Just taking it slow. Putting in more training room time and moving around boxes in my home instead of taking the time to sit down and write. So no post-BAM recap for now.
But life is good…
Because the Lakers are 1-4!!!
The Lakers have the worst record in the Western Conference.
…
Repeat after me:
The Lakers have the worst record in the Western Conference.
Ah, it tastes so sweet.
Kobe loves Mike Brown
…So, so sweet.
Ah well. I know that it is still early days.
And I am fully aware that there is a distinct possibility that the Lakers will get their act together and win the championship while the media hail it as “the greatest comeback in history.” And then I will have to endure the pain forever.
Many of my friends know that my favourite Ryu player is not any of the current top SFIV Ryu players but actually John Choi aka the Korean Inferno.
The Korean Inferno getting in that..
I still get asked sometimes which Ryu player I like/study. And when I respond with Choi, and not the obvious answer of Daigo- by the far most winning Ryu player in SFIV, I get quizzical eyebrows and weird looks. Almost like, huh. What has Choi done in SFIV?
Well, Choi doesn’t really play much SFIV these days, although he was a real contender back at the start of Vanilla SFIV, and will continue to be really strong without actually playing much due to his incredible fundamentals and the character design of Ryu remaining relatively unchanged throughout the Street Fighter series.
But I still enjoy watching Choi matches the most out of any Ryu player and try to watch every Choi video I can find. I know some people will watch his matches and go, why do you like this guy? He just turtles and throws a million fireballs.
But as a Ryu player his gameplay just enthralls me. I want to be just like Choi. Just stay on the ground at all times. And destroy people with fireball after fireball after fireball and then when their will has been ground down and they finally jump out of desperation, to feed them a soul-crushing uppercut to the jaw. I want my Ryu to play just like that, so clean, and just so pure in style.
But guess what? It’s frickin’ hard to throw fireballs like John Choi!
That’s why he’s John fucking Choi, with twenty years of experience of fireballing and uppercutting fools. There’s a real art to his spacing, to where/when he throws his fireballs and how he readjusts his ranges after each fireball. It’s so subtle that it’s really hard to pin down or explain plainly. What he’s doing looks so deceptively simple but is actually incredibly difficult to replicate. That is the magic of Choi.
In this day and age everybody is so experienced with fireball patterns and traps that one or two unsafe fireballs will quickly earn you a phat jump in combo to the face. Or an anti-fireball Ultra or EX move.
When I try to work on my fireball game and try to throw fireballs in the footsie game, I get so discouraged when people read me so easily and I always end up taking so much damage that I am left feeling like it’s simply not worth it, or that it’s just not a viable style for Ryu in SFIV with focus attacks and so many other anti-fireball options.
With the way jump ins work in the game as well, if you compare it with ST, not only are the fireballs better in ST and with more pushback, you have to do your jump in really deep to get any sort of combo off your jumps. But in SFIV with the big hitstun on jump ins you pretty much can get whatever combo you want.
I watch myself play and there’s quite a few matchups where I see myself not throwing much fireballs at all. In matches like Dudley, Rose etc it feels like throwing a fireball is just an opportunity for my opponent to deal damage to me or build meter. I end up almost giving up on throwing fireballs and walking forward instead trying to play aggressive footsies with low forward.
Over time, I lose faith in the style.
And then I watch a Choi match!
This is easily one of my favourite sets of the last few months, and I know that while it’s partially because the opposing character is Guile that Choi can successfully employ such a fireball heavy ST-esque style, it still warms my heart and brings a single manly tear to my eye watching John Choi do his thing.
I occasionally share my love of Choi with other people, and Spoony once shared his experience with me of watching ST matches of Choi from EVO with Seth Killian’s commentary. Basically because of those famous matches, hilariously nowadays when he watches a clutch-ass uppercut he always hears that same booming announcer’s voice in his head exclaiming:
Okay so I didn’t take much of a break after all. Am grinding my Spencer in training mode to get ready to put him on point, and tuning up a lot of my Ryu stuff. I am also regretting the inevitable incoming deluge of “I told you sos” from the Melb Marvel players.
