A teeny tiny guide to drive rush

Welcome to the first post on the new site! Are you excited? i know i am

Drive rush is a mechanic in Street Fighter 6 tha- hey wait where are you going?

As i was saying, drive rush is a mechanic in Street Fighter 6 that it is incredibly important to master, in order to squeeze the best possible performance you can out of your chosen fighter. Everyone from Akuma to Zangief needs to be able to use it effectively, so in this post i will give you a brief outline of how to do so. It's not lost on me that nobody reading this plays SF6 but i can dream.

There are two ways you'll be performing a drive rush, a parry rush and a cancel rush. A parry rush is simple, you enter the drive parry stance by holding medium kick and medium punch, then double tapping forward. There's also quite a sneaky manoeuvre you can do by tapping forward once, then pressing medium kick and medium punch just before you tap forward again. This eliminates the time you spend entering the drive parry stance, and catapults you towards your opponent for a surprise attack. It's tricky to get the timing down, but it's the fastest you'll be able to launch an offensive assault. Unless you're Dhalsim, then you can just teleport in. An important thing to note is that every character has a slightly different set of stats for various stages of their drive rush. These are the startup window, the initial cancel window, and then the full rush. This might sound a little bit complicated, but it's quite simple when you break it down. The startup window is simply the time it takes to start rushing. The initial cancel window is the amount of time you'd travel if you spammed an attack immediately after rushing, and the full rush is how far you travel if you let your rush go right to the end. For example, M. Bison initially covers a tiny distance due to his slow startup, but once he gets going he covers the most distance in the game. Look at those legs go!

So your other drive rush is a cancel drive rush, and this is done by pressing medium punch and medium kick as you make contact with a rush-cancellable move. This immediately sends you into a rush, hopefully allowing you to continue the offensive against an opponent still hitstunned by your initial attack. Rush-cancellable moves vary from character to character, but typically all light attacks will be cancellable with some combination of medium and heavy attacks. An important thing to note is that you can't press any other buttons while you attempt to rush cancel! If you're cancelling from a crouching attack this can be tricky to master, as you've got to hold down for long enough to get the attack out but then let it go before you try and rush, it's quite simple on paper but can be awkward to get your head round. Another very important thing to note is that a cancel rush will use a lot more drive gauge than a parry rush, as it allows you to apply a huge amount of offensive pressure during a combo. Also as a fun sidequest, Dee Jay's drive rush is notorious for being one of the strongest in the game - as he travels quite far very quickly despite his initial cancel window being very short, which works great for his shimmy and feint style of gameplay. It's amazing how such small changes in drive rush can fit into each character's gameplay style, i'd really hate to be the devs trying to figure all of this stuff out.

So now that we've covered how to drive rush, what do you use it for? One very important use of drive rush is that it enables moves that ordinarily wouldn't combo into each other to be linked up, as an attack performed out of drive rush will have a whopping 4 extra frames of blockstun and hitstun, as well as increased forward momentum. When Terry tries to hit with a crouching medium punch after his hammer punch, it normally doesn't work. Out of drive rush however, the extra hitstun means they can link into each other, making it a very useful combo for breaking through an opponent's guard. Doubly so because hammer punch is an overhead attack, meaning it will hit opponents who are crouch blocking.

This is a great little offensive tool, especially so when you consider that Terry's crouching medium punch is rush-cancellable! Here's what happens when you take the combo further, effectively linking two separate combo pieces into one MEGA COMBO.

Another way drive rush enables crazy combos is by allowing you to effectively link juggles, by keeping your opponent in the air and closing the distance to carry on the beatdown. Terry's trusty power charge is a great combo tool, but has the unfortunate side-effect of sending your opponent far, far away. This can be remedied by juggling them with an OD power wave, then catching up to them with a speedy drive rush to carry on the combo and lay down some serious hurt.

Yeah baby!

Drive rush is a great example of a very simple but incredibly rewarding mechanic, as is it essentially just moving forward quickly. What makes it so satisfying to master is how it enables linking of separate combo pieces that wouldn't be possible otherwise, rewarding players for their quick thinking and game sense. i hope you enjoyed or at the least tolerated this teeny tiny guide, i just wanted to share a little bit about a mechanic i really love that helps to make Street Fighter 6 such a fun game. One day i'll get someone to play a fighting game with me... and Smash doesn't count. Thanks for reading, and hopefully i'll see you for many more posts and exciting projects to come on the brand new home of i am weeb now!