Street Fighter II AI absolutely cheated to win

[Shawn Knight]

Through the looking glass: Street Fighter II is one of the most iconic fighting games in history, right up there with Mortal Kombat. As enjoyable as it was, the game felt unnecessarily difficult on occasion and outright unfair at other times. As it turns out, it wasn’t just your imagination.

As highlighted in this recent video from YouTube user desk, the CPU in Street Fighter II certainly exhibited unfair advantages at times to skew a match in its favor.

Desk presents evidence showing that the AI consistently recovers from stuns in just 12 frames, or 1/5 of a second, and doesn’t play by the same rules with regard to having to charge up for special moves like Guile’s Somersault Kick. Furthermore, the CPU can reportedly mash buttons faster than humanly possible and can even brush off blocks as if they never happened. How is that fair?

It’s a fascinating look at a classic game and more importantly, validation for your childhood. Of course, unless you played a ton in the arcades, this probably didn’t matter much as I suspect most at-home console battles were of the multiplayer variety.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/82020-street-fighter-ii-ai-absolutely-cheated-win.html

 

[QuantumPhysics]

It's always been my experience that the computer can anticipate your moves as you yourself are making them. It almost felt as if my pressing of a button triggered the computer to activate a block or a counter. I'm not surprised by this - which is why I prefer to fight human players. They may be able to exploit move timings and recovery timings, but they can't possibly cheat on the same level as the computer.

Mortal Kombat 9 made me unstoppable with Sindel/ Noob saibot and in MK:X I'm unstoppable with Alien, Predator and Kano. I always focus on characters with powerful defensive moves and high speed attacks which can whittle down the opponent faster than they can anticipate the next attack. In MK vs. DCU I was a beast with Flash.

 

[sushi board]

Yeah, it could be cheating. But I think it's impossible to get the measurements between the characters exactly the same and that micro difference might have made all the impact.

 

[tkabou]

That's why the games of yesteryear were so rewarding when you beat them and spent hours doing so...

 

[fluffydestroyer]

Load up Mame emulator and have fun trying out now. Save and load at your most difficult moment. Thats what I did with 1 arcade game and it was hell of a fun time.

 

[redgarl]

Well, I was just playing MK2 on MAME this weekend and it was obvious that the AI was cheating. There was some invincibility frames providing the CPU to be able to grab me in the motion of the swept. It was obvious and they knew what I was pressing for buttons. The only way to win is by punishing their special moves or abusing AI weaknesses like multiple swept in a row.

The AI in SFV is also as clueless when you jump punish them on wake-up. SO if you knockdown the CPU and you time your jump attack accordingly, the CPU believes that it needs to crouch and you hit a major combo opportunity again and again. Really useful for playing survival mode.

 

[redgarl]

Yeah, it could be cheating. But I think it's impossible to get the measurements between the characters exactly the same and that micro difference might have made all the impact.

I was one of the best Canadian Player of SFIV and Virtua Fighter 5... the cpu is having invincible frames startup, it was obviously demonstrated.

 

[treetops]

Does a game exist where a super hard version ai does not "cheat"?

 

[amghwk]

Only now they know? I already knew about it while I was in my diapers and pressing those buttons while sucking the pacifier.

Anyway, as much as we want to remember those arcade machines fondly, they were all games designed to suck in our coins.These games were designed for the arcade business owners, who most often than not, always increase the difficulties a bit in their premises. Even at the lowest difficulty, which you can test with MAME nowadays, the games still have difficulty brinking on cheating.
I know there are hardcore players who can finish the games at the hardest difficulty with a single coin, these players are those who have been able to circumnavigate and make use of the AI successfully.

Anyway Street Fighter II is one of the most groundbreaking and influential fighting games. Even Mortal Kombat doesn't come close at that time. It just made use of it's gore and fatalities to pull in players.

And trust me: M. Bison cheats. Period.

 

[Puiu]

Yeah, it was the bot cheating not me playing like crap

 

[ckm88]

I don't think they meant this as cheating but it gave players a sense of accomplishment when you finally managed to beat the CPU.