On a more serious note, Seasons Beatings was pretty exciting to watch. I couldn’t watch the top 8s because I was at work and missed the above gem…

After taking a bit of a break, the Gods of Street Fighter have struck me down and told me to get back to training mode…basically my PS3 went red flashing lights of death on me. Noooo my Dark Souls save game….

So I called Sony and they said it was a $175 for repair plus no data recovery.

…..Fuck that.

So I’m back in training mode. Working on my She-Hulk mid-screen runner’s launch relaunch combos- even though I may drop her after the UMVC3 nerfs so I wonder why I’m even bothering to practice them.

I did pretty badly at Shadowloo Night Live as well. Oh well. At least the pizza was good.

I am going to try harder. So no more break for me.

So yesterday I played “That fucking Yun guy” from my arcade log twenty games in a row. And I lost every single game.

As my losing progressed and I pumped in dollar after dollar, I was literally going through the five stages of grief:

Denial: I haven’t warmed up yet, I’m gonna win the next game, I promise.

Anger: FUCK THIS CHARACTER!!!!!!!! FUCK YOU CAPCOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! @#$%^&*&!@

Bargaining: Okay, if I don’t win the next one I will stop. Okay, I lost. If I don’t win in the next five games I will stop, remember to use standing close roundhouse as a meaty….Wait, I lost…

Depression: Man…I suck.

Acceptance: It’s not me. It’s just Yun.

So by the end I wasn’t that salty…more resigned. The Yun player had enough of beating my ass as well and went outside to smoke. I went outside to talk to him, and he actually opened up to me.

Normally he just sits there stone-faced win or lose- Umehara style. And we share manly nods of acknowledgement sometimes,  but never an extended conversation.

So I asked him how I could beat his character.

He said he could tell I don’t know the matchup that well, and that once I got used to it, Yun wasn’t that hard to beat.

I was dubious …but he went on.

He said the Ryu player with spectacles (KiLok) beats him quite often.I asked him what KiLok was doing that I wasn’t.

Everything! Said the Yun player. I didn’t do any focus attack absorb backdashes or any backdashes at all. Which avoids his meaties if he doesn’t option select and more importantly- avoids command grab. I was patiently sitting there all the time and just blocking and eating command grab after command grab. It’s not that backdash is that great of an option, just that I was never mixing what I did on defence.

I didn’t neutral jump in the corner after his block strings. He said that the probability of him going for a command grab in the corner was extremely high, so I should bait more with a neutral jump, and while risky, I can get a really juicy punish for that. I was doing neutral jumps- just at inappropriate times and positions.

He told me to stop trying to uppercut his dive kicks, and focus more on preemptive stuff like stand jabs and shorts.

He told me not to be so aggressive (I was trying very hard to bulldoze into his Yun after getting very discouraged from my zoning game), and to be aware of the ranges of his shoulders and EX shoulders and to throw fireballs accordingly. I was making his job easier by getting into his preferred range, and not throwing fireballs at the range where I could get away with it.

He gave me a lot of good advice, which I was definitely thankful for.

I actually have not seen a lot of Yun/Yang players at the arcade during lunchtime in the last two months.I was actually getting slightly better at the matchup when I was playing those twin players all those weeks ago! For a while I thought they had all disappeared because of the impending AE 2012 nerfs.

So I actually hadn’t seen that Yun player in ages.

But what I realise now is that I am definitely far from being complete player, in terms of matchup knowledge. I never really took the time to really get the Sagat matchup down in Vanilla, and I am still not good at the matchup now. AE 2012 is coming, and I still don’t know the Hong Kong fighter matchup. When you play fighting games competitively it is simply a crime to not know the matchups against the top-tier characters inside and out, and I need to make more of an effort to learn those matches, painful as they may be. Playing at Bluehouse is good for practice- but it’s Ryu city. It’s just not good enough for learning different matchups.

I think I actually need to start playing online again.

Alright enough ranting, I should probably get back to work or maybe work on the BAM writeup I’ve been putting off for ages.

Edit: This delightful picture contributed by Spoony and taken by Karaface sums it all up.