Ultra Street Fighter IV

[Qazimod]

I was going to get Divekick for Vita because I knew that the crossplay shenanigans would let me play with PS3 mans, but then they announed it for PC so I got that instead because I thought everyone here would get it on PC since we all use PCs to post on forums and things with our PCs.

PCs.

[joffocakes]

I don't have a PC.

I should get a PC. There's so many wonderful indie games I want to play. I'd only ever play Street Fighter on it.

[Camel]

I've got an ancient PC that runs on gas.

[JLM]

Agh, ended up staying up until the wee small hours watching the exhibition matches at NEC. It was worth it though as Sanford vs PR Rog and Sanford vs Justin were absolutely incredible. Spooby has Youtubed them already because he's great like that. Please watch them as they're probably my two favourite sets of the year, not just for the gameplay but because of the players and associated human drama involved.

Streetfighter.

[IgTerminals]

Awesome matches Jellum.

Good god I'm enjoying using Bison. Whilst I've certainly had lots and lots of fun playing all of you, Bison has made me realise I haven't had so much fun using Guile. Satisfaction, certainly. But not happy fun.

I'm loving this guy.

Oozaru!

[ah]

USF4 3v3 exhibition starting now:

http://www.twitch.tv/teamsp00ky

Sanford vs Rog was definitely the best post-match pop-off this year. Both were great sets, too, which probably warrant rewatching with the sound off to be able to think more about what's happening than the hype of it. Thanks for posting as it will probably be ages before I get round to catching up on the stream archive.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

You've not had to play a guile as bison yet, have you IG?

You've not had to play a guile as bison yet, have you IG?

[IgTerminals]

You've not had to play a guile as bison yet, have you IG?You've not had to play a guile as bison yet, have you IG?

No. I know it's supposed to be a bad matchup but not only have I lost to fair few Bisons, I've seen a lot of Guiles lose to Bisons in tourney vids, although that's obviously hideously, horribly far above my skill level.

We'll see how it goes. I'm having fun though so that's the main thing.

Who's around tomo for some matches?

[JLM]

The best example of Guile/Bison being a big problem for Bison in recent memory was when Happy Medicine was in the form of his career at the end of last year. He was easily the best Bison in the U.S. and his great run culminated at NEC13 where he got all the way to winners finals. Then he had to fight Dieminion and Nuckeldu in succession and lost all six games, resorting to picking Cammy at the end because the fight felt so hopeless. If Guile does everything right there is no way he should lose that fight, so it's one where Bison is forced to make hard reads, take big risks and also get a bit of luck or come out on top in scramble situations. It's a similar one to Honda/Sagat, where Honda only wins if he goes nuts, forces errors and turns the fight into a brawl. If he does anything more orthodox than that he'll get slowly picked apart without the Sagat player breaking a sweat.

Bison has these awkward stalemate match ups against other charge characters like Honda and Balrog, but with Guile it's one of those with the added problem of a projectile. Honda and Rog can fight each other knowing that when one of them takes the lead it's the other player's turn to go in. In Bison/Guile it is *always* Bison's turn, and Guile loves it when it's Bison's turn because he can anti-air everything thanks to Bison's abysmal jump, EX scissors aren't as big a threat to him as other projectile users, he can air grab stomps/devil reverses and his normals are more than strong enough to challenge Bison's normally excellent ground game.

Here are the Happy Medicine/Dieminion/Nuckeldu NEC sets:

[IgTerminals]

Trying to stay happy, excited and optimistic here...

Plus I'm never gonna be good enough to be in a serious tourney where it'll come to that situation.

Also I'm not giving up on Guile. But I've played him solidly for 18 months and it's nice to have a change.

I'll always have Guile...

EDIT: Cool vids. Think I've seen them before but a while ago.

I watch so much Street Fighter.

[joffocakes]

Kara-Blanka.

Also, I finished that Super Mario 3D World and it is wonderful.

[JLM]

Haha, not trying to be the voice of doom, Bison's a very solid pick against most of the cast, just do Guile mirrors instead if you fight a troublesome Guile.

