Picking up Tokido

Posted on December 8, 2010 by muttonhead

I shaved my head on Tuesday, feeling my hair was getting a little shaggy. My lovely girlfriend upon seeing it promptly said, “So you got a haircut just for some Japanese #%@#?”

So today I woke up at 6 to get ready to go the airport to pick up Tokido with Ali, Igor and the guys.

My girlfriend who was still half-asleep mumbled “Never seen you wake up so early for anything else before…” as I tried to sneak out.

I get there around 730 am and meet up with Igor, Ali, Sol, and Toxy.

I was a little disappointed to see that we didn’t have a big ass “Welcome Tokido” sign ready like the Socal guys did for Sako. And the guys were worrying a little about Tokido taking a while to come out. I wasn’t sweating it though. This is Melbourne Airport. You always take an hour to get through customs. At least I always do. (Because I always get nabbed for “random inspections”)

Mr. Murderface is actually one of the first few people from his flight out through the doors. He looks a little tired, but it’s definitely him. He gives a big cheery wave, and the first thing through my head is how small he is. He actually is pretty normal sized for an Asian guy; it’s just that maybe after watching him being larger than life on so many streams I was expecting him to be a dude of a much bigger stature. But you know what, his big personality more than makes up for it!

We introduce ourselves, and he is really friendly, addressing us all in English. Initially I felt really nervous, but as we headed towards the car park I surprised myself by settling into stride beside him and asking him how his flight was. He tells me he got on the plane at 10 am, so it’s been a damn near 24 hour flight!

I tell him I’m impressed with his energy and he kind of grins and nods his head happily. He does this a lot!

I get into Igor’s car to head over to Ali’s house for a while before we check Tokido into his hotel. We actually take quite a while to get to his place, and when we get there Tokido’s already making himself comfortable. The TEC guys have set up the living room with tables in the middle with a triple monitor and console setup with couches all around, and three baskets of cookies and chips at the side.

Toxy is talking animatedly to Tokido; apparently Tokido remembered his name Toxy on the car ride to Ali’s!

Tokido doesn’t feel like playing casuals just yet, so I ask Sol to body me while I play half-distracted by the stuff Tokido is saying to Ali and Toxy on the couch.

He talks about a ton of interesting things; he says after entering as “Iceman” and “Murderface” he wants to enter as “Crown”. He tells us his full real name. He talks about SCR, and how he planned his Shun Goku Satsu beforehand. He says he was taking off his jacket right beforehand meaning to do it, and wanted to take his jacket off completely the whole event but it was too cold!

He said he did Rock Paper Scissors with Daigo before their match because he wanted to play alternate characters: Fei Long.

He said Daigo told him to watch out for two players in Australia: Toxy and Humanbomb. Major butter for Toxy. He talked about his work, and him and Igor even went over his chemical engineering papers. He talked about the business model of arcades in Japan being broken, and he talked about wanting to take advantage of the current big boom in gaming and really play for one or two years before he decides to do something else.

He talked about Momochi wanting to play Ken over Akuma because he liked relying on a strong ground game rather than mixups. He talked about KSK’s arcade closing down, and the new console centred lan centre that will be opening up. He talked about Yun and Yang and Shin Akuma and Evil Ryu.

It was just really cool talking to Tokido live in the flesh. When I saw Daigo, it was a totally different experience because obviously Daigo doesn’t speak English. So to just have an unfettered conversation with the best Akuma in the world was an amazing opportunity. We tried to teach him Melbourne idioms such as “fimble” and he laughed, using his own missed uppercut against Daigo at SCR as an example.

Then it got serious. Tokido started playing. Continue reading →

Posted in Melbourne, Ultra SFIV | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 61 Comments

Hakan AE changes

Posted on December 7, 2010 by muttonhead

The Real Hakan

From http://shoryuken.com/content/super-street-fighter-4-arcade-edition-changes-guile-seth-deejay-hakan-2681/

Hakan-

[Normals]
st.HP’s hurtbox around his arm got smaller, so it’s easier to use as an AA or a poke.
When Oiled, even when normals are input during forward dash he will still slide a little. (<- i need help with this translation)

[Unique Attacks]
Step Low (F+LK) got to be cancelable.

