Ultra Street Fighter IV

[Nate Dogg III]

So my wife and infant son are at the in-laws for a few days, and I had to buy a month's Xbox Live for a work thing. Would anyone like to punch me later this afternoon?

[ah]

For such a rare treat then I can probably make an exception to my never-playing-this-game again rule and pop on for a few matches :-)

I'll be out in the garden at some point though so post up here when you're heading online.

[Nate Dogg III]

Got the Xbox, got the stick... Can't find my AE disc I will remain forever unpunched.

[ah]

Profound sadness. It's probably hanging out at Cale's house with my towel.

[Nate Dogg III]

Profound sadness. It's probably hanging out at Cale's house with my towel.

It was, and Cale came round last night so I have it. I also have a lovely new (old) towel (I don't really).

Lots of work to do today but I may jump on for some hungover punching later on. I ended up playing some ranked on PC yesterday and did ok. The brain knows what to do but the hands are not cooperating.

[joffocakes]

I played Mr Nathan the Dog for a single match of SSFIV AE this afternoon and it was a delightful one. For a man who claims not to have played in a while he had plenty of Ken's links intact. Links I recently discovered myself to be awful at when getting Ken up to C rank on PC. Good show, sir. An undeserved, cheeky win for me, there.

Also! Also. Last night "radlord" and genuine Reality Based Human Phil came over and we played the wonderful Speedrunners a bunch alongside Towerfall Ascension. Both are excellent. Towerfall is the most beautiful vision of Spelunky re-imagined as a single screen archery deathmatch with the added brilliance of timed RT dodges allowing you to snatch an enemy's arrow out of the air. Imagine how infuriated Mary upstairs must have been at all of our wild guffaws. She was probably too drunk to notice. She's basically Marsha from Spaced.

[Nate Dogg III]

Yes, good game (singular), sir. I have been playing and watching this game for almost five years and only today did I learn that Dan's U1 goes through fireballs. Lovely stuff.

[ah]

[sith]

And thy fingers are like unto the penises. It's okay, it's the same for all mortal men compared to lunatics like Smug.

Joffocakes used to be the forum example of someone playing on a standard 360 pad and still beating most of us handily. His was customised with cat stickers, though, so it's possible that it had extra power. Sith uses a fancy 360 pad with the rotating D-pad to kill people with Hawk.

Wolfkrone uses a PS3 pad, by the way, and I think Snake Eyez uses a Madcatz pad now. Vipers and Zangiefs are the most frequent pad players, I think - some of Viper's stuff is easier and SPDs are supposedly quicker to spin on a half-decent pad than an arcade stick - plus nobody can hear you churning that butter!

I use this pad:

Yes, it is meant to be C3-PO but the D-Pad is great for grapplers.

[imp]

Where are your cat stickers?

[joffocakes]

Cat stickers are too OP.

Here's me fightin' Nate earlier to test thon Open Broadcast software thing. I fumble about at the start, amazed by his presence.

[Goemon]

Yes, good game (singular), sir. I have been playing and watching this game for almost five years and only today did I learn that Dan's U1 goes through fireballs. Lovely stuff.

This blows my mind too.

5 years and I'm still learning stuff about this game every day.

I just found out yesterday you can plink multiple button press moves to get them in super quick time

Crouching plinked MP, plinked MP, HP gets you crouching MP, HP hands with Gen every time - my mind was blown!

Not only this but we have a new version of the game coming with new characters, new mechanics and balance changes

It really is amazing

[JLM]

Done many fightings of late. Dragonman session at Brylarke's house on Thursday, SFO session at SFO House on Friday and then another on all day today. Play to win first to 3/best of 3 sets, Dragonman ranked and your more casual casuals mixed in as well. Held my own against Ghost's Honda with Rose, which was quite encouraging. I cannot do Rose's b'n'b combo online but am hitting it fairly consistently offline on the Asus monitors now. I think being able to do the latter is more useful to me at the moment, so that's good. Figuring out match ups as I go and building my knowledge based on the countless Louffy/Filipinoman/Arturo/Gootecks matches I've watched. Need to start putting together some more concrete science-y stuff and do some proper research like I did with Dudley though. There are lots of little character specific things I need to know if I'm going to keep using her as my first choice tournament character.

One example is that if I do the cross up jump MK set up off a back through, my usual combo is cr. MK - > cr. fierce xx reflect - > tings. However, I have discovered that, at this spacing, the reflect will whiff on shotos and I need to do standing fierce instead. I need to put together some Infiltration-esque phone notes so that I don't lose tournament matches due to little gaps in knowledge like that.

