Additional Topic: From Light Kick to Heavy Damage Hyperfist (Maximizing the Beat on the Machine Gun Upper)
The combo you actually want to start using
is a jump medium kick (either regular or cross up) followed by a duck Short
into the Fierce version of the Hyperfist. Note that there is tricky and precise
timing to this version of the combo, but it’s an imperative one to learn if you
wish to maximize your combo possibilities in the best ways possible. So here is
how I do it consistently (although I am certain there are additional ways to
accomplish the same thing):
1) Do your jump in Forward Kick while charging down (either from
the front, or from the back as a cross-up), then do a Low Short Kick button
press immediately upon landing. This will give your follow-up Light Kick as
the second hit of your combo (assuming you are quick enough).
2) After doing the low Light Kick, begin shifting the stick towards the Up position but pause a very brief moment while doing this before hitting the first Heavy Punch button press. Then continue to repeatedly press the Fierce button for the additional Hyperfist hits. You can either do this by riding the gate from Down to Down/Back and beyond or you can use a roll pause to accomplish the same thing (these terms are explained in my later post on joystick and input tricks here). For all methods, the key is to move the stick in the Up direction and then wait a small number of frames before beginning the Fierce button presses. This is what makes comboing into the Upper from a single low more difficult than in between multiple weak attacks. With multiple lights, you are able to have that sustained Up position hidden in between the lights whereas canceling from the single low Light kick is harder because your timing needs to be perfect to get the proper cancel. You can actually feel the difference between a cancel for an Upkick versus an Upper in terms of muscle memory, too. The cancel into an Upkick always feels quicker and more instant while the cancel for an Upper feels like it "drags" a little more. Hard to explain in words but is obvious if you tool around with the two moves for awhile.
3) Repeat this combo sequence in training mode until you can consistently do it from a jump in medium kick, no matter what side you land on. And . . . that’s all there is to it. Sounds simple, right? Well, on paper it is, although it can take awhile to get the exact muscle memory required down. If you're lucky, that won't be the case for you. If it is, this input hack should help your cause immensely.
NOTE:
You really do need to start pressing the Fierce button at the perfect moment after an initial
Short Kick button press to get this combo to work. If you do the button press too early, the Hyperfist won't come out. If you do it too late, though, the Upper will not combo properly
and will often be blocked by your opponent. Secondly,
at the same time you are doing the Fierce button presses, be sure to keep the
Light Kick button held down after the initial press of it. If you don’t, you
risk the possibility of doing a Light Upkick instead of the Upper, due to the
negative edge property from letting the button go. Again, the description of
this combo sounds pretty simple in words, but it is actually somewhat difficult
to perform it consistently until you have the muscle memory well-practiced.
Nevertheless, it’s an effective way to take your Hyperfist combos to the next
level, if you are willing to put the effort in.
September 2022 Update: As it turns out, you can also substitute a low Strong Punch instead of a low Short in the above hyperfist combo, meaning your damage from a basic Upper combo now jumps up to 317 (and even more if you cancel into a Super or Red Focus combo). Furthermore, this combo works on damn near all opponents in USF4 (including the more fickle ones like Poison), so not sure why I have never seen any Dee Jay player choose to use it during the history of USF4. The trick to performing it properly is to throw your crouching medium Punch right after your initial jump in hit (either cross up or from the front) in order to make it combo . . . but then pause for the briefest of moments before moving to Up and pressing Fierce Punch for the cancel into Hyperfist.
Furthermore, the extra frames on the low Strong actually make this cancel a lot easier than that for the low light kick; it’s just trying to consistently find that sweet spot between connecting with the initial Strong Punch and holding off on the cancel slightly after to get enough charge and input the unblocked Upper that is challenging. Nevertheless, the combo is entirely possible with a little practice (and learning the initial version with Short Kick does help in the learning for this one as well). Lastly, the extra frames of charging on the Strong punch actually allows you to cancel the Hyperfist even earlier, putting your total damage in W mode as high as 550. You do have to combo the Strong from a very high cross up since the extra high hit gives you a few additional frames to reach your back charge (so not exactly a super practical combo, even if possible). That said, even a slightly later cancel on the Hyperfist will provide up to 517 damage, which is nothing to sneeze at. See the video below for an example of such heavier damage hyperfist combos:
January 2023 Update: After even more research, I've discovered that you can also use a low Fierce as the second hit after a cross up and before cancelling into a special. This combo tends to be much more character-specific and situation-specific to perform, but it also adds several additional bonuses that the above combos do not. The situation is so nuanced that I decided to add an additional post on it which you can find here.
February 2024 Update: Because there are enough nuances to the cross up into Strong Punch/Fierce Punch and Hyperfist strategy, I decided to do an additional post going into the setup and timing for this particular combo (which you can now find here).