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Ultra Street Fighter IV

JLM

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Camel

Camel

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I thought the freezing was only introduced after one of their utterly incompetent attempts at patching.

There was the quick combo freezing which internet sensation Lyrical Donut I discovered, then they patched it and introduced the projectile hit freezing.

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I slept in JLM's bed this weekend. There follows a lengthy account of everything else that happened.

We spent a large chunk of the weekend playing stupid other games (Marvel 2, which apparently I am better at right now; Marvel 3, which annoyingly Jason is better at right now; Error1 mod, in which Fei and Balrog in particular are deliciously broken and Gouken's EX tatsu is a thing of beauty; Error1 Yang mirrors with zero life to replicate the Divekick experience, which literally nobody in the world is better or worse at; several dreadful XBLA games that JLM's debilitating fighting game addiction made him buy…), and then after all that JLM made me go to an AE tournament in Leeds on Sunday. Spoiler: neither of us lost all our games!

We got there early and, having brought my laptop and being pretty much the first people there, we immediately started in on more ghetto Error1-provided Divekick, which is a glorious game. I think we made a couple of converts out of other people who tried it out as well. I am now very excited for the real game when it comes out. It's so good! Then a couple of games against Jason on a big screen, then a quick one against a Guile player I would meet again later... Apparently 15 people entered AE and that's probably everyone who was there. It was in this cafe and people kept coming in for coffees and sitting at a table and smirking at us all, adult men running around excitedly playing videogames and cheering at each other when something exciting happened.

My first tournament game was against a Bison player who headstomped and empty-stomp-throwed me many times, but thankfully didn't do much st.HKing of me. I lost the first and won the second having picked up that he was crouch teching after divekicks. It was pretty cagey. Partway through the game the organiser came over and joked that we must be playing a best-of-five or something for the game to still be going on, and funnily enough when I read the tournament description the previous night I'd read it as saying "first to three" when it actually said "best of three", so I got a bit of a shock when the guy I was playing pointed out in the last round of the third game that it had come down to the very last round. Fortunately I had metres of meter, and I managed to not crack and take a win. This felt good. Jason came over to remark how hard it is not to issue instructions when you're watching your friend play, which I experienced first hand immediately afterwards as I got to watch him fall to the repeated rushes and headbutts of a Balrog player who just went in and didn't care about Chun li's puny punishes, when if just one in three of his risks paid off then he'd still come out with the life lead. Jason: if I end up accompanying you to another tournament, two loud coughs at the end of the first game means switch characters.

It was really good having someone to talk to immediately after each game and process what happened and hopefully learn something from it - definitely added to my enjoyment. And j pointed out how hard it is to learn your opponent when you potentially only get four rounds before you're done, which in retrospect I could have used to my advantage later.

My next match was against… the tournament organiser, yikes, who turned out to be… a Bison player who was less stompy than the first and a bit more cautious, and I took liberties on his wakeup before winning the second game largely thanks to a throw on his wakeup and then later a jump-back fierce because I knew he was going to psycho crusher to try and escape. I was feeling myself. It later transpired that he was clearly a Marvel man at heart, as he was just sneaking into the Marvel grand finals as we left for the day. Anyway, it was all very pleasing.

And I now feel like I have a different understanding of what people are talking about when they say players are really feeling themselves - I always figured it meant getting cocky, wanting to be stylish, whatever, but right at the end of that match I was just kind of locked into what was happening and the nerves and performance anxiety that plagued the rest of my games kind of faded away, and rather than just thinking I was better than I usually do, I actually was better than in the rest of my play that day. It never really made that much sense to me before as a phrase because that kind of anxiety doesn't really exist for me in my natural street fighter habitats, but I guess at times the tenseness is as much of the game as knowing your character.

