Being a Scrub

I have decided to keep a record of my Street Fighter 4 progress and journey. I know a lot of people think investing so much into a fighting game is stupid, but this is strictly for myself.

I started playing back in February 2009, and on pad, and decided to pick up Ryu as my main. Ironically, many people see Ryu as the most boring character in SF4, but in my opinion he is one of the hardest characters to master in the game despite being the “main character”. Additionally, I am aware that a large majority of the fighting game community get irritated at the massive explosion of online Ken and Ryu scrubs.

But why is Ryu so hard to master? Because at the core strength of the character is his ground game, which includes zoning and footsies. This control of horizontal space and limb range is probably the hardest thing to master in Street Fighter, and possessing incredible footsies is the hallmark of OG street fighter legends such as John Choi and Alex Valle. Sometimes such old-school legends do not need to rely on incredible execution and combos, but they simply dominate the other player with pure zoning.

Ed Ma one of the top SoCal players feels that his ground game is insufficient to play Ryu. And look at the Battle Point Ranking in Japan. Daigo is the only Ryu in Japan with over 100k BP, and that’s mainly because, well, he’s Daigo. It is HARD to play Ryu at the top level. You have to play like water, changing your play to accommodate each matchup. So what makes me think that a scrub like me can master Ryu?

For the first few months of playing the game I was struggling with my basic execution on pad, and getting my ass whupped a lot. By everyone. By balding uncles in white tank tops. By little kids.

At the same time, I was losing myself in the fighting game community, the lore and the legends, the comebacks and the history. It fascinated me following the US and Japan professional scene, finding about the Alpha 3 championship back in 1998, Bang the Machine, learning about SoCal personalities such as Gootecks from the Dogface show etc. Watching tournaments, getting hyped about Evolution and Justin Wong vs Daigo, Poongko against Daigo, East Coast versus West Coast. I donated money to “I Got Next” a documentary about the scene by Ian Cofino. I became a fan.

It was around June then my game took a jump. My game knowledge has always far exceeded my actual execution, and because of my obsessive nature I tend to read a ton on my current passion. So knowing about safe jump frames or advanced option select jump ins doesn’t mean shit if you can’t execute properly or have the mental capacity to engage in some basic mind games with your opponent.

Basically, I got a stick. And I switched to Balrog. The combination of the two brought a spike in my motivation to play. Balrog has, very bluntly, very easy execution, and even a scrub like me could pick up his basic combos and ultra set ups.

However, Balrog is a very linear character. He lacks mixups, and he does not even have a crossup. (A jump positioned such that you reverse the direction in which the opponent must block). I found that I could feast on shotos that were the same level of myself with some basic defensive play, and locking my opponent in the corner. Continue reading →