I’M BACK YALL AND I’M BLACK YALL AND I’M BLACKER THAN BLACK AND I’M BLACK YALL AND I’M BACK YALL AND I’M BLACKITY BLACK I’M BLACK CAUSE I’M BACK CAUSE I’M BACK AND I’M BACK WITH TRUE TECH TOP TIPS VOLUME 2.

This article was requested by Roogle who, recognizing my obvious talents and greatness, asked I write about plinking to help him out since he has been having a problem with a rose link. Having only played the alpha games he probably has a few problems with this technique as would others who didn’t play kara heavy games like 3rd strike. Now plinking is a technique unique (see what I did there?) to SF4. You are basically kara-ing a normal into another normal. What this does is give you two inputs of the same button. This is useful since it gives you two instances to a small frame link such as Balrog’s cr.forward, cr.strong or Guile’s cr.jab, cr.strong. You can probably find uses for this with every character. I would recommend this most with Guile, Ryu, Balrog, Rufus, and of course Akuma. Want to do that dope shit with Akuma? With plinking you can do the jab roundhouse like you were Sako’s kid brother.
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Now on to the good shit, the how-to. Let’s start with Ryu as an example; cr.strong, cr.strong is a strong (I should write for snl) link but hard to time. To plink this you would press the first cr.strong as normal then for the second strong, you will piano your fingers one pressing strong, the other immediately pressing jab. The notation for this would be, mp~lp. You will be pressing the buttons at almost the exact same time. You know you did it right when you get the input seen below.

cr.strong x 2, oh True Tech why you so nice?

Notice how there are 3 inputs for cr.strong and 1 for jab? The second strong has been plinked so there are 2 inputs for it making the link easier.

Let’s use Rufus as another example; His st.short, st.short, st.fierce link is 1 frame if I recall correctly. You can use plinking to make it easier. Here, we press short, short like normal, as you can’t plink jabs or shorts since there’s no lower strength normal to kara those into. Then we move to the fierce and just like before we piano the buttons quickly from fierce to strong. When you get the input below, you know you’re cooking with gas.

Short short fierce x 2

Now even you, you, and yes even YOU (I’m pointing in real life) can play just like Justin Wong. Never miss those links and go win some tournaments.


We want YOU, to stop sucking.

Wait… what’s that you say? You want one more example? Well, I’m not one to leave the audience wanting, so how about we take out the big guns and talk the Akuma roundhouse jab loop and show you some plinking inputs. Same as the first two examples, you press the first button as normal, so you roundhouse, jab, plink roundhouse. Let’s take a look at the inputs.

One rep of roundhouse loop

The first roundhouse is naked as is the jab that follows up, however the second rh is plinked, so you’re getting two inputs for the second roundhouse to combo after the jab. Sako won’t have anything on you right?

Desora (sagat) vs Sako (akuma)

Do not take this technique lightly though, it isn’t a free pass. You still must know the timing to your links but if you do this correctly, you will see your success rate rise. Now you can do those hot links to impress the women folk, or just the stuff that is more damaging, that you would do if you were awesome as me. Well now, while you still can’t be as awesome as me, you can fake the funk. In the end, that’s all you can hope for. Fake it till you make it. UNTIL NEXT TIME, ENJOY THIS TOP TIP.