knuckle down and get a handle on Chipp Zanuff’s moves. Been meaning to either pick him up properly or just refresh my memory, ’cause he’s always looked fun, zipping around the screen like crazy.
So, first thing I did was boot up the game and head straight into the command list section for Chipp. Scrolled through it… yeah, quite a bit there. Lots of speed, lots of options. Saw the usual suspects: Alpha Blade, Beta Blade, Gamma Blade. Those seemed like the place to start.
Getting Started in Training
Jumped into training mode. Picked Chipp, of course. Set the dummy opponent to just stand there, nice and easy, no pressure. Okay, let’s go.
- Alpha Blade (Forward): Did the quarter-circle forward plus slash. Okay, that came out pretty reliably. He dashes forward, does the slash. Cool.
- Beta Blade (Back): Quarter-circle back plus slash. This one felt a bit trickier for some reason. Sometimes I’d mess up the input, get a normal slash or jump back accidentally. Had to consciously slow down my fingers for a bit to get the motion clean.
- Gamma Blade (DP Motion): The classic forward, down, down-forward motion. This one creates that clone, right? Took a few tries to get the input consistently. My thumb isn’t always precise with dragon punch motions after a break.
Spent a good chunk of time just doing these three over and over. Left side, right side. Making sure I could pull them out without thinking too hard. It’s basic, but you gotta nail the fundamentals.
Movement Mania
Then I moved onto his movement stuff. This is where Chipp gets nuts.
- Triple Jump: Just jumping and hitting up twice more. Feels weird at first, you gotta get the rhythm right. Tap-tap-tap. Found myself hitting the ceiling a lot initially.
- Wall Run/Cling: Dashed to the corner, held the button. He sticks there for a sec. Then tried the wall run. Getting him to actually run along the wall instead of just hopping off took some practice with the directional inputs.
- Genrou Zan (Teleport): Quarter-circle back plus kick. Poof! He disappears and reappears. Tried the different kick strengths. Okay, so light kick is close, heavy kick is far. Medium somewhere in between. Still felt a bit random where I’d pop up, need to get a better feel for the spacing on that one. Definitely easy to teleport right into trouble if you’re not careful.
Honestly, just moving around with Chipp felt like its own minigame. So fast, so many options. It felt good when I could chain a double jump into an air dash, then maybe another jump.
Trying to String Things Together
Okay, specials and movement felt a little better. Time to try connecting things. Nothing fancy, just simple stuff.
Tried doing a basic punch into Alpha Blade. Punch, quarter-circle forward slash. Dropped it. A lot. The timing window felt tight, or maybe I was just rushing the input after the punch. Did the same with a kick into Beta Blade. Same story. Lots of flubbed specials, lots of Chipp just standing there after the normal hit.
Also looked at his Overdrives. Zansei Rouga, the big dashing super. Input looked like half-circle back, then forward, plus slash. Pulled it off a couple of times in training. Looks flashy as hell. Then there’s Banki Messai, the install super? Quarter-circle back twice plus kick. Makes him glowy. Need to figure out what that actually does later, just wanted to see if I could do the input for now.
Wrapping Up the Session
So, after maybe an hour or so, I felt like I had a slightly better grip on his individual moves and his general movement. Actually landing them consistently, especially the specials after a normal hit? That needs way more work. And combining the movement with attacks? Haven’t even scratched the surface there.
Felt a bit clumsy, inputs weren’t always clean, definitely got frustrated a few times when I kept messing up Beta Blade or dropping easy confirms. But hey, progress is progress. At least I can do most of the moves now, even if it’s sloppy. Next step is probably drilling those basic links until they’re second nature. Gotta put in the time, right?