[Specials]
For Oil Shower, the duration of the oil will be stacked now.
The maximum duration will be 30 seconds.
Also, MK/HK/EX versions have 5f less recovery,
and EX version can be canceled into Guard Position (D+3P, aka coward crouch).
Also, Oil Shower will be one of the follow-ups after Oil Slide.
The effect is the same as LK Oil Shower, and he will be in advantage nevertheless.
LP Oil Slide has faster start-up, and can be connected from cr.LP or Step Low.
Oil Dive (including EX), while holding button, can be canceled into Guard Position.

[Others]
Oil Rocket, Oil Dive’s input property is adjusted, so the feeling will be same with that of Zangief’s SPD.

Hakan buffs! The only thing I really wanted for AE Hakan was hit confirmable slide. My hit confirming reactions are pretty bad so I can’t do it off a single cmk. Now that you can hit confirm it, it’ll be much easier to setup his mixups reliably.

Cancellable Oil Dive! Very interesting.

The two things I would like to further clarify is “When Oiled, even when normals are input during forward dash he will still slide a little.” Is that a change to Crisco?

And “Oil Rocket, Oil Dive’s input property is adjusted, so the feeling will be same with that of Zangief’s SPD.” What does that mean? Is Oil Rocket 2 frames now? How can Oil Dive possibly feel like Gief’s SPD?

I’m very, very excited about the changes. And it’s cool to see DeeJay getting buffs too, for poor Igor’s sake.

In fact, there’s so much interesting stuff that I think it’s going to be quite a challenge to test all the new setups without a training room mode!

Posted in Ultra SFIV | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Don’t be a Scrub Podcast Episode 4: Zan

Posted on December 5, 2010 by muttonhead

Spider Muttons Productions © 2010 is back with the fourth episode of the Don’t be a Scrub Podcast. Continuing on with our community focus, this time we interview Couchwarrior’s Zan. We talk a lot about Couchwarriors, the Melbourne community, and fighting games in general.

Onyxx and Zan at CW Final Round

This time we decided to do the interview with both Igor and I at the same time. We started off slow, but towards the end I feel the three person dynamic really contributed to what felt a lot more like a real conversation rather than a straight question and answer segment.

Big thanks to Zan for taking the time to do this interview with us! And thanks to Dave/Bosslogic for another fantastic banner, and Spoony for being a big help with coming up with Zan-centric questions.

This time our outro features the song “Karma” by the Singaporean band the Sexies.

Featuring my brother David Siow on the bass guitar.

The Sexies on Reverbnation

The Sexies Myspace

This interview was conducted at Couchwarriors Final Round, 16/11/2010

Don’t be a Scrub Podcast Episode 4: Zan

(To download, right click and “Save As”)

DBAS Podcast Ep. 4 96 kb/s version

Spider Carnage/Igor: Hi everyone. We’re here at the last Couchwarriors for the year, for 2010 that is.  Today we’re going to be interviewing one of the main Couchwarrior organisers. And it’s Zan. So Mutton’s going to be doing the interview. Take it away.

1. Muttonhead: Hi Zan. How long have you been playing fighting games and games in general?

Zan: Games in general all my life. I think most people here would say that. And fighting games since I’ve sort of moved to Melbourne for Uni.

Started out a little kid on the console, on the Nintendo and then switched to, you know during my teens, mostly shooters and stuff on PC like shooters back as a kid. And when I moved down here I was more… yeah let’s try something different. And fighters it was. And it pretty much stuck. Continue reading →

Posted in Don't be a Scrub Podcast, Interviews, Melbourne, Ultra SFIV | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

CCH 12/11/10 Recap or How I found out about Mago!

Posted on December 1, 2010 by muttonhead

I held off posting this post earlier on because obviously I didn’t want to spoil the big news 😛

It’s been a rare week in which I have had plenty of chances to play offline Street Fighter. First at Spoony’s house on Monday, then on CCH on Friday.

I’m gonna sound like a bitter man here but honestly the more I play offline, the more I can’t bring myself to play online. Everything is just more fluid offline. All the things I depend on for my Ryu game; the counterhits, the 1-frame links, they all work so much more reliably offline. There’s also the added bonus of conditioning myself to execute all the technical or difficult stuff consistently.

So anyone out there in Melbourne still not going to the meetups, please go to http://www.ozhadou.net/forum/viewforum.php?f=12 to find a meetup near you.

Now right before this, Heavy Weapons wrote in the CCH thread that there was going to be a big news announcement at CCH. He put it up in huge red letters, and everyone was quizzical. I for one was really curious.

Now being the nosy ass I am, I started bugging Dave and the Shadowloo guys about what it could be. They were all being coy while at the same time dropping hints here and there how huge it would be.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I headed to the TEC house under the guise of getting some training in, but my primary goal was to find out the truth!

Continue reading →

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My to do list

Posted on November 30, 2010 by muttonhead

Time for another short list of things to do in training mode.

1- Learn how to DP crossup Psycho Crushers from Bison.

2- Learn to whiff punish the following moves:

Akuma chk (-9 on block but big pushback) and fhk (2nd hit whiffs on Ryu)

Ken chk (-6 on block but big pushback)

Gen’s smk (cannot block this, he gets free hands) and chk

Guile’s backfist (whiffs on crouching)

Juri’s cmk

Bison shk

Boxer chk

Dee Jay cmk

Rose cmp

This is a large hole in my game. Whiff punishing. I realise I am very lousy at making my opponent whiff pokes. I tend to crouch block a lot, and do not dance at the right ranges. I tend to have a “block it” mentality but a lot of these moves are quite safe unless you make them whiff. I realise this footsie skill is very hard to learn however, and is what separates top player footsies from the scrubs like me.

3- Learn how to avoid Gen’s vertical wall dive where he comes down on top of your head.

4- Practice FA dash through, plink chp srk on all shotos cmk fireball. I never do this.

5- Practice using smk if I want to use fireball fadc combos midscreen.

6- Repractice dash/walk towards meaties with clk+clp, clp+chk option select sweep after successful DP or tatsu ender. Keep getting stuffed by mashed shorts because of bad timing.

7- Practice FA dash towards punish instead of holding the FA to try and get a crumble for moves like Hazanshu, Blanka’s chp, Balrog’s shk.

8- Practice delayed safe jump option select sweep on the appropriate characters like Guile.

9- Practice recognising the different Fei rekkas and punishes.

10- Practice SRK FADC off a single counterhit cmp.

That should do it for now, time for some grinding.

 

Posted in Ultra SFIV | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Plinking failure

Posted on November 28, 2010 by muttonhead

I’ve always struggled with the forward hp, chp, srk combo since vanilla days.

I put in a disproportionate amount of time practising that combo, and yet I am still unable to hit it consistently enough to use it comfortably in tournaments. Which is really disheartening.

I’ve even developed a bit of a complex; choosing to learn character specific solar plexus strike combos such as fhp cmp cmp cmk tatsu for Chun and Blanka and fhp cmp chp for Sim and Sagat all of which you can find in Mr Caesar’s delightful solar plexus centric post.

These combos are all very useful to learn because they do more damage and stun than the universal fhp chp srk combo which works on everyone. But honestly, the real reason I’ve been putting a lot more effort recently to practice these character specific solar plexus combos is because I simply do not have faith in my fhp chp srk.

And every Ryu player knows that if you screw up the fhp chp srk combo, you’re gonna eat big damage. Doing fhp cmp cmp cmk tatsu and fhp cmp chp tatsu simply feel a bit more hit confirmable and safe to me.

So I was tinkering in training room today as per usual and getting frustrated because I can now hit fhp cmp cmp cmk tatsu and fhp cmp chp tatsu way more consistently than I can fhp chp srk! Urgh. This doesn’t make sense.

But I figured out what I was doing wrong. It wasn’t that my consistency with the link timing, it’s actually my consistency with the plink itself. I simply switched my plink from hp~mplp (double plink) back to hp~mp, and my consistency shot through the roof.

Now I have been practising the hp~mplp plink a TON the last few months specifically for fhp chp srk. But even after hours of practice, I still can’t do it consistently.

And I figured out why.

