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Ultra Street Fighter IV

JLM

By JLM
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ah

ah

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It almost looks like I'm playing a videogame, except it doesn't seem to pay any attention to which buttons I'm pressing on my controller. I'm much more consistent with my Doom combos this way, though.

Also Texas Showdown this past weekend was a good watch. Stream archives are over in this direction if anyone's interested:

http://www.twitch.tv/leveluplive/profile/pastBroadcasts

Also apparently PR Rog is flying out to Japan to play in the next Topanga league, which is exciting news.

Also I'm dropping Juri because she's too complicated. Who should I play instead - Ryu? Ken? Dark Souls II? I haven't bought it yet but it might be easier than learning to play Street Fighter.

Also if anyone fancies a game in a little while then just let me know.

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lewismistreated

lewismistreated

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I watched the Texas Showdown live on Sunday night. Was pretty good, up until the point where

the EG trio of K-Brad, PR Rog and Justin Wong knocked out the last of the local competitors, at which point the crowd seemed to lose all interest. Never seen a final with such a distinct lack of hype. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that half the audience had buggered off to watch Wrestlemania at that point.

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JLM

JLM

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Hypespotting

That there was the best fighting game tournament I have attended. Many thanks to Joffles for hosting and, as alistarr says, being the best person. Many moments of sheer hilarity to be had. I particularly enjoyed the answers to the Blind Date question "if you were a lightbulb, which kind would you be and why?" and of course the "Fox's Pacier Sprints" slow reveal and subsequent attempts to top that pun. You also have the best food and drink items in your flat and seem to know the places to go in Glasgow. Oh, and those absurdly cheesy Cheetos were a revelation. It's amazing to me how you managed to figure me out entirely over the course of the weekend too; you are an astonishingly perceptive man. Towerfall Ascension and Speedrunners are both wonderful games. I have already convinced two people to buy Towerfall since returning to Leeds and will hopefully convince some SFO people to start playing it as well. I think I like it more than Nidhogg, which is pretty high praise.

I also vividly remember one point during the weekend where I was talking to Alistarr about whether a particular match up was 6-4 or 7-3, which seems an even more absurd thing to be talking about in person than it does on the internet, and saw Joffo looking at us with a "you fucking nerds" grin on his face. This is what I have become/probably have always been.

To get the mildly offensive Scotland observational stuff out of the way:

1) A chip shop we went to had fried pizza and a deep fried rack of ribs on offer.
2) The Hypespotting venue had a remarkably high Irn Bru to other soft drinks are available ratio. This amused me more than it perhaps should.

That's all I have. Other than that Glasgow seemed nice aside from some of the more horribly depressing bits, much like most other cities I've visited.

Before getting onto Streetfighter for the rest of this post, I will also round up the few other extra-curricular activities:

1) Dong Dong. As mentioned by Alistarr, this swiftly became very competitive indeed and I will be challenging folks at the next Heggfest. Ultra launch, guys? This still a thing? I truly hope it is still a thing.

2) The quiz. This was a good laugh despite a dismal performance on my part. Some of the London headz were getting extremely over-excited about the whole thing, but it was still an enjoyable time.

3) Marvel 2. I have so much fun with this game every time I play it that I think we should always play it when we get to that stage of a session weekend where the foolish idea of playing Marvel 3 rears its ugly head.

4) Gangbeasts. I liked this almost as much as Towerfall. Absolutely bloody brilliant this game. Everyone get excited about it please!

Other stuffs that get their own sub-sections:

Ultra Streetfighter IV

I got to spend a lot more time playing this than I thought I would beforehand. I got to test out a few bits and pieces re: changes and absorbed a lot more information from other players and Dawgtanian. Rufus does indeed seem to be absolutely fine, so you dive kicking scumbag types can rest easy. T. Hawk is glorious. He'll still have plenty of problems but he has been given as much as you can without fundamentally changing what is an extremely limited character design. Zangief's jab green hand is even more absurd in practise than it looks in videos. Yang was lots of fun and I am definitely going to spend more time using him when the game drops. It's still hard to get cross up medium kick to hit, but not near-impossible like it is in 2012.

