The Complete And Thorough X-Men: Children Of The Atom Combo FAQ
<If ANYONE out there would like to send me an ASCII art title, please, by all
means, do so!!!>
By James Chen
e-mail:jchensor@ucla.edu
jchensor@delphic.com
Version 0.9
Table Of Contents:
- Intro
- Types Of Combos
- Multi-hit Moves
- Special Moves/Hyper-X Moves
- Magic Series
- Special Move Cancellation Combos
- Air Juggling Combos
- Throw Combos
- Air Combos
- Summary: Examples of Combining Combo Types
- Character Specifics
- Storm
- Cyclops
- Wolverine
- Ice Man
- Colossus
- Psylocke
- Omega Red
- Sentinel
- Silver Samurai
- Spiral
- Akuma
INTRO
Combos: the one element of fighting games that became the defining art of
skill and technique.  In the glory days of Street Fighter II: The World
Warrior, the ones who could pull of the miraculous three hit combos were the
ones who were considered great.  Combos, from then on, became a trademark of
fighting games and the one element that many people enjoyed performing the
most.  Since then, there have been a plethora of combo systems invented to
satisfy those who desired new and innovated ways to perform combos: the
DarkStalkers Chain Combos, the Killer Instinct Openers / AutoSeconds / Linkers
/ Enders system, and the classic old-aged Street Fighter II Normal Move
canceled by a Special Move combo system adapted by many a Neo-Geo fighter.
But in X-Men, combos have been taken to the extreme.  Rather than resorting
to combo systems (like in Killer Instinct) to create awesome, multi-hitting,
and a wide variety of combos, they gave the player the ability to Create Your
Own Combos, as the demo screen beckons you do to. But the combos in X-Men can
almost be too unlimited as the number of combos possible and the types of
combos possible are completely unknown by the majority of the X-Men: COTA
fans.  Thus, I have compiled together this FAQ to help all those who still
love X-Men above all other fighter and those who just still play it for its
great fun and freedom.  So read on and (hopefully!), this FAQ will help turn
you into the combo master of X-Men in your local arcade!
Note: Remember, this is PURELY A COMBO FAQ.  For more comprehensive
information on the game in general, please look for the X-Men FAQ by Rich
Joseph in the Brawl.Mindlink.Net FTP Site or in any other places you may be
able to locate it.  It may be a good idea to find that FAQ first because the
names of almost all the moves I have used in this FAQ were obtained from that
FAQ.  This FAQ assumes that you already have a very high knowledge of the game
in its basic structures and systems.  If you are very unfamiliar with this
game, it may be more productive to learn the game to an extent before
utilizing this FAQ.
Also, for clearest reading of this FAQ, it is best viewed with a type-
writer font (example: Courier on Mac-based Word-Processors) with 1.0 left/right
margins in 10 point or smaller (but not larger).
TYPES OF COMBOS:
There is a great variety of types of combos you can perform in this game.
This section here will list the different types of combos you can perform.  All
of these types can be combined with each other to eventually form combos that
are wilder than anything you've ever seen!
-=Multi-Hit Moves=-
By far, the easiest way to do a combo in ANY fighting game is to just find
a move that hits more than once.  Good examples of this are SpiralOs Standing
Fierce Punch or Wolverine's Crouching/Defensive Crouching Fierce Punch.  These
moves all hit the opponent more than once, awarding your fighter with a combo.
Not the most skillful way to do a combo, but it is still a combo nonetheless.
-=Special Moves/Hyper-X Moves=-
Right along with Multi-Hit Moves are the Special Moves and Hyper-X moves
that hit more than once.  Examples of this are Sentinel's Deploy with the
Short Kick button or WolverineOs Berserker Barrage.
-=Magic Series=-
Capcom has developed the method of chaining normal moves together in many
of their fighting games following Street Fighter II to increase the use of
normal moves and give people a new way to perform combos.  In Darkstalkers, it
was the Chain Combos.  In X-Men, it's the 'Magic Series', a term taken from the
X-Men FAQ (the term was originated, however, by Tom Cannon according to the
FAQ).
Basically, the Magic Series is a system in which the fighters are allowed
to cancel a normal into another. For each character, there is a specific set of
rules for their Magic Series.  Also, for each character, they have different
Magic Series for when they are in the ground, for when they are performing a
regular jump, and for when they are performing a super jump.