Anyway, then I played the Guile, who was a friendly chap but sadly didn't let me win. Jason disapproved of my cautious play in this one - all the rounds were pretty close and he rightly pointed out I could have taken a couple of them if I'd only EX messiahed. I didn't want to look silly :-( anyway, that's fine, I played too cautiously throughout and he rightly moved forward. And we had a nice chat afterwards about how at this point pretty much everyone who plays is good at the game to some degree, and about how it's good to leave the house to play fighting games.

Then I watched Jason played a Honda who manfully tried to use Honda against Chun li for a game before switching to Balrog but struggled a couple of times to get ultras after headbutts (possibly moreso because he was using a 360 pad) and Jason, having learned from his earlier Balrog match, just patiently sat and waited and occasionally threw out something when it was safe to do so. Very good.

Then our next matches were against… each other, with the winner moving on to losers' semifinals. We'd played about 40 warmup games of Chun vs Rufus the night before, so it was no surprise to get beaten 2-0. The second game was looking kind of close for a minute but I just don't really have a good way to fight a solid Chun, and as has been extensively documented in the past I just don't really have a good way to fight Jason either. Good games you bad person.

So Jason was up against an Oni player for a spot in losers' semifinals and a share of the prize money, and he lost the first game and switched to Rose and there followed about ten minutes of full-screen fireballs, reflects, neutral jumps and fakes occasionally interrupted by a flurry of close-quarters activity. Then Jason got crossup slashed and died at the end of the last round. He was pretty mad and I called him the number one pot monster and we went to get food, and we came back to watch the Guile fight a Sagat in grand finals which was pretty entertaining and in which the Sagat, who'd been beaten by the Guile in winners' semifinals, reset the bracket and came back to win the whole thing, partly due to inhuman reaction ultra 2s through sonic booms.

Then we played more street fighter while the Marvel tournament got underway, and suddenly realised that I was about to miss the train I wanted to catch and we were out of there quickly and I was on a train back to Manchester before I knew it. Got home, ate some lasagne, and spent half an hour playing street fighter with mister samuel before going to bed. You've always got to get a bit of street fighter in at the end of a long weekend.

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JLM

JLM

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Happy Backdash Birthday Donut!

Yes, excellent write up Allystah. You are welcome back any time as long as you can deal with my ghetto living conditions. Maybe try to get to another SFO tournament in future.

Seriously guys, Error1 dive kick is so good. I knew he'd modded Yang so all he could do is dive kick, but he's also replicated Dive Kick's controls. The punches all make you neutral jump, kicks make you jump backwards and then kick in mid air makes you dive kick. The stick does nothing. If you set it to best of 7, pick a blue Yang outfit and a yellow Yang outfit and put the health at zero it's the next best thing to actually playing The One True Game. Also whiffed dive kicks build nice chunks of meter, so if a couple of the rounds go long someone will eventually get super, which is quite a terrifying prospect and is a good approximation of Kick Factor from Keits' game.

My additional bits from the tournament were that I beat a Cammy player in the first round, and that the Honda/Balrog player I beat is one of the strongest players there who routinely beats me in casuals and is also the man who usually gives me a lift down, so I had to avoid him for a few minutes after we fought in case he was salty. He does absurd hands into jabs into more hands combos on a regular 360 pad, and he can do the full Marn extended Dudley combos on his pad too. He was a bit too proud in trying to get it done with his main (Honda) in the first game against me though, and had he gone to one of his twenty or so other characters in the first place things could have been different. I was pleased with my performance against him though, particularly when he switched to Balrog and my earlier game against the berserker Balrog paid off as hardly got hit by any okey-doke nonsense. I got the impression he was already a bit salty at losing Honda/Sagat earlier in the day and had resigned himself to losing his bad match ups and focusing on Marvel I think. This turned out to be the right call, as he won Marvel later in the day so it was all good.

