Ultra Street Fighter IV

[JLM]

Shadowloo Showdown qualifier stuff:

Oh, in other news, Andreas and F-Word won trips to Shadowloo Showdown. Very pleased for Andreas not only because he's one of the best players in Europe, but also because he isn't sponsored and certainly wouldn't have been able to go otherwise.

Zak Bennett and Don D won the Marvel spots. I think Zak will do pretty well out there, and I hope he enters AE as well even though he doesn't play it any more. I haven't seen Don D play because I don't watch the WSO Marvel weeklies because there are just way too many streams these days.

Justin Wong won via a Marvel tournament and got all the way to losers finals using random select. The scamp. Oh, and Tokido won the French qualifier at WGC. He was on beastly form at the tournament, but it's kind of a shame because he would have gone to SS regardless, so all that's really done is save Madcatz a bit of money.

[Camel]

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.

Hmmmmmmmmmm. That sounds well dodgy.

[JLM]

Here is stuff about Winter Brawl. The formatting is a mess for some reason.

GVN Winter Brawl 2012

AE

AE Teams

First set here was another stacked match up of Noel/Floe/Justin vs Jeron Grayson/Sanford/Dieminion. Well, aside from Noel, who isn't great in this game. OG New York Bison

player Jeron with his incredibly lame playstyle and the crispiest of links took out Noel Brown

and Floe.

Justin Wong as anchor in round 3 beasted the first round, had the second round won but

when for fanciness and did dive kick - > lk - > lk - > standing fierce - > EX Galactic tornado -

> FADC - > target combo - > Ultra, which meant the damage scaling stopped it killing and went to

round 3. I applaud that decision wholeheartedly. He won the next round anyway so it didn't

matter. Then the classic Justin vs Sanford battle followed and Sanford was able to clutch it out.

First game of the next match was DMG Insayne vs Demon Hyo, which means Blanka mirrors. Yipes and Arturo tried to make it interesting by side betting on who would build the first EX bar. I like

that as a side bet. Insayne vs Lucky G's Dhalsim was a really good match, enchanced by Arturo

giving fantastic insight into the finer points of the match up. Arturo is amazing on commentary

when it's a Dhalsim match, but over time his commentary always seems to descend into a flurry of

clichés.

He was great for Lucky D's next match against FNEX K Brad's Cammy as well. Cammy/Sim is

still very obviously a 7-3 to Cammy. Brutal. Good to see Dr. Chaos' Ken beasting here as well.

Lots of good players at this tournament. Yipes handing over commentary to Chris Hu. I love East

Coast tournaments. ChrisG's Sakura is the best in the U.S. The beating he gave Dr. Chaos was particularly savage, though I agreed with Chris Hu that in the second round Dr. Chaos needed to just mash DP at some point to make him respect it and stop him relentlessly frame trapping. He just sat in the corner and took the abuse. Still amazing play from ChrisG though, particularly how he converts every slight touch into a max damage combo.

Winners final was a good set, highlighted by Aquasilk beasting and taking out Jeron Grayson and

Sanford's Sagat. I love Aquasilk's Gief. FNEX K BRAD taking out Floe and Justin was hype,

particularly his finishing off Justin by pre-emptively air throwing a dive kick. I've seen K Brad

up near the top of the Xbox Live leaderboards, so it's cool to see he's not just an online

warrior and can perform against the best in tournament.

Banana Ken destroying Dr. Chaos, Hiro and Lucky D was pretty spectacular. There aren't enough Ken players at tournament level in any region. East Coast tournaments tend to have the most and he's always really fun to watch in the hands of Dr Chaos and Banana Ken.