Oh, and for anyone who isn't watching the NEC archives, at least keep an eye out for the top 3 matches from teams. Team PIE (Zeus,Smug and Poem) had a magnificent showing using three middle-tier characters in Vega, Dudley and Balrog. Smug is obviously everyone's man of the moment and is rightly getting a lot of attention for being the best Dudley in the universe, but Zeus' Vega is magic as well, winning plenty of Vega's horror match ups against the best players in the country. If I remember I'll post them up here when they're on Spooky's youtube. So much hype and salt. I love me some Smuggles, but PR Rog most certainly does not.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

I think my favourite thing about how ludicrous guile v bispon is was seeing a bipson focus-dash through a sonic boom at point blank ranged and then getting jabbed by the already recovered guile for his troubles. The recovery time on sonic boom is ludicrous, and bison just can't do anything against it whatsoever.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

Right. I'm picking gouken against camel forever.

[Camel]

So I had a couple of games with a lovely chap last night. A (IIRC) 3,000pp/14,000bp Sagat player. First, I beat him with Honda. Then with Dhalsim. He was so overjoyed he just wouldn't stop sending me friendly congratulatory messages after. I was embarrassed, truth be told.

After he'd sent all those, I replied with:

Must be very frustrating, all those points and everything

But he hasn't replied since

[IgTerminals]

You should send him a message everyday for the next year asking if he's still frustrated.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

This is my last week before my wild move, lads. I'll try and get some time in for games, and then I will never be able to play again.

[Camel]

Right. I'm picking gouken against camel forever.

I don't use Dhalsim any more, he's lame.

[JLM]

SFO monthly tournament was yesterday. Excellent attendance this time, with a 22 man bracket for AE even with several regulars missing. Five players who were new to me, Bradford making a strong showing and Metallic Mike, ProFluke and White Daigo also traveling from out of town. It's lovely to see how much the Leeds scene has grown in the relatively short time I've been a part of it.

Stacked bracket this month, and between Domihy, Benners, OverMostHeads and Whaigo there were plenty of matches I wanted to see as well as players I wanted to fight against.

Bracket is here:

http://challonge.com/SFODECae

Stream archive is here:

http://www.twitch.tv/sfotv

Not sure how watchable it was as there were all manner of technical issues once again. Allystah has successfully watched my two streamed matches though, so hopefully it's not too bad.

Highlight of the day was a stellar showing from Harry a/k/a InfernoKong. He's a 16 year old who mainly plays Tekken but also plays a mean Seth in SFIV. He doesn't get to that many events because his mum is still very protective of him and needs assurances that he'll have people getting him back safely or that she can be there to get him as soon as it ends. He's very humble and doesn't rate his SF skills very highly, but at this event he turned in a star making performance, making it all the way to grand finals and racking up quite a body count in the process. He has been dubbed "White Poongko" as a result. What made it even better was that he was primarily there to play a FT7 in Tekken Tag 2 against a guy who called him out on Facebook and has been talking a whole lot of shit about him, not always in a fun/competitive way either. Harry beat him 7-0 on stream and it was beautiful. He played the same guy in Streetfighter a bit later on in the day and landed a 33 hit Poongko-esque Seth combo with a focus crumple in the middle of it and loads of entirely unnecessary links. This made me very happy indeed. He barely said a thing to the guy either, just let the utter destruction in both games speak for him instead.

My tournament didn't go too badly given the quality of the bracket. Much like at Teesports, I ended up going 4 and 2 and all of my games were against good players or great players.

JLM (Chun) 2-0 Todd (Bison)

Beat a semi-regular SFO player called Todd who has a solid Bison. Seems like I'm forever playing Chun/Bison in tournament these days though, so I'm getting more and more confident in the match up. As I blathered on about in my Teesports write up, it's a win for Chun and I have a good understanding of why that is and how to apply it. Todd isn't as strong as Galva Muirtron from Teesports, though he does seem to be getting better each time I play him. I took it 2-0 but the first game in particular was extremely close.