I only used delayed wake up once and red focus once. It's going to take a while to remind myself that they're in the game at all, though delayed wake up in particular is going to be essential once we all get used to it.

Poison is the new love of my life as I hoped she would be. Good back dash, solid anti-air buttons and some wonderful mid-range pokes. I don't think she's necessarily very good, but I thoroughly enjoyed playing her regardless. Some of the buttons she has that looks amazing aren't as good as I'd hoped, though. The cr. fierce looks like it should be as good as Sakura's if not better, but it really isn't at all and I found it trading quite often. The compensation for that is that you can cancel it into specialls and set up free fireball chip etc. I am a big fan of cancelling anti-airs into things, so I approve of this. It can also be used to start punishes as it has better horizontal range on the ground than you'd expect.

Her crouching medium kick is excellent, perhaps slightly better than Yang's although she doesn't have the greatest walk speed. Cr. mk xx rekkas in the mid-range is good, though the rekkas can only be FADC'd on hit, so you have to make sure your spacing is good. You can FADC the second rekka on hit, though to what end is still unclear to me. Nobody seemed to find a good use for it over the weekend, and Dawgtanian was mostly interested in showing off his outstandingly cheap Hugo shenanigans instead.

Standing medium punch is a fantastic anti-air. Love that button the most so far.

Her standing roundhouse looks like it should be utterly broken but in practise is a bit crappy. It looks like it goes as far as Yang's and is twice as fast, but the hitbox doesn't match the visual and it isn't very active or beefy at all. Disappointing.

It's hard for her to cross up from a jump in, and her general mix up game seems weak. That said, her fireball and ex fireball are very strong tools both offensively and defensively. Cr. fierce xx EX fireball - > more tings in the corner creates some nice Juri-esque pressure unless the opponent wants to risk jumping/dashing/mashing. Anti-air fireball is legit as it hangs out in front of her for a while, then you can juggle fun things afterwards.

Her DP is not great. Almost no horizontal hitbox when it leaves the ground and it isn't active for very long at all. It's amazing the number of situations where it whiffed completely. Anti-air DP also does absolutely pitiful damage, so I don't think using it is much of a deterrent. Her zoning game is potentially good but I still think strong rushdown will be a huge problem for her. I know it's only day 0, but I found myself getting cornered all the time because no matter how much resistance I put up they would keep pushing. EX seems much better all round. Hitbox, damage, active frames, invincibility. Much stronger than the others and perhaps the only one you're realistically meant to use when in trouble. That said, regular DP - > FADC can be juggled with anything you want, which is very cool indeed. DP - > FADC - > cr. fierce xx fireball to keep them locked down is excellent, and I'm sure there will be some lovely resets when people have had more time to play.

She can't chain cr. shorts, so it's hard to get people away once they're in your face. Close standing medium punch is fast and does two hits like Chun's though, so that might be a passable panic button.

Standing medium kick is Urien's and it is cancellable and generally absolutely godlike. Love this a lot.

Ty from SFO discovered the b'n'b cr. jab - > cr. jab - > link standing MK xx rekkas which does respectable damage. You can also do EX rekkas and juggle the ender into ultra 1.

Ultra 1's projectile only has one hit of durability, which is really shit. Thankfully it at least breaks armour and is reasonably fast and nets you the full U1 animation if it hits.

Love me tender is absolute dogshit. It's her flippy overhead head grab thing, except NONE OF THE VERSIONS ARE ACTUALLY AN OVERHEAD. Not even the EX one! What in the blazes is the point of that? Normal xx LMT could, mixed in with that excellent cr.mk and a decent regular overhead could give her such a fun high/low mix up game to compliment her strong corner pressure, but no, it's useless. It breaks armour and can go over lows/projectiles, so it's like a really slow EX hazanshu that's unsafe on block and can be anti-aired with ease. It doesn't look like this has changed in subsequent builds as far as I can see. Boo to that. I hope some clever Japanese people figure out some unexpected uses for it, as everything we tried over the whole weekend made it look like one of the worst special moves in the game.