And I’ll be writing some stuff up Buttonsmash and BAM as well! I have to say the post-event comedy this year is very impressive.
For instance, take this gem by Sol after EB Expo 😛
In terms of the fighting game calender – for me, at least.
I’m actually really glad to see the end of BAM. This month alone I travelled to Brisbane for Buttonsmash, had to help with running BAM two weeks later, and I’m also moving house all in the same month. It has been a really long year and it has been very enjoyable, but I think I might be all Street Fightered out.
I was telling Spoony last night that I was so looking forward to taking a break from the community/organisational stuff. And please don’t take this as a whinge, because I know that plenty of people that put in much more work into the community than me are still going strong. Guys like Ali, Chris Ho, Bosslogic, Burnout, Loki, Berzerk, Bugs and so many other guys that sink so much time into the community. (Well, I guess from that list Loki is stepping down as CW president too.)
I’m just saying that personally for me, I’m a bit burnt out, and am looking forward to a bit of a break.
I’m not sure if taking a break means that I will finally get to play some non-fighting game games. Like maybe Star Ocean 4? Something good. Something that I will enjoy. I’m so out of touch with the rest of the gaming world… (Also, I’m a noob, but can you run something like Star Ocean 2 on a phone? I got this idea when watching Andrew play games on his S3.)
The only other game I have on me, Arkham City, is not capturing my attention. And basically the only game I picked up and played all the way through this year was Dark Souls. So yeah, maybe take a break and do other stuff… Watch more Alena Hemkova. Play some more guitar. Definitely catch up on my reading.
Or maybe taking a break means doing less TO stuff and focusing more on being a player. My game has really fallen off in AE, and my progress in Marvel is quite inconsistent. So ironically yeah, maybe my “break” will just mean doing less fighting game stuff…to play more fighting games. If that makes sense.
GGs to everybody, and thank you guys for a great (and tiring) 2012.
edit: Never mind- I’m already back in training room.
When I walked into the new Shadowlogic venue in Footscray for the first time, my first thought was “This place is…freakin’ awesome!”
It was near the city in Footscray, and only about a ten minute walk from the Footscray train station. The hall was big and open, with a really high ceiling. With the bare concrete floor and walls and the looming roof, it really did feel like the Batcave! On each side of the walls were long rows of tables sheathed with black cloth, and upon the tables rested BenQ monitor after BenQ monitor- flashing light and fire, and Xbox after Xbox grinning with that familiar green glow.
At the back of the hall were two arcade cabinets, hooked up to a big projector screen. And behind that was the stream setup where Team Bugs captain Justin Creed was already sitting at, hard at work. I walked around for a while, letting all the space (and icy air) seep in.
And then I sat down and played all day.
It was really nice to talk to a lot of people I hadn’t seen in a while. And it was especially nice to patch things up with a good friend. Afterwards, when the SBO qualifiers were done, and Antman had emerged victorious, with Fish playing out of his mind to eliminate Toxy to reach the grand final (good shit <><!), I started thinking to myself.
“This is great,” I told myself. “Hm… there isn’t really a point to running CCH anymore is there?” Continue reading →
Check out this series that Kevin (Burnout) and I did for BAM to highlight some of the local talent in Melbourne. Kevin did all the video editing, and is releasing them one by one as pre-BAM promotional material, and we thought we could also use them as stream filler. You can check them out on the CouchWarriors page, and I’ve embedded the ones that have been released below. Can’t wait for Stef and Xavier’s ones to be done!
(Taken from Air’s Youtube channel. Thank you Air for uploading these Dakou matches.)
I find Dakou’s Ryu to be very helpful to watch. Compared to say a Daigo or a Choi, whom I also enjoy watching, while their styles are more centred around their extremely strong fundamentals, his style seems to incorporate a lot more specific matchup specific tricks and setups.
So while I admire Daigo and Choi’s play, I cannot simply emulate and be like them right away. It will take me a couple more years of playing to get my basics somewhere close to their level. But with Dakou I almost always come away with some useful new nugget to apply to a matchup.