JLM (Gief) 0-2 ProFluke (Elf)

Next up I fought ProFluke. I have next to zero experience against a good Fuerte, and ProFluke is a very good one. I panicked before the match and counter picked with Gief. First game was a total disaster. He's clearly well versed in this bad match up as character specialists should be, and was spacing everything in such a way as to beat lariat the vast majority of the time. He was also abusing Q.Bomb in the knowledge that without meter for EX green hand I can't do anything about it. Second game I did better, but I didn't show any patience at all. One of the reasons the match is horrible for Fuerte is that Gief can sit on a life lead and Fuerte has a horrible time approaching him. I didn't take advantage of this at all, relentlessly chasing him around the screen when I didn't need to and giving away rounds for free. Lost 2-0, second game was better but I didn't have enough time to adapt.

JLM (Chun, Dudley) 2-1 TSCooler (Sakura)

First game in losers was against Tyson/TSCooler/Mr. SFO, who has started taking this game seriously again of late and is improving significantly every time I face him. He used to have the excuse that he spent all his time playing Marvel and entered SF4 for a laugh, but you can tell he wants to win at AE now, as evidenced by him sticking to a top tier character in Sakura and trying to accumulate as much dirty tech as possible. He had been working on Chun/Sakura specifically to fight me and it was evident here. He had a much better handling on the spacing than in previous sets and did a good job of whiff punishing me with cr. mk xx uppercut. That said, I made life more difficult for myself here by losing a round in the second game where I took 99% of his life without getting hit and then allowed myself to get Sakura'd to death for no good reason.

A combination of playing Sakura myself, her consistent appearances in tournaments and my own experience fighting against Ty and others has made me quite good at the match up now though. With Chun I was challenging every jump air to air, rarely getting counter hit and baiting EX DP at all the right moments. Felt good, but I still managed to lose the second game following the aforementioned balls ups. Fortunately for me, I am confident in Dudley as a back up now and I know from experience that Ty hates fighting my Dudders. It has been great the past couple of tournaments to have a character who is the polar opposite of Chun for a complete change of pace if things aren't going my way. Ty was salty about the character switch (in a good humoured way as it always is with him) and has challenged me to a Sak/Chun FT10 at the next event, which I am very much looking forward to.

JLM (Chun) 2-0 Domihy (Guile)

Guile/Chun. Exhausting. Grueling. Etc.

JLM (Chun) 2-0 Rydah (Sagat)

This is a match I've wanted for a long time, so I was very nervous going into it. Rydah is a player from Bradford who talks a lot on the Facebooks. He talks himself up whilst also making sure to mention that he doesn't have a main character (he does, it's Sagat) and that he doesn't even play this game any more (he does, a lot). This is at odds with the fact that any other player who knows him will confirm that he's often grinding in endless lobbies until the wee small hours. He also never comes out to SFO events because he "doesn't have time", but continues to cling to this rep of being a good player who just can't be bothered practising any more. I think it's more that he used to be good but everyone has leveled up since then and now he's nothing special. He has good execution and combos but he's also pretty rraggo and I don't think his fundamentals are up to much. We have completely different outlooks on the game and how it should be played. Rushing down and doing combos is only one part of the game to me, whereas for him doing anything other than that "doesn't take skill" and is for "pussies" and "faggots".

All Streetfighter-related stuff aside, the Leeds scene is thankfully not that big on the usual FGC macho posturing and homophobia, so it's that part of his attitude that made me want to beat him the most. I've never interacted with him in any capacity before and I have no desire to get into an argument with the man, but my goodness I wanted to beat him at virtual facepuncher. From what I'd seen, his Sagat isn't even in the same league as Benners' but is certainly more reckless and unpredictable. With that in mind, I thought if I played the match up correctly I could beat him quite comfortably. The first game was quite a narrow win, highlighted by one moment where he got reset air to air and did raw EX uppercut when he landed. I'm pretty sure I did an involuntary Floe face when he did that. Whoops. Anyway, I felt like in game two I'd figured out what was up and was in little danger of losing. He's a lot more humble and pleasant in real life as a lot of gobby internet types are, so that was nice. Don't think I let on just how chuffed I was to beat him and do so comfortably, but my satisfaction levels were high indeed.

