Patrick and Poongko, CPS2 and Viewtiful Joe

Posted on April 22, 2011 by muttonhead

Patrick aka Phatkau, the best Honda player in Melbourne is currently in Korea right now. And of course he visits the famous cafe [ID] and enters a tournament against the likes of Infiltration, Poonko and Laugh. It’s a great read and I recommend you guys have a look:

http://forum.ozhadou.net/index.php?topic=6261.30

My favourite part was this part:

“So even though South Korea has the most amazing broadband network (it seriously does – fuck 3G, how does national wide wifi sound??)”

..Wow!

Here’s a small excerpt as well:

“The next team we went up against was Worldclass (Poongko/Zerstin). This time my teammate went first against Zerstin’s Honda, who took my teammate out. Needless to say, I was pretty pumped to play against Poongko. Some highlights I remember: managed to get his Seth into the corner and kept him there, getting me the first round which hyped up the crowd quite a bit. The second round ended up being very close, with both of us around 15-20% life. I remember getting him knocked down into the corner again and I should have just kept my space and held back a bit, because I went in on his wakeup and it didn’t work, so he took the 2nd round. The 3rd round? I got bodied, and it was horrible lol. Please refer to one of the Poongko video’s out there on opponents being rush-pounded with Seth mixups, getting dizzied and so forth for a similar experience to the one I had.”

Big props to Patrick for a entertaining and very informative read.

And the second part of the post is about a Viewtiful Joe combo video made by Iso and CPS2!

CPS2 used to help me so much on the Ozhadou blog, and it’s great to see that he’s been putting his time after stepping down from the team to great use. I’ve always loved Viewtiful Joe, and maybe I might think about dropping Ammie for Joe now.

Great work guys.

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Melbourne FG Scene Primer

Posted on April 21, 2011 by muttonhead

I was just at the BAM meeting yesterday with the rest of the CW staff. There were a lot of good ideas floating around, and one of them was an idea that Ali and I have been thinking about for a while.

Berzerk mentioned that it is very hard for newcomers coming into the scene to find out about things in the community. What tournament is what, who is who, where do you go for all this information. All that information is not easily available in one place.

Ali has been thinking of doing an FAQ for Shadowloo, and I have been thinking of doing a primer for the Melbourne scene. Another idea I I had was to do was to do a player flowchart, with Toxy at the top, and with relationship arrows flying around. But that idea is something I’ll try to do later.

But after that meeting I had a lot of juice going through my head. It was in my head when I showered in the morning, I was thinking of a party boy analogy for Hoppa when I was playing at Bluehouse at lunch.

So finally I vomited everything out onto a word document and wrote out my primer for the Melbourne FG scene.

Again, hopefully this will be useful for new players, and can perhaps be used as a resource on sites like Shadowloo.com.

I actually really enjoyed writing the players sections. Loki was mentioning the awesome player profiles that Iplaywinner did for the NCR8 stream, and they were definitely my main inspiration for the tone/humour I was aiming for.

Click on the images to see all 30 godlike player profiles from Iplaywinner!

I will talk to Ali, about perhaps writing the full series of player profiles, with stats and quotes etc for later use in Shadowloo Showdown and BAM, but in the mean time I would like to get some feedback on my primer. What do you guys think?

Did I miss some crucial information? Should I cut some parts out? Any feedback would be much appreciated.

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For dear old THK

Posted on April 18, 2011 by muttonhead

I first saw these videos on Combovid.com.

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Don’t be a Scrub Podcast Episode 12: Bosslogic

Posted on April 17, 2011 by muttonhead

Hi guys! Spider Muttons Productions © 2010 are back with the latest episode of the DBAS Podcast.

Our guest this week is the world-famous graphic artist and my very good friend, Bosslogic! He’s one of the principal members (brothers) of the Shadowloo team, and his graphic skills have played a massive role in catapulting Shadowloo to where they are now.

He’s probably the most active graphic artist in the world out there right now when it comes to the Street Fighter scene, releasing wave after wave of gorgeous Street Fighter graphics that have hit the front pages of every community site out there like SRK and Iplaywinner. He’s  produced beautiful trailers and videos for Shadowloo as well as for illustrious tournaments like Revelations and CEO 2011.