Grand finals was tremendous. Aquasilk busted out another great performance against Sanford to win a horrible match up for Gief, and he was one dropped combo away from beating Dieminion as well. Although Aquasilk is my favourite Gief to watch because he's both excellent and obsessed with

Blizzard set ups, Dieminion was getting away with a lot of whiffed normals that would have been

punished hard by Vangief or Snakeyes. The final match saw ChrisG's Sakura take on Dieminion's

Guile, and Chris G had a massive, massive life lead in round 3 with Dieminion on chippable health

and Dieminion somehow pulled it back. Huge choke from ChrisG, but also very cluch play from

Dieminion, particularly at the end where he air grabbed an EX Sakura Otoshi on reaction to avoid

taking chip.

AE Singles

It's a shame Flash Metroid and a few other killers didn't get their matches on stream. Flash

needs to be on stream more often generally. He's one of the best players in the country but

there's no coverage for Florida so you just never get to see him. Banana Ken not making out of

pools and again not making the stream also made me sad.

Flocker's Cammy was fun to watch in pools, as was Arturo's Rose and of course Aquasilk's Gief.

Manny's El Fuerte has some nice trickery too. I loved him using armour cancel into Ultra 2 to

beat Yun's dive kick mix ups in particular. Speaking of Fuerte, I still think he's a pretty

stupid character but I must say I'm looking forward to seeing Iperu at more tournaments now that

he has sponsorship. The character design is silly but he's not very strong at all and you do have

to know your stuff to get anywhere with him in tournament, so I have respect for and enjoy

watching the few geuinely good Fuerte players.

Simply Ph33r's rufus vs Aquasilk's Gief was the best match of day 1 pools for me. Simply Ph33r trains with Flash Metroid's Gief and was obviously very clued up on the match up even if it's not

a great one for Rufus. He was mixing up his defensive options brilliantly and refusing to be

conditioned or let Aquasilk get a solid read on him. Very close games, but Aquasilk was able to

take it in the final round of the final game with SPD - > green hand - > blizzard to catch his

jump back.

Juicebox beating Sanford to qualify in winners was very impressive. Some clutch comebacks from

Sanford and it could have gone either way, but Juicebox's reads and mix ups were too strong.

Credit to Spooky for having the cam switch ready to catch the Juicebox dances. Insayne vs

Darkchild's Boxer was a lengthy and turtley match, but I love some of the tricks and combos

Insayne has with Blanka. Two crouching light kicks into standing roundhouse is sick, and post

knockdown upball into electricity corner tricks are very slick. Great T SRAI style

hop/jab/medium/electricity pressure as well. I swear he wasn't anywhere near this good last time

I saw him play.

Henry Cen beating K Brad with Chris Hu getting super hype on commentary was the greatest thing.

Henry Cen's Honda is good, but he remains the luckiest man in the world in terms of what he gets

away with. I think the way he fluctuates between solid play and just doing stuff really throws

people off their game. Floe vs K Brad was a great set too, with more crispy links from K Brad and

a very impressive download from Floe to beat him. Reaction ultra-ing a fairly low EX cannon

strike was beautiful. It's a shame K Brad didn't make it out of pools.

Top 16

ChrisG putting Wolfkrone into losers was pretty hype. Wolfkrone took a couple of very

uncharacteristic suicidal risks, but ChrisG's comebacks were still pretty beastly. Floe's Guy is

looking great already, and I was rooting for him to beat Wolfkrone but it was not to be. Juicebox utterly destroyed Dieminion in winners finals. That match has always been in Abel's

favour, but you can tell Dieminion hasn't had much practise at it lately since Abel didn't

feature much during AE, and two of the best Abel players on the East Cost in Ryder and KDZ have

both quit fighting games.

Amazing adaptation from Justin Wong to beat Chris G in losers after being sent there by him in

the first place. ChrisG almost pulled out a great comeback in the final game, but it was clear in

that match that Justin had figured out his approach game and also established that he wasn't

responding to the dive kick pressure when Justin went in. Great performance from ChrisG

throughout the tournament though, and it's mind boggling that he's this good at so many different

games.