I use hp~mp for every hp plink in my BnB combos. Clk clp chp tatsu. Cmp chp tatsu. Even cmk fb fadc chp lk tatsu dp. I simply get to use that plink way more in my matches whereas I only ever whip out my hp~mplp when I want to go for fhp chp srk.

Therein lies my mistake. If I wanted to use hp~mplp, I should have worked it into every other combo I use. Over the months I have been gaining a lot of match confidence in my hp~mp but my hp~mplp still remains very much a training room plink.

I think I’ve just wasted a few months of training room time. While I know the hp~mplp double plink is what all the best Ryus use for fhp chp srk, I think I’ll go back to hp~mp for now. The huge jump in consistency is something I can’t ignore.

Maybe one day if I decide to implement hp~mplp into all my other combos, and then spend a couple months reworking my muscle memory, then I might go back to it.

So my advice for any other player struggling with your execution: if you decide to learn a specific plink for a combo, don’t just use it for that one combo; use it for everything else you do!

Don’t end up wasting your time like I did.

Posted in Ultra SFIV | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Don’t be a Scrub Podcast Episode 3: Loki

Posted on November 18, 2010 by muttonhead

Spider Muttons Productions © 2010 are back with the third episode of the Don’t be a Scrub Podcast. This time we’ve decided to focus more on the community side of things, and who better to interview than the president of Couchwarriors himself, Loki!

Loki at AVcon. From Shadowloo.

This man and by extension, Couchwarriors, has done so much for the Melbourne community. I personally am very grateful for the time he has put into organising the CW ranbats that I’ve enjoyed so much throughout the year. We hope that this and the next interview will give everybody a greater understanding of the creation and history of Couchwarriors.

This time the interview was done by Spidercarnage/Igor at Chris’ house on 01/11/10. Thank you Loki for taking the time to do this interview with us and hope you guys enjoy it!

P.S. Special thanks to Syntax_AU who taught me how to use global hotkeys in VLC, and improving my transcribing speed by 200%. Thanks man!

Don’t be a Scrub Podcast Episode 3: Loki

(To download, right click and “Save As”)

DBAS Podcast Ep. 3 96 kb/s version

Spider/Igor: Hi everyone, we’re actually at Chris’s place, not Chris’s Club House today. And this is gonna be interview number three with Loki. So welcome.

Loki: Thanks.

1. How did you get into Street Fighter?

Well I grew up in a country town, Shepparton. So I didn’t have a lot of chances to play [SF] growing up. Occasionally there would be like an old Street Fighter II cabinet, just whatever version, like Hyper Fighting, Championship version, whatever was there. And I played a little bit of that, I played a little bit of X-men vs. Street Fighter as a kid, but there was absolutely no scene. There was almost no one even playing the game ever when I came in[to the arcade].

It wasn’t something I could get into until later. It wasn’t actually until I moved to Melbourne for Uni, that I started to play stuff. I met Zan at college, and he was playing Guilty Gear at the time. He got into Guilty Gear through Batasan, Sat and those guys. And I started playing at the arcade there at Therapy at Latrobe and they had a 3rd Strike cabinet.

Batasan's CW profile pic!

And I started playing 3rd Strike there and I started playing Akuma. I thought; I like the look of him. But…I’m still shit with Akuma; I was never good with him. And eventually I changed over to Dudley, and that’s when I really started to like the game, and I started to get…I got a home version of it and I started inviting people around and we started events.

Pretty much the same as we’re doing here [at Couchwarriors] but at our house that Zan and I were both living in at the time. And that over time gradually evolved into Couchwarriors.

2. I often see you play 3S at CW. Which game do you prefer to play SSF4 or 3S?

It’s hard to… (Sighs). 3rd Strike is such a broken game but it’s so fun. I think I’ll always have a soft spot for 3rd Strike just because I got into it…it was my first relatively competitive game. I was never fantastic at it, but I always really enjoyed [it].

It’s always kind of a shame that I got into it when most people weren’t really playing it anymore. The scene was already kind of dying.

I dunno, I think in general I like SF4 better. Now. Nick will hate me for saying that but… if there was a scene still playing 3rd Strike I would still be playing 3rd Strike too.

And who did you use in 3rd Strike, predominately.

