Ultra Street Fighter IV

[Yasawas]

Good games gentlemen. Nice to see someone learning Rose, she's a bit different and can be properly nasty as evidenced by Louffy last weekend. Don't come across many of them in my ranked adventures.

[joeplus]

Yo, that was awesome. Cheers to Mute and Yasa, and Nate for earlier. Mute, your Rose is beautiful but I found myself shouting at the screen when you Ultra'd and backed off. Get in there!

I still can't punish a focus properly but I feel like I'm getting sort of good with my main chickens. Akuma is the best character for shit players ever, I love him so much,

[joeplus]

I also really don't want to get into SFxT so if the forum is bored of it I'll still be here. I can't learn two characters at once.

[MacMantis]

Just watched the replay back and it was pretty close at the end. I managed to do 2 ultras during the match both missing by miles! I always find it hard to fight Ken but at least you don't do the old flowchart jump in kick, sweep like all the other Kens I fight. Actually... they always beat me... ignore what I say, try that!

I'm less of a flowchart kind of guy, more chaos theory. I ended up playing a bunch of ranked matches last night focusing on Ken. Didn't enjoy much success (mainly due to being extremely outranked) but it meant the rounds I took felt extra sweet. My favourite moment of the night was a Hurricane Kick > Shoryuken > Shoryureppa. His block slipped halfway through the Hurricane Kick and the rest connected. Of course after landing that to claw back a round I got brutally punished in the 3rd. But it was fun whilst it lasted.

Kept an eye out for you Joe, but I'm guessing you logged on after i'd given in to the desire to sleep. See you tonight at The George?

[Yasawas]

I also really don't want to get into SFxT so if the forum is bored of it I'll still be here. I can't learn two characters at once.

I've got £40 of Amazon vouchers on my account, nothing else in mind to spend it on and I still can't bring myself to order SFxT or however we're supposed to abbreviate it. It looks a lot of fun but the DLC kills it for me, the shift towards this kind of thing and online passes and so on has really dampened my enthusiasm for games these days.

[Nate Dogg III]

Good games folks! Sorry for disappearing like that but I got chucked out of spectator mode and then my connection to everyone was red. Took the hint and off I went.

[DC]

I wanted to get on but fell asleep, like an old man.

I also won't be getting X so will be around for hidings in the future.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

Lads I've just read the last week of posts and NOBODY has said 'wild' once. For shame.

[joffocakes]

Oh man, the Evil Ryu you face in Arcade mode after seth is utterly insane. Guile-fast recovery on his fireballs, cancelling out of teleports with dragon punches and at one point did a teleport > demon on my wakeup. I was holding up and only up and it still got me! Jesus.

Wild.

[imp]

Yeah, I remember him being utterly infuriating too. Did you manage it Joffles?

[joffocakes]

Nope! Got demon'd. Was pretty simple to get him though; Seth pretty much hands you a Gief Ultra. Hardest part was probably getting the perfect. Abel likes to focus absorb lariat and lose though. YES.

After one attempt the lure of online tempted me away.

[Goemon]

E Roo combo'ed HP into demon on me, literally combo'ed - I couldn't escape.

Man, some lovely Elf play here!

[joffocakes]

Yeah, I watched that last night! I was pretty annoyed that the eventhubs blurb about it talked it up as a Daigo Akuma video when it's really all about the Fuerte. That extra armour on EX run really does the business against Akuma! RSFRSFRSFRSFRSF.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

That is certainly a beast of an Elwood Fuerte. Is the rsf a true infinite? He should just have done it forever and ever whenever he hit it.

Also someone give me a code that works so i can get sfxt with extra jems which i will never use.

[joffocakes]

I had a look to see if I had some Zavvi codes, as I usually look in my inbox and say "look at all those 10% off codes I won't use", out loud and everything. But now I looked and there are none. I am sorry.

Also, RSF can be looped for pretty long, but I think due to scaling it becomes a bit pointless after a certain number of hits. That'll be why he was going for the knockdown to start a fresh mixup. Also, was that akward looking anti-air Elf's mp? It looked amazing!