Justin vs Wolfkrone was a great set. Heartbreaking for Wolfkrone to lose on a dropped ultra which

is so rare for him, but frankly I'm happy whenever a top 3 doesn't have Viper or Seth in it these

days so I'm not complaining. I like Latif, Wolfkrone and Poongko and the crazy shit they can all

do, but the way those characters completely transform means I'd much rather see someone else in a long grand finals set.

I know everyone hates Guile, but Dieminion really is a fantastic player. He placed in tournaments

in Vanilla when Guile was terrible, in Super when Guile was great, in AE when Guile was utterly

useless and continues do so now that he's somewhere in the middle. So smart and quick to adapt,

and even when he clearly wasn't prepared for Justin using his pocket Adon he still managed to

adapt and at least make him work for it. His Broken Tier sponshorship is thoroughly deserved.

Grand finals was brutal. My god it was brutal. Poor Juicebox. It was cool that he busted out his

Juri for the first set, but set two he might as well have unplugged his stick. It shows you just

how well 801 Strider did to hang with Ricky Ortiz at West Coast Warzone 3 because that match is a

nightmare for Abel. Amazing stuff from Justin, but also an excellent showing from Juicebox, who

is another player I'd like to see on streams a lot more often. A fun tournament on the whole,

though I'm very disappointed not one of Flash Metroid's matches made it on stream.

Marvel:

Marvel teams

Man, East Coast still loves Wesker. I like Megaman Steve's commentary a lot for the preliminary

stages of a tournament. Good mix of funny stuff, digressions about all manner of unrelated

subjects and a good dose of Marvel science as well. Also he sounds exactly like Chris Moltisanti

from the Sopranos. Awkward moment on commentary where he had to explain at length what a guy's t-shirt slogan "I support the right to arm bears" was getting at.

OMG Itz Andre's team went out in the first round, which is quite an upset. He got dropped from DMG after this tournament, and people are speculating as to whether it was his very poor finishing places or possibly him making his money matches/side betting waaaay too public that prompted it.

Early highlight in teams was the stacked match up of Dieminion/Yipes/Flocker vs Unknown/SteveH/DJ Huoshen. Dieminion's unique and ultra lame team is always great to see, but of these six I most enjoy watching DJ Huoshen. Super Skrull remains an underused character, particularly when it's near unanimously agreed that he's really really good. Amazing resets and great synergy between Felicia and SKrull, and he's just as effective with any of his three characters on point. Very hype match that went down to 2-2 and Huoshen left with Taskmaster against Flocker's whole team. He very nearly pulled it off as well. The single elimination before top 8 rule put one of the favourite teams out very early there.

Pretty funny that Spooky got to top 8 in teams despite only playing one game. Some amazing teams

in top 8 as well. Marlinpie/ChrisG/Masta CJ is pretty ridiculous, as is Floe/Justin/Noel. Also

very cool that IC Ruin and Royal Flush travelled for this. I haven't seen Royal Flush at any non

West coast tournaments before. Yipes on commentary early was welcome, and I liked him stirring up

shit about West Coast players not coming out for East Coast tournaments often enough. I love that

they're making a gold plated championship belt for the Curleh Mustache champion also.

Hype stuff in top four as you'd expect. What I like about ChrisG's team is just how slick his

Akuma/Doom is if anyone manages to get through the Morrigan nonsense. It's also crazy that it's

not even his main team. Dieminion remains really impressive considering he doesn't own the game.

Noel Brown is still a beast too; and I like watching the routine he has to get level 5 Frank

West. Flocker and Justin Wong in the final game was ridiculous as well, with Flocker going from a

near perfect to losing to another Justin Wong comeback.

Unknown vs Noel Brown in the first to 5 exhibition was hype stuff. 5-4 to Noel, but the last game

was extremely one sided and allowed Noel to be incredibly obnoxious about it, styling on Unknown

for the whole game and shaking hands with people in the audience while his supers were hitting. I

can't imagine how sick it would make you to be on the other end of that. It's a shame too as the

Maryland crew were getting super hype for every hit Unknown landed during the set.