Most of the time I was playing Dudley. I’ve changed to Chun now actually. I’m tier whoring now.

Continue reading →

Posted in Don't be a Scrub Podcast, Interviews, Melbourne, Ultra SFIV | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Life Lessons with Mike Ross Pt.1

Posted on November 17, 2010 by muttonhead

“Through the course of my life, I’ve learnt a hard lesson. When it comes to music, there’s no point in arguing with anyone. Everyone has their own opinions. So just sit there, nod your head,  listen to whatever they have to say, and say…

‘That’s cool.'”

-Mike “The Great Mike Ross” Ross, Canada Cup 2010 stream.

I wish I knew that earlier. If only I had heard from Mike Ross earlier, I could have avoided so many face-flushed, I’mmabouttokillyou arguments in my life.

Now as most people know, Michael Ross is a Street Fighter Master. But he is also a great sage of life’s wisdom. When he opens his mouth, often great pearls of condensed knowledge and wisdom are ejaculated for the world to enjoy.

Being a fervent follower/fanboy of Mike “Mike Ross” Ross, I hope to make this a long running series. Whenever I come across some great wisdom shared by Mike Ross on any stream or Excellent Adventure of Gootecks and Mike Ross, I will be sure to share it here.

And please feel free to leave here any life lessons you might have got from Mike Ross!

Posted in Ultra SFIV | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Mago and Gamerbee and Tokido are coming to Melbourne!

Posted on November 16, 2010 by muttonhead

Shadowloo Showdown, December 11-12th

http://www.shadowloo.com/?p=3237

Updated!: Shadowloo Showdown site with pre-registration, rules and other useful info. Go pre-reg now!

Finally the big reveal! The big news that the Melbourne community has been harbouring since the last CCH. The first tournament ever run by Shadowloo is going to be a hype one, with none other than Mago 2D god, arguably the best SSF4 player in all of Japan, and Taiwan’s champion, Gamerbee! Edit: And now Tokido “Murder Face” is the newest player confirmed to be coming!

Get HYPE!!!!!

And I know there are a few other big names in the works. Keep your eyes peeled, and go visit shadowloo.com!

Important note: Calling everybody from Melbourne, we need all the help and support we can get.

The community will be having weekly fundraising meetups and tournaments. Please visit Ozhadou’s Offline Hook-Ups forum, and I will simply keep this post stickied and update it with the meetups every week.

Chris’s Club House 03/12/10

Deakin Uni 04/12/10

And also, Igor and I will be conducting special episodes of the Don’t be a Scrub Podcast at Shadowloo Showdown, interviewing Mago, Tokido and Gamerbee.

We’re looking for question suggestions from the community. You can visit the thread at Ozhadou, or simply leave a comment on this blog post. Thanks!

Posted in Melbourne, Ultra SFIV | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

Being a Street Fighter couch potato!

Posted on November 16, 2010 by muttonhead

I just want to highlight three SF video series that I’m pretty fond of.

Everyone that knows me probably knows my great love for the Dogface Show. The show done at Socal Regionals was probably every SF fanboy’s ultimate dream, featuring John Choi, Mike Watson and Alex Valle!! I don’t think you can get any more O.G. than that unless Tomo Ohira shows up again.

This is part one of the show, you can catch the whole thing at
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/10709830

The second show I want to highlight is the excellent series done by Zaid Tabani aka Redrapper.

It’s a great look into the inner workings of the Socal scene, and I personally like anything with James Chen in it. Even if he does praise Kobe.

There’s even footage of Oz’s own Humanbomb sparring against Daigo in it!

And the third video I want to highlight is the newest in-game video by none other than Sol-T, who was featured in the first episode of the Don’t be a Scrub Podcast. There’s nothing like some nasty actual in-game beatdown. And you know what? My matches with Sol all go exactly like that, with me on the receiving end.

Check out his insane execution here:

Time for some not so happy words.

When I was writing this post, I was feeling enthusiastic about sharing these videos that I really enjoyed. Then I started thinking about the recent content debate in the community. I’m very new to this web content business, and I want to have a clear sense of ethics with whatever I do here.

