No real news on my fighting game development, but I was watching a stream the other night when MarkMan of Madcatz was in there talking about being bummed about girls.
You think a woman designed the TE stick? I took her design and turned it into MY DINNER.
Dohohoho.
Dorion had a level-up session at his house tonight, aimed towards preparing a “Team AZ” consisting of him, Mr. SNK, and Juicebox for the House of Cicada tournament in California pretty soon. It was kind of cool to overhear bits of their conversation, about Combofiend’s playstyle or Alex Valle’s or how Sabre played Justin Wong while he was just a Marvel player. As I am currently, I’m simply an SRK member who watches streams, so these players are borderline celebrities to me, and to hear them talked about in such a casual fashion shows how distanced I am from the community.
The mentality of the AZ Scene, however, is exactly the opposite of what SRK is. Everyone here is really welcoming as well as extremely supportive of my recent revelation and new desire to improve, and to quote Louie, “If someone’s going to show the initiative, it’s worth helping them out.”
Anyway, I spent a good deal of time playing with Reece (Dictator), Louie (Blanka), and Alan (Guile) tonight. Mostly Louie, who was kind enough to really just walk through my game style and watch my games with Alan and pick apart the many imperfections. Afterwards I played several other games, but I also had a talk with Zaine prior to leaving about more of the Viper-specific stuff that I can do.
Louie
Zaine
I’m actually pretty confident that I left some stuff out, but my brain was so full of Street Fighter that I couldn’t hold anymore. Add that to the fact that I did another all-nighter in a failed attempt to reset my sleep cycle, as well as the fact that it took me a half hour to write and remember this on said lack of sleep.
I ended each section from Louie and Zaine with a quote of theirs that I found particularly inspirational. While it sounds overly mushy and gay, I really feel like it’s worth noting that they are going this far to help me, and therefore I should not waste their time. Maybe I’ll bring a notebook with me next time I go and I’ll get more notes down.
These are a couple of the responses I got on SRK regarding my False Plateau post. Many are very wise and so I’d like to save them here for both prosperity and further reference.
Dorion:
See the thing is, the people who never get better are the people who never realize what you came to the realization of tonight. Now that you noticed it, you’ll start to adjust. The mind games will become obvious in time.. Now that you’re looking for them.
Reece:
@Tsumuji, yo what do you say you work on gettin comfortable outside of your comfort zone. That can range from doin shit that you normally wouldnt to loosening the spring on your stick so that its like everyone elses’ stick so that if you use another person’s stick youre not outta your element. Either that or never play on anyone elses’ stick but your own lol. But if you do end up doing the spring readjustment and you acclimate well, help me convince Zaine to continue to work on using a REAL (jap) stick. ahaha. Both of you have that problem whereas if you guys arent using your own stick that youre comfortable with, whether you dont wanna annoy people by changing out sticks every match, (more so Zaine than you bc not many ppl use his stick), or just being semi lazy, you miss shit…Dah well, must be a Viper thing.
So yeh, I’m not pro but thats definitely something to consider. That and not giving a fuck sometimes will help. You’ll eventually end up doing something or not doing something that you’ll notice and go “oh shit, okay. I guess this DOES work” or “damn, if I…then…” ect…Allll bc you had a little dose of i dont give a fuck.
If you dont believe that last part, just ask Dorion. Although he CAN do it with Gief’s 12000 HP (YES, it might as well be 12,000), he’ll often jump in and eat hella damage just to see which attack of his will beat whatever attack…Just bc he doesnt give a fuck, that and Gief’s 12000 HP can take it. But after that he has that much more knowledge of his character and whatever matchup.
DrDogg:
Realizing the problem is the first step, but there’s a lot more to it. I think a big issue is playing online and in training mode. How often do you talk to your opponents and actually discuss why they did something? That’s how you become better at a game IMO.
