By Derek Daniels, and John Choi

Feburary 8, 2001 - For years, advanced players have employed techniques to maintain their charge in circumstances where it appears as though they should have lost it. In CVS, charge characters have an unprecedented degree of mobility, making such techniques especially important.

If you play a charge character, such as Guile, Honda, etc, you will often find yourself in situations where you are holding either back or down/back to charge, and want to roll. If you cross up your opponent during a roll, a lot of people think that they must adjust their joystick so that they will be holding back (or down/back) at the end of the roll when they turn around, which results in their having lost the initial charge entirely. However, the game does not consider your character fully turned around until the end of the roll. Because of this feature, you can retain your charge even during a side switch.

Let's use Guile as our first example of how to preserve your charge when you roll past the opponent. Start off by holding back to charge the sonic boom, then continue to hold back and press Jab+Short so that you roll to the other side of the opponent. Since you were holding back the entire time, the charge will be maintained and when you recover from the roll, that previous 'back' position will now become a 'towards' position (since 'back' and 'towards' are always defined relative to your opponent, rather than in absolute terms). If you continue to hold the same joystick position and press punch the exact moment you recover from the roll, a sonic boom will be released.

Balrog can also take advantage of this little feature. Start by holding down/back to charge then while continuing to hold down/back, press Jab+Short to roll past the opponent then hit punch and you will immediately do a low rush punch (since the command is charge back for 2 seconds then push down/toward+punch) as soon as you recover from the roll.

Not only can you do specials as you recover from a roll, but you can do supers as well. Honda can hold back to charge for his super, and then roll so that he goes past the opponent. While rolling you want to press toward, then return to back at the end of the roll so that it will now become a towards position and press punch to unleash his super. Essentially, you are tricking the computer into thinking you did all 4 necessary points (charge back, toward, back, toward+punch) to activate the super, when you are truly only pressing 3 (back, toward, back which then doubles as toward at the end of the roll). This technique is especially useful with Balrog and Chun Li. A lot of people will attempt a move as you recover from the roll and now you can try to counter their attempt with a super!

Characters that have what is commonly referred to as the 'flash kick super motion' (charge down/back, down/toward, down/back, up+kick to activate super) - such as Guile, Chun Li, Vega, etc can take advantage of this just as well. Start off by holding down/back to charge for the super then press Jab+Short to roll past the opponent. As you near the end of your roll, press down/toward, which will double as down/back, then press up+kick to activate the super. A really easy way to do this in one motion is to start off by charging down/back then as you recover from the roll, move the controller to down, down/toward, toward, up/toward+kick which will hit all the necessary points for you as well.

This technique of keeping your charge can also be applied when an opponent crosses YOU up. If the opponent tries to jump over you, you can still hit him with a flash kick super if you are Guile. If the opponent rolls past you, you can hit their roll with a super such as Bison's scissor kick super.

Once you understand the way the game interprets charging, you should realize the corresponding point that you can not hold the joystick towards the opponent, then cross them up and still expect to be able to do any charge special or super moves right away. Even if you try something like hold toward then up/toward to cross someone up, since you didn't initially charge the required back for 2 seconds, nothing will come out.