I was already experimenting with cmp buffer fireballs against Chun, into FADC stuff, but I never really tried to buffer EX fireball into it. I was noticing that the places that Dakou was putting his cmp buffers were extremely smart, and come to think of it, were exactly the places where I probably would hit a panicked cmk, and get scissors kicked for it. Instead, the Bison runs right into Dakou’s cmp EX fireball FADC Ultra. In this match where the life lead really dictates the match, spending so much bar to get a decent chunk is definitely worth it.
I also noticed how Dakou spaces himself just out of EX scissors range and chucks plasma. But even so, when the Bison bulldogged his way into his optimal range, even Dakou was finding it extremely difficult. But I need to learn to apply this same spacing without panicking, and emulate how Dakou puts himself out of range rationally. And learn to not take too much damage walking forward or standing at neutral.
I keep losing to Dave (Bosslogic) at tournaments. And Bison in general. I know I haven’t been playing AE much, and have probably become worse at the game. But a few months ago I came close to beating Dave, which was progress. I don’t want to fall even further behind. I wanna beat Dave at least once before SFV comes out goddamnit!
Time to study up and start working on that Bison match again.
Widely regarded as Melbourne’s best UMVC3 player, Antman has had a hell of a year since the release of UMVC3. He started it off by having a dominating win-streak at the SNLs at the start of the year, went to OHN and had a blockbuster moneymatch with KG, upset Tokido and DJHuoshen and got top 8 at Shadowloo Showdown, travelled to America for EVO and Curleh Mustache, qualified for SBO and beat Abegen to get out of the first round, and finally got invited by Ghaleon to go to Seasons’ Beatings to be on the World team. He might not even be at BAM because of that! But if he is, I for one am looking forward to see who can claim the crown in UMVC3, and I would also love to see if anyone can beat Arnold’s godlike Morrigan.
In this episode we talk about all his travels, his history as a fighting game player, and how he got to his level. And of course, since it’s a pre-BAM special, we also did some predictions and callouts!
Also, if you listen to the podcast, you’ll realise that I am doing the introduction solo. This is because Igor has once again retired from the podcast, to focus on other real-life commitments. While I’m sad to see him go, I completely understand and am very grateful for the stuff we’ve done together. In any case, he will still be present in spirit (and in gear, because he lent me the recorder for this podcast.) And who knows, maybe he’ll come back someday.
So I was unsure whether to continue the podcast and shut it down for good. But Antman going to SBO proved to be too much…of an interview bait! I couldn’t let it go. So I grabbed Gab “Gabneto” Ferrada to be my co-host, and we did the recording at an SNL two weeks ago. I’m extremely happy with Gab, because he’s a confident speaker (unlike me) and also knows a crap ton about stuff I don’t, namely Tekken! And he offers a lot of insight into characters like Vergil, and Morrigan, characters that he plays at a high level. So big thanks to Gab.
Gab and Muttons
Big thanks to Rossco for a extremely buttery banner, thanks to Dave and Sol for letting us use their office/photography, and also thanks to Xavier for his shots of their time in America. And of course, cheers to Antman for taking the time to sit down with us!
For Direct Download, right click this link and “save as”
Don’t be a Scrub Podcast Episode 23: Antman
Muttonhead: How you doing Antman? Good to see you.
Antman: I’m doing really good man! Haha. It’s pretty cold but it’s good. (Rubs hands together.)
M: How long have you been back for?
A: I’ve been back for…as in like, what do you mean like in back?
M: From America. From Japan, sorry.
A: From Japan, ah okay. I was in Japan about two weeks ago, and yeah. Been back since then so been…I’ve only been travelling there for like five days just for SBO. So I didn’t spend too much time in Japan. So…yeah.
(My phone rings. Yay for professionalism. Antman continues:)
Yep, so um…
M: So yeah. Why don’t you start the questions… oh! Before we continue, our co-host today in the place of Igor…
Gab Ferrada: Is Gab.
M: …is Gabneto! Heheh.
A: Heheh.
G: Gabneto who doesn’t even play much Marvel anymore. Doesn’t deserve that name….