Back flip (three kicks like Vega) will be really good if you use it sparingly. The invincibility appears to kick in immediately, and it didn't seem to get caught by Gief's blizzard, so it's either fully invulnerable throughout or not considered airborne. That's a powerful escape option, but it costs you a lot of screen space and will be easy to chase down if you use it too liberally.

She had some verey strong air to air buttons too, and cr. MP is like Sakura's, can be special cancelled and has exceptional range.

I think that's all my Poison notes. As you can see, I did a lot of investigative work.

Oh, and the best thing she had by a country mile was that her sweep could be cancellend into any special move. So excited for that until Dawgtanian told us on the last day that she doesn't have that in the latest build. Boooo.

But yeah, anyway, Chun/Rose/Dudley/Yang/Poison will be my five piece variety box of main chickens.

Valmaster :wub:

So I knew this gentleman was the best Chun Li in Europe and I had seen bits and pieces of match footage here and there. However, after essentially stalking him for an entire weekend and watching his tournament run I can safely say that he is the best Chun I have ever seen. Immaculate neutral game, never misses an anti-air, encyclopedic match up knowledge, superhuman reactions and of course legs loops Desk combos on top for fun. Absolute beast of a player.

Notable stuff:

Going 74-10 in casuals against every notable player in attendance.

Punishing Sagat overhead with Super, punishing blocked tiger shots with Super, punishing Honda Hands - > FADC towards with Super, punishing every single fucking thing under the sun with Super. Lots of people know that Chun can punish everything with her 2f super, but I have never seen a player do it with such consistency and phenomenal reactions.

Ultra-ing a Cody player for just thinking about picking up some rocks. He did it so fast that it would have punished fake rocks as well. He hadn't even started to stoop down and the ultra flash happened.

Beating White Daigo 10-2 in a money match, ending the last game with cr. fierce xx legs - > cr. fierce xx legs - > cr. fierce xx fireball - > FADC - > cr. fierce xx legs - > cr. fierce xx hazanshu reset for no reason other than style.

Winning the tournament, obviously.

He has inspired me to not give up on Chun, and I when I used her in casuals on Sunday I was able to super punish roundhouse Dan Kicks on block because I know they are -2 and I am now a confirmed Valmaster fanboy who wants to be just like him because he is my hero.

The only criticism I had of his game over the entire weekend was that he does too many mid-range Hazanshus, and this nearly cost him when Ryan Hart picked up on it. Aside from that it was the closest to a perfect performance I have seen from a player in person.

The non JLM/Joffistarr bits of the tournament

Not much to say that hasn't been covered by Alistarr. Easily the most stacked top 32 at any tournament I've attended. Almost exclusively killers, which meant that I had to make lots of horrible decisions about which matches to go and watch.

So, so pleased that OverMostHeads finally showed the rest of the UK what the Yorkshire scene already knows; that being that he is one of the best players in Europe and has the knowledge and skill to beat absolutely anybody. I think the fact that he was pretty stoned made the difference here, as instead of his usual downcast expression and constant berating of himself for his mistakes, he sat through the whole glorious OverMostLondonHeads run with a massive grin on his face, hitting the buttons twice as hard as usual and going for style combos because he was feeling unstoppable. That combo he did against Problem X where he got a situational anti-air juggle and then confirmed into electric fireball and then one hit of EX tatsu for no reason at all was fucking spectacular. Oh, and him completely shutting down F-Word in the neutral (and F-Word is one of maybe three Ibuki players I actually thing has an exceptional neutral game) by stuffing every cr. mp with towards + LK. Ghost remarking "you ain't getting a neckbreaker, try something else blad!" was one of my favourite calls of the tournament. The combined Yorkshire and Teeside teams stood behind him and going absolutely mental in support of him also seemed to help a great deal. Problem X being so enraged as he walked away that he almost took the set up with him was a joy to behold. Dom picked the perfect time to finally show up at an offline event and play as flawlessly as he does when he's playing online at home and I loved every single second of it. Amazing.