That Balrog player who put me in losers made me so mad. My initial problem is that he's considered to be one of the better players there so I started out as if playing against a smart player only to get hit by him going dumb at every opportunity. I then completely failed to adapt, and the third time he did an EX headbutt during my sloppy block string I could already hear the scolding I was about to get from Alistarr after the match. Also, on the occasions where he didn't headbutt he went for a back dash on every wake up, and I actually did adapt to this during the match but mis-timed my punishes every time. Next time I fight him I'm using Dudley and giving him max damage punishes for that nonsense. I assume his rep as a strong player is deserved and that he'd never played me before so just decided to go for bullshit and then just kept doing it because it kept working, which is perfectly valid in such a short set. Definitely more annoyed at myself than at him.

Watching Alistarr's games was excellent fun, though I almost had to bite my tongue off at times, much like he had to during my games. I enjoyed watching him test ouf his two consecutive Bison using opponents and seeing how cr. LK happy they were under Rufus pressure and then adapting accordingly. I also like that, after letting the first Bison get away with some extremely reckless EX and roundhouse scissor kicks and getting a telling off from me after the match, he made sure to at least get a jab punish when the second Bison made similar mistakes. The aforementioned jump back fierce to punish the baited EX psycho crusher was the greatest thing, and it was difficult not to make an embarrassing noise whilst stood right behind the players. The last round against the second Bison was absolute domination based on the information acquired from everything up unitl that point, and that's the sort of thing I love seeing.

The games against the Guile player who eventually made grand finals were so close, and there was one occasion in particular where the Guile player had no life left and went for a ridiculous block string into boom FADC into grab and I was so angry that he didn't eat an EX messiah kick for it but said nothing. There was also one occasion where he whiffed a flash kick completely and didn't get punished for it, but that was by virtue of playing so sensibly and cautiously for the rest of the set that it came completely out of nowhere. Playing at a certain level definitely affords you one or two free moments of madness and I know I would have missed that punish as well. Anyway, yeah, Alistarr could definitely have won by being a bit more disrespectful and just burning those Messiahs when they were both down to 1% life at the end of almost every round, and I know in casuals against me he would have done it without hesitation, but it's always different in tournament and you don't want to be that guy who does the stupid suicidal reversal in front of an audience, particularly an audience that has never seen you play before this tournament but has already dubbed you "The Bison Killer" based on your strong early showings.

I respectfully avoided coaching during any of the matches, and ultimately I'm especially glad I did because the Guile player was indeed a real gent.

My full tournament was thus:

Beat a Cammy player 2-0

Lost to Balrog 2-0

Beat a Sakura player 2-0

Beat a Honda/Balrog 2-0

Beat some Rufus scrub 2-0

Lost to Oni 2-1 in Losers' semis.

The win against the Sakura was particularly pleasing for two reasons. The first is that I correctly anti-aired every jump in aside from a couple of delayed air tatsus, including perfect use of standing MK, which I've only recently added to my Chun game. It's not easy to anti-air Sakura's jump roundhouse or jumping fierce, and you have to constantly shift your spacing and choose the right normal as appropriate for each jump, so this was a big personal victory. Also, after losing to that fucking berserker Balrog, I talked about how I'd bait reversals and punish back dashes properly in my next match, and I did this against Sakura with a couple of well placed Hazanshus and baited EX DPs. If you get derped into losers then the best you can hope for is that you learn from it and apply it to your next matches and I think I mostly did this.

The losing game against Oni was heartbreaking for me, as a win there would have put me in top 3 and the guaranteed money. I also feel like Guile and Sagat are two of my strongest match ups with Chun, and my regular back up characters of Rose, Dee Jay, Gouken and Sakura are all solid alternatives against those characters if things go bad. In the first game against the Oni I got murdered as Chun. I've played the guy plenty of times before and usually won comfortably, but he has levelled up a lot in the past few weeks and was also playing an entirely different game in tournament based almost entirely on fireball zoning with a small sprinkling of Oni gimmicks when that didn't work out.