When I play Paul or Arnold in Tekken 6, if they do something that caught me off guard I’ll immediately ask what they were thinking. This helps me understand what’s going through my opponent’s mind and how I can manipulate that to my advantage. I also pay attention to how I react to certain things and look into what I’m thinking when I take a hit and why I took that hit.
It’s really just about not mindlessly playing. I think Paul said it best one day stating, “It seems like you’re just throwing out good attacks instead of having a plan that you’re trying to execute. What are you trying to do?” Or something along those lines.
A-Rodt:
@Tsumuji – I’ve been reading a couple articles lately that have really been seeming to help me out with the psychological aspects of winning. Prior to reading these articles I hadn’t won any G1 tournaments online. After reading these articles and playing online for like 2 or 3 hours, I won three G1 tournaments. They helped me not really change my game per se, but more so think about the tactics that I’m using, why they are or are not effective, and how I can turn them into tactics that are more efective or make a decision to abandon that tactic all together. The first articles were these ones on footsies -
Intro – http://sonichurricane.com/?p=460
Chapters 1-5 – http://sonichurricane.com/?cat=8 (starts at the bottom)
next is a book written on tournament mindset that’s helping me along
http://www.sirlin.net/ptwReading through these articles helped me come to a realization. The higher and higher level play you are at, its no longer about the knowledge of what beats what, and it starts becoming more an issue of “ok, I know this beats this, how do I get him to throw that so I can beat it.” sorta deal. Anyway, check those articles out, see if it doesn’t blow your mind a little.
Thread: http://www.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=204779&page=185
I posted this in the AZ thread of SRK just now.
Just got back from a gaming session at Dorion’s. I think in general I haven’t been the biggest participant in local/live play, especially since Ranbats ended. Basically, between Barfights and now, all I’ve been doing is staying at home in training mode or playing online. Training mode yielded some results; When I’m comfortable (as in relaxed, using my stick, and sitting on my couch in front of my laggy HDTV) I can execute some combos I’ve been practicing for the past month. The moment I leave my comfort zone (Using a stick with a looser spring, for example), however, my performance drops greatly. I miss my SJC FADC combos, I miss SJC seismos, I miss CANCELS. And I’m in no way blaming technology for this, but my own failure to adjust. Even when I’m able to correctly emulate this “comfort zone” that I think is so golden, I still screw stuff up. I think Reece put it best when he says that was the jitters. I think the only solution is just to play more with people rather than in my own house alone beating up on online folks, or at Gameworks where I can play Ken and rack up the wins.
That said, multiple games with Eric, Zaine, Reece, and Dorion have really got me convinced that, on a mental level, I’ve been playing the game wrong for the past year. I feel like I enter this trance when I play, where I’m constantly hedging bets with what moves to use next based on the matchup, with random sprinkled everywhere that serves as a series of shortcuts in what is basically a flowchart. Because of this, I lose the mental tug of war that Street Fighter or even fighting games are all about. Rather than catering my style, my attacks, and even my movements to my opponent, I categorize them instead and get my shit kicked in when they do something outside of my flowchart. So, disregarding all that comfort zone crap I was talking about earlier, I still can’t land my combos because I don’t read my opponent well enough to start them. There was an instance where I was playing Juicebox and he walked towards me and correctly predicted that I was going to jump towards him with an attack. He explained to me that his walking forward was actually a way to get me to attack, which is basically a whole ‘nother layer of game that I missed out on. My mind just went “Oh look, he walked forward, I should attack,” rather than thinking why he walked forward. Because of this whole extra layer of play that I’m completely missing out on, I’m a little worried at how exactly I’m supposed to get better at the game. Is this a problem really just solved by playing the game more?
I don’t even feel like this problem is even worthy of being called a plateau. It feels like I was on a certain, fake level of play, and I need to start over at the base of the mountain and get the basics down. To me, the basics were always c.mk xx fireball, but the basics really are just walking backward and walking forward.
