Mike Ross, courtesy of Iplaywinner

When I was starting down the path of a Street Fighter scrub, there were a lot of podcasts out there that were essential to my education to the scene. Today, there is such a profliteration of podcasts out there catering to different audiences, covering different topics.

I love this new variety in the podcasts; you have WakeupSRK covering the general fighting game sphere, you have Juicebox doing his extremely technical player-improvement JuicyBits podcast, and you have the personality pieces of Gootecks’ podcasts.

I thought I might make a mini-list/guide of my favourite podcasts I’ve listened to over the years. I’m still an avid listener, and everytime I go into training mode, I put on a podcast to pass the time.

Gootecks Podcast

I’m not sure why Gootecks gets so much hate in the community these days. Sure he might not be winning tournaments anymore, but when vanilla SF4 was starting to hit its stride, he was putting out a ton of media, and personally his podcasts taught me a lot about the SoCal scene and the myriad of personalities there. So I have to give him props for that, as well as being very creative in his approach to Street Fighter as a venture.

edit: Gootecks also has a new podcast going over at http://crosscounter.tv/. Thanks to Anonymous for the tip.

His stuff did a good job of describing the early exploration of Street Fighter 4, as well as being good showcases for the Socal personalities (It certainly helped developing my man crush on Mike Ross). You can get that from one of my favourite episodes featuring Dogface and Omni. And this one is literally a Street Fighter history lesson with Alex Valle.

While the Gootecks show was probably the first stuff I started listening to, the other show I have to list down is none other than Alphaism Radio. Originally the home of Skisonic, and hosted by Bunkei, this show can be overly long, nonsensical, random but ALWAYS hilarious. From prank calls, to Wii Boxing, to Face-Gina dreams and which way Keit’s weeping willow bends, to shit talk central, Alphaism radio has it all. To be fair, the show can also be very informative when Bunkei sets his mind to it, and long live Alphaism Radio!

Skisonic and Keits were mainstays on Alphaism radio, and they’ve brought their talents to shoryuken.com’s weekly podcasts, Wakeup, Shoryuken! This show is the current Godfather of the podcasts out there, with wide-ranging topics covering the entire fighting game scene. It also probably is the most consistent out of all the podcasts in terms of quality, and the fact that they deliver it every Wednesday really brightens my week, as well as leaving me marvelling at their dedication. Like I mentioned before, the quality is really consistent, so you could really just go ahead and take your pick out of any of their podcasts and take something away from it.

Iplaywinner is one of the premium sites of the community, and though they don’t often put out podcasts, I’ve always enjoyed what they put out. I guess it might be on hiatus now because Pherai is in Japan, but I’ve always liked Pherai’s candour in the podcasts. Here’s one featuring the man himself.

Juicebox Abel has always been an entertaining player, but I had no idea he could be capable of putting out such highly technical, detailed and helpful podcasts! Here’s his latest and greatest, Juicy Bits Podcast – Episode 3 – ‘How To Get Better at Street Fighter’

As our scene continues to grow, I hope to see the quality and variety of podcasts constantly getting better, to sate the Street Fighter fanboy that resides within me 😛
Hey, down in Melbourne we might be getting our own podcast in the near future! I’m personally very excited about that. Keep your eyes peeled.