As Chun I just got out gunned in the fireball war and out damaged ithe up close game, so I went to Rose as a counter pick and did much, much better, absorbing and reflecting fireballs all day, using my broken set ups off back throws and trying to bait out uppercuts where possible. I also blocked every single cross up slash attempt in all seven rounds until the very last second of the last game when we were both on 10% life and he did a back throw and then a roundhouse cross up slash on my wake up, which I like to do myself EVERY SINGLE TIME I PLAY ONI and I failed to block it and that was that. Gutted. Still, the fact that I was able to get one win away from the money was encouraging, and Bison is a good match up for Chun, so if I have to run the Bison gauntlet in future tournaments I'd feel fairly confident about that too. I also want a set against the Sagat player who won as he looked really good and I enjoy the extremely tactical and spacing-oriented Chun/Sagat match up a lot. .

So, fourth and fifth place for team Jellistar. Next time we take some of that fight money..

Other fun weekend things were watching the Xian/Daigo and Xian/Akimo FT5 sets with another Zhi fan and fighting game nerd to cringe/laugh at Zhi's commentary and also do some armchair punditry on the matches. Also the fourth episode of Mike Ross' neighbourhood, which was absolutely hilarious and did not feel like it was anywhere near its 54 minute run time. Flailing aimlessly in Real Steel and Arcana Heart 3 was amusing. The latter is still a complete mystery to me, the former has to be one of the worst fighting games on the console, and there are plenty to choose from. I did indeed get destroyed at Marvel 2, and I felt like I only won the majority of the Marvel 3 games because I kept to the simple Captain America/Tasky combos I've practised to death and didn't chance anything else, whereas Allystah was trying to pick up Ammy and also do legit Spencer combos that are much harder than my beginner Cap ones.

Oh, and my best effort at an Error1 fighter combo so far is with Fei:

Jump roundhouse - > standing fierce - > That horribly broken QCF + kick move he's been given - > cancel that into jump roundhouse - > Ultra 1. Meterless 50% damage. Bam. Error1 fighter is so silly but undeniably entertaining. Balrog's jabs are utterly insane.

Now I will watch some Winter Brawl. The end.

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JLM

JLM

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Also, London peoples, Gamerbase and Casino are both closing, but a new venue called The Heart of Gaming is opening fairly soon and looks like lots of fun. They apparently have 40 arcade cabs rescued from the Trocadero and a number of other deceased arcade venues and will be fixing them all up. They also intend to have plenty of console set ups when it's finished.

Facebook page is here: http://www.facebook.com/TheHeartOfGaming

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mayor_mike_haggar

mayor_mike_haggar

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Sorry for not staying around for birthday fights with you doughnut, I was quite profoundly tired and still probably recovering from the weekend a bit, due to not getting home from my Friday night until around 8am on Saturday morning.

I had a nice little FT3 against joffo and ran lots of different men against his entirely gimmick/vortex based gen, and it was nice. I have no idea what his walldive thing does, or indeed what is or is not punishable. So that was fun. I managed to win 3-2 thanks to a combination of lag making balrog overheads unblockable and furiously churning butter with t-hawk in the final match.

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Camel

Camel

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Instead of playing Street Fighter last night like the good Lord intended, I watched an episode of the Twilight Zone, then Tales From Earthsea (which has a stupid ending that makes no sense whatsoever) and then played Game Room like a fat saddo. Forgive me Father.

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joeplus

joeplus

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Tales from Earthsea has my favourite unintentionally hilarious line of dialogue in it.

"I killed my father."

(Look of surprise)

"I stabbed him and ran away."

Doesn't read that funny, but it's after these soft romantic-looking scenes in a cornfield and totally apropos of nothing. It made me snrk.

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joeplus

joeplus

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Jellum, what are your rose backthrow setups, or where did you find them? I've been playing a bit more of her lately and had forgotten what an excellent cow you can be with her. Especially U2 mixups.

I like to pretend I have U2 mixups by activating after a knockdown, hitting a button then doing a soul throw. Sometimes it works! Some science from JLM would be much appreciated so I can read it then fail horribly to put it into practice.

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