That said, I really have no intention of giving up. I’m a little demoralized at the moment, but the reason for this novella of a post is really just to ask for some advice. How should I go about tackling this problem, when the problem is that I flat-out don’t think enough while I play? Does it have to do with not knowing the game well enough, or more to do with the fact that I’ve been practicing alone and online too much? And where should I go from there?
The Ranbat season officially ended awhile back, but yesterday (technically 2 days ago) the tournament organizer, Dorion, ran another tournament creatively titled “Barfights.” It was *surprise* at a bar/restaurant, at My Big Fat Greek Restaurant Express. I kinda put this entry off all day today, but I might as well get it out of the way before the memory slips from my mind.
Leading up to the event, I had successfully roped Francis, Eric, and Andrew into competing that evening. They all came over about 3 hours prior to the tournament, and while we had a brief Rock Band distraction with my little sister, we started running some games to practice. I’ll take a moment to address the person with the best record for that session, Eric.
Eric’s been improving a lot lately, and while I would love to take credit for it and be happy that I taught him how to cancel and do basic combos, those techniques were completely thrown out the window. To be honest, the same applies to Andrew as well. I worked towards having them master the art of quarter-circle cancelling, but then they both went and switched to charge characters. Cancelling into special moves is still indeed possible with charge characters, but I have yet to see a lp xx Blanka Ball or a mp xx Kikouken. It’s a little bit depressing, but I’m starting to think that it’s better to let them learn on their own rather than force something into their styles. One thing I’ve found is that their mixups are actually pretty solid against me. Specifically me, however. And since at the moment they seem to do pretty well fighting me, that’s sufficient and not enough to drive them any deeper into the game.
That’s where competitions come in, I suppose. As this was Andrew’s second time, I imagine he knew what to expect, but what I wanted for Francis and Eric was that sense of inspiration that I got after playing living, breathing people who really know what the hell they’re doing. And, with that inspiration comes the notion that their mixup games tailored for my fighting style simply become easily-broken shenanigans when facing other, more refined styles. Then comes the drive to change one’s style to more of a one-size-fits-all kind of thing, which ultimately comes full circle to learning the necessary combos to optimize damage output. And all of this comes from simply exposing them to other players, and what better way to do that than during a competition?
Francis is a little bit different of a case, as I’ve noticed that he’s quite simply the polar opposite of Andrew and Eric. His execution is pristine, to say the least. Nailing jab-sweep links several times in a row during his first tournament match, getting shoutouts for such great looking combos by some of the best players in AZ/the nation. When it comes to playing in the rest of the match, however, he’s pretty Pringles. I attribute this to the fact that he just doesn’t play other people enough. While training mode is definitely a great way to get your combos down to perfection, like he has, you can’t set the training dummy to “Unpredictable, momentum-capitalizing human.” In particular, I find that his crossup blocking game is weak, as is mine. I think that this will come with just playing more and learning more of the character matchups and the hitboxes of each move. However, at the moment, his low defense makes it possible for him to be tricked and outplayed, which hurts him in matches with the other two.
Now that I got all of the dickish comments out of the way, I’ll go back to my original idea of talking about Eric. Besides the combo problem, his game has improved so much more than I could have ever expected. I would definitely say that he’s achieved an awareness in the game that I nor any of the others have, where he’s able to read us and make correct, educated decisions while still keeping a heavy defense. I feel that the moment he decides to start optimizing his offense and really working in combos, he’ll be a very large threat. It’s incredibly amusing too, after all of this praise, to reveal that he is incredibly apathetic to this whole situation, though. I’ve learned that his main motivation, unlike mine, is not to get better for himself and to accomplish a win in a competitive environment, but to just stay one step ahead of Andrew. I believe Andrew considered me his “nemesis” for awhile, but I honestly think that Eric is definitely a much better rival than I am, and if they can keep pushing each other, they’ll probably improve exponentially faster than I will. Still, the problem with that is that Eric really only desires to stay ONE step ahead, and so he’ll never chase anything on his own unless Andrew raises the bar for him. It’s almost a symbiotic relationship, really.
