Ultra Street Fighter IV

[Camel]

Oh god, I played SFIV in the Taito arcade near Shinjuku station last night and it was excellent and terrible. Strekken Dhalsim has ruined my SFIV Dhalsim and it was pretty embarrassing all round as I failed to do anything of note whatsoever. The players I've seen so far are SO good.

I bought one of those SFIV IC cards but I have absolutely no idea how to use it. It just pops right out again when I insert it. Anyone know?

Nikko today to look at goldent temples and waterfalls and whatnot yawn yawn. Not really, I love it.

Oh and me and the gf played an excellent 3D scary light gun game in a massive booth. Funny scary stuff. Then we played Puyo Puyo 2 for ages like the massive nerds that we are.

[Plopboy]

I bought one of those SFIV IC cards but I have absolutely no idea how to use it. It just pops right out again when I insert it. Anyone know?

I think you have to put it in once your credits are in, though I seem to remember I only managed to get mine to work twice whilst I was there.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

I did actual fighter at kicbloxing last night and got punched in the face once or twice. I landed a 2 hit combo though so it was ok. No taunts to start off the rounds though

I also went home and dourly watched an episode of level 3 focus all alone in my bed, it was the one where 'ultra' david talks about how low tier characters aren't all that bad at all, actually, thank you very much. It was quite interesting I suppose. I love what an utterly lunatic geek he is about all the characters. Anyway that also made me want to play more dan. He was talking about how things like fast air dan kick blow up loads of things, like sagats wakeup dragon punch etc. Someone (joffo, jlm, plopboy, hegg) tell me all of the best things to do with dan.

Also, who does everyone think are the bottom 5 mans in the game? I reckon it's probably something like Hawk, Dan, Chun, Oni and either 'Sim or Dudley.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

Also the next set of change logs is out for sfxt. Julia appears to have got kicked right in the teeth for some mad reason. Her super is up to 3f, lost 50 health and totally merc'd her backdash.

Kazuya lost hittable invincibility on mist step, which is pretty huge.

[ah]

I think Yang struggles now. He just doesn't have the damage output he needs to make up for the fact that he dies quickly and his mixup isn't as good as the real vortex characters.

I don't think Dan is that bad and I don't think Chun and Sim are actually that bad either, though they suffer from the rise of Seth, Viper and Cammy. The problem with most of these characters is really that nobody awesome plays them, so you don't see their good sides. I actually think most of the charge characters are fairly weak now. But I mean fairly weak as in slightly less awesome than the average, with most characters sitting fairly close to that average.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

I think the main reason that sim is near the bottom is the fact that his bad matchups are truly horrible. Seth, viper, ibuki, cammy, twins all eat him for breakfast. YHC-Mochi got utterly dismantled by sako in the topanga league. It was like 10-1 or something.

And for some mad reason the current iteration of the srk tier list has vega in the top 10.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

just as an FYI, here is the present srk tier list.

http://imageshack.us/a/img99/5179/tierlist11.png

The discussion thread there is actually somewhat informative, contains a lot of knowledge bombs and is pretty free of the usual bullshit that you tend to get there. Lots of diagreements over matchups, which is fine as they'll probably always be fuzzy numbers anyway. there are some really interesting things there, including Abel, Honda, Blanka, Saukra and Vega all being in or near top 10. Rufus Ryu and Yun are all low/mid.

Then again, blanka only really makes top 10 by virtue of a few really really good matchups such as hawk, gouken and Dan.

I guess as far as tournament success goes, ryu does well because there really is very little difference between his worst/best matchups, with nobody really stuffing him that badly. Wheras some of the other higher placed characters do have some pretty bad matchups, honda and blanka certainly.

[ah]

I get what you mean about Sim - I guess you wouldn't want him to be your only character. I refuse to believe that about Dan. I was right about Chun though (apparently)!

[nuskool]

Oh god, I played SFIV in the Taito arcade near Shinjuku station last night and it was excellent and terrible. Strekken Dhalsim has ruined my SFIV Dhalsim and it was pretty embarrassing all round as I failed to do anything of note whatsoever. The players I've seen so far are SO good.

