Your way of learning to play fighting game

Hi, for me when I started to learn playing fighting game "for fun", here is how I learn:

In Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter (My first fighting game that I started playing):
- Using Main character: Ryu and Wolverine
- Using Easy Mode control such as pressing an attack button, my character can do his special moves
- Mindless pressing buttons like a fool in many matches
- When Easy Mode is disabled, need to visit site like gamefaqs to read up how to execute moves, QCF+P, DP+P, QCF+PP etc

Other Fighting games:
- Using cool looking characters reference from Fighters Generation
- Look at movelist from gamefaqs or menu list
- Keep doing moves that are reliable such throwing projectile, dragon punch, performing super moves
- Perform some basic combos that are easy to execute

Now for serious play (tournament style) here is how I learn and it is way tougher than playing for fun:
- Using my favorite character that I like, I can also use reference from Fighters Generation website for the coolest looking character, but mostly in this top high level play style, several professional fighting game players use character based on top tier which doesn't work for me I will not be having fun if I use character base on top tier unless my favorite character is top tier
- try doing all of his moves and make sure I can execute all of his moves perfectly on both one player and two player sides
- learning from top players video matches on youtube site and making gifs of it for my reference
- try performing those combos in training mode several times to memorize them
- try doing moves and combos on CPU opponents first and notice how it affects my gameplay
- for my case, I notice I keep on getting beaten whenever I keep on attacking my opponent
- looking and studying frame data of opponents and my characters to see which moves are advantages or disadvantages to which moves and when is my turn to attack my opponent
- try it on CPU opponents first to experiment with it

there might be more, but this is how I learn to play fighting game seriously so that I might be able to play as quite the same level like those professional fighting game player, I guess

My 1st first fighting game was SFII:CE aka "Street Fighter II' - Champion Edition".



Let me try to remember..........hmmmm......actually I heard of SFII:CE from my friends.........and before SFII:CE I didn't tried any fighting games.......

When I played SFII:CE the 1st first time, I picked Ryu.  Honestly speaking, in those times I didn't know what a fighting game was about (not much media/medium about it for me to study), so I just played it like "Kung-Fu Master" -- kept pressing punches & kicks when my Ryu got close to his opponent(s).  Later on I learned how to block/guard more.  Then I realized every SFII:CE characters have special command moves.  After I got to know the special moves list of all SFII:CE characters, I tried to test all of their special moves.  Somehow I preferred to start with my SFII:CE training with the charge-motion-type characters rather than the circular-motion-type characters.

I tried E.Honda, Blanka, Guile, M.Bison (boxer), Balrog (claw), Chun-Li, Vega (dictator) -- all the charge-motion-type characters in SFII:CE.  I liked both Blanka and Balrog (claw) because they both have long reach and both have some very good jump-in kicks that make use of a nice diagonal angle.

To me, Balrog (claw) is better for some players who are able to anticipate/predict their opponents.  And I chose Blanka my SFII:CE main because I found it suits my spot-on-reflex style for totally pure reaction type of strategy.  I tried to use the SFII:CE A.I./CPU for my Blanka combo practice, and use SFII:CE real human players (all were my friends) for my Blanka strategy practice, both ways required a great deal of my patience.



From time to time I learned a number of SFII:CE Blanka tricks including these two (2) cool tricks :

1) try to roll near to a downed opponent and use electrical shock to cause as much damage as possible :


2) try to roll near to an idle/a blocking/guarding opponent and surprise him/her/it with a idle bite-throw :


Next time I will talk about other fighter games that I have experience in learning.