[Nate Dogg III]

Nate: are you local enough to be subject to this big heap of misfortune?

Nope, I live in Bristol, where we have internet so fast a page loads before you've even thought about visiting it.

[joffocakes]

I am basically in a huff because I don't think I can get fibre optic broadband in my area. Virgin media are terrible at the moment and I really want to fix the JLM/Haggar connection issue for SFxT. I wish there was an all-purpose Better Internet I could have.

[Goemon]

Also, have everyone seen the results of the Topanga league?

# Player Character Record Set record Game record Sponsor Prize 1 Sako Ibuki 2 - 0 4 - 1 30 - 20 $7,208 2 Haitani Makoto 0 - 1 1 - 2 12 - 18 $1,295 3 Uryo Sakura 1 - 1 2 - 3 29 - 30 $649 4 Mago Fei Long 4 - 1 9 - 3 78 - 60 Mad Catz $324 5 Kazunoko Seth 0 - 1 0 - 2 5 - 12 eLive Pro $260 6 Fuudo Fei long 0 - 1 0 - 2 10 - 15 $194 7 Daigo Ryu 0 - 1 1 - 2 14 - 19 Mad Catz $130 8 Momochi Cody 1 - 1 2 - 2 22 - 19 Evil Geniuses $65 9 Tokido Akuma 3 - 1 6 - 3 47 - 39 Mad Catz $13 10 Bonchan Sagat 0 - 1 1 - 2 12 - 16 $6.50 11 Kindevu Cammy 0 - 1 0 - 2 9 - 14 eLive Pro $1.30 12 RF Sagat 0 - 1 0 - 2 6 - 12 eLive Pro $0.06

Soooo happy about the winner! I love watching him play.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

I'm still somewhat certain that my internet woes are caused by the fact that my xbox connects via the cheapest wireless ethernet bridge that money can buy, and for some reason my router NEVER recognises that either the bridge or the xbox are connected to it (in the page that lists connected devices) despite that fact that it allows me to connect. The thing is it took me 4 hours of increasingly furious dicking around in the settings to get the sodding thing to work, so I am somewhat loath to tinker any more. I definitely have 'moderate' NAT, and despite all manner of messing with ports and DMZs in the router that never seems to change. Perhaps I should write BT an utterly foul-mouthed letter and attach a heavily pixellated picture of my zoomed in face.

Although I am sure that I've played online with you while living at my current flat, so perhaps it is your fault.

Weep Fighter.

[imp]

So... some stuff happened in the FG Community.

On the Cross Assault show Capcom have been doing to promote SFxT Mike Ross and Jago fought another FT5 (their previous being a 5-0 beatdown in Marvel in Jago's favour played at the Barfights event). This time Mike Ross won 5-0. Then, Arturo "Sabin" Sanchez secretly streamed them all chatting in the car after the event from his phone. And this happened:

Basically, you can hear Mike Ross and Jago talking about planning certain theatrics, for the purpose of extending of their 'rivalry'. This is a bit of a bummer to be honest. The event wasn't a major tournament or anything, but potential match-fixing throws a massive dampener on community spirit. I mean, there are certainly stories of preferential treatment in tournaments, I remember reading quite extensively about that concerning Neo Empire and their tournaments over here, but I don't think that casts nearly as dark a shadow as flat out match-fixing.

EDIT: Arturo Sanchez is committed to the story that the matches were real, but the theatrics were fake. I don't think anyone's going to believe any of that now.

[Nate Dogg III]

Yeah, much as I dug the BarFights stuff I got a really strong WWF vibe from it all. This grudge match stuff drags it away from being about the game and towards the personalities, which I'm not comfortable with. Suspicion has always been that Mike and Jago were overdoing it for the cameras anyway - didn't they admit as much on Cross Counter at one point?

Still, they're only talking about the mad reality show thing, in which case I don't have that much of a problem with it. I can't see this stuff bleeding into proper competitive play because, well, it's competitive. Jago says as much - "It ain't about the game anymore, it's about the hype" or something.