Anyway, Barfights. We arrived a little bit early, got food, and then started to witness some neat casuals. I met up with another new player named Shane who looked to be in middle school. He had questions about the tournament format, asked me which one was Sabre, basically all the newbie stuff while holding his 360 pad.
Then I saw him play.
Tick throws, FADCs into Ultra, Super cancels. He knew what he was doing! I was so caught off guard that I realized how arrogant I could really be. Using a stick doesn’t make someone superior automatically. There are pad players out there who can beat me. And age! Age doesn’t really make a difference, at least on that end of the spectrum.
Got to talk to Dorion again and renewed my endless invitation to go over and practice. While school has kept me and will likely continue to keep me from going over regularly, it’s nice to know that I’m still welcome there after all this time. Anyway, tournament.
First fight of the night was, sadly, two of my friends against each other. So, you know what I said earlier about getting them motivated by taking them to tournaments and letting them play different styles? Nuh-uh. I went and talked to Dorion about the bracket setup, and while he was happy to oblige, there was a miscommunication and Eric and Andrew started playing against each other anyway.
Then came their match and the button configuration problem that left all four of us (Francis included) with bad tastes in our mouths. I really wish I had been more thorough in describing them how exactly the button checking process worked, but boy was it a problem for poor Eric. I got to see the ruthless competitive side of Andrew as he initially denied the idea of stopping the match so Eric could get things sorted, and I got to see a frustrated Eric fighting a match I believe he would have won via wakeup Ultra. I think the blame can be placed on both parties here, Andrew for misunderstanding what exactly our competitions are like, and Eric for not being able to perform a button check correctly. I feel responsible for it as well for not explaining either of these points to them as diligently as I should have, relying on whoever their opponent was to do the job for me. Then, whoops, they get paired up. And Francis felt responsible too because it was his stick that had the “mystery configuration.”
So Eric got knocked into Losers, Andrew advanced. I received a bye for the first round. Francis went up next and fought Eat Paste, who I actually had played in a Gameworks tournament when the game had just come out. I think it’s safe to say that both Mike (Paste) and I have improved a shit ton since then, but I didn’t get a chance to play him. Francis did, however, and while he got burned by his crossup problem, he was able to talk to Mike afterwards and get some pointers. Which he wrote down on a napkin! That’s what you get when you drop an engineer into a fighting game tournament, how awesome.
While Francis was playing I got called up for my match against ARod-T, who I later learned (again) is named Alan. He’s a Guile player who I’ve played twice before at Ranbats. The first time I played him I eliminated him, the second time he eliminated me. So we had a bit of a friendly rivalry going into our match, haha. The details of the match kind of escape me, but I know I did some pretty unsafe shit due to me not being accustomed to the matchup. Crossup burning kicks ate EX Flash Kicks, c.HPs, and worse, Ultras. I was able to catch him off guard with a wakeup EX Seismo into Ultra, getting a big OOOH from the crowd. I have to say, our match really received a lot of hype that I was really happy to have a part in. The first match came down to the wire and I ended up losing it due to a wakeup Ultra and me being an idiot going for a jumping attack. The next match I don’t remember too well, but I do remember lots of shouting and me winning it. Then came the last match, where I dominated the first round and got a dizzy, but his stick died right at the end of that round. So we had to redo some of the match, and he came back and got me for the second round. Things were looking bad for me in the third round too, until I said “Fuck it” and did a wakeup Ultra. Which connected. And then I went for a deep crossup and evaded his own wakeup Ultra, which I was able to punish and win the set and the match. While that last round was clearly sloppy for both of us, the sheer amount of yelling and hype that the match got really made the night for me, and I was happy with that for the rest of the night.