But anyway…
1- G: What’s your history with fighting games? I remember that I used to play Tekken with you but…
A: I would say my history of fighting games is…I started playing fighting games when I was like thirteen- back in high school days. I used to go to Highpoint and play at the arcades. I used to play like all sorts of random games. Like I wasn’t really good at the games. I just really enjoyed playing fighting games. So I started playing X-men vs. Street Fighter. Back in the days where Toxy was actually playing as well. So I used to see Toxy all the time playing X-men vs. Street Fighter and trying to learn how to play the game as well. Ever since then, I’ve been moving onto games like Gab said. Been playing Tekken for a long time as well. Played it since Tekken 5. Been in the Tekken scene for close to about…I would say a year and a half to two.
So yeah, been playing in tournaments. I was quite consistent in tournaments. I then, after 5 DR, the game just basically died down, so I just stopped playing Tekken and now I’ve been moving onto Marvel, so.
M: Ah, that’s really interesting.
I didn’t realise that you guys used to play Tekken together. When was this?
G: Oh we did. We got here [on my notes] that you won a team competition, was that the one where you, me and Johno teamed up?
A: Ah no…actually…
G: Or was that the other one. Because I remember there was a few that they used to run back in the day.
A: Yeah definitely. If you’re talking about the Highpoint tournaments, I actually used to team with the brothers- Diego and Alex.
G: Ah yeah! That’s the one.
A: I used to win tournaments with them! I used to win tournaments with them, so yeah.
M: So are you going to get back into Tekken once…
A: (Before I even finish my question) Yes I am. Definitely. Yes. I’ll be getting back into Tekken Tag 2. That’s where it begins again.
So I clicked it, not really knowing what to expect. But hey! It’s written by Melbourne’s own AlexMD. I have great respect for Alex, he’s the best VF player in Melbourne, and he has this real humble, student-like approach to the game. And he’s offered me a lot of advice and help when I was trying out 3D games for the first time a couple of months ago.
So it was really interesting to read about his growth as a person and a fighting game player, and his struggles with his ego. To become this calm (suave), thinking student of the game.
I really enjoyed this article, great stuff Alex. It’s continually amazing to me to see how many delightful nuggets of intelligence and joy there are to be unearthed just from the people around in our small community. It also underlines again how ignorant I still am about the community and the scene’s greater workings!
VF heads. Berserk, Alex “I’m suave” MD, and Gabneto.Taken from the SL facebook.
It has been a few months since Shadowloo Showdown, and a lot has happened in that time. I thought things would slow down a little for me, but it seems like there’s been one event after another. Except for CCH shutting down in June for library maintenance, I’ve felt a little swept up in things. So I haven’t really written much about the last few months, especially since the SS recaps took me forever to get done. I’ll try to briefly recap what I can remember.
After SS, we had two or three CouchWarrior ranbats. (I can’t even remember.) We were trying out new venues- Masonic Halls in Brunswick.
I remember waking up really early in the morning to go to the venue so that Chris could come by a couple of hours earlier to drop off his gear and I could watch over the suitcases and monitors until Loki or Gail came by to open up the venue. Chris was working those Saturdays; he basically used his break time to come drive the equipment over.
Once again I have to reiterate: no one in the community puts in more work than Chris Ho.
I remember it was raining one of those mornings, so I put the gear and boxes under what shelter I could find in a doorway. And I kind of huddled up over one of the suitcases with my hoodie up.
Heheh. I can’t imagine what people must be thinking, as they drove past and saw this dude slumped over boxes and boxes of gear, multiple suitcases and stuff, on the side of an obviously closed building.
Hilariously, an old Chinese guy was walking past and he stopped to give me a look of pity. He asked me if I needed some help, and whether I could use a lift. I was grateful but told him no thank you. Wonder where he was gonna cart me off too. Chain me up in an abandoned building somewhere.
But I really enjoyed the two masonic halls. They had this rustic ambience which I really dug. On the walls they had all these awesome banners of masonic associations. I think one had a Phoenix on it, and one said “Jolly Good Company” both of which I found to be quite appropriate.
I had a lot of fun at the CW ranbats, but one thing that saddened me was the poor attendance, at least for the Capcom fighters. We still got a fair few heads for VF, Soul Calibur, and of course Smash came in numbers. Part of it was the burnout after SS I suppose, and also the great destroyer of video game communities: Diablo 3.