He’s created graphics for top players and sites such as Tokido, Gamerbee, the DMG guys like Inthul and PR Rog, Choco Blanka, Cross Counter, Iplaywinner, the PeacefulJay stream, The Vesper Arcade, The Traveling Circus just to name a few.

Additionally, he’s found the time to be a top player in SSF4 in Melbourne! He plays a tenacious, standing-roundhousin’ Bison under the name of Just-S or Subject 64432B.

He’s always willing to help out the community, and has been especially helpful to me over the years.

If you’re interested in his services or just want to talk to him, you can visit his deviant art page at: http://bosslogic.deviantart.com/

Email him at dabossproductions@gmail.com, or his twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/Bosslogic

Or check out his site at http://www.dabosslogic.com/

Also, check out his interview with DMG.

Big thanks to Dave/Kode for doing this interview with us! We go over a lot of topics like the Melbourne scene, yummymatches, Shadowloo Showdown, Bison, zombies and Nigella Lawson. Hope you enjoy the interview!

Don’t be a Scrub Podcast Episode 12: Bosslogic

DBAS Podcast Ep. 12 96 kb/s version

(Right click and “save as” to download)

Don’t be a Scrub Podcast Episode 12: Bosslogic

Spidercarnage: Hello everyone, today we’re at the old Shadowloo headquarters. Today we have a very special  guest that we’ve been chasing for almost a fortnight? Three weeks now?

Muttonhead: It’s been longer than man. It’s been a month.

S: Yeah it’s been about a month. The man who’s constantly busy, but super well-known. And he’s not just an artist, he’s actually a really good Street Fighter player. And I am talking about Bosslogic. Welcome.

Bosslogic: Hey guys, how ya doing.

1-      M: How come I call you Dave, and your real name is Kode?

B: Because…the reason why people call me Dave instead of Kode is ‘cause when I was in school, the teacher couldn’t- for some reason pronounce Kode. So she gave the name David for the first day, and it’s just stuck.

M: Okay, okay. But isn’t it cool that you’re into digital stuff and code and video stuff and art-graphic design and your first name is Kode right? And since it starts with a K, that means you have to play Mortal Kombat?

B:…No! Continue reading →

Posted in Don't be a Scrub Podcast, Interviews, Ultra SFIV, UMVC3 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

The X Report- Episode 5

Posted on April 14, 2011 by muttonhead

Ali and Pyro “Hung and Handsome” ZeroX are back with the newest episode of The X Report.

The show has really come a long way from the first episode, and it’s very cool to see all the feedback being taken on board and more and more things being added to each new episode. The new graphics and stats and video inserts all look awesome. Even though Pyro maybe shouldn’t have flashed the notes, I think it’s great. It shows that the guys are putting an effort to script the conversation, thus leading to a lot less pauses and umms and uhhs.

It kind of reminds me how when Spider and I started out with our show…our format was all over the place. But I think we slowly made progress and once the format was solidified, things would move a lot smoothly after that.

Keep up the good work guys!

Interviews:

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Medicine for the soul

Posted on April 10, 2011 by muttonhead

When I’m feeling down or I’m feeling salty…when I feel that I can’t suck any harder at this game called Marvel vs. Capcom 3…

Mike Ross makes it better.

The only thing that can comfort the salt is more salt...

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Getting BUTTERED at CCH

Posted on April 10, 2011 by muttonhead

Updated with Burnout’s new video:

I had to work unexpectedly on Friday…so I had to run home really quick after and haul some major ass to get there in time to grab the key for CCH.

Thanks to Melbourne’s wonderful train system, I had to wait nearly forty plus minutes for a train. A lot of  the trains that were delayed that day then chose to skip West Richmond in order to get back on schedule. So a twenty minute journey became a fifty minute journey. And I was really sweating it as the clock ticked closer and closer to 5:50. (The library closes at six.)

The train came at 5:50, I ran back from the street where I was trying to hail a cab and  squeezed onto the train. I got out at Collingwood and sprinted down from the platform with my Xbox and stick banging around on my back, really busting a lung to get there…only to spy Burnout already calmly waiting there with his video setup.