Marvel Singles

Early pool play was a lot of Justin and other top players destroying intermediate players.

However, there were a couple of excellent Spiderman players doing some very fancy stuff to keep

things interesting. I also thought the RDK/Spooky commentary team was excellent. Gutted for Royal

FLush that he travelled all the way to the East Coast only to get put into losers in pools by

Justin Wong. He still put up a good showing in the first game and got the crowd behind him with

some of his signature crazy Modok barrier set ups.

Justin's Iron Fist coming in after previously being snapped out with jamming bomb applied and still blocking the mix up was ridiculous. Tonnes of hype for OMG Itz Andre getting knocked into losers early by the relatively unknown GFX. People love to see Andre lose, and even Spooky on commentary was willing GFX to finish him.

Royal Flush's performance to beat NYCFab and get into top 16 was amazing. Every time I see ihim

play he busts out some crazy new stuff I've never seen before. It's a real shame there aren't

more players who are this good with weird left field teams as they're alwats fantastic to watch.

The way he completely played Akuma tatsu assist out of the game was masterful.

Unknown getting a perfect with a lovely Nemesis corner vortex was very cool, as was his win over Master CJ to qualify for top 16 in winners. Easily the best Nemesis player there is, though there aren't that many to choose from. Noel Brown getting knocked into losers was a big upset, and it seems those two will always be pissing each other off one way or another. A bigger upset still was Noel getting knocked out of the tournament in pools by Omen. Noel not making top 16 in any Marvel tournament is pretty crazy.

Day 2 pools was highlighted by MarlinPie being typically beastly, and Predator1A destroying flow

with his disgusting Haggar/Chris technology. Oh, and Justin and Megaman Steve doing Christian

Bale batman voices for one of Floe's games was fun. Justin's piss take of Arturo's commentary at

its worst was also amazing. AHHHH, EEESPOOOORTS, YEEEES EEEESPOOORRRTS 895 895 895 etc.

Top 16

Smooth Viper is hilarious. He's a prick and it was amazing when Noel Brown punched him in the

face, but tournaments are infinitely better with him than without him. It's just not Marvel if

nobody pops off after they win, and he's guaranteed to do it every single time. I loved the

Maryland crowd's support for Unknown throughout the weekend too. Great stuff.

Justin Wong vs Predator was incredible. Predator's Haggar tech. was talked about on commentary

all weekend and is always cool to see, but the final match was all about choke after choke after

choke. In a match like that where both players are dropping things and nerves are taking over,

you can always count on Justin Wong to somehow pull it out of the bag at the critical moment.

Chris Matrix's commentary towards the end was magnificent also. "He had it, and it slipped

through his fingers. IT SLIPPED THROUGH, HE WAS TRYING TO EAT CEREAL WITH A FORK AND IT SLIPPED THROUGH!" was the choice quote, but I also liked "And IFC Yipes is BEWILDERED!" and of course the staple for all East Coast Marvel commentators these days "You hate to see this type of thing happen".

Justin Wong vs Smooth Viper... wow. The whole set took about 30 seconds. Jesus. Justin's

Ironfist/Akuma rushdown is just insanity. UltraChen TV did a whole episode on his matches against

Mine at SoCal regionals and showed just how crazy it is when you watch it slowed down. The timing

on his dashes back in and the impeccable assist calls as he advances and piles pressure on means

that the gaps in his pressure can often be almost non-existent. When someone hasn't faced it much

before he can make excellent players like FChamp and Smooth Viper look like they've never played

the game.

So many hype matches in the Marvel top 16, to the point where it was infinitely more exciting

than Streetfighter just for all the hype and side betting going on. Omen vs Unknown was a rinse

and repeat of Omen getting mauled by Unknown's awesome Nemesis corner vortex and then Unknown trying to stop the Dark Wesker comeback. I'm glad he did, because he outplayed Omen for the whole set. Great tournament for Omen though, taking out both Flocker and Noel Brown and making quite a name for himself.