I remember being quite sad at the time; that we had brought out so much gear, and had this great event going on…and we only had like less than 10 people for an AE bracket at one time I think. VF on the other hand filled out its 16 man bracket completely.
Oh well. I guess the poor attendance for AE gave me a golden chance to win my first ever tournament. And I made to grand finals for the first time in my life!
I have always wondered how I would do if I ever got to a grand final. Would I prove to be a choker? Would I stay strong and clutch it out?
I remember noticing the camera crew of Nathan Swan constantly filming and recording stuff throughout the entire weekend. At the time I thought it was just another gaming web site group coming to do an feature on the event. But normally those guys don’t stick around for the entirety of the three days, so finally my curiosity overcame me and I went over to those guys to ask them who they were.
So they told me a little bit about themselves, and they explained to me that they had come down as a favour to the Ali brothers to do full HD recordings of the entire event. Every hype moment, every tiny pop-off.
I was really impressed and excited- I know Dave aka Bosslogic has always wanted full HD footage so that he can make even better and hype trailers and videos for Shadowloo Showdown. In the past he would have to rely on stream footage of the crowd reaction, popoffs etc. But now he would have tons and tons of HD footage to work with! So that was sick.
They told me that the footage was gonna be used for an extended piece after Shadowloo Showdown, and I assumed it would be a recap video of sorts. Awesome, I thought to myself. I can’t wait!
Quite a few months have passed after SS2012, but the result of Nathan Swan’s camera crew and Dave aka Bosslogic’s labours have finally come to fruition:
Good shit guys. Is there an extended cut, or a longer video incoming?
So I felt the urge…to play some MechWarrior last Saturday night.
With MechWarrior Online coming out soon, (the only game that could possibly retire me from SF at this point), I’ve been catching up on my Battletech lore. Grabbing them old Warrior trilogies and Blood of Kerensky stuff of my shelves.
Installation was a piece of cake. Download MTX, download the game (took an hour or so), and patch it. Fired it up, worked just fine.
To my pleasant surprise, the fine folks at MekTek have been updating the hell out of the game since I last played it years and years ago.
I think I remember there were like 30 or so Mechs in the original Mech 4: Mercs, but my jaw dropped open when I clicked on the Mech list in Instant Action. There were like 80 or 90 mechs!!! I had to scroll down for ages to reach the bottom of the list.
As it scrolled down, my jaw dropped further and further.
Warhammer!
Marauder
Behemoth aka Stone Rhino I assume
Centurion!!!
Battlemaster and IIC variant
Warlord
Supernova
Rifleman
Trebuchet
Urbanmech (The trashcan returns! Aka AC20 on a light mech.)
Blackheart
Black hawk (Love the slots, hate the torso twist.)
Kodiak
Grizzly
Commando
Highlander
Cyclops
Zeus
Hunchback and IIC variant (aka double AC20s on a medium mech! You can even dump the guns in the torso and strip off all the armour off the arms like the lameass I am :P.)
And many more mechs than I can even remember right now. I was almost salivating at this point. One of my peeves with Mech 4 was the lack of classic Mechs, I couldn’t stomp around with the old Zeuses and the Centurions that I loved in Mech 2.
Not only the Mechs, I think they balanced the weapons and added a ton of new weapons!
Assault laser (Basically a short range laser that does 20 damage. Only 5 tons. I instantly tried it out.)
Inferno rockets
Plasma cannon
Rail gun (The dropship weapon, think it’s 5 slots ballistic weapon with 50 plus damage!!)
Linked capacitor PPC
That’s all I can remember, but they had a ton of new missiles as well.
Utterly amazing. I downloaded it at 11PM, and I played it straight till 730AM the next morning. And then I woke up at 11 AM to go to SNL! Actually went 2-2 in AE and Marvel, which was not bad considering…
Damn, I had so much fun. The first thing I did was to make a Yen Lo Wang Centurion build to smash some mechs in Solaris. (LBX-20 with 4 mediums/ER Large Laser)
Felt so broken instakilling other mediums with my double AC20 armourless arms Hunchback 11C. And still tinkering with all the heavies to try to improve on my favourite Loki build- double LBX-20 with a ER Large laser and pushing 100kmps top speed.