I bought one of those SFIV IC cards but I have absolutely no idea how to use it. It just pops right out again when I insert it. Anyone know?

Nikko today to look at goldent temples and waterfalls and whatnot yawn yawn. Not really, I love it.

Oh and me and the gf played an excellent 3D scary light gun game in a massive booth. Funny scary stuff. Then we played Puyo Puyo 2 for ages like the massive nerds that we are.

That's where I played a lot (downstairs right?) and got my ass kicked constantly.

Okay, the points card. First thing to note is that it only stores ONE character.

Insert your money... Then at the character move the cursor over your character of choice and then stick the card in... you will get a pop up- just press a button to confirm the default option. Then if i recall correctly you select the character (or maybe you don't hence why you hovered over it before) and then another popup comes up... if you select the default here nothing happens and you play the game as normal... you have to move the stick to select the other option (I think it's basically asking you to confirm you want to use the chosen character) and then it should be all set to go.

When you next play you pop it in at the character select screen and it will give you a popup which i think just asks if you want to choose the character for the card... press a button and that's it!

Hope that makes some kind of sense... if not let me know.

Also, I know you are in Japan but if you fancy a burger pop into "Freshness Burger"... lovely stuff.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

I refuse to believe chun/seth is 5/5.

[imp]

Ooh, Freshness Burger is an excellent shout. I wish they still did those pringles cans of 5 mini burgers.

[Qazimod]

I refuse to believe chun/seth is 5/5.

Jellum and Donut best of 10?

[Camel]

I get what you mean about Sim - I guess you wouldn't want him to be your only character. I refuse to believe that about Dan. I was right about Chun though (apparently)!

*sobs*

[Camel]

Thanks for the tips, Nuskool and Plopboy. I've found a Belgo near shibuya and am drinking Geuze. Geuze in Japan! I might actually die. 10 quid a pop though :/

Went to Nikko then Chuzenji-Onsen today which has the Kegon waterfalls which are breathtaking. Bit of a disaster though as we didn't leave enough time to see the toshogu shrine which I really wanted to see. We rushed back and sprinted around the wrong bloody shrine. Bah. Now have a quandary about whether to head there again or not as it's basically a day trip or leave it. Nikko is gorgeous though. Really stunningly beautiful.

[TheShend]

I'll be on 3SOE this afternoon if anyone fancies a muck about.

[TheShend]

I've been adding scans of my various SFIII paraphernalia, including all my of the Secret File stuff. Some interesting early character designs in there.

Brady Guide stuff is here too.

[joeplus]

So apparently SFIV does have parrying

[JLM]

Chun is in the same boat as Dhalsim, she's far from bad, has some great match ups and is generally very capable but "you wouldn't want her to be your only character" hits the nail on the head for her. It's not that she suddenly loses to everyone in the game and is rubbish, it's just that she loses to the strongest characters you'd expect to have to beat to win a tournament, and she also has that Guile/Dhalsim issue where you have to comprehensively outplay every opponent every round and have no "well if I can just get that one knockdown" factor to fall back on.

4-6 against Rufus, Cammy and Viper is not good, and I feel like she loses her losing match ups worse than someone like Gief,because he at least does have that "but if I do get in just one time" ray of hope going for him. Also most of the 6-4 wins that have pushed her up that ranking chart aren't of much use in tournament.

I do agree that nobody is truly "that bad" in this game.The bottom five in this game would be nowhere near as bad as the bottom 5 in most games, but I do think there are a handful of characters who would massively struggle to win anything without having at least one secondary character. With Chun, going on the basis of having her as your one and only main, I would put her in the bottom ten in terms of having a chance of winning a tournament. I'd say the same about Guile though, so I don't dispute that the right character specialist in good form on the right day could pull it off.