I’m not really sure which of the four of us played next, but I know my next match was with none other than Dorion himself. This matchup was not unfamiliar to me, I had played him before and gotten raped. So I went in with a lot of fear, but in my exasperation at my disadvantage in the character matchup and as a player, I found that I was able to relax easier and just go for broke without worrying about the consequences. So with that, I played the first set and surprisingly won it with an incredibly lucky EX TK crumple into Ultra, and then a well-placed Seismo for the third round. This really inspired me, maybe I had gotten better! …And then I got raped 4-0. All of my normal Gief tactics went down the drain, such as baiting the Lariat with a neutral jump HK into my SJC FADC combo (He just delayed the lariat to beat my kick) and my Seismo SJC Seismo strings, which were easily dodged. I talked to Louie and Zaine about the match afterwards, and they flat out told me that I was doing majorly unsafe stuff. Louie suggested that I do a better job zoning with the Seismos, and Zaine offered the opposite advice saying Dorion’s Gief in particular is too jumpy and to go for anti-airs instead. So I think I’ve picked up a lot about that matchup, and stealing one set from Dorion really upped my confidence.
Francis and Eric had to play against each other next, to my chagrin. The match was actually incredible to watch, but it was a shame that not too many were paying attention. Eric, with a correct button configuration this time, mauled Francis for a good majority of the match, but Francis had a pretty badass comeback culminating in a near perfect round, with jab-sweep combos (Mr. SNK shouted out “NICE LINKS!”) and a Super combo punish. Eric ended up taking it in the end, however, so Francis was eliminated. Simultaneously, Andrew was fighting the other Viper player, Zaine, and while I didn’t catch all of the match, I was able to notice Andrew having some difficulties adjusting to a different Viper. It’s quite an uphill battle when his only experience with the matchup is me and my unsafe tactics, and Viper’s already a tricky character to fight to begin with.
Then came my next fight, against Mr. SNK. I pretty much got owned at the character select screen. The only thing that consoled me for my beating on this was a compliment for sticking to my guns and not defaulting to Ryu. My name’s Jon, my tag’s Tsumuji, and I’m a fucking Viper player. …Who also gets raped by Hondas, Giefs, and Dictators.
So I was eliminated. I don’t know who eliminated Andrew, exactly, but I know that Eric lost to a really good Guile player later on. So our tournament ended, and I feel pretty happy with the results despite netting only one, really hyped win. I played my best, and the odds were just not stacked in my favor for the last two matches. I’ll rationalize my losses with the following facts:
That said, I’m actually proud that I was able to take away some experience fighting those two, and if I was to get my shit kicked in, I’m glad it’s to such great players. And the hyped match with Alan had me satisfied, too.
Anyway. Long post. Holy shit, it’s nearly 2500 words. I’ll call it a night here.
I’ll add onto this post when I have time, I want this to be the article for SJC FADC. It’s been giving me trouble for the past week, despite me thinking I had it down. For now, just a quick note:
It’s all in the timing of the focus attack. My left hand motion is fine, don’t worry about that. Just don’t get too eager with the right hand and hit it too soon. It’s okay to do it too late, I’ll just jump and lose my Ultra opportunity, but at least I’ll be safe. And don’t backdash Ultra by accident, that’ll cost me a match!
I took the time to write this as a comment to one of Andrew’s blog posts regarding our friend, Eric. I figured since it was so long (Much longer than I expected, yikes) it wouldn’t hurt to post it here, especially since I’m going to start keeping tabs on all my friends.