DJ Huoshen poppin' off was hysterical. He's far too polite and understated a guy to be doing it,

which makes it so much better. Him running through Aluckard was a joy to watch. It really shows

that he's been using the same team since Vanilla with all the cool set ups and synergy he has

going. It's also evident in the fact that he has Felicia on point but doesn't abuse Delta Kick

nearly as much as the new Felicia players do.

Huoshen vs SmoothViper was the best set of the entire weekend in either game. Truly nail biting,

edge of the seat stuff. Huoshen got murdered in the first game but ended up pixels away from

coming back with Taskmaster and killing all three characters. In game two it happened again

except he did pull out the Taskmaster comeback. In game three it was all Huoshen but somehow

Smoothviper made the comeback with Sentinel without X Factor and won Taskmaster vs Sentinel when Huoshen had the life and meter advantage almost the entire time. Amazing stuff.

Winners finals was crazy just for how helpless Justin looked against ChrisG's bullet hell. He

still had plenty more teams to try out that he didn't get to in that set though. Losers finals

between Marlinpie and Justin was a good set, though it was a shame to see Marlinpie drop so much

stuff when his execution is by far the strongest part of his game. Justin busted out yet another

amazing Akuma comeback with no X-Factor. So clutch. Loved the crowd shouting "Foo-foot-dive!"

with doom during Marlinpie's corner combos.

Excellent grand finals. Justin forced to go back to his old A squad and it worked a treat. It's

funny how the only times ChrisG and Justin ever get air thrown is against each other. Those two

possess the secret of flawless air teching. Justin's Storm comeback in the second gamewith Chris

Matrix losing his shit over it was probably my favourite part of the set, but it was also just

great to see Justin engage full on beast mode to overcome the Morrigan madness. Jump jab - > X

Factor - > Dive kick looks absolutely impossible to block. Justin Wong winning both games at a

major again. Looks like he's back on his best form for 2012.

Amazing Marvel tournament. Every player in the top 16 was either a known killer or a new player

making a massive buzz, and you get the latter a lot more often in Marvel than Streetfighter

simply because it has so much utterly broken trickery to discover. Hpe crowd, and I look forward

to the next event where they'll have East vs West battles because the East coast marvel scene

just gets stronger and stronger.

[Nate Dogg III]

Jason you wab, I was going to watch the SS qualifiers this evening.

[JLM]

Oh crap, sorry, I'm normally so good with spoilers.. If it's any consolation there's no stream archive for it.

[Nate Dogg III]

But...I watched about ten minutes of it over breakfast this morning. http://www.twitch.tv/offcast/b/309872846

[Yasawas]

WGE will probably put the European qualifiers on his youtube channel through the week - http://www.youtube.com/user/Hakf

He's disabled archives at the moment because other people were uploading his WGC stuff I think.

[JLM]

Ohh that one. I thought you meant the UK one, which has been taken down as Yasawas says. So yeah, sorry again about those spoilers..

[Nate Dogg III]

Ah! Wait! So have you only partially spoiled my funs? This is fine. I apologise for calling you a wab; you are of course so much more than that.

Also, SFXT review code is due on Wednesday, if anyone wants to get on a train.

[Goemon]

Found this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7emotqdOcI

Edit: Actually, forget it. It's old, thought it was the final

[mayor_mike_haggar]

Why don't you get on a train? A train to heggfest 2012!

Heggfest 2012 will be held in my front room. No Heggs.

[joeplus]

Just jumped into ranked again, went from 9PP to 0 with Cody.

Finally got a win against a decent Juri though so it wasn't a wasted hour. Lots of close three-rounders that I lost by panicking. One awesome moment though, where I totally baited a Guy player - threw out a normal so he'd get dashin' then Ultra'd his bonce.

[Qazimod]

Why don't you get on a train? A train to heggfest 2012!

Heggfest 2012 will be held in my front room. No Heggs.

