One of the first tournaments I ever went to was the Galactic Circus tournament held in March 2010 with a cash prize of $1000!

The writeup can be found here: http://www.shadowloo.com/?p=1237

I wasn’t planning on going for the tournament, but as fate would have it, I somehow met Chris, the organiser of the tournament, on a psn chat room. Unbeknownst to me, this player Junzt a-Belle, was Chris, the same Ken player that I met on my one and only trip at the Crown Casino SF4 machines. (He played nothing but Balrog, which confused me even further).

He beat me the majority of the games, but I felt I took a while to adapt, and I got a few wins in the end. He had some bad tendencies, such as a quick trigger finger on headbutt, which gave me a lot of free damage. Long story short, he convinced me to go the tournament. (I have a sneaky feeling that he maybe threw some games to boost my confidence).

When I got there, I found out Junz was Chris, and I watched everybody settle down for some casuals. I was still new to the Melbourne scene then, and the only people I knew was; Somniac, the beastly bison I play often on psn, and Ali and his brothers who I met at an earlier event called Fight Nights. I also scoped out some excellent cosplay from the GC staff!

As you can probably see in the pictures they had a intimidating setup there, with me being new to tournaments, the way the screens are set up right in front of the crowd was a little scary.

But I was able to put my nerves aside, and I was one of the first players up. I got a mirrormatch against a Ryu player called Onegai. At the same time, Havok’s girlfriend Celia was having her match with another female player, and I felt a little lucky that their match would probably have most of the audience’s attention.

The first time I ever played SF4 in an arcade; my hands were shaking for half an hour when I left the arcade. But funnily enough this time I felt pretty calm, and I went into the match with a pretty clear mind.

I don’t remember much of the match as it was so long ago, but I immediately remember thinking first round, whoa. He’s a rushdown Ryu.

I like to think that I play a patient or methodical Ryu, and it seems when it comes to mirrormatches, Ryus that can push the tempo and be a little random at times give me a lot of problems. Mainly because I think I have sluggish reaction times, and I can’t deal with fast paced rushdown.

So we played back and forth, I remember I didn’t make any major mistakes, I didn’t miss combos, (I didn’t try for anything big at the same time), he just out damaged me every round. He would do things like meaty low forward ex tatsu, and jmk chp ex tatsu, and generally was burning a lot of meter every round.

He basically rushed me down, and I didn’t answer with a lot of offensive pressure. Occasionally, he broke through my defence, and that was enough to win the set as I didn’t put any pressure back on him. I think I was too busy trying not to screw up, I was too rigid.

There was one instance however that I could have won a game. I hit a crossup and a throw, and I went for a ambiguous crossup. I got a clp clp srk combo, and he was dizzied! I was a little surprised and I hesitated a little, crunching damage scaling numbers in my head. I decided on doing a jfp chp srk combo instead of a focus attack combo because of the scaling, but he shook out of the dizzy amazingly fast and managed to block it. It all went downhill from there.

After the match I went over to say GG to Onegai, (btw Celia won), and I was asking his advice. While some advice he gave me was good; you’re too defensive, attack more, some advice he gave me made me raise my eyebrows.

He said that his style was to basically continually burn ex meter, to maintain optimum damage throughout the match. I got hit by a few ex fireballs during fireball wars because my style is that I like to save meter. I hardly ever use Ex moves, I prefer to always have meter ready for dp fadc and super. I felt that he was exchanging meter for not really having to hit confirm much, but I guess there’s nothing really wrong with his style.

He also said he prefers to use lp srk in combos, which really was the thing that surprised me. His reasoning is that it recovers faster, allowing for more time for setup. I understand what he was saying now, because of things like lp srk followed by crossup tatsu, but at that time I thought that was a little unfundamental, because he tried to do a jump in setup after lp srk and got dp fadced by me.

Guys, do not ever try to safe jump Ryu. 3-frame reversal.

But in the end I realised he was better than me, GG Onegai!

I also finally met up with Jerard, another Ryu I play on psn. He did better than me too. He also plays a kind of unpredictable slightly unsafe rushdown Ryu, I watched him beat a Sagat.

Ryu keeping it nice and starchy

The real nice thing about the tourney was meeting people. I got to spend a lot of time talking to Baz, the viper player, Somniac, Ali and his brothers (I spent a lot of time talking to Justice), I talked to Faith the Guile player and so many more. (I still feel a little too intimidated to talk to Toxy though. Maybe one day.)

They all were awesome to talk to, and in general it felt really good to have fellow Street Fighter heads to talk to.

The finals were also fantastic, that was the first time I found out about Akira!

The beast from Japan. He was like this mad scientist hunched over his stick, autocorrect tiger uppercutting everything.

Toxy was landing clutch Raging Demons left and right, and it was an awesome spectacle.

All in all, I got peaced out first round yet again, but I went away from the event feeling that the real treasure that I got from the event was the start of friendships and connections made within the Melb SF community.

P.S. On a last note I had a funny conversation with Chris post tourney on psn:

Chris: Hey Mutton, how was the tourney for you?

Me: Oh I went out first round.

Chris: Oh that’s too bad. Hey, what did you think of the C. Viper? (refer to photos in report)

Me: She was awesome! The best thing about the tourney. After I saw her, I don’t feel sad about my loss anymore.

Chris: Lol! Good, good. Btw….

Me: Yeah?

Chris: I designed that costume.

Me: Good shit!

Chris: and that C.Viper…

Me: yeah?

Chris: She’s my girlfriend.

Me: Good shit!!!! (Ohhhh!!!!!!)

Chris: She’s MY OWN C. Viper!

Me: (OHHHHHH!!!)

okay, I’m lame.