As a next step in my recent retro-revival adventure I picked up Tekken 1. I've never played it before because I've never owned a Playstation and I'm currently playing it on PC using an emulator and USB pad controllers.

I took some time to learn the moves for Kazuya (decided to focus on one character and he looked cool) but the problem is I'm getting my ass handed to me on easy most of the time on the later stages. The computer characters storm me and I don't have a chance to hit them back. One problem I'm having is King, he runs at me as I'm on the ground, and keeps doing body slams on me while I'm lying down. I keep mashing the dpad to get up but somehow the computer does it much quicker than I can. He also has this move where he keeps kicking low in a combo which I can't interrupt or block and which stuns me if it connects so he can do it again and keep it up forever.

I got as far as Lee, but I've never won a single round against him. He keeps kicking at me in an infinite combo, which I can block, but every now and then one of these kicks is low and gets through the block.

The other problem I'm having is that it's very difficult for me to do the special moves, I can pull them off about every 1 in 10 times. Unless I time it exactly right (not too fast, not too slow), the move doesn't work. Is it supposed to be like this? 

What am I doing wrong? Thanks.