Damn! I can’t wait for MechWarrior Online. I know Pyro is excited about it too, this might finally be the game that pushes me to get a good computer after all these years.
We wake up at a more reasonable hour of 7 am. It’s the last day of Shadowloo Showdown and I for one am really looking forward to it.
I always love Sunday at majors, because generally most of my tournament responsibilities are over at that point. The Marvel bracket, my main responsibility, has been run through, and we have our top 8 ready to go. Finally, all the TOs can take a break, sit down for a change and watch some games. I always look at Sunday as the “reward day”. When I’m slogging through Friday and Saturday, and I’m thinking to myself “Urgh. When will this end?” the thought of Sunday finals always cheers me up.
So we get down to the venue, and most of the tournament stations have been packed away already. We don’t really have to do much in terms of setting up this morning because we did most of it last night. So we move stuff around for a brief time and we’re basically good to go.
I don’t see Chris anywhere and I wonder where he’s gone. It turns out that because Chris worked so hard and did not get to sleep at all, his body fell into a sort of coma, and he was actually physically unable to get out of bed on Sunday. He only was able to make it on Sunday in the late afternoon, and that really sucks because I know Chris loves watching finals. This should not be happening to TOs. Chris works way too hard.
The function room suddenly seems much more spacious with people slowly trickling into the venue, and without all the setups clogging up space. I start to fiend for some games, as I basically have not played any casuals all weekend except for some ST games on Saturday with Yang. Also in the end, I did not get to get a single game in with any international, which didn’t bother me at the time because of the circumstances I was in, but in hindsight I really regret that.
Rossco and I grab a setup from the backroom to setup for casuals, and we only get a few games in before people looking over our shoulder request to go on next. We look at each other and go to grab another setup from the back room, but the same thing happens again. I think this time Rossco had to go do something, and someone slid in to take his spot.
Poor Rossco. Unlike him, I got to play for a while, and got bodied by George in Marvel if my memory serves me right. This was followed by a much longer set of bodyment from Yang. I was having a lot of difficulty with his zoning teams, and I was dropping everything, even basic Doom combos that I should be able to do in my sleep. I wasn’t saying much to Yang, but inside I was feeling very frustrated at my execution, actually I think Yang might’ve sensed it. After a while I had had enough of myself sucking, so I said good games to Yang, and wandered off elsewhere.
In retrospect, the decision to pack up all casual setups to “force” people to watch the finals might not have been such a good idea.
People want to watch what they want to watch, and even if you don’t have the casual setups there, if they’re not interested in the game on screen, they’ll simply go off to eat or go back to their hotel rooms to play. What ended up happening was a big crowd massing around the small number of casual setups we had in the casual area, so eventually we had to keep bringing out more and more casual setups for everyone. We should’ve have just moved some of the tournament stations setups over rather than packing up everything in the backroom.
The other aim of packing up casual setups early was so that we could pack up and leave from the venue on time and not go way over time like the last few years. But as Berzerk was saying in the post SS CW meeting, maybe next time we could have a softer approach; leave casual setups there and gradually start removing them as the day goes on and people start moving to the spectator area to watch the more popular games. That way we still solve the pack up issue, and I really think “forcing” people to watch the finals, especially early in the day doesn’t really work. It has to be a more organic process. I think quite a lot of the enjoyment that people take out of the event are the moneymatches and sets and the first to threes that people want to do with internationals and the other interstaters they seldom see. And Sunday is an important part of that.
The other cool thing about finals day is that Bugs printed out a couple of designs that Loki did. A “Butter” one, a “Fimbler” one and my personal favourite; a “You are Dead” poster with a Kyleface on it. We’ve actually had the “You are Dead” one for a while. I think Bugs brought it to CCH once and we hung it on the wall like a dead ancestor’s portrait or something. I liked it so much I got Andrew to pin it on my back.
Later in the day Kyle, who’s in Japan right now hitting on underage schoolgirls, notices all the Kylefaces on the stream, and I heard he was buttered beyond belief. Heheh.
Ah, it tastes so sweet.
Being a Scrub 