Doh. I should have just got his number and called him to pick up the key instead of stressing myself out. Oh well, in any case I got there at  around 5:59, panting and sweating much to the amusement of the library staff.

But it was worth it.

Because the Shadowloo guys premiered another Shadowloo Showdown trailer and boy, was it buttery.

Everyone watching got so excited, and there was a special hidden secret Melbourne-exclusive video at the end of it that was incredibly hilarious too! MAJOR props to Shadowloo for liasing with with the players, and Bosslogic for making maybe his best video yet.

The funny thing is Dave has been teaching me video skills for work. So I sit there and look the video that I made and I might feel myself a little bit. I think to myself; hey maybe I actually know how to make videos now.

Then I watch the trailer Dave made and I’m reminded; now That is some Video Editing. Holy shit.

But probably the best thing about the night was Nick’s reaction to the Third Strike reveals. Poor Nick loves Third Strike so much and must probably detest how SF4 has pretty much killed the scene for the game.

But his mind was completely blown watching the trailer and he seemed almost on the verge of tears! It was awesome.

Check it out here: (Nick is the blonde dude second from the right)

Continue reading →

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Iplaywinner- From Fan to Fanatic

Posted on April 1, 2011 by muttonhead

I”ve always enjoyed reading thoughtful writing about the competitive gaming scene, and Iplaywinner has put up quite a few gems in the past, several which I’ve highlighted on this site as well.

This article is no different, written by Trevor “Scan” Scanlon of GLHF.tv, and offers great insight into other competitive gaming scenes as he details his journey into fighting games.

I personally feel that I have a very narrow-minded scope when it comes to competitive gaming; I only really care about fighting games, and know next to nothing about other scenes like Starcraft and FPS games. So it’s refreshing to read something by someone who has experience with other games as well as the fighting games that I love.

I think by comparison the fighting scene is really small compared to juggernauts like Starcraft, so I think we probably have a lot to learn from the other games in terms of expanding our scene, changing perceptions about it, making tournaments/sponsorships/leagues commercially viable and most importantly- to make sure our scene doesn’t ebb away again like it did in the early noughties-late nineties.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

“While my casting passion certainly lies with Starcraft 2, my gameplay passion lies with fighting games.  Super Street Fighter 4 is one of my favorite, if not my overall favorite, fighting games of all time. Every chance I would get I would be watching a stream by iPlayWinner or LevelUp, and would cancel all of my plans the weekend of Evo or Devastation.  The fighting game scene was just so drastically different than what I was used to with games like Starcraft 2; both have their own tempos, their own energies that compliment each other but at the same time have different pacing.  Fighting games are games of the moment, where things happen at fast speeds and a game can be decided with the timing of a single button press.  Starcraft 2 is more like spectating a hockey or soccer match; there will be small skirmishes throughout, but the deciding plays only come after calculated moments that take a deal of preparation, but turn out no less exciting and energy driven.

I found both of these energies addicting in their own ways.  After being a spectator to these fighting matches for so long, I received word in January of 2011 that I would be moving away from my east coast home.

To Los Angeles.  To the last great stronghold of fighting games.”

If you like what you read, please go to Iplaywinner to read the whole thing. And I hope more people start writing about their experiences in the fighting game scene as well. I enjoy reading everything.

On a side note, in remembrance of one of the finest April Fool’s Day shenanigan in history:

edit: I almost forgot this awesome article by Combovid.com.

Go check it out:

Shoto Hitbox Case Study

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Losing the Ryu mirror

Posted on March 29, 2011 by muttonhead

It has been a hectic week of Street Fighter in Melbourne.

We had the Galactic Circus AE ranbat on Thursday, which Toxy won, and the Deakin meetup on Saturday where some big news was announced.

It has been a funny week for me, improvement wise.

I’ve been playing a lot of Street Fighter at the arcades, and putting a lot of training room time in Marvel. That’s my weird balancing between the two games right now, given my more limited free time.

The good thing about the latter is that I have finally been able to get down She-Hulk’s BnBs. It took me all of four weeks of practising to actually get it down on a semi-consistent level, so that tells you a lot about my natural execution talent.

That means I’ve been able to drop Wolverine, (a character I play out of necessity, not because I want to) for She-Hulk, one of the characters I have been intending to play since the game has dropped.

Or at least since I heard UltraDavid talk about her on the Wakeup SRK podcast.

So I now have two-thirds of my intended team; She-Hulk and Ammy. I just need to find someone to replace Sentinel, and I should have my full team ready to go. At the moment I find myself having a lot of difficulties on defense against characters with fast normals and rushdown like X-23 when I’m playing She-Hulk, and to lesser extent, Ammy.

I guess what that means is that I will eventually switch out Sentinel for a defensive assist. And right now the one that looks the best is the Tron assist. But that would mean I would be playing the exact same team as Justin Wong!

Which is good in one way, because I can learn a lot by watching him, and bad in another way in that my buddies will be able to bag on me for being a Justin Wong clone. But oh well. That’s the fun of a new game; trying new things and experimenting. We’ll see who my third ends up being.

Thursday at GC 17/03/11

I made it a point to attend this ranbat because the previous one had a pretty low turnout of 28 players. Not sure whether it was tournament overload or Marvel coming out that affected the attendance.

Now out of all the ranbats/events in Melbourne, the GC one probably depends the most on its attendance for it continued survival. Chris has been doing a fantastic job talking to his superiors and getting the needed changes for our ranbats.

Such as: changing the layouts from 2 player cabs to single player cabs, lowering the height of the machines, getting chairs. And maybe even getting more cabs in the future.

Things like that that make tournaments that much more viable, but are understandably hard to push through in a corporate setting. So big thanks to Chris! Our Melbourne community is really blessed to have so many members stepping up to take big roles in the scene like Chris. Continue reading →

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Don’t be a Scrub Podcast Episode 11: TTC ToXY

Posted on March 22, 2011 by muttonhead

“Normally, you have a chance to catch up with some hard work. See, luckily most talented people are lazy. Usually.

But when they’re naturally talented…and hard working? Then that’s when it becomes so, so, so hard.”

Jeff, one of the 5 Gods of Bluehouse

Hi everyone! The interview that Spider Muttons Productions © 2010 have been prepping for all this time is finally completed.

See, almost a year ago, Igor and I decided to start an interview series. And obviously, we had to interview the best player in Melbourne; Toxy.

But we decided that being neophyte interviewers, and Toxy being generally a reserved kind of guy, that we should slowly work our way up to him, and do some “easier” interviews like Heavy Weapons or Somniac to polish our skills and our format before we tackled the biggest gun in Melbourne.

So you could say every single DBAS podcast has been all leading up to this.

So I’m very pleased to introduce our guest for this episode: TTC ToXY!

ToXY is Melbourne’s best fighting game player, and became known internationally in the fighting game scene as an X-Men vs. Street Fighter legend, even travelling to EVO for the game. He is a pioneer of many versus games innovations and combo videos, and his deadly Akuma has also been dominating the Melbourne fighting game scene for years. We sit down with him and ask him about all things fighting game related, and how the versus games king of Australia is feeling Marvel vs. Capcom 3.

Toxy is not one to crave the limelight, so thank you very much Toxy for agreeing to this interview. Thanks to Bosslogic for another great banner, and our intro for the interview also features Melbourne Chun player Spoony! (My good buddy and frame data/technical info bible.)

Don’t be a Scrub Podcast Episode 11: TTC ToXY

DBAS Podcast Ep. 11 96 kb/s version

(Right click and “save as” to download)

Spoony at Box Hill. By Shadowloo.

DBAS Ep. 11 Intro featuring Spoony

Spidercarnage: Hello everyone, this is episode 11 of the Don’t be a Scrub Podcast. My name is Spidercarnage aka Verbosemute on Xbox Live. My interviewing partner is Mutton, [muttonhead]01 on PSN and Xbox.

Mutton: Yeah! Heh.

Sp: And today to intro the Toxy interview, we have a special guest for the interview, it’s Spoony. Hello Spoony.