Some basic rules about Magic Series: unlike most other fighting games, you
need not make contact with the enemy to cancel a move.  You can cancel the move
at ANY POINT in its animation. You can cancel the move instantly after starting
it or cancel it very late in its animation.  Also, if a Magic Series is more
rthan two buttons long, you can skip any of the middle buttons and jump right to
later ones.  However, you can never go backwards.  For example, Psylocke can do
a Jab, Short, Strong, Forward, Fierce, Roundhouse Magic Series while on the
ground. However, she can choose to do a Jab, Strong, Forward, Roundhouse rather
than all six buttons.  However, she CANNOT do a Jab, Strong, Fierce, and then
back to a Forward.  You can only progress FORWARD in the series.
Rules for ground Magic Series: On the ground, you can start a Magic Series
and continue it with either standing or crouching moves.  For example, with
Storm, you can cancel a crouching Strong with a crouching Roundhouse OR a
standing Roundhouse.
Rules for regular jumping Magic Series: The same basic rules apply for
regular jumping Magic Series (in that you can cancel at any point in the
animation and that you can choose either regular jumping moves or the
specialized "Hold Down + Button" jumping moves).  However, the main difference
is that you can only do two moves in the series.  For example: although
Psylocke's Magic series is six buttons long for normal jumps, you can only do
two buttons in her Magic Series.  So in the air, you can choose to do a Jab to
Short, a Jab to Fierce, a Strong to Roundhouse, a Forward to Fierce, a Short to
Strong, or even a Fierce to Roundhouse and many more... but never more than two
moves. Also, another limitation is that you can only go from one type of attack
to another; i.e. from a punch to a kick or a kick to a punch.  Even if your
Magic Series has a path that allows you to go from a punch to a punch, it won't
work for regular jumping.  For example: Cyclops has a Magic Series that allows
him to go from any button to any stronger button (like Jab to Forward or Jab
to Roundhouse or Forward to Fierce).  However, even though the series allows
you to go to ANY stronger button, in regular jumps, you cannot go from a punch
to a punch or a kick to a kick.
Rules for super jumping Magic Series: Unlike regular jumping Magic Series,
you can do as many of the moves in your series as you can as well as going from
one type of attack to that same type of attack. And since, while super jumping,
you can always keep doing moves as long as you are not stuck in the animation
of any move/special move/Hyper-X, some characters can do more than one Magic
Series in one jump (in a super jump, you can always do another move even after
your first ended.  However, only Magic Series can CANCEL your move into the
next one. Non-Magic Series sequences cannot cancel animation.  You must wait
until the move ends and then do the next one afterwards).
To learn each character's Magic Series, read the section entitled
"Character's Specifics".
-=Special Move Cancellation=-
The classic way to do combos!  X-Men continues the tradition of the Street
Fighter series of allowing you to cancel normal moves with special moves so
that the special move hits so fast that the opponent cannot recover from the
normal move in time before the special move makes contact.
However, in X-Men, the programmers have decided to give the player MUCH
more freedom than in the SF series.  In the SF series, you could only cancel
CERTAIN normal moves. Also, you could only cancel them if you made contact with
the enemy with the move (whether they got hit or blocked it) and only on the
first animation frame that has the potential for producing a hit. In X-Men, you
now have the freedom to cancel ALL normal moves (grounded, jumping, super
jumping) at ANY point in its animation whether you hit the enemy or not!  This
goes for ALL normal moves including Cyclops's Fierce Button Mini Optic Blast,
Sentinel's Crouching Fierce Missile, and Sentinel's Down+Fierce Body Smash when
in the air. At any point in the animation of a normal move, you can do the code
for a special move and your special move will interrupt your normal move.  This
allows for a great freedom of combos!
-=Air Juggling Combos=-
Borrowing a combo technique made famous in the Mortal Kombat series, X-Men
allows you to hit people out of the air even if you had already hit them.  In
the Street Fighter series, for example, if you punched an opponent out of the
air and threw a fireball right afterwards so that your opponent would land into
the fireball, they would be able to block it even though they landed right in
it.  In X-Men, however, the rule is this: as long as your move reaches them,
they will get hit!  Thus, air juggling combos (or Hot Potato Combos as I like
to call them) is possible just like in Mortal Kombat.  So if you hit someone
out of the air, try to hit them again before they recover even though they are
reeling in the air!
