Additional Topic: The Ultimate CLIMAX Method to Your Jamaican BEAT (AKA How to Reliably Perform The Infamous Forward Dash to Ultra 2 Technique Like a Rhythm Loving God)
While I have tried many times to offer methods for inputting Dee Jay’s dash to Ultra 2 - all of them using the technique I have come to call roll pausing (see related articles here and here) - none of them seem to have reliably hit the mark for this rather complex combo sequence. This is due to the number of moving parts involved in the sequence, all of which need to be done within a very short period of time. Despite this, and after many long, frustrating years, I have come up with (what I believe to be) the most reliable method for performing this rather advanced technique. My latest explanation of how this new method works takes into account many of the concepts mentioned in my earlier articles above (particularly around concepts like a joystick's throw and dead zone), so it is worth refreshing your understanding of these in the articles above before you continue on with this post. In any case, the inputs I now use for the dash into Ultra 2 are as follows:
Charge Down/Back --> Neutral -> Soft Toward -> Neutral-> Down/Toward -> Down/Back -> Up/Toward + All 3 Punch Buttons
Observing this input sequence, you will notice that it is somewhat similar to that for the regular Ultra 2, with some strange pseudo-directions put at the start. The truth, however, is that you are actually inputting several more directions than you think you are when doing this sequence. Here is how this input sequence works and why it works so well:
a) The first directional input after charging Down/Back is to go to neutral (i.e., the center point of the stick where no directions are being inputted). In other words, quickly let go of the stick before moving on with the sequence. The reason for this is to get started on the first Toward directional input for the dash as quickly as possible. Believe it or not, it will actually take you longer to move from Down/Back to Toward in one movement than it does to simply let go to Neutral before hitting Toward. The technical explanation is that a single movement from Down/Back to Toward will require you to actively move through the dead zone from Down/Back to Neutral and then the dead zone from Neutral to Toward (often moving much farther than necessary and hitting the joystick's throw point for Toward). Because your brain has to focus on several different points during a single movement, it has a tendency to slow down your input speed and also move well beyond the distance actually required. In contrast, by letting go of the stick to reach Neutral, we remove the hand movement required to reach Neutral altogether and therefore can reach the first Toward much more smoothly and quickly.
b) Once you reach Neutral, you need to move the stick forward to a soft Toward. I define a soft Toward as a stick movement that activates the Toward microswitch without reaching the full length of the joystick's throw (i.e., the furthest point of the stick where it begins to press on the stick's restrictor gate). Again, the reason for this is that we have to input a lot of directions in a short period of time so we really want to only move the stick as little as possible in order to activate each direction.
c) After the soft Toward, let the stick go back to Neutral on its own and without forcefully moving the stick back to Neutral. This is necessary because the dash forward requires the two Toward directions to be separated by a return to Neutral. Put another way, you simply let the stick bounce from your Soft Toward to the middle neutral point (almost like a "mini-roll pause").. Again, performing the half-roll pause to neutral is the best way to do this because it is quicker and more precise to relax the stick and let the stick go to neutral this way than it would be actively try and input a full movement from Toward to Neutral.
d) Following this, you begin the joystick movement for the Ultra 2 by immediately inputting the Down/Toward from the neutral position. Here's the thing, though. During this movement, you will actually be adding in more directions than you think you are on your way to Down/Toward. Done properly, and with quick enough speed, what you are actually doing is inserting the second Toward direction for the dash during your movement to Down/Toward. Always remember that the shortest distance to activate any additional direction on the stick is from the neutral position because the distance to engage any other direction is equal (in other words, an equal dead zone to reach all inputs from this location). So our second Toward input ends up being a "phantom input" during our movement to Down/Toward which causes our initial dash to kick in, even though we never consciously attempted to do so. In contrast to this method, doing multiple directions from a starting charged back position to get this dash would have taken us far longer if we were intentionally focused on it (not to mention we would have stood a greater chance of missing the neutral starting position this way). So, by setting up our inputs in a very specific way, we are able to hide the input for our dash while doing the other inputs in the sequence; in short, you are using quick movement of the stick in conjunction with the way the game engine reads inputs to generate that dash in the shortest time possible after the necessary return to neutral position.
e) We then follow up our Down/Toward with the next input of the Ultra 2's sequence, Down/Back. While going from Down/Toward to Down/Back, it is likely you will put a Down direction in there as well as a phantom input. Doesn't matter, as the game engine will still read the required inputs for the Climax Beat even with an extra input in between (provided you are fast enough).
f) After inputting Down/Back, you can actually go to any up direction to activate the final Climax Beat Ultra. Up/Toward is used here in the input scheme because you will often hit Up/Back and Up as well during your movement to Up/Toward, thereby maximizing your chances of getting the Ultra 2 successfully as you hit the 3 Punch buttons.
g) Lastly, keep in mind that you can even begin the input sequences above while an EX Upper is finishing animation (roughly around the last hit of the move); meaning, you then only have to do an even smaller number of inputs after the EX is finished to get the dash into Ultra. As an example, you can do all the inputs up to the Down/Toward input of the Ultra 2 during that last hit of EX, then finish the remaining inputs and button presses as Dee Jay completes his dash. The timing takes a bit of practice, mind you, but this method will further cut down on the number of inputs you need to do AFTER the Upper in order to do the dash into Ultra successfully (although it is certainly not a necessary requirement to perform this technique).
NOTE 1: The key to this entire input sequence is to keep your stick movements as quick and precise as possible in order to maximize the chances of getting all the directions into the limited input window. To improve your input speed in this regard, I sometimes use the mental trick of pretending to quick cancel each directional input I do into the next directional input (in the same way you might cancel a normal into a special attack). This input hack (a form of visualization tool, really) helped me to start performing inputs far more quickly than I was previously doing, leading to more consistent results in my attempts at dash into Ultra 2. As I have said before, the relaxed nature of the USF4 input system actually allows for a wide number of ways to perform this technique - but this, to me, seems to be the easiest one to do AND the best one to get the desired Ultra with the greatest degree of reliability. After a decade and a half, it seems I have finally come up with a sequence for this technique that doesn’t make my head explode. Cheers to 2024.
FINAL NOTE: Really, the trickiest part of this technique is getting the dash inputs started as quickly as possible from a neutral position, since this is the only way that two toward inputs in succession will be read properly as a dash. How you get there is up to you (many players, for example, used to roll from Down/Toward to Down/Back to Up/Back in a "tiger knee" motion, which is just completing the three necessary inputs for the Climax Beat by another method) . In all honestly, though, I like this latest method far more than any of the previous ones I have used because, when you combine quick and precise joystick shifts for only a handful of directions in a way that takes advantage of the USF4's relaxed input system, a lot of the pressure to perform a large number of inputs in a short period of time is removed. On that note, here's a quick video showing you how much more quickly you can begin activating that Climax Beat Ultra once you have your inputs fine-tuned to be as efficient as possible. As you can see, it makes a big difference in landing the Beat as soon as the opportunity arises to do so. Explore this technique yourself to see if you agree.