I actually do think that Chun/Seth is 5-5 though. She's fucked after a knockdown like most characters, but her back dash is great, and more importantly, like Cammy, she's one of the characters who can compete with Seth in the air. Neutral jump roundhouse, jumping fierce, jumping roundhouse and air grab are all formidable air to air options and can actually force Seth to think about how he gets in. Also she slaughters him at footsies as you'd expect. If it's in Seth's favour it's only 5.5, but I think it's even.

I'm not convnced that Chun is even with Sakura though. On paper she certainly has much better footsies and could feasibly keep Sakura out, but it's nearly impossible to consistently anti-air her for a whole round, and Sakura can kill her in a couple of combos. I'd say it's 5.5 Sak.

Vega being that high is skewed as well. I'd say some of those 4-6 losses he has are actually 3-7 when they're actually played out. There is nothing he can do once certain characters get in on him, Like against Rufus, Vega is listed as 4-6 because he has good buttons and could feasibly keep Rufus out for a bit, but this just doesn't happen in practise ever. It's just a matter of time before he misses one anti-air and then he is dead. There are Vega players who can block better than you could reasonably expect a human being to block, but against Cammy and Rufus they need to get in once and he is dead.

All of that said, I can't pick a bottom five. I do think Dan, Dudley and T. Hawk are bottom three though. Dan because he doesn't have a shoto's zoning game, he has a limited and gimmicky mix up game, no potent vortex, he has a couple of good buttons but generally limited footsies, and he can't get big damage off a light attack so has to work extra hard to open anybody up and struggles with a lot of punishes other characters can hit routinely. . Again, he's not rubbish because nobody is in this game (and both air and grounded Dan Kick pressure are really good options), but he's definitely relatively weak.

Dudley has a strong up close game (that still has nothing on Sakura's, Cammy's or Cody's, who all have other tools going for them as well) and nothing else, and a string of horrible losing match ups.

T. Hawk has the most horrifically horrifying horror match ups (you don't even have to have a great knowledge of his counter pick characters to use them against him), a decidedly average vortex/mauling game for a grappler, very limited/unsafe methods of approach and is just incredibly hard work. Again, he's not useless and can compete, particularly if you play him as a footsies character, try to establish the life lead and then chill out for the rest of the game and accept that he's not the typical "get in and maul" grappler, but yeah, if you're trying to win he's in the bottom 3.

Oni is great evidence for the fact that nobody is truly bad, but some characters sort of fall down the tier list by default. He has some great buttons but on balance below average footsies for a shoto. He has decent zoning, decent rushdown, good hit confirms/combos/mix ups off his light attacks and a magnificent uppercut. However, his mix ups are a bit gimmicky, he doesn't have the most potent vortex and there are just too many characters who do what he can do plus that little bit more. I think his uppercut not being cancellable is a bit overstated, because at least he has a wake up option that beats pretty much everything for no meter if your read is correct. There are characters who don't even have that option at all without an EX bar. If you could cancel it on block it would make an enormous difference to his placing, but I don't think it's quite as big a mark against him as some claim. But yeah, he's not bad at all, but it's hard to argue for him being better than a lot of the cast, so he's going to end up low in the list by default. The weaker end of a cast full of very capable characters, because this game doesn't have an "ass tier".

[cale]

Jesus, dude. I am so glad that you post this stuff for us all to read and don't even charge for it. Hats off to you.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

I agree that picking an actual bottom 5 is really hard. Thing is, even though the numbers might put blanka, vega or honda at the top, they'll never win a big tourney because they're too volative in a tournament situation. Vega gets blown up by cammy, rufus, maybe the twins. Honda players will just run into too many good ryus and sagats. Blanka is only placed so high by virtue of things like the 8-2 vs hawk. so even though ryu might actually be lower on his absolute score, he's got a much smoother matchup distibution, with more 5.5-4.5s and only a handful of outright 6-4, meaning that skill can take precedence over character selection in a tournament setting. Certainly in something like a Japanese format 1 round single elimination, picking hawk is suicide, since you've basically got to avoid all of his horror matchups to have a realistic hope of winning.