Some examples of this are: with Sentinel, do a standing forward kick.  This
move knocks the opponent into the air.  Cancel the kick with a Fierce Rocket
Punch and you will punch the enemy while they are still in the air even though
they are flying away in their reeling animation.  Another example is with
Psylocke.  If you are in the corner and manage to hit the enemy while they are
just off the ground with standing jab, you can them perform all 6 hits of her
Magic Series on the opponent and keep bouncing them up and down in the corner
while they are still in the air.  If you get really skillful, you can then
cancel her last hit into a Special Move... but more complicated combos will
come up later.
-=Throw Combos=-
Whenever you throw someone in X-Men, there are two points in which they
lose energy: they lose energy on an initial hit and then they lose another bit
of energy on a second hit.  This is true for EVERY throw in the game, even
holds.  Some examples: Cyclops's Fierce throw slams them into the ground
(initial hit) and then they bounce and land on the ground again (second hit)
and lose more energy).  Wolverine's Fierce Throw has him climb on the enemy's
head and start slashing them (first hit) and then throw the enemy to the floor
(second hit).  Sliver SamuraiOs Fierce Throw has him swing the enemy over his
head on his sword and into the ground (first hit) and then the body of the
slammed person just crumples to the floor (second hit). Storm's Fierce button
throw has her toss the enemy (first hit) and then they crash onto the floor
(second hit).  The list goes on and on (more detail will be given in the
character specifics section).  However, when the thrown character lands on the
ground on this second hit, it takes him/her a while before they stop moving
(they are still landing in their "pain/reeling" animations).  At ANY POINT
during the pain animation of the victim landing on the floor, you can strike
the enemy with a move that hits along the floor (a low foot sweep for example)
and this will stand the victim up into a normal "hit" animation with the
victim on his/her feet.  Also, this produces the combo meter on the side of
the screen and it goes into "2 Hits."  And since this stands them up, you can
continue the combo into more hits!  So, in X-Men, you can actually combo a
victim after you throw them.  An example of this is with Cyclops: If you throw
the enemy with the Strong button, Cyclops shoots the opponent up into the air
with an Optic Blast for the first hit.  Then, the enemy plummets to the floor
and smashes into the ground for the second hit.  As soon as they hit the
floor, perform a low Short, standing Fierce Magic Series Combo and cancel the
Fierce Mini Optic Blast with a Fierce Gene Splice. The low Short will stand
the enemy up and the rest of the combo will be able to hit the enemy.
Also note that many times, it is necessary to dash after the throw to catch
up to the opponent to perform a throw combo.  For example, if Sentinel throws
you with the Strong punch into the corner, Sentinel gets pushed out of the
corner a little and wonOt be close enough to perform any satisfactory chain
combos afterwards.  To remedy this, merely dash into the corner and start your
chain combo from the dash.  Thus, you can get in a Low Short, Standing
Roundhouse, Jab Rocket Punch combo off after the throw.
-=Air Combos=-
Do not confuse this with Air Juggling.  In essence, it is the same thing,
but with one difference... these combos involve having YOUR character knock the
enemy into the air and you chasing them up into the air and continuing a combo.
To do this, you must know one thing: you can cancel ANY NORMAL MOVE in X-Men
with a Super Jump.  Thus, you can do a Fierce Mini-Optic Blast with Cyclops and
Super Jump right afterwards, canceling the long pause after the move.  However,
using this knowledge to your advantage gives you the ability to do perhaps the
most impressive looking combos in X-Men: the Air Combos.
Many character in X-Men have been equipped with normal moves that knock the
enemy into the air even if you hit them off the floor.  An example of this is
WolverineOs Standing Roundhouse Kick. This kick causes the enemy to fly up into
the air after being hit.  However, after you kick them, you can cancel your own
kick with a Super Jump.  Thus, you can actually kick the enemy with the
Roundhouse Kick, launch them into the air, cancel your kick with a Super Jump
and hit Roundhouse again to continue hitting them while they are flying away
with Wolverine's Double Kicking Roundhouse Jump attack.  THEN, if you know that
Wolverine's Magic Series allows him to cancel the Roundhouse kick with a Fierce
attack, you can cancel the Roundhouse kick after the second hit with the Fierce
button for an additional hit that gives you a total of four hits!  Sound
complicated?  Don't worry.  It's really not as hard as it sounds.