JLM (Chun) 0-2 White Daigo (Ryu)

I think this is the most pleased I've ever been with a 2-0 loss, simply because it was such a huge improvement on my showing against him at Rival Scenes. At that event it wasn't even that he was much better than me at the game, but more like we weren't even playing the same game. All I did was get swept, get counter hit and eat option selects on my wake up. It was the very definition of free. This time around I was much much better. I didn't whiff nearly as often, and as the set went on I got a feel for how to handle his pressure. His delayed pressure on wake up is the most terrifying thing to deal with, and he was opening me up for free at the beginning of the set. As it went on I got stronger in the neutral game and more composed when on the back foot. I still find him utterly terrifying to fight against because his footsies are out of this world, he does optimal max damage beast combos to punish every error and he option selects everything all of the time. All you can do on wake up is block and try to react to the grab. He is in a different class to anyone else I've played aside from OverMostHeads and it takes everything in my power to avoid being double perfected by him. Never has a nickname been more appropriate.

All of that said, if I'd have cleaned up my execution I could definitely have taken a game. My spacing was much better than last time and my defense (particularly in the second game) was immeasurably better too. I also got used to his post knockdown set ups as it went on. He was doing a super deep jump MK so that if I did EX SBK it would stuff it, but the trade off is that it has to be done with a slight delay and therefore is no longer a safe jump. The answer for Chun is to leave the EX SBK as late as is humanly possible and it'll then catch him. At the beginning of the set I was sitting there getting hit with these cross ups, but by the end of it I was landing my SBKS. There was also one point where he hit me with empty jump DP FADC ultra, which turned a round in his favour when I should have known better. It was a speculative effort on his part and I gifted the round to him. After the match I felt hungry to play him again and continue to learn how to beat him whereas at Rival Scenes I felt more like throwing my stick in a fire, so this is definitely progress.

Excellent tournament all round. I did OK, Harry was immense and almost every other match I watched was super hype thanks to the nice variety of players in attendance. It's also cool to see how much Ant and a few of the other regulars have improved since I first started going. Ant used to go 0 and 2 every tournament and wouldn't take games off me in tournament or in casuals. That is absolutely not the case any more. He uses Cammy, but that doesn't take away from how much his decision making, reactions, adaptability and execution have improved over the past year or so. He's not the only one either. The whole group is getting stronger, and this is only helped by all the traveling we've been doing and all the visits from talented players from other areas. Having OverMostHeads as a regular attendee is a huge boost for the scene, and it looks like he's just the first of many players who will be coming to our events and forcing us all to level up. SFO is the best thing. Allystah, I hope to see you there at some point in the new year good sir.

[hegg]

Those Sanford sets were incredible.

Been playing ranked with Hawk, enjoying it a lot. Some match-ups though, like Blanka, fuuuuucking hell. Just get out.

Oh, ragemail fun. I got one at some point over the weekend.. "Fuck off you prick with your broken Guile". Don't know what that was all about.

Edit: nice report Jellum, glad you beat that awful sounding Rydah bloke. What's his GT? Name looks familiar.

[JLM]

I think it's just xxx Rydah xxx or something similar.

I love Sanford so much. He commits so hard to every decision and his wins and losses mean the world to him. Such an expressive player too; you could watch footage of four or five Sagat players without name tags and be able to pick out Sanford's with ease. PR Rog is exactly the same, so a match between them in front of an East coast crowd was always going to be spectacular. For Sanford to call out Justin immediately afterwards was just unspeakably great, and was why I stayed up until nigh on 5AM watching them play. That is *the* American Streetfighter match and it ended the only way it realistically could. It's the sort of thing that would make Clive Tyldesley say it was written in the stars or something. The prick.

[mayor_mike_haggar]

What's the Leeds coleslaw scene like?

[ah]

SFO stream archive is totally watchable, commentary is a second or two out of sync with the gameplay but that's all.

If I get time to play over the next few weeks then I'll try and come to the next one in the new year, but my last visit left me feeling like I was just out of my depth so I need to get that practice happening.

There's a copy of Paws of Fury in the trading thread though so I might just get that and make it my main game instead.

[Nate Dogg III]

Man, that Sanford/Rog match was *brilliant*.

Now to convince the wife that what she most wants to watch this evening is the Justin set. Then the top 8 archive.