[imp]

Actually he says "It's about dem papers". Does that mean he'd rig a match for money if it was in a tournament? I dunno. The #WWESports hashtag is funny though.

[JLM]

Yeah, the Mike/Jago feud was always overplayed to build hype, and Jago made no secret of that from the outset so I'm not too bothered. Match fixing would be pretty awful, but I'd have to find out that Noel punching Smoothviper in the face was scripted before I got too worried about this. I still think it's easy to tell what's real and what's not, unless the tournament scene has a lot of great actors I don't know about.

[imp]

I don't think I ever thought the feud was real, it was fairly clearly a ploy hype up some matches. I mean it came out of nowhere for one thing. That's fine. But if the matches are fake, or the question of legitimacy is there, it takes the fun out of watching! And I like watching Mike Ross! I wonder if he's cross assaulty.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

I doubt that they'd ever bother throwing matches, would they? There's hardly enough money or anything at stake for that to be really worthwhile just yet, I'd assume that building up 'rivalries' is where they think more money is to be made. Was it 1k to the winner for the matches on cross assault though? That's kind of crazy.

I wonder how they all feel about arturo streaming that.

Also I'm kind of amazed that they have good enough mobile broadband for that to be streamed. Wildness.

[A.C.R.O.N.Y.M]

For me I find it insulting to the fans that they did this. The whole point of Barfights was because of the hype drama they created to get more people to watch Barfights and then afterwards to buy the digtial download which is pretty underhanded way of getting an audience.

[A.C.R.O.N.Y.M]

For me I find it insulting to the fans that they did this. The whole point of Barfights was because of the hype drama they created to get more people to watch Barfights and then afterwards to buy the digtial download which is pretty underhanded way of getting an audience.

[A.C.R.O.N.Y.M]

I doubt that they'd ever bother throwing matches, would they? There's hardly enough money or anything at stake for that to be really worthwhile just yet, I'd assume that building up 'rivalries' is where they think more money is to be made. Was it 1k to the winner for the matches on cross assault though? That's kind of crazy.

I wonder how they all feel about arturo streaming that.

Also I'm kind of amazed that they have good enough mobile broadband for that to be streamed. Wildness.

I like to think they don't throw matches but the point is that they're so desperate to create entertainment and hype to sell their own wares .

[JLM]

I don't think the conversation implies match fixing, and is just them laughing about trolling the audience, which we knew they were doing anyway.. "The important thing is that it's not done" to me is MIke saying that "this result works out pretty nicely in terms of extending our pseudo-rivalry". Plenty of MMA fighters are using the WWE model of hype building for matches, and boxing promoters have done it for years as well, and you don't need to alter the result of the fight if you know how to spin the result effectively to keep people interested. I don't think artificially overplaying rivalries necessarily denotes match fixing, and for now Jago beating Mike 5-0 at UMVC3 and Mike beating Jago 5-0 at SFXT both seem perfectly legitimate because Jago is a far stronger Marvel 3 player and Mike has played a lot more Streficrotek (I'm trying to think of the worst short hand possible for it) and is a huge fan of it.

I agree that match fixing and suspicion of match fixing would be a huge downer, but I don't see that strong evidence for it as yet.

[imp]

Well, there's one thing, which is that Jago makes a lot of really stupid decisions in the SFxT match, like not switching out characters when he had chances, and getting KO'd very quickly for it. To me it looked like he was just being hard headed, and didn't want to raw tag. Apparently Jago was making similar mistakes all day on stream, but now the doubt has crept in my mind! Mike was looking shit hot though, doing some amazing reads, and seemed to look much more comfortable with his combos, and general match plan. So yeah, I hope it really wasn't fixed, but I don't think we'll know for sure.

This is kinda fun though. E-DRAMA!

EDIT: The only thing that really pointed to match-fixing was when Jago said something like "Mike was supposed to try and shake my hand so I could just walk away". I suppose they could have agreed that the winner would try and shake the loser's hand and the loser would just walk off though.