I Wish I'd Made This: Button Philosophy

On the data journalism politics/sports site FiveThirtyEight, they have an ongoing series where they post about things they wish they had written and direct the reader toward the article in question. They’re always titled “Damn, We Wish We’d Done These (insert number) Stories This Month.” I’m going to go ahead and steal their idea about stealing ideas (which they stole from Bloomberg News, so it’s all fair game!), except of course, I’m going to try and point people toward great fighting game-related content that I wish I’d been smart enough to think of.

Today, that content is a blog post written by Hans ‘Pichy’ Stockmann back in 2015 about the philosophy of Guilty Gear’s buttons. In Street Fighter, it’s not too difficult to intuit what a lot of buttons might do- jabs (and really, just light attacks in general) are quick short-ranged attacks. A sweep (cr.HK) is almost always going to be a long-ranged low attack that knocks down on hit. Guilty Gear is a lot less obvious, at least at first. How do you make sense of buttons like slash and dust? Regardless of which game you play, figuring out the ideas behind the buttons in your game of choice is a fun thought exercise that can help you make better sense of the game as a whole. Pichy does a great job of explaining the overarching ideas behind each of Guilty Gear’s buttons. Check it out!