Haggfest?

[ah]

Killing esports! I warned you guys about all this back when jwong got an evo season yellow card for not trying hard enough! How exciting.

Also the best abbreviation I've come up with for street fighter cross tekken is ODST. I'm still not ordering it though - I too have oodles of amazon credit. I'll probably order it at such a point as to still pay full price but miss out on pre-order stuff and day one hype. Inevitable fighter.

[Plopboy]

GGS tonight Pockets and Joe

[JLM]

GGs to Goemon, sadly interrupted by my stupid router. I didn't know you had an Abel as well; looked pretty handy from the couple of games I saw. Poor Evil Ryu really can't afford any mistakes or bad guesses against Gief can he? Such savage damage. Must get more games in soon when my internets isn't being so lame.

[Goemon]

haha, you officially have the worst connection on the planet!!

was good fun though, just a shame it was all too brief.

Yea, I have the fear against Gief at the best of times never mind old glass jaw E Roo! I was laughing when I tried to chip you out, it didn't and when I landed from the DP and you did punch. I thought 'ah! he's fuc.....' then I got caught with SPD

[JLM]

Haha yeah, I have this habit of punishing with tick SPDs rather than raw SPDs so I potentially get more damage and have the option to tick blizzard if they hold up. It works a lot of the time because if the opponent's whiffed a big uppercut or something they're usually somewhat resigned to eating something on landing and it can slow the reactions. It's the old Jellum staple of trading guaranteed damage for glorious resets. I'm getting better about just fierce SPD punishing things though; it's waaay too much damage to pass up in most situations.

[Wintermute]

Got a good late night battering from Jiroczech there. So to speak. Boy, did I pick the wrong day to give Oni a try...

[JLM]

GGs Jiro (briefly) and Donut.

Man, Zangief vs. Dee Jay is horrible. I mean, on paper it's obvious it would be, but yeah, horrible. I felt like I was getting better at it as the games went on but it's a real struggle. Also there were several rounds where I got free damage because you love to troll me with tick throws. If only I could bring myself to churn butter! It was all made worth while by Jumping medium kick (hits) - > Brizzaaaaaaaaahd. Yes!

[lewismistreated]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-02-27-street-fighter-edition-of-monopoly-incoming

Gentlemen, start your puns.

[Lyrical Donut]

Old Ken Road?

I hope they do Cluedo next. Imagine the possibilities.

GGs Jiro (briefly) and Donut.

Man, Zangief vs. Dee Jay is horrible. I mean, on paper it's obvious it would be, but yeah, horrible. I felt like I was getting better at it as the games went on but it's a real struggle. Also there were several rounds where I got free damage because you love to troll me with tick throws. If only I could bring myself to churn butter! It was all made worth while by Jumping medium kick (hits) - > Brizzaaaaaaaaahd. Yes!

Ha, I'm amazed I got away with so many tick throws with DeeJay. But yeah, you had me downloaded after a while. Every time I took a break from laming you the fuck out it got messy.

SPDing Gief with Seth was fun too. One day I will take your Gief out with nothing but Seth SPDs!

Cammy vs Seth was also fun - the majority of the matches saw us running away from each other

[JLM]

Was just about to post Old Ken Road. Curses.

Other than that I only had The Mashed Electricity Company so far.

Hawksford Street at a push.

[JLM]

DHC to hail. DHC directly to hail, do not feed Floe, he could stand to lose 200 pounds.

[imp]

Whitechipel.

[Lyrical Donut]

ShoryEuston Road.

[imp]

King's Cross Tekken.

[joffocakes]

Do not pass Gouken (Or Go Hibiki I guess, but that's not really a pun).

Uh... tick-adilly? Blanka Ball Mall?

I don't think I'll ever come up with one to rival ShoryEuston.

[DC]

Hond Street

[Wintermute]

Shoto Jail.

Hadoken Road.

Ibowki Street.

Poke-a-dilly.

I give up. This is hard.