[JLM]

I still have AE top 8 to watch, though sadly during the Curleh Mustache Battle Royale grand finals one of the commentators casually dropped the name of a grand finalist and the result of grand finals in a quick throw away sentence that had nothing to do with Mahvel. Curse you Megaman Steve! I say that, but I love Megaman Steve and would like to have the exact same voice as him.

The Leeds 'slaw scene is middle tier at best and the burrito game is garbage. Good for Indian and Chinese food, but any city should have those covered as standard. Eating crazy amounts of meat at Fazenda is probably the best food option, though Red's, Trinity Kitchen and a bunch of other new places that have opened recently are improving things. Apparently getting a Meat Liquor in the Spring too. We're quite a way off being the nation's fattest city but by god we're trying to close the gap.

[Qazimod]

Amazing SFO words by JLM there.

This is my last week before my wild move, lads. I'll try and get some time in for games, and then I will never be able to play again.

Boo; if my connection plays nice I'll see if I can jump on and get Cammied to death sometime

[joffocakes]

Man, Jellum, you really oughta be paid to do these write-ups. At least start a blog or something with a donate option. I'll pay you until someone professional does. Such terrific skill in adding narrative drama to each match punctuated with excellent attention to coleslaw.

[cale]

Infiltration's corner-bashing was just foul. Felt a bit sf2 though I'm not sure why.

Sanford / PR Rog was simply stunning though.

[JLM]

I'm in desperate need of postings in this thread, so here is a thing. There was a bit of discussion at SFO about who has the better normals between various pairs of characters. It got me pondering, if you cherry pick normals from the entire cast and put them into one character, what would be the best set you could give a character. Distance-related normals and command normals are allowed, but the set would have to feasibly fit on one character without any overlapping commands, and the command for the move has to be the same as it is on the character who has it normally. So, for instance, if you want Ken's step kick you can't have Evil Ryu's hop kick on the same set.

My attempt:

Jab

Standing (both far and close) - Sakura
Crouching - Balrog
Jumping - Cody
Command normal (Towards + jab) - Oni

Strong

Standing (close) - Dan
Standing (far) - Chun
Crouching - Fei Long
Neutral jump - Dudley
Angled jump - Seth
Command normal (Back + MP) - Cody
Command normal (Towards + MP) - Hakan

Fierce

Standing (far) - Dudley
Standing (Close) - Sakura
Crouching - Sakura
Neutral jump - Cody
Angled jump - Sakura
Command normal (Towards + fierce) - Ryu

Command normal - Zangief headbutt

Short

Standing (far) - Abel
Standing (close) - Vega
Crouching - Guy
Angled jump - Cammy
Neutral jump - Sakura
Command normal - Angled jump down + short - Dee Jay knee shot
Command normal - Towards + short - Oni
Command normal - Back + short - Dhalsim

Forward

Standing (far) - Guy
Standing (close) - Ken
Crouching - Ryu
Neutral jump - Sakura
Angled jump - Dee Jay
Command normal - Towards + MK - Ken
Command normal - Back + MK - Ken
Command normal - Angled jump down + MK - Evil Ryu
Command normal - Down/towards + MK - Rose

Roundhouse

Standing (Far) - Chun
Standing (Close) - Dudley
Crouching - Gouken
Neutral Jump - Adon
Angled Jump - Seth
Command normal - Towards + Roundhouse - Dudley
Command normal - Back + Roundhouse - Dhalsim
Command normal - Down/towards + Roundhouse - Vega
Command normal - Angled jump down/towards + Roundhouse - Seth.

No Bison, Honda, Blanka, Guile, Gief, Makoto, Akuma, Gen and plenty of other expected candidates in there surprisingly. Might try and do one with a one move from each character limit to mix it up a bit more. Yes, this is the slowest work day ever.

[joeplus]

I watched the Sanford-PR Rog match. Ridiculously exciting, I'll have to watch the Aquasilk and Justin Wong sets too when I get a moment.

Here's a thing for the lab enthusiasts/masochists: a dude on reddit posted a list of "Two Move Trials" to test execution, timing, knowledge of juggles and all that jazz.

List of the trials

Intro video

Edit: another excellent post JLM. Rather than contributing, I will amuse myself by trying to remember what each of those normals looks like and why it's so amazing.