I’ve got a lot of theories about the kind of player Eric is. While you’re right, he’s not quite the “jungle style” I was yelling about while you guys were fighting, there is a certain degree of randomness in his game that makes him difficult to read. He does indeed have several predictable strategies, though. For example, he loves his j.HK, c.HK no matter which character he uses (Though he does it a lot less with Ken since we’ve really started playing), and his entire nature is “flow-breaking.” I’m sure you remember that he would love to just back up with Blanka and get a charge, and then he’d get away and you’re at full screen again, totally boned. By backing up like that, he effectively breaks the flow of the match, whether it’s because he’s getting whaled on, or, strangely enough, if he’s at the advantage. My first reaction to this was that he needed his charge, but then I observed him doing this with Ken during your Ryu sessions. There’s absolutely NO reason he should back off on the pressure when he’s at the advantage, example would be when he’s got you in the corner and then he jumps back to Hadouken. This leads me to believe that, while his combos (which are nowhere near as complex as they should or could be) are not necessarily random, his game plan in general is completely random. This applies to any and every game that Eric plays: CvS, SFII, Alpha, Marvel, even Smash Bros.. I’m sure you remember those nights a couple years ago where there’d be a big clusterfuck of three people kicking each others’ asses and a lone Marth on the complete other side of Final Destination.
That said, I also think that Eric plays much more reactive than proactive, and while his punishes may not be efficient and it definitely becomes quantity over quality, the way to screw up his flow is to do the same thing to him but with quality over quantity. My fights with him nowadays ultimately become trading hits until he makes one mistake, and then I punish it with whatever I can, most of the time a combo into Ultra. From there, I simply out-turtle him and that causes him to make the same mistakes. So if I’ve got a life lead on him and he starts backing up to reset the flow, I’ll just let him. I’ll time him out if I need to, and that’ll punch him into action and make him several times more likely to make a further mistakes. The fight will either play out like that for the entire time, or he’ll get reckless and my rushdown will continue due to, yes, my greater amount of experience with the game. Thus, matches outside of SFIV are more even, but all it takes is me to learn one good, punishing combo and I can apply that strategy (Remember Garou?).
TL;DR version: Either take his strategy and send it back to him with a little ribbon, or out-knowledge him with the game (This includes knowing the matchup! For example, jab him out of that Blanka ball and then throw him once he gets surprised and starts turtling again).
Last post of the night, I promise! I think it’s time I finalize my Viper color and taunt, so it’ll be me.
I’ve decided:
Color: Alternate 07
Personal Action: 08
I like the purple alternate costume, shows some hot belly action and brings out her hair. Dohohoho. I was worried about Viper’s taunts, because alot of them are very subtle. I picked 08 because she turns completely around and so you’ll know it’s a taunt. In the English dub she says “It’ll all be over soon.”
If this stuff isn’t available, I’ll just go with default black and default taunt. 
This post has little to no real meaning on Viper strategies, but…
I FINALLY FINISHED VIPER’S TRIALS!
The one I was stuck on, where you do a s.LK link with c.LP SJC Ultra really screwed me up, but the last ones were easy as hell because I had already done them before with her! People complained about the last trial everywhere online, I got it in 5 minutes. Whoo. Anyway, now I can finally use the Viper icons on my profile to show true Viper pride!
Also, I am hereby introducing the “FUCK YEAH” tag, used for whenever I do something awesome.
Funny how I started my blog right when the Ranbat season ended. For those who don’t know me in person, I live in Arizona and thus attend the Ranbats there. I usually play under the name Tsumuji.
Anyway, today was the last of the Ranbat season. I think I had a pretty solid showing for a first timer. My Viper definitely needs some improvement and I still need to get past several different factors outside of the game, which I’ll list later. For now, let’s talk about this specific Ranbat.
I was fortunate enough to get Andrew to come with me today, I hope he got a good impression of the community. We warmed up a little bit at my place beforehand, and while I had worked out all of my links and SJC FADCs, none of that really worked once we got to the venue. This could be one of two reasons, or a combination of both: Jitters, or lag. While it’s perfectly acceptable to believe that I was nervous and playing out of my element, I feel like I had my timing correctly while performing the SJC FADCs, or hell, even consecutive seismos. My TV at home suffers from lag, however, and so I’m concerned that learning on my own TV is affecting my ability to execute my moves correctly, especially because of the character I use.
