If you’ve played more than a few rounds of Street Fighter then you’ve more than likely experienced the bizarre “nobody wants to win” scenario. This is when some egregious error happens at a crucial moment that no one expects, and so the other player scrambles to take advantage of their sudden new situation, but flubs their punish.
This begins a back and forth of failed scramble punishes that makes both players look like it might be their first time every playing. It’s embarrassing, it’s silly, but it happens, even to the pros… even during the winners semi finals of a Capcom Cup event in Japan.
If you somehow haven’t heard of IBUSHIGAN|Kakeru and BC|Takamura, they’re two of the best in the Street Fighter 6 business. The pair met during the winners side semi-finals of Sunday’s Capcom Pro Tour World Warrior Japan event with Kakeru using Akuma and Tachikawa using Ed.
A cornered Tachikawa catches a neutral jumping Kakeru with quick special that he immediately cancels into Super 3 for a conversion that would most certainly end the round, but the Super winds up whiffing and thus Tachikawa’s Ed is left wide open.
Kakeru’s Akuma is a good distance away, however, and must quickly consider what the best route to punish might be. Deciding that Drive Rush and OD Demon Flip might not make it in time Kakeru opts for an OD fireball, but this move proves too slow as well.
An apparently mashing Tachikawa winds up getting an OD reversal, the invincibility frames of which take him directly through the incoming fireball. This actually leaves him once again exposed for a punish, and this time he’s burned out and directly in front of his opponent.
Instead of scoring a final hit, however, Kakeru continues the scramble and winds up whiffing a heavy Akuma Tatsui… which looks really cool when it hits but even more embarrassing when it whiffs.
— J I Y U N A (@jiyunaJP) July 28, 2024
We’ve all had less than stellar sequences like this play out in our own games, but it’s nice to see the pros are humans too sometimes. Chime into the comments below with your worst Street Fighter scramble stories.