Oh, we came across FairlySadPanda during a short Dragonman ranked session this afternoon. For those who don't recall, he was the guy who lost to Ghandi's rrraggo Ryu on stream at Dreamhack, much to the delight of the cruel, cruel internet. So we decided that we'd each play him using Ryu and play as stupidly as possible and see if it worked. We mostly won, and then he sent us a message saying "Shout outs to SFO, I am still free to Ghandi tactics :("

What a good sport. Much respect to that man.

A lag-free Asus monitor is currently top of my frivolous purchase wishlist by a huge margin. My Dudley game is sooooo much better on those than in any other setting. I react to counter hits, confirm everything and am infinitely more consistent with my links. I went into training mode for twenty minutes at the end of the session today and was doing some ridiculous shit that I can never ever land on my set up at home. The overhead into standing roundhouse one framer in particular seemed to be within my grasp when it never is normally. It's definitely at the point now where practising combos in training mode at home is going to be counter-productive, so that new monitor is a must. Spent a while doing Jump fierce - > Kidney blow - > standing MP - > standing MP - > standing MP xx medium machine gun blow on Balrog and managed to pass the Dieminion test of landing it ten times in a row without failing. Meterless 400 damage, but more importantly it is almost on jab jab sweep levels of satisfying to land.

Frame trapping is so much easier without screen lag as well. It's incredibly frustrating to get hit out of your meaty set up or counter hit attempt by the very thing you were trying to bait, but this happens far less frequently offline on these swanky monitors. Managed to get some lovely stuff with Cody that I only get occasionally when playing online. Did stuff like back throw - > Jumping roundhouse safe jump (blocked) - > cr. jab (blocked) - > *pause* - > standing fierce counter hit - > link Ultra 2 on multiple occasions. On one of them it was a trade instead of a counter hit but I was able to link that as well just by reacting to the hit. On that one I had everyone laughing at me because I am generally quite humble and unassuming but could not resist an involuntary Mike Ross "Oooooooohhh!" and a turn and scan of the room to make sure that everyone in attendance was suitably impressed.

Oh, and on Friday I was playing a set as Dee Jay against SFO Willo's Honda. I landed Jumping MK - > cr. jab - > cr. jab - > standing MK xx roundhouse dreadkicks - > FADC - > cr. jab - > cr. jab - standing MK xx roundhouse dreackicks - > FADC - > cr. jab - > cr. jab - > standing MK xx short dreadkicks. This got a big "oooh" from everyone in attendance and I felt pretty good about myself. About a minute later everyone else went out to the shops for a bit. In the very next match, Will landed Jumping MP - > cr. jab xx EX hands - > cr. jab xx EX hands - > cr. jab xx Fierce hands - > standing roundhouse for 18 hits and absurd damage and nobody else was around to see it. Poor Will. I made sure to tell everyone about it when they got back but he was totally denied his moment. What's great about Will is that when he does something amazing like that, he just does this little smirk that you have to turn around to notice, and then he cracks a smile when he realises everyone is looking for it. It's a little bit like Joffo face and it consistently cracks everyone up when it happens. Every time he does hands into hands into super it's worth a little glance over to see how pleased he is with himself. It's great.

Had a similar thing with Chris, who is a strong Marvel player but is struggling in his quest to get good at Streetfighter IV. He plays with us when we do the pass the stick Dragonman ranked sessions and he gets really flustered when people are shouting coaching at him during his matches. He's trying to learn to play the right way, he is constantly tapping up OverMostHeads for science and tips (he's learning Oni) and is all about max damage combos and optimised set ups and stuff. His problem is a common one that all of us intermediate-ish players share, though, and that is focusing too much on playing "correctly" and giving opponents far too much credit. He almost never uses Oni's cross up slashes because they're used quite sparingly at high level play and he feels like he should focus on his fundamentals and other proper stuff rather than relying on gimmicks. We have been trying to teach him the value of "going dumb" when necessary, and particularly when playing these ranked matches. Dudley's EX cross counter is a great example of a shitty move that is almost always the wrong call, but on that one magical occasion is the best call you could make and will win you the match. Oni's EX slash is very much like that, and we have been trying to explain this to him for weeks. Playing with your heart, making those reads that skate the line between ingenious and suicidal, and also playing the opponent rather than trying to play the perfect game on paper are such important parts of the game that you can't learn from tutorial videos.