Sure, I don’t make any money from my site, but other people do. And they depend on the view numbers for their revenue. Have I gone ahead and linked to every source that I’ve embedded a video from? Yes I have, but if people view content on my site, what’s the incentive for them to actually click back to the source? Am I contributing to the problem here?

I like SRK’s model of putting up excerpts from articles and piqueing your interest. If you want to read the whole thing, you probably will click on the link to the source site. But what about videos?

What’s the clearcut solution here? Should I screencap videos and make the image link to the source site? Doing that will take much more time than just typing the youtube address in my blog post. But maybe it’s time that I should be taking.

I’m confused about the right thing to do here. Sure everybody else simply embeds videos and puts a link back. But I don’t think “everybody else does it” is a valid reason in itself.

Anybody has any thoughts?

Posted in Ultra SFIV | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Final Round Couchwarriors 2010 Recap

Posted on November 13, 2010 by muttonhead

I’ve put off writing this recap for a while for two reasons. The first reason is that while I was very disappointed and salty with my results, time passing by and a lot more training has washed away most of my saltiness.

So maybe I must be SALTY to write!!!

And the second reason is that I actually missed almost all of the top 8 because Igor and I were conducting Zan’s interview in the back. So I don’t have too much to say about the last CW except my own losses.

Melbourne CW  Final Round results 6/11/2010

I have a few casuals on the day, but actually don’t get to play too much. With the turnout that CW has been getting for SSF4, once the tournament starts it’s actually pretty hard to get some casuals in.

I did get a chance to sit down and play other games though.

I’ve never played Third Strike before. I’ve always wanted to learn the game, and perhaps I will once Third Strike: Online Edition comes out on PS3.

But I got Tian to sit me down and teach some Third Strike. I sit down and pick Ryu and SA1. He sits down and picks…Gill.

…..

The boss character. He proceeds to near double perfect me with some lame corner juggle combo, chortling like a madman all the time. Gee, thanks for the Third Strike lesson THK. Continue reading →

Posted in Melbourne, Ultra SFIV | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

It’s a sad day for the community…

Posted on November 11, 2010 by muttonhead

Maj from sonichurricane and combovid.com is quitting.

You can read his post here at http://sonichurricane.com/?p=5222

“I’m sorry. I tried everything i could think of, overextending myself to ridiculous extremes in the process; and i’m no closer to my goal of making any of this sustainable.”

I have always been a huge fan of Maj, and he has always been very good to me. When I emailed him about using the “rekka beats paper” as a site header he immediately gave me the go ahead. He was one of the first sites to put up a link to one of my articles as well.

He puts up a ton of hugely insightful material and content, like the Footsies Bible and the amazing SF4 TACV Series. I’ve always been reading his stuff diligently and I even preordered a copy of his Combo DVD. He’s been an inspiration for me as a budding SF writer, and his technical strategy articles have always been the benchmark of what I want to achieve one day.

It’s a fucking sad day for the community.

So please, if you’ve been a fan of Maj, please go to his site one last time and leave some words of appreciation. Let the man know that you’ve enjoyed his work. We’re all Street Fighter consumers and fanboys, but have we ever considered the time that people put into producing content?

Even if Maj is leaving us, he’s left me with one last great insight. A look into the inner workings between the “view wars” of the community sites out there like eventhubs and srk.com.

I feel guilty now for having viewed so many embedded videos and articles and not clicked back to the original site. I feel guilty of helping damage the community I love so much.

Not to toot my own horn, but I’ve always had the intent of keeping the content on my site mainly of my own authorship. There wasn’t any concrete reason, just a whim. But I’ve also fallen guilty to the simple embed function.

From now on, I will approach things with a much firmer sense of ethics in my head.

Thank you Maj.

Update!: Iplaywinner.com have done a podcast interviewing Catalyst_nc from Eventhubs.

Check it out here: http://iplaywinner.com/news/2010/11/13/iplaywinner-podcast-episode-12-catalyst_nc-from-eventhubscom.html if you want to hear the other side of the argument.

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

Footsie Gods part II

Posted on November 9, 2010 by muttonhead

Previously in Footsie Gods part 1 we had my favourite Ryu player, John Choi vs. Daigo.

