Street Fighter IV Combos – How to Build Your Own Combos

In the early Street Fighter games, combos were rarely seen, and were nearly impossible to execute. Street Fighter IV combos now make up a vital part of the game, and you’ll need to learn a few if you ever want to be considered a true player, or if you want to play to a decent standard and hold your own online.

It’s important to understand how combo damage scaling works when learning the game. This basically means that for each consecutive hit in a combo, that attack will do less damage than it normally would. By the time you get (if you ever do) to your 9th hit in a chain, the move will only be doing around 20% of its potential damage.

Each character has around 7 different combos that the developers have already come up with, and each on can be learnt in challenge mode, with detailed instructions. For that reason, I will avoid simply listing every combo, and focus more on the theory behind them.

For Street Fighter IV combos to be effective, they have to be worthwhile. This means that they have to do enough damage to be worth the effort – otherwise you could just do another, easier move on your opponent.

Most Street Fighter IV combos follow the same basic pattern. They start with an introductory attack – one that is easy to hit with, and won’t push your opponent back to far. These are usually light punches – either crouching or standing, or some kind of an aerial lead-in move. The idea at this stage is not to go for damage, but to get close enough to your opponent so that you can unleash the real moves, whilst temporarily stunning him so he can’t hit back. Next you’ll proceed with a succession of moves, each gaining in power, before finishing off with a special move or an Ultra combo.