You can even tack in air throws in combos if you get good at Super Jump
combos. For example, if someone jumps at you and you are Colossus, you can kick
them out of the air with Roundhouse and that launches them upwards.  Then, you
can super jump and catch them out of the air with an air throw and the computer
will give you a 2 hit combo!!  I've also seen the computer Spiral and Storm do
something similar where they air throw you in the corner and, while they are
still in the air, catch your falling body again and throw you AGAIN for a 2 hit
combo!  I'm still not sure how this works and will work on it and also gladly
accept any input from anyone else.
-=Summary=-
So what kind of combos can you do with this wealth of possibilities? Well,
thatOs why the game itself tells you to OCreate Your Own CombosO because you
can... and almost too easily.  Try combining every kind of combos with each
other until you get combos that are out of this world!!
Some examples?  HereOs one: Using Magic Series and Special Move
Cancellation techniques, you could do a Low Short, Standing Roundhouse, Jab
Rocket Punch with Sentinel.  Or, you can combine a Throw Combo with a Magic
Series with a Special Move Cancellation with Cyclops: Throw the enemy into the
corner with the Strong button, do a Low Short, Standing Strong Magic Series on
the landing body and cancel the Strong with the Gene Splice.  Or how's THIS for
a clincher: combine a Throw Combo, a Magic Series, an Air Combo, ANOTHER Magic
Series, AND a special move cancellation: With Colossus, throw the enemy into
the corner with the Strong Punch. Dash in and do a Low Short, Standing
Roundhouse Magic Series to the landing body.  Cancel the Roundhouse with a
Super Jump and do a Super Jumping Forward kick into a Fierce lunging punch
Magic Series and cancel the Fierce punch with the Hyper-X move and perform the
Dive immediately (Down+punch)... 6 hits of pure, MASSIVE damage!!!  Impress
friends with that one!
CHARACTER SPECIFICS:
Magic Series: Here is a list of definitions to help understand the way I
explain the Magic Series.
Weak Attacks: Jab punch and Short kick.
Medium Attacks: Strong punch and Forward kick.
Hard attacks: Fierce punch or Roundhouse Kick
ZigZag 1 - The Series used in DarkstalkerOs Revenge.  Basically, it's:
Jab -> Short -> Strong -> Forward -> Fierce -> Roundhouse
ZigZag 2 - Backwards of ZigZag 1:
Short -> Jab -> Forward -> Strong -> Roundhouse -> Fierce
Punch to Kick - Can cancel any punch button with any kick button.
Jab/Strong/Fierce -> Short/Forward/Roundhouse
Kick to Punch - Can cancel any kick button with any punch button.
Short/Forward/Roundhouse -> Jab/Strong/Fierce
Stronger - The Series used in Darskstalkers 1.  Can go to any stronger attack.
Jab/Short -> Strong/Forward -> Fierce/Roundhouse
Note: Can skip the medium attacks from the Weak attacks if desired.
Weak Start - Start on Jab or Short and end with any of the other four attacks.
Jab/Short -> Strong/Forward/Fierce/Roundhouse
Other Words:
---Throw Combo Starters: Throws that can start Throw Combos (haven't tested all
the air throws yet... still working on it). Remember to always do the next move
of the combo on the second hit of the throw and not earlier.
---Launchers: Normal moves that knock the enemy into the air even if they are
on the ground.
Combo Notations:
-> means use Magic Series
XX indicates Special Move cancellation
/ indicates that you cancel the current move with a Super Jump
, indicates that no special combo method is needed in between the two moves
S. stands for standing
C. stands for crouching
O. stands for offensive crouching
D. stands for holding down while hitting button in air
T. stands for holding forward on the controller (direction you are facing)
J. stands for jumping
SJ. stands for Super Jumping
In corner: means that the ENEMY is in the corner and you are outside.
Corner yourself: Put yourSELF in the corner and the opponent outside.
READ THIS NOTE: Not all of the sample combos work on everyone.  In X-Men, there
are different body types/weights for every character that make them reel in
different ways that allow them to be hit or make them so that they won't be
hit.