The JLM/Joffistar tournament

Gutted that my pool clashed with Alistarr's. Would have loved to watch his matches and provide some coaching. It's a shame I only caught the last bit when the positions were decided and when he finally settled down and started hitting his stuff. Unfortunate scheduling there. Would have liked to see Alistarr vs Emersion in particular. Got to watch a good chunk of Joffo's play and he had some lovely stuff despite a few nervous drops and missed punishes. Was nice to see some of that corner lockdown in action against other players and seeing it work rather nicely.

My matches:

JLM (Rose) 2-0 Balrog player the 1st (Balrog)

Very pleased to win this as I hate fighting mid-level Balrog players so much. I slightly prefer playing this with Rose over Chun, even though Chun is better at it on paper. Used some drills to discourage EX rushes, played lame and dry, did what was necessary. Got a bit annoyed with myself because he was headbutting out of my back throw set up. I know it's safe against reversals and I knew his headbutts would whiff but I didn't punish any of them. Need to get into the habit of fighting people who don't know about the set up and try to reversal out, rather than assuming that everyone is going to try (and usually) fail to block it.

JLM (Rose) 0-2 Greyhamme (Gouken)

So it turns out Greyhamme is considered to be Scotland's number 3 behind Milligano and BigFool. With that in mind, I'm quite pleased that I should have won the second game and ran him very close throughout. Second game we were both down to 10% life, I landed a forward throw, then on his wake up I walked in and then back dashed out. Didn't want to risk another grab in case he cracked and did EX tatsu, didn't want to try a meaty in case he parried, and I also thought back dash would give me enough room to anti-air if he did EX demon flip. He did EX tatsu, slammed his stick in frustration because he thought he'd conceded the game, but it ended up catching the end of my backdash and killing me. I have a terrible habit with Chun and Rose of back-dashing to bait a reversal when in some situations a little step back and block would be the answer. Paid dearly for it here. Lesson hopefully learned though!

JLM (Rose) 2-0 Balrog player the 2nd (Balrog)

See above. Difficult win against a character I hate fighting. Pleasing.

JLM (Chun Li) 2-0 Bird (Rufus)

All credit for this win goes to Joffo and Alistarr. Easily one of my most practised match ups with Chun, and one that I have continued to improve at even when my overrall game has deteriorated a little. I know exactly what to do in this fight, and even though it can be very hard for Chun, I feel confident in it purely because of my knowledge and experience. I frustrated him, I did EX bird kicks at varied timings and in different situations to not become predictable and generally did all the right things in neutral. Highlight, though, as using the recently developed team Jellistarr tech. So Rufus against Guile, if he does EX Messiah and his it blocked, he does FADC towards instead of the usual back dash. This is because Guile can flash kick the back dash but is seemingly unable to punish the forward dash. We tested this in the lab and determined that it is indeed safe for Rufus to dash forwards against 4f reversals, but we delved further and found that this is not the case for 3f reversals. This also means that this is not the case for Chun's super. So he does the Messiah, dashes forward, I super him for the round and he goes "well I did not know that." The power of science, folks!