So on Friday he was on this terrible losing streak in Dragonman ranked, and he kept losing to awful players and we kept saying at key moments when he could close out the round, "just end your next combo in EX slash and ultra him, you haven't used it yet, it will be damn near guaranteed". He kept refusing, he kept losing, then in one glorious match, he beat this guy in an absolute nail-biter by closing out both rounds with cheeky resets into cross up slash into ultra. The look on his face of mild disappointment in himself being slowly overwhelmed by unadulterated glee is one that we should have filmed so we could show it to him next time he refuses to take our advice.

So fortunate to have all these regular local sessions available as it really is the best way to play the game. Even when we're playing ranked matches, making a local multiplayer experience out of it makes everything so much more fun. So very excited for my trip to the Scotlands now, and I fully expect the games at Joffo Estates to be more fun than the tournament.

[sith]

Jay, its not an Asus monitor but I'm selling my old syncmaster monitor. Its got no HDMI but works perfect through VGA. 2MS response time. Myself or infexious have never noticed any lag.

Its in decent condition and to you I'll let you have it for £25 if you want it. Cost me well over £200 5 years ago.

[ah]

I was trying to politely advise Chris when I visited that he might want to choose between picking Oni and playing solid all the time - Oni's just not good enough at that without also using his nonsense, and I feel like Oni only ever lands his honest solid stuff when people are scared of his nonsense stuff. If he wants to play solid all the time he should probably be picking Dhalsim or Chun or someone whose buttons are actually good - as Oni if all you ever do is walk, block, b.MP and f.HP then people will out-footsie that all day, but land one horrendous slash or stomp and they'll be scared to push buttons the rest of the week.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

Wait, Rose can link cr.mk into cr.hp? What madness is this?

[Nate Dogg III]

I see I still jump too much.

[JLM]

No, Rose can't do that, meant to put jumping MK. Whoops.

We all jump too much Nate. It's an incurable affliction.

[joffocakes]

Cale doesn't.

[cale]

Who said that!

[joffocakes]

You have to actually play the game to jump, I guess.[/meow]

[JLM]

You're right, Cale's Rose doesn't jump. Mine does and it is almost always what make me lose matches. I blame Carlito for correctly pointing out that jumping is fun. Ruined my game forever that did.

[Qazimod]

Cat stickers are too OP.

Here's me fightin' Nate earlier to test thon Open Broadcast software thing. I fumble about at the start, amazed by his presence.

Nice OBS is pretty solid and quite straightforward to set up, which just makes it that much better when tests go to plan.

I did a few mini-streams a few days ago but it was on MAME and wasn't Street Fighter. Boo.

[Choo]

I played Mr Nathan the Dog for a single match of SSFIV AE this afternoon and it was a delightful one. For a man who claims not to have played in a while he had plenty of Ken's links intact. Links I recently discovered myself to be awful at when getting Ken up to C rank on PC. Good show, sir. An undeserved, cheeky win for me, there.

Also! Also. Last night "radlord" and genuine Reality Based Human Phil came over and we played the wonderful Speedrunners a bunch alongside Towerfall Ascension. Both are excellent. Towerfall is the most beautiful vision of Spelunky re-imagined as a single screen archery deathmatch with the added brilliance of timed RT dodges allowing you to snatch an enemy's arrow out of the air. Imagine how infuriated Mary upstairs must have been at all of our wild guffaws. She was probably too drunk to notice. She's basically Marsha from Spaced.

Yes! Towerfall is incredible! It's just so so polished and crammed with features. Easter eggs, secret unlocks, bosses.

Also the non vs modes are ace too. Coop plays like super crate box but with the biggest threat as team mate incompetence.. Mostly when trying to exchange arrow ammo by firing one for your friend to catch...

It plays so well, I've just learnt you can super jump by crouch dashing -> jump. Feels lovely. mmmm.

ggs to lyrical and Imp last night. 5 seconds crouch block face off -> walk forward throw never gets old!

[cale]

You have to actually play the game to jump, I guess.[/meow]

A fully deserved meow, sir. I'm lost to Dark Souls now. Probably forever. I think there's a very real possibility of me only playing Street Fighter at weddings and bar mitzvahs (read: Heggfests) from this point on.

[andygt]

http://youtu.be/ND7kMQvfyk8

[joeplus]

I think Dudley could do with a coffee as well, Guile. Put the kettle on.

[Qazimod]

Espressonic Boom

Cappucinocom

[DC]

X.C.O.F.F.E.E.

(Again)

[mayor_mike_haggar]

Cafe necro

Flat white daigo

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