Now we have my favourite match of Socal Regionals, Daigo versus the legendary Alex Valle.

Ryu vs. Ryu is the best mirrormatch in the game. Ryu has the tools to counter everything Ryu can do.

Walk back sweep > low forward fireball. Focus absorb dash towards beats low forward. Low forward EX fireball beats Focus absorb dash towards. Walk forward EX fireball beats walk back sweep. Mid-range fireball beats far poke. Ultra beats mid-range fireball.

Every fireball has to be applied with meticulous skill. Every bit of damage has to be earned. No jumping allowed.

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

Monday at Spoony’s

Posted on November 8, 2010 by muttonhead

After being so disappointed at placing last place at the last Couch Warrior Ranbat of the year, I actually feel even more desire to train harder despite the Ranbats not starting up until March.

I couldn’t sleep at all on Saturday night with visions of flash kicks and Zangief 720s floating through my head. I eventually got out of bed and played some 5 am NBA 2K11 to ease my saltiness.

I feel that despite improving in several areas throughout the course of the year, I remain a very poor tournament player. I am mentally weak, lack confidence, and as Mike Ross would say, am prone to cracking.

Most of all, I really lack the skill of adaptation. After eating so many flash kicks from Tai, and Ultras from Internev, I only have myself to blame for taking far too long to change my game accordingly.

I was still thinking about CW on Monday, as I watched the SoCal Regionals stream. I watched Filipino Champ put on a show, and Justin Wong get his revenge on Vangief. I think my favourite part of Socal Regionals was actually the Dogface show featuring Alex Valle, Mike Watson and John Choi. Mike Watson was not afraid to put people on blast!

What happened to Vic’s famous hair though? Hm.

Anyway, Spoony sent me a text message asking whether I was interested in some casuals at his house. Despite my girlfriend looking extremely cranky, I risked her displeasure to go to Spoony’s.

Normally, I wouldn’t want to risk her wrath, but my blood was fiending hard for some Street Fighter. So I headed off to Carlton to Spoony’s.

We had a long enjoyable set that did wonders for the residual saltiness in my system. During our set, Spoony told me some things about his first top 8, and I also learned a fair few new things.

Once thing that I learned from Spoony is when you block Chun Li’s command crossup, you must always block it as a crossup even when it hits from the front. The mixup is that she might land on the other side, and you have to change sides to block her low shorts.

Another thing I learned from Spoony was even more helpful. On a character like Guile, I often don’t safe jump option select him unless I feel he is going to backdash. This is because I originally thought that while my sweep option select catches his backdash, it loses to his flash kick.

When I told Spoony that, he frowned and said; that’s not right. His flash kick starts up in four frames, which is fast enough so that you should be able to do your option select sweep and be able to block.

So we mucked around in training room, (having another person around to test option selects is IMMENSELY helpful) and we discovered that you can do the option select sweep and block the flash kick!

It turned out that I had been doing my option select sweep too early in the option select window in the air, resulting in the sweep coming out and getting flash kicked. I have this habit because I want to err on the side of caution, and do it early. This way if I screw up, most probably the option select won’t come out on hit, especially with dangerous option selects like dragon punch.

We tinkered a bit with the timing and discovered if you do the option select sweep quite late, almost with the timing during the second half of the blockstun of your jump in, the sweep won’t come out when Guile flash kicks. And it still comes out to catch backdash, and doesn’t come out on hit or block!

Fantastic! Obviously, the danger of doing it late is that you have a greater chance of screwing it up and getting unwanted option selects on hit/block. But if this works on 4 frame reversals, perhaps I now will be able to have 100% safe option selects on characters such as Gen, Ibuki, Guile and perhaps Dudley.

Obviously I have to do some more testing, but with those characters I originally thought I can safe jump their reversals and do something to catch their backdash (sweep or tatsu for Ibuki), but their reversals would hit the option selects. So it was more of a 50:50 choice than a true 100% safe option select. If they all can be safe jumped with late option selects like Guile…I’m salivating at this point.

Especially since I struggle with the Guile match, relearning to do my option selects late with these characters will definitely be worth it for that character alone!

Updated my safe jump option select list with the new late safe jump option select timing.