Having such a rigid tier list like that is also really unreasistic. Especially assigning things down to 0.5. For something so imprecise, the numbers are always going to be a bit amorphous. Hell, there's 5.5 points difference between abel in 7 (!) and juri in 23. I'd assign a minimum of +/- 5 to most of those totals.

Then you see gief down the bottom in 29th and realise the whole thing is just pointless, really. Can't we just have fun playing a videogame?

[Qazimod]

Can't we just have fun playing a videogame?

Picking bottom 5s, top 5s and other 5s is fun though! Personally I find myself mentally making up matchup data based on my ineptitude: some days it feels like everyone is 10-0 against Juri.

[JLM]

Indeed, theory fighter can be fun, and I think it adds more hype to underdog stories if they're using a supposedly weaker character or trying to overcome a bad match up. Obviously it's nothing worth getting remotely upset about and it should all be taken with an enormous helping of salt (ooh potential double meaning), but people on the internet will get heated about anything won't they.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

Yes, I do like theory fighting. But srk mans can get wild about it.

I still think that there should be a tier list for intermediate level play too. I bet it'd look totally different. Viper would be ass tier for one.

[JLM]

Top tier: THINGS

Bottom tier: Blocking

[mayor_mike_haggar]

j.hk into sweep is broken

I am going to now play this videogame for no less than 30 earth minutes

[joeplus]

Jesus, dude. I am so glad that you post this stuff for us all to read and don't even charge for it. Hats off to you.

Jellum's posts are like the When Saturday Comes of fighting games.

[sith]

The fact I can only play as Hawk means ill be forever stuck in the 2500-3000PP range and yet I feel like I'm playing better than most on Live, it can be incredibly frustrating and I often wish I could use someone like Cammy or Akuma but the satisfaction I get from beating high ranked people with Hawk makes it all the more rewarding. I really should post some vids. One evening I beat Ryan Hart, Afii, world number one Hawk and then played a 1200PP Blanka from France and lost 6 times in a row since I'm a persistent bastard and lost 700PP in the process. Street fighter <3

[joeplus]

I agree that picking an actual bottom 5 is really hard. Thing is, even though the numbers might put blanka, vega or honda at the top, they'll never win a big tourney because they're too volative in a tournament situation. Vega gets blown up by cammy, rufus, maybe the twins. Honda players will just run into too many good ryus and sagats. Blanka is only placed so high by virtue of things like the 8-2 vs hawk. so even though ryu might actually be lower on his absolute score, he's got a much smoother matchup distibution, with more 5.5-4.5s and only a handful of outright 6-4, meaning that skill can take precedence over character selection in a tournament setting. Certainly in something like a Japanese format 1 round single elimination, picking hawk is suicide, since you've basically got to avoid all of his horror matchups to have a realistic hope of winning.

Having such a rigid tier list like that is also really unreasistic. Especially assigning things down to 0.5. For something so imprecise, the numbers are always going to be a bit amorphous. Hell, there's 5.5 points difference between abel in 7 (!) and juri in 23. I'd assign a minimum of +/- 5 to most of those totals.

Then you see gief down the bottom in 29th and realise the whole thing is just pointless, really. Can't we just have fun playing a videogame?

As a lasped mathematician I love this post to pieces, for its conclusion more than anything. You didn't go in hard enough on tier lists, they have no moves and zero defence. That 8-2 ruins the accuracy of a system that was already badly designed, to make a tier list which is itself a bad system.

The top 8/16 results of all recent big tournaments would be an infinitely better starting point. I might get my drunk maths on for a bit.

[JLM]

Yeah, the match up based tier list is particularly flawed, but it provides a good starting point for chit-chat.

I just kicked all my housemates offline and went on the Xbox, only to have to do an update and then find nobody online except an Away Lyrical Donut. No fighter.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

well, its quite possible to come up with a theoretical character who bodies like 6 people in the game 8-2, and then does even/ slightly loses against everyone else, but the numbers work out top tier. but could a character who only has winning matches against 6 of the cast really be considered top tier?