S: Hey! Spoonygosling.

M: Spoonygosling on Xbox.

S: Ah whatever. It’s something. Spoony’s so much easier. What the hell does the last bit mean anyway?

Sp: It doesn’t mean anything. That’s the point.

M: What does Spoony mean? Is it a sexual position? Continue reading →

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Dave gets interviewed! And Shadowloo Showdown raises the hype bar even higher!

Posted on March 21, 2011 by muttonhead

Sorry I’m late in posting this article, but I’ve been very busy. Working on a new DBAS interview as we speak. But this can wait no longer.

Bosslogic gets interviewed by DMG!

(Damn, DMG scooped us! Nah just kidding, awesome work guys.)

So check that out, as well as Shadowloo’s HYPE new guest reveal video of Shadowloo Showdown 2K11. It blew us all away at the Deakin premiere!

GET HYPE!

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Codes of Honor

Posted on March 19, 2011 by muttonhead

I really, really enjoyed this. The imagination…and the loneliness.

Subscribe to ArcadeHustla’s Youtube channel here.

I first saw this video on Iplaywinner.

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They’re just typical…NERDS!

Posted on March 16, 2011 by muttonhead

I was lingering on Lygon Street one day with my friends.

I was having a conversation with one particular guy, who shall remain nameless.

Somehow or rather, I ended up talking about the diverse characters that you find in the competitive fighting game scene. (Boy, I never learn my lesson.)

“I dunno,” said my friend.

“That day at the tournament,” (He had inexplicably shown up to BAM with a few of my other friends).

“I was looking around,” he continued. “And to me…they all just seem like typical…NERDS!”

Inside, I was offended. But I chose not to show it, and didn’t say anything. (After all, I’m pretty sure all my other friends agreed with him.)

What makes us “nerds” to the every day man?

Take this guy for example. Continue reading →

Posted in Melbourne, Ultra SFIV, UMVC3 | Tagged , , , | 9 Comments

The X Report Episode 2

Posted on March 15, 2011 by muttonhead

EXC355UM is back with the second episode of the X Report!

The show keeps getting better, and they seem to be taking a lot of the feedback and suggestions on board. So please go to Shadowloo.com and leave a comment if you have something to say.

The major addition to the show is a new dashing and handsome co-host: Pyro!

Unfortunately he cut his hair! I was kinda hoping he’d grow it out…

Pyro being dreamy...

Posted in Melbourne, Ultra SFIV, UMVC3 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Lunchtime at Bluehouse

Posted on March 10, 2011 by muttonhead

So far my “training regime” of scarfing a bite at the nearby Nando’s everyday and scurrying off to Bluehouse for half an hour of street fighter delight on my lunch break has been fairly fruitful.

I fimble less and less on the arcade setups, and my pangs of nervousness every time “A New Challenger has entered the ring!” flashes across the screen have slowly diminished every passing day.

I play all kinds of people and characters, which is definitely good for my game as I believe I have not been exposed to a diverse array of playstyles and characters, like you would if you went to the arcade every day.

I think I get less mindfucked whenever I get hit by something random, and I’m also working hard on improving my fireball and anti-air game every day.

Slowly, I’m working towards actually having a good uppercut one day.

I’m grateful for having the chance to play at Bluehouse every day, because I don’t really have much time to play once I get home!

I’m sure everyone who works feels the same way. I can’t really spend the whole day in training room like I used to (when my missus is out), the most I can put in when I get home is a few hours every few days or so.

Not to mention I have to practice a new game; Marvel!

I’ll be honest and say when I’m practicing Marvel at home and see Heavy Weapons and Zerokill in an SSFIV endless battle, I’m sorely tempted to join in. I’m pretty sure it is because of the “I feel more comfortable with Super because I actually know how to play the game more” factor that makes me feel like putting down Marvel for Super a lot of the time.

But even though I still feel very much out of my element when I play Marvel, the fun of learning a new game gives me the motivation to keep at it. I still think playing two games should not be a problem for most people.

But back to Bluehouse. Continue reading →

Posted in Melbourne, Ultra SFIV | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments