Tactical Tuesday – Mastering Makoto Mixups

The “C to Shining C” achievement in Super Street Fighter 4 looks straightforward at first. For the uninitiated, the achievement requires the player to reach an online rank of C with all 35 characters in the game. Considering you can’t even lose rank before rank B, this would appear to be a cakewalk (if not a bit of a grind). So, what’s the problem?

Makoto

Yes, eventually this means you must play as Makoto, the character everyone has attempted to learn before giving up and throwing an arcade stick through the nearest window.

Makoto doesn’t have a projectile. She doesn’t have safe pressure chips. Her goddamn command grab has more startup than a DeLorean and less range than her wrists.

When Hawking gets angry, he throws his stick into a black hole.

Hell, her walk speed is so abysmal that its very existence made Stephen Hawking question the constant speed of light, since time slows down uniformly for all players observing Makoto.* It’s that bad.

But, as Hawking demonstrated, for every great challenge, there is a greater genius willing to tackle that challenge. And amidst the online mélange of endless Ryu, Chun Li, and Balrog players, a few select Makoto masters have taken her game to a new level.

Their stories are stories of patience. Stories of timing. Stories of flawless execution, radical thinking and yes, even the occasional crotch punch finish…

LostFragment’s Low-Tier Beatdowns

LostFragment is not necessarily the best Makoto player on Earth, but his videos demonstrate how far a strong command of normal attacks goes towards successfully playing as everyone’s favorite rage-powered punching machine. Consistent use of st.MP and cr.MK as anti-air. Well-spaced f.HP beatings. Block strings into feints into grabs into Ultra. In other words, the exact opposite of most players’ online Makoto experience.

This is delicious.

One thing that may immediately strike you is how often LostFragment comes back from the brink of failure for the clutch win. If anything, it’s a testament to his patience. I think many wannabe Makoto players, myself included, get so frustrated at her incredibly slow pace that sloppy mistakes and desperate maneuvers become standard.

LostFragment instead treats Makoto as a slowly-advancing glacier, pushing opponents into the corner and pressuring them with a vague sense of guilt over the whole global warming thing. This is usually followed with Karakusa and Hayate resets for good measure.

In addition to his scrapes with random Xbox Live opponents, LostFragment has also recently posted a series of fights with Satyamdas, a 19,000+ BP Dhalsim.** If there’s any matchup Makoto players dread, it’s the annoying runaway/zoning Dhalsim fight. Yet LostFragment is so sure of his ability to get in on his opponent that he ops for Seichusen Godanzuki in lieu of the more commonly favored Abare Something That’s Not Seichusen Godanzuki.

Yoga Inferno was on the Top 40 list for 33 weeks straight in 1974.

If you’re looking for other Makoto inspiration, you can always check Shoryuken.net’s forums for combos and videos (though all but the most stalwart masochists should avoid posting new topics or asking questions). Other notable Makoto all-stars include VRyu, Flash Metroid and some guy named Justin Wong.

*If you laughed at this, congratulations! We’re both losers!
**While BP is not a pre-requisite to skill, it would be hard to argue one could reach 19,000 BP without possessing some modicum of it.