There are basically 3 body types: light, medium, and heavy.  Storm, Cyclops,
Wolverine, Iceman, Psylocke, and Spiral fit under light.  Omega Red and Silver
Samurai fall under medium.  Colossus and Sentinel fall under heavy.  Also,
Cyclops and Iceman have particularly annoying ground reels as they duck down
VERY low in pain... some moves will whiff right over their heads when they are
doing this reel.  So experiment around and see which combos work on which
characters.  There is a good chance that any combo listed that requires you to
knock an opponent into the air and Air Combo them wonOt work on the heavy
bodied fighters.
-=Storm=-
--Magic Series
Ground: Punch to Kick
Jump: Punch to Kick
Super Jump: ZigZag 1
--Throw Combo Starters: Fierce, Strong
--Launchers: S.Roundhouse, C.Fierce
--Sample Combos:
1) C.Short, C.Short, C.Strong -> C.Roundhouse XX Typhoon
Note: The Typhoon wonOt count as part of the combo, but if your opponent does
not slide off the floor soon enough, it will hit him.
2) Fierce Throw into corner, combo 1
3) Fierce Throw anywhere, Typhoon
4) In corner: C.Fierce XX (Forward Flip direction) Lighting Attack
-=Cyclops=-
*Magic Series
Ground: Stronger
Jump: Stronger
Super Jump: Stronger
Note: Cyclops's Roundhouse Kick can cancel itself into a different somersault
kick.  To do this, just hit Roundhouse twice quickly.
--Throw Combo Starters: Strong, Fierce, c.Kick
--Launchers: S.Strong, S.Forward, S.Fierce, S.Roundhouse (2nd hit), C.Strong,
C.Forward
--Sample Combos:
1) C.Short -> S.Strong XX Gene Splice
2) In corner: C.Short -> S.Fierce XX Multi-Attacks (-o -o Jab+Short) (make
Multi-Attacks hit five times... fifth hit launches enemy into air), Gene
Splice
3) J.Roundhouse enemy out of air XX Guidable Optic Blast Hyper X
4) Strong Throw, combo 1
5) In corner: S.Roundhouse, S.Roundhouse XX Fierce Optic Blast
6) SJ.D.Short -> SJ.D.Roundhouse, C.Short -> C.Roundhouse
Note: You can replace the C.Roundhouse with a Gene Splice if you want but its
dangerous hitting enemies directly off the floor with the Gene Splice as
sometimes, the last hit of the uppercut will miss and the enemy can combo YOU
when you land from the uppercut.
7) Fierce Throw into corner, combo 1.  If you do combo 2 instead of combo 1, it
is a dizzy combo.
Note: The Dizzy combo is really weird and hard to pull off.  To help you
perform this combo, I will now go into great depth on how to perform it.
This combo requires that you throw the enemy into the corner or at least
towards the corner with the FIERCE BUTTON ONLY.  The Strong throw will NOT
produce a dizzy.  When you throw them into the corner, they will bounce up and
you have a lot of time to follow their bouncing body into the corner (note: you
don't have to be ALL THE WAY in the corner.  You can throw them a good ways
away from the corner... just so long as they have their second landing near the
corner, you'll be fine).  Right when they hit the ground on the Second Hit, hit
Down+Short to Low Kick him on the ground.  This stands them up and then, after
hitting Down+Short, hit Towards on the controller (the direction you're facing)
and the Fierce Button.  This makes Cyclops cancel his Short animation with the
Mini Optic Blast because of his Magic Series.  Then, after hitting Fierce,
QUICKLY hit Towards again on the controller and Jab+Short.  This will cause the
Fierce Mini Optic Blast to be canceled by Cyclops's Multi-Attacks special move
(-o -o Jab+Short).  The first Towards on the controller you hit when you hit
Fierce was part of the code for the Multi-Attacks move.  The second towards
and Jab+Short will finish the code.  Since the Fierce Mini Optic Blast causes
people to freeze in their hit animation for such a long time, the
Multi-Attacks has enough time to make contact with the enemy.  After hitting
Toward Jab+Short, keep hitting any punch button until you count five hits (The
Multi-Attacks special move will only hit twice if you don't keep pressing
buttons.  The last hit will have Cyclops doing a crouching elbow attack
knocking the opponent into
the air).  At this moment, your Multi-Attacks special move is done so you can
perform a Gene