JLM (Chun Li) 1-2 ED Jinty (Ken)

Heartbroken over this one. Going from what I'd seen up to that point, I knew I had to beat Jinty after losing to Greyhamme as those two were the favourites to take top 2 in the pool. I went with Chun because Jinty has a huge amount of experience fighting against a much stronger Rose than mine. Ended up being a crazy back and forth set; I think we both got dizzies in the second game in fact, which is crazy in this match up. I ended up getting a bit flustered because he'd jump in with late air tatsus to make his angle of approach hard to read and anti-air, but other than that I was doing fine. Last game we both ended up on 5% life, full screen, we both cracked. He did two wild air tatsus and I just sat and did nothing, trying to hold my charge. He then gave me two fireballs inside ultra range and I just sat there and let him, then he did another one and I mis-timed my neutral jump and landed on it for the loss. Absolutely gutted, as I knew that this was me out of the tournament in a game that my opponent gifted to me TWICE. Bah. Jinty is a strong player but he should not have beaten me here and I could have made top 32 if not for choking so horribly when it mattered. :(

JLM (Rose) 2-0 SegaZoom (Rose)

Quite a comfortable win in what is an awkward mirror match. At one point I reflected his reflected fireball in the hopes of getting impromptu Rose ball happening. We ended up doing four or five of these, then he slid under the fireball and hit me! Not cool! Anyway, yeah, workmanlike win but I was already resigned to not escaping my pool.

So 4 wins, 2 losses, and so heartbreakingly close to making it out of my pool. Not a terrible performance, but it would have been excellent to be a part of that top 32 bracket of killers on the Sunday.

Still, playing more Ultra and WINNING A GAME OF THIRD STRIKE ON STREAM helped to take the edge off my failure. I cannot believe I won at the Third Strikes on stream when I am the worst at that game. Felt good man, but not good enough to make me want to play any more 3S.

So, erm, I think that's it.

Lovely time at Joffo estates, outstanding tournament, lots of fun playing Ultra, lots of fun playing other excellent multiplayer games. Would absolutely love to go back next year. Hypespotting 4 anyone?

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joeplus

joeplus

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That was a joy to read on the train Mr J. I certainly hope an Ultra launch party is still on the cards.

It feels a little silly to add more text after that but I really enjoyed the post I just read on Patrick Miller's always-excellent blog.

Fighting games aren’t just about competition

He's a cool dude and you should follow him and read his stuff.

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JLM

JLM

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Cheers :)

Catching up on tournaments now. Got cafeid and Texas showdown to go now. Watched next level battle circuit and was pleased to hear that Sanford had been jokingly asking to borrow people's sticks all night. Good man.

EDIT: That blog post definitely sums up what being part of a local fighting game scene has been about for me. Although I still am a little bit "hungry" and want to stop going 4 and 2 at tournaments and go at least one step further, my recent run of attending every fighting game event I can has been more about the new friends I've made who all share my passion for what is still quite a niche hobby. It has been as much about the road trips and shit-talking as it has the tournaments, and it means that when I do under-perform I am not nearly as salty as I would be if I had traveled alone with the sole intention of entering the tournament and winning as many games as possible. I would never have traveled to Leicester or Scotland on my own for the purposes of entering a tournament, but having people to travel with and friends and team mates to have a laugh with and cheer for when at the event and on the journeys there and back makes all the difference in the world. I do sometimes glaze over a bit when James Chen makes one of his misty-eyed speeches using the word "community" two hundred times per sentence, but it can be a beautiful thing at times.

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Qazimod

Qazimod

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I read joe's link the other day and started a big reply about how ace it was, but it was late and I was sleepy. It's a great read though.*

Speaking of reading material.. I'm not a sub so I've only just picked up the latest Edge, but congrats to Nate for his column debut :D (and for resisting the urge to include Street Fighter references everywhere, unless they're references so subtle that I missed them :P )

*insert pun about Nate/Patrick Miller making great reads

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joeplus

joeplus

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NtYKahb.jpg

"This creature... is the famous Neg Butterfly. While colonies of this species survive elsewhere in the world, from Xbonia to the Edgethread mountains, it was thought to be completely extinct in Streetfighterland. It is a rare thing, indeed, to see one in this habitat..."

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ah

ah

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I think Gief will probably be just about as fine as he is currently - mid-tier for ever more, just like Rufus and Ryu and every other well-made, honest character.

Right now I'm most worried about Ken being too good. I think Seth's the most likely character to end up sucking and I think I'm okay with that. Sorry Donut.

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