Other than that, I was pleased to see some other things I was specifically working on paying off against Spoony’s Chun.

In one of my last posts, I mentioned that I was practicing buffering super off a cmk just outside of cmk range to catch pokes and walk forwards. I was using the Super Turbo method I mentioned in my post, which is qcf, down + mk, down forward, forward+ hp, and it worked really well.

I must’ve caught Spoony at least a dozen times with that cmk buffer super from near half screen away. It’s definitely going in my arsenal!

If anything I might’ve been a little too eager to hit it, and should’ve have maybe saved it sometimes for the KO.

I also was hitting a lot of my Chun specific combos like forward fierce, low strong, low strong, low forward, tatsu. Monster damage on Chun!

In general I was happy with my play, and I just remember thinking that I need to transfer this level of play into my tournament matches, and not choke every time. I have to say, there’s also nothing like playing offline. Every time I do so, I go home and almost don’t want to play on PSN anymore.

Spoony was also nice enough to play a little Gief and Guile for me to work on my problem matchups. Thanks man. Along with a nice donburi dinner, learning new things and playing the set did wonders for my confidence, and reinvigorated me.

Alright! Time to train harder.

P.S. If you’ve noticed, my site has gone through a bit of a facelift. Big thanks to Just-S/Bosslogic for providing awesome header and background graphics.

If anything, I almost feel that his graphics are too cool for my “being a scrub” site. I almost miss the quirkiness of my old sonichurricane “rekka beats paper” header.

But regardless, thanks very much Dave!

P.S.S. The next two Don’t be a Scrub podcasts will be more community based interviews, with two of the principal guys of Couchwarriors. We’ll have them up as soon as I get my lazy ass to some typing.

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Final Round- Preparing for the last Couchwarriors of 2010.

Posted on November 4, 2010 by muttonhead

I haven’t been posting my usual strategy talk, event recaps, and training progress stuff recently because I have been so busy with the Don’t be a Scrub Podcasts. For that I apologise. (Well, if there’s anyone out there who actually reads my normal stuff.)

I have just finished up the Heavy Weapons transcript; just have to wait for Igor to put the finishing touches on the audio files and it should be good to go.

Transcribing interviews actually takes a surprisingly long period of time. Being a former Arts student, I would’ve thought any kind of word processing would be reasonably easy. But transcribing actually turns out to be a little tedious.

When I’m just writing, normally I have the TV on or some music on to keep the juices flowing and to alleviate boredom. But when you’re transcribing, you need to be constantly listening to the interview and nothing else. I’d type half a sentence, then click on the time bar of my VLC player, and try to rewind it by 5 seconds or so. I’d miss the mark by 30 seconds and be too lazy to click again, and have to listen to the previous sentence before I’d finish up the current one.

I need one of these.

But I shouldn’t be complaining, after all, it is my own lack of an attention span that drags out the process. I actually went around asking people for feedback on the interviews, whether anyone read the transcript or just listened to the audio (Looking for an excuse). A ton of people told me they read the transcript when they’re bored at work, so I guess I have no choice 😛

But in the meantime, I haven’t played any Street Fighter at all in the last week. Which worries me.

I had some personal stuff as well that prevented me from playing, but I really don’t want to go without playing for too long. After all, this blog is called Being a Scrub, and how can I be a scrub if I’m not actually playing? Not to mention I don’t want to go into the last Couch Warriors Ranbat without practicing up first.

The last time I played was at Spoony’s house on a Monday. Disregarding the rest of my game, I was feeling reasonably satisfied with my execution on that day, and my general sharpness. I almost am never satisfied with my execution because I put a lot of time into it, and it is never as consistent as I really want it to be. So feeling confident about it for once was a little bit of a rare occasion.

Fast forward to this week, and I only just picked up the stick two or three days ago. Now, I’m the sort of player who has to work hard for every ounce of my execution; once I stop practicing for a few days I lose almost everything.

So I picked up my stick and did cmp cmp chk. And hit it first time. I smiled a little and did it again. And I hit it next couple of times. Which was a pleasant surprise. After practicing a bit and getting a couple online games in, I felt that my execution was still roughly there. Continue reading →

Posted in Melbourne, Ultra SFIV | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments