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1. Basics.

Okay, first of all I'm going to assume you can play. By play I mean, block, jump, attack and defend. Chun Li is best played as a character whose aim is to keep their opponents from taking to the air. She's an interesting character in that she's easy to pick up and can hold her own against most of the other characters with no glaring weaknesses. She only has relatively easy to execute specials, and her super can be stored making it one of the most useful supers in the game.

2. Getting started.

The first thing you should do when starting to play Chun Li is go into training mode and get confident at some of his specials. Chun Li's easiest special is the lightning legs, it's done by jamming on one kick button as fast as you can. Light kick don't require as fast button pressing, but do less damage and hit slower. If you have auto fire pad, obviously you can use a long button press to activate this - but I would recommend against it - it is usually plainly obvious when someone is doing this and it's frowned upon. In competition play you wouldn't be allowed auto fire so it's bad practice to rely on it. Chun Li does have a fireball - the Kikoken, if you're having trouble with it, try timing the charge for longer, then reducing it rather than the other way around. If it's still not coming off - time the button release rather than the press for the end of the motion. Her fireball is not as useful as other characters because it doesn't travel the full width of the screen. Keeping a charge ready with Chun Li is useful, but not critical, her main game does not really rely on specials, particularly charge specials as much as, for example - Guile.

3. Openers.

Chun Li's best bet at the start is probably to get moving. You could open with a fireball, but you aren't going to be winning many fireball throwing matches, so be prepared to follow it with something else, probably that moves you around the screen. The new spinning bird kick might be worth a try, but in my opinion you are probably best off getting off the ground and moving around the screen. A spinning bird kick opener is probably worth throwing in occasionally but overuse will see you punished. Obviously if your opponent is religiously opening with a jump in kick - wait, charge back and down, then catch them with her tornado - spinning up kicks.

4. So far.

Okay, so you should have a few specials to use, and an idea of how to start a round. In this part I'm going to go into more details about how to play a round once you've got through that opening moment. To start with I'm going to look at what your options are. Namely the specials we've covered so far, and a few of Chun Li's normals which you will find useful.

5. The Kikoken

By all all accounts is a fairly mediocre fireball. It's not particularly slow or fast, doesn't travel full screen and won't combo or knock-down. It's great for nullifying an opponents better fireball, but if you try and stand there and exchange fireballs for any length of time you are probably going to lose out. A better bet is to use one to nullify, buying you time, then try to get in close, probably with an air attack. The light one goes slowest, but travels furthest, but even the hard one travels past ½ screen width.

6. The Spinning Bird kick.

This is arguably a better move than the standard SSF2T horizontal one. Timed perfectly it can hop over fireballs, and her old problem of crouching characters easily jabbing her out of it doesn't apply as much now. Plus it hits on the way up and down, before it would simply not hit a crouching character at all. It can be done in the air, and in the air you can use a charge down then press up motion to activate, this makes it useful as you can charge it even when advancing., particularly after a down and middle kick head stamp.

7. The Tornado (Up.) Kicks.

This Chun Li's standard anti-air and it works well. The lightest has more frames of invincibility but does not climb very high, hit many times or do a great deal of damage. It is possible to juggle a little with this if timed perfectly. The main problem with this move is that it has a very steep angle, if you release it too early you are open to be punished. This is particularly the case with the heavy kick variant.

8. Lightning Legs.

Easy to do, in the extreme and useful move. You'll probably find yourself doing more chip damage with this than anything - but it's still useful. A downed character will find this a hard move to reversal through as they get up. Long range jump-ins can be taken out with this move, and if you jump in deep with a kick and then keep jamming on this as you land you can do a lot of chip damage, and possibly get a hit or two out of it. It's pretty good for stopping incoming attacks, however it's not invulnerable, for example, a well timed Vega heavy kick slide, can hit under it.

9. Super lightning legs.

First of all, this can be stored. That is - you can do the motion, then keep holding forwards without pressing kick. You can even jump or crouch as long as you maintain the forward press. This means you can walk up to someone then unleash her super even though technically it needs a back charge to activate. You can also steal an extra hit with her upkicks if you time it perfectly.

10. Throw.

Chun Li's throw is a great move, it's got fantastic potential for tick throwing, reasonable range and is one of her more damaging moves. It can be done in mid-air too, but it's not reliable to pull off, best used on a character who has jumped and spent their attack early.

11. Head Stamp.

Down and middle kick will cause Chun to hit vertically downwards while in the air. If your opponent makes the wrong move you can sometimes do two or three of these in succession without landing. Your are asking for a Dragon punch or similar spamming this though. In some respects it's best use is after an off-the-wall jump onto a high jumping opponent who will usually have the right colour hitboxes for you to score this hit even though you'd normally be so high you sail over them.

12. Neck breaker flip.

Good damage, no longer crosses up though. Its worth having in your repertoire, but you'll find yourself using it to set up throws mainly, as a wildcard move to unbalance your opponent or hop fireballs.

13. Normal punches.

Chun's normal punches are great pokes, particularly the medium one. You can hit people out of many moves with it and it's fast enough to be very useful to tick into.

14. Normal kicks.

Any of Chun Li's kicks has exceptional air priority. Players can find it very frustrating fighting a jumpy Chun Li simply because in an air exchange they are almost guarunteed to come off worse. Her light has the best priority but the damage is very low. Medium is still excellent priority but has reasonable damage. Her standing heavy kick is a pretty good anti-air at the right range, and her crouching medium kick is good to lead into lightning legs.

15. Where we are up to.

Okay so if you've been following the guide so far you should have a broad view of all the best tools Chun Li has available to her.

10. Anti-air options.

Chun Li's standard anti-air is the up kicks, it's very good, it juggles and the light has high invincibility. The trouble is it goes almost straight up, meaning characters at the right range will be missed and you will be punished. Her standing heavy kick is better for if it looks like they will land just shy of you. Alternatively, if you have the charge, throw out a spinning bird kick, or fireball. The lightning legs works okay too, but some characters can hit over it a little too easily for my liking.

13. General Tactics..

Chun Li's strengths are her mobility, excellent normals, speed and air priority. Her problem is probably a lack of big damage moves. Her throw does good damage but can be teched. Her lightning legs does good damage, but it doesn't really combo, once you have the first hit, so you'll usually end up doing chip damage. Her light jumping kick is nigh on unbeatable unless you have a special with invincibility frames - but it's very low damage. The best way to play Chun Li is patiently, concentrating on not being hit as much as possible. She isn't so much a defensive character like Guile, but more evasive, a slightly less aggressive version of Vega possibly. Play patiently, use your speed to avoid being hit, then nail them when they get complacent. Take little bits of damage off when you can - they are on the deck? Lightning legs as they get up - it'll probably only give chip, but it's hard to reversal through.

14. Tick throwing.

Tick throwing is one of Chun Li's more damaging tactics and she can do it well. Jumping in with light kicks then going for the throw if you're deep enough works well. Set people up by jumping in with a kick into lightning legs to get people in the mindset of blocking. Use her standing medium punch to poke them into that same mindset.