We started off with some casuals between me and Andrew, and eventually some other folks jumped in like Nef and Gurlin. Josh showed up too, so Andrew got exposed to the three Chun Li players here in AZ: Ray, Nef, and Josh. Each is pretty amazing with Chun, particularly Josh. I’m hoping that Andrew will pick up some tips from them. I also got to play against Reece’s new Dhalsim, which didn’t quite measure up to my Viper but he had the excuse of just picking up the dude last night.
On to the real matches. My first one was with none other than Ray, a Chun Li player versus my Viper. I wish I could remember the specifics of the match, but I know that I rocked the first match pretty easily. For the second one I was able to carry some of that momentum, but it ultimately didn’t prove to be enough and he got me by a very thin margin. The third one I got raped, because I think he had downloaded my Viper and I ran out of tricks. Not gonna lie, it was pretty demoralizing and I can’t even think of what I could have done better besides kept my nerves under control. I recall my hands still being really shaky while fiddling with my wallet to lend some money to Andrew.
Second match was against a Cammy player. I absolutely suck ass at the Cammy-Viper matchup, I’ve got so little experience with that matchup that I didn’t even want to risk it. I also hear that the matchup is greatly in Cammy’s favor anyway. So I counterpicked right away with Ryu. And I steamrolled him. Focus-attacked the Spiral Arrows, Shoryuken’d the jump-ins, and Hadouken’d her to death. Nothing fancy at all, I didn’t use my Ultra at all because he never got me past half life. I feel bad for counterpicking since Viper’s supposed to be my perfect character, but I figured since it was the last one of the season I might as well go for broke.
Next match was against a Guile player, and the matchup is in Viper’s favor. Nonetheless, I lost it due to what I felt were tourney nerves. I wish I could remember the specifics of that match too, but I KNOW I got hit by another fucking wakeup Ultra. Man, that’s annoying. Shortly after I lost that I switched right to Ryu and beat him down with my standard shit. I think I got an SRK FADC Ultra in there but launched it too soon, only tipping him. He switched to El Fuerte right after, which freaked me out a bit, but I kept my cool and returned the pressure to keep him from running too much.
Last match was against yet another Guile player, who I’ve actually fought before. A-Rodt’s a pretty cool guy, and I remember rolling through his Guile with Viper like it was nothing, but this time he actually beat me on the first go. Didn’t help that this was right after my previous match, and A-Rodt had been watching my Guile-Viper fight. I switched to Ryu yet again, but it didn’t work out for me this time and I lost. Can’t remember specific details of this fight, either. Maybe my memory’s going.
After tasting defeat, I went back to the casual station, hands still shaking and chest still hurting. Even now, remembering the feeling I had makes my hands shake and screws up my typing. After awhile I was able to cool down and play some matches with this new Bison player, Stefan, who I had actually met/fought at Gameworks a couple weeks ago! I did pretty well against him, I think I only gave up one round. I’ll probably be seeing more of him in the future. I also played against the person who I view as the best Blanka player in AZ, Luey, and while it was my turn to get steamrolled, I feel like I learned a lot about the matchup and Luey was really cool about giving me some pointers. Partway through our matches Zaine showed up (Zaine/Flook is pretty cool. He’s a big guy who just got out of the service midseason. He, I, and a guy from Tucson named Forward/Sean are the only Vipers in AZ.) and gave me some pointers on the Blanka matchup, mainly that Viper elbow (F+MP) beats electricity clean. Then we played some more matches and it culminated into Viper vs. Viper. I lost, but I picked up a lot of neat tricks. Gotta see if I can work some seismo feints into my game.
So, I’ve got a bit of a laundry list to work on after another average performance today. Outside of the game itself, I need to learn to deal with my tourney nerves. I think I cut some years off of my life, and shaky hand syndrome really fucks with my game. I also hate the idea of counterpicking with a high tier character, as natural as Ryu feels. I should also play more live matches, probably at Dorion’s.
Inside of the game, I need to work on the following: