Obviously more thoughts about SF. Played a lot this weekend but nothing serious. Played with Natty a lot and played a lot online. We found something very interesting this past week. I start off like this:

I was over The Basement and it was just me and Natty, he didn’t feel like playing at the time so I hoped on his xbox and under an account he made called “Best Gen Ever” I played Gen in championship mode.

I was feeling particularly obnoxious that night and was just having fun with the players I was getting matched up with. I was taunting (I taunted after every throw), getting up off my chair to jump up and celebrate a combo or whatever I had accomplished. I was playing people in the same exact grade I’m in now. I won so many matches in a row I had lost count. Now I personally believe it was because I was just relaxed and not zoning in on anything particular, just going with the flow of the match. Also there was probably a good amount of scrubs running around DPing every chance they got, but when I’m concentrating I even lose to them and I have the videos to prove it…

When I record my matches I’m trying my best to put on an impressive show for the people of youtube who might stumble upon my videos. I’d say I do pretty awful losing to a lot of people who I believe shouldn’t beat me, but yet they still beat me. It’s terribly aggravating and discouraging.

Then this morning at Natty’s house on my account I stumble upon DSP as my opponent. Instantly I’m telling Natty, “shit, it’s DSP. blah blah blah” just talking about how he records matches and shit. I was pretty pumped at first, but then he picked Zangief. Lately I’ve been having so much trouble with Giefs! The upset victory Anderson pulled on my really put this weird kink in my brain.

I just think Giefs are stupid and I’m seriously afraid to attack them. These are my scenarios with Giefs that make me afraid to approach him.

1. Lariat – His lariat eliminates my jump-in game. The only move that [b]might[/b] beat his lariat is my [KKK] fierce, but most of the time it doesn’t beat it, in fact it trades. So we both take damage (me on the losing end) then he gets to EX-Greenhand putting me even more at a disadvantage.
Lariat also makes my st.MK poke a risk because too many times have I beat counter hit by that stupid move…
2. Grab range – I don’t want to be anywhere near Gief (who does?) so I run, run, run. His grabs deal a ton of damage and sometimes have unrealistic range. What is even more stupid, is when I’m trying to poke at gief with my st.MK he can command grab my st.MK and even my cr.HK. It’s pretty hard to do, but I feel like it happens too often.

I guess two scenarios are all that make me afraid… mostly the lariat.

Basically, I lost to DSP really bad and I got made fun of by DSP and some commentors on youtube.

First of all, fuck DSP. I don’t know him personally and ‘fuck DSP’ isn’t suppose to be an attack. What I mean is, fuck anyone. I shouldn’t get scared or psyched with whoever I play. If it’s Nestor or if it’s CP I should play with both with the same confidence and composure. I don’t know what it is about me that gets so worried.

I care about what people think of me and that’s my first problem. That’s sort of getting away from SF and more into my personal psyche but I think all plays it’s role in my gameplay. I’m not going to continue my thoughts on it anyhow.

Basically, what I’m saying is I gotta relax a bit and just have fun with the game.

I’m definitely also rambling.

I’ll conclude this for now. I’m still going to play, even if ignorant fools say, “worst Gen I’ve ever seen” or shit like that. I could go on youtube and try to ‘defend’ myself, but what’s the point? They’re assholes to talk shit on someone like that and don’t deserve the time it’ll take me to respond to them.

I’m still new to the tournament scene and that’s seriously what I need right now is to just make the high pressure situations the norm.

Good night folks

videos at:
http://youtube.com/asiantomdotcom
you can see me be scrubby and sometimes pretty good ;]

Also, thanks for all the input you give me Furious Roy, whatever you say always makes a lot of sense. I just have trouble applying it during the matches I have. But I appreciate the help trying to level me up and keep it coming, I’ll break down these walls sooner or later.

I think it’s because I didn’t think people read it.

Anyways, a lot has developed with me and Gen over the past month or two. I would say I’ve leveled up considerabally with Gen. I’m still far from amazing, but I think I’ve accomplished a lot. One thing I know I need to work on is my composure in tournaments. But I suppose everyone needs to at one point, everyone needs to fight as if it were a casual match.

On the 9th, CP and I went to Fall River to Paul Wall’s bar for a SFIV tournament. We met up with LuckyD, Furious Roy, Smiley, Justo, and I guess a bunch of other players from GU. I was really hoping to make a positive impact on our local scene that day. The tuesday before the tournament I showed everyone my new and improved Gen. I showed patience, good reaction and most importantly good execution. I was feeling amazing with Gen. Then the Friday tournament came around. Something weird happened. I could hardly do my MK > Hands combo, I didn’t punish, I didn’t react, I couldn’t do anything. I didn’t know what to think at the time. I was beaten by a Gief player that I shouldn’t have been beaten by. CP mentioned to me how many times I could have super or ultraed him. I didn’t see those opportunies, I didn’t really see anything. I went back to our home town pretty broken, but still hopeful for the Paul Walls Bar Tournament.

Skip forward some hours, we’re at Paul’s Bar at 2pm. I still felt weird, I also felt oddly awkward in Paul’s bar, I felt out of place. Not because I didn’t want to be playing SF with these people or anything like that,  Iwant to say it’s because I wanted to prove something to these people. LuckyD(Dan) was already there hanging out. We decided on our team name and we entered the 2v2. Even before we entered the tourney I sort of didn’t want to be on Dan’s team. Dan is a great player and before I had even fought a match I felt like dead weight.

The team tournament started off to a bad start with our team (Team Biscuits) fighting CP and Zorin. CP beat me, it was like normal. The part that really crushed me though were NYers sitting behind me critizing both my gameplay and Gen. They really got into my head and I couldn’t hear anything but them. The NYers I believe were Rashaan and the other three were unimportant to me. But I think I could name them. They were oddly aggressive towards us. Namely LuckyD. I felt they would try to antagonise him at any chance they got. Either way, Dan beat Zorin and CP and got team biscuit to the next match. Dan handled the NYers fine, sort of brushing off any comments they may have made.

I’m getting mighty lazy and not really feeling like describing the whole tourney. In short, Dan really stepped up, he had some upset victories that made the whole room get up in excitement. I was getting worse and worse the higher in the bracket we got, it didn’t feel good not winning any rounds or matches against scrubs and pros alike. I made a bad first impression and I really hope I can redeem myself later in other tournaments.

I understand friendly competition from NY maybe a friendly rivalry, but seeming like you hate us or making it seem like we’re not real people crosses lines. It crosses lines with me anyways. I won’t get into it I guess.

It’s been about a week since my terrible preformance. The past two nights I’ve played beautifully with CP and online (for all that’s worth). I had doubts with Gen, but I’ve put them aside and I do seem him to be perfectly viable when I play him correctly.

There’s not many to go for to get advice on playing him, but I’m glad to say my learning sources are reliable and very helpful (jibbo!)

Good night.

I’ll try to post more often.

Between work, real life and actually playing Street Fighter, I don’t find much time put away to update this blog. Even though I usually am always thinking about Street Fighter.

So I’ll start on Friday night, April 11th.

We had Furious Roy, Smiley and Gonzales over The Basement for some matches. Others were invited, but we’re sort of far from most people and everyone has their schedules.

It was fun, Furious Roy played a lot of Gief. He is a great player and I dread when he plays boxer, but I’m always very excited for the challenge.

Gonzales practiced his Chun, pretty good matches.

We stayed up way too late but it was worth the time I’d say.

This is what I really want to talk about! The Street Fighter IV tournaments at Game Universe. There were two tournaments, but we missed the first one because we over slept. Oh well!

A lot of New England’s great players came for this $10 tournament; namely Nestor and his crew. Still the tournament wasn’t easy. I didn’t even get to fight Nestor, Ernest, LuckyD, ect.

I went 1-2 in this tournament. I beat some new player, so it was hardly a victory for me. No offense sir. My second match was against CP :[ If you know our win/lose ratio, he easily beats me 8 out of 10 times. So I was put down into the loser brackets. I then had to fight Greg, a pad player who seems to main a mean Cammy and a Chun Li. I was nervous to fight his Cammy since I don’t really know the match up, but I triumphed our first match. He then switch to Chun Li, I recalled beating his Chun Li weeks earlier, but something changed and he won the second match 2-0. I would like to think I learn from my mistakes and in the third and final match, we took the match down to the wire. All I needed to win was a super > ultra, but sadly I think I focused too much on getting that and I lost the match.

CP went 1-2 also. Winning against me :\ and losing to Ernest, a very respectable lose, then losing to Gonzales’ Rose. CP took care of Gonzales’ Chun Li pretty easily, but CP still can’t find a way to get past Rose’s c.MP with Ken. CP kept going in with forward MK even though it got beat out a lot of the time. It was weird to watch because I feel like CP wasn’t being as patient as I feel he usually is. He was pretty discouraged though after the match, especially since it was his third time being knocked out of a tournament by a Rose. We should seriously take some time to experiment!

Nestor went to win the whole thing, but that wasn’t much of a surprise and he didn’t seem to have any trouble doing it.

Gen Progression

Now I’ll talk about what I’m ALWAYS thinking about. Gen! Ever since I started practicing Gen’s s.MK > Hands I’m always taping my fingers trying to practice the motion and speed so that one day I can easily throw up s.mk > Hands. It’s an amazing offensive tool. Just two weeks ago I thought it might be impossible for me to accomplish. But this past weekend I was doing it a lot. It got me really excited and pumped to see CLEAR progression with Gen. There’s also so much else I’m experimenting with and trying to improve on. Hit confirming into Super > Ultra. Found out that a really easy hit confirm is, c.lp > c.lp ~ Hands ~ Super > Ultra. With double tapping it’s very easy. But I still need to practice.

Another thing I’ve been experimenting with is my (KKK) jumping forward cross up > c.lk > c.lp (or c.mp) ~ lk wall dive. This usually mixes people up. I’m experimenting with mk wall dive that might actually cross someone up

It’s hard to tell right now, but when I find out it’ll definitely be hard for anyone to guess and deal with.

I suppose I’m done for now. I’m just pretty excited for the progression, I’d like to think what the top tier players think of my Gen play and if they think it has any potential. I’d like to know what advice Nestor could give me and if it would make me a better Gen.

I also wonder if Nestor would tell me to just drop Gen and play a more ‘tournament’ worthy character. But I don’t think  I could do that.

Time will tell.

Yo! Last Fridays Fight Night was pretty fun.
Natty, CP and I (Tom) entered a 2 dollar tourney, so did Jim but Dan didn’t seed him into the brackets :

Natty went 0-2 losing to CP(KE) and Gustavo(Claw)(in losers)

Tom went 2-2, winning against Chads(??) and Gustavo(Claw)(in losers) and losing to Ryan(VI)(Winners) and asiandave(RY)(losers)

CP went 1-2 winning against Natty(ELF) and losing to LuckyD(Sim) and Gonzales(RO)

I think that’s about right, it was a lot of fun and i think we’re going back this Tuesday.

What’s on the horizon:
1. Game Universe – Tuesday Fight Night
• When: Tuesday, March 31 (right after 5)
• Where: Framingham, MA @ Game Universe
• What: Casuals @ GU

2. The Basement: Casuals/Learning!
• When: Not sure what day
• Where: The Basement
• What: LuckyD and Furious Roy (and others?) wanted to come hang out and play some matches. Details will be discussed at March 27th Fight Night.

3. Game Universe: Two SF Tournaments
• When: Saturday, April 11th (1st @ 1pm, 2nd @ 6pm)
• Where: Framingham, MA @ Game Universe
• What: Two SFIV Tourneys at GU. $10 entry, cash prizes.

4. Digital Mayhem Tournament
• When: Saturday, April 18th (Registration at 11am)
• Where: Wallingford, CT
• What: SFIV Tournaments (Singles and 2v2)
• NEED: PS3 Sticks (probably won’t go if we can’t get any sticks)

5. New England Wallcade Bar Tournament
• When: Saturday, April 25th (Sign up begins at 12pm)
• Where: Fall River, MA
• What: Series of tournaments that start at 3pm, but signups end at 12:45pm. The tournaments WE care about are: SFIV Team 2v2 Tournament (3pm start) + SFIV Singles Tournament (8pm start)
• SRK Thread + More Info: http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=182803

6. Game Universe: Two SF Tournaments
• When: Saturday, May 1st (1st @ 1pm, 2nd @ 6pm)
• Where: Framingham, MA @ Game Universe
• What: Two SFIV Tourneys at GU. $10 entry, cash prizes

Also, register for the Game Universe Convention in August! More details on that later: http://www.gameuniverseconvention.com

So that’s what’s coming up so far.

I’m trying to level up my game and become better known in the community.

My Gen is coming along I’d say. I have greater control over his moves/combos. I’m learning new ways to combo into his super. It’s a lot of fun I feel like I’m constantly thinking about what Gen COULD do and testing out my theories. I definitely need the players at Game Universe to help me out through practice and just talking about it.

One suggestion I hear sometimes is “drop Gen” but I’ll never do such a thing even if I never win.

I’m thinking about buying a ps3 stick for tournaments on the ps3 console, but maybe I should just buy a ps2 stick and get a converter. This is irrelevant.

Until next time.

I wish I updated more, I’m not sure why I don’t. I still am constantly thinking about Street Fighter.

Street Fighter IV is still huge in my life/head. It’s pretty good liking a game that isn’t dead (Alpha 3). There is constantly chatter or events going on about it.

I recently just got peaced out of the Street Fighter IV National Gamestop tournament after making it through Round 1 and 2 in New Hampshire.

CP, Natty, Clark and Ryan went with me to Rochester, NY (Buffalo) to compete in Round 3. The competition there was good I’d say. One very good Dhalsim (EvilRahsaan) and the rest were about average players but definitely no where near the level of this Rahshaan kid. After I got knocked out we decided to leave New York before the tourney was over because there was no question who was going to win.

I practiced a lot on an xbox pad with as Bison (Dictator). I thought I had gotten pretty good/decent, I was giving CP a run for his money and that says a lot to me. I don’t even think it was my skill though that got me knocked out. I believe it was my nerves. I didn’t think about my matches when I played, I didn’t adapt during the matches. I was just nervous and I always felt like I was on the run. But I wasn’t. I definitely need to level up my SFIV game, but I also need to remember to relax and actually have fun in these tournaments. I love the idea of playing in tournaments and competeting, but when I played in this tournament I definitely wasn’t having fun. I was just so serious and worried about everything.

Now that I’m out of that tournament, I’m going to set my focus back on the stick and Gen. No way around it, Gen is going to be an up hill battle but I’m prepared to lose a lot and just try to seriously learn him and get him to a high level. I’m going to need help and I’m hoping I’ll be able to learn from the good guys over at Game Universe.

I think I’ve asked this before, but what makes high level players different than me? Is it the amount of time they devote into Street Fighter? Do they just have this natural skill for it? Even if I don’t have a natural skill, can I get as good with tons of practice and guidance from the right people?

Either way, I’m going to try to work hard. It may be a video game, but its my passion!

Street Fighter IV has been great and I’ve definitely been putting too much time into it, but I have no regrets ha.

I don’t think I mentioned this last post, but I’ve been competing in the Street Fighter IV Gamestop Tournaments.

I won Round 1 in Salem, NH and just last weekend I wont Round 2 in Derry, NH. It’s been a blast so far and I’m really liking competitive tournaments so far, they’re really exciting.

For the tournament I’ve taken up Dictator and I’d have to say I’ve been doing pretty well with him. I can trade wins with CP pretty consistently and to me at least, that’s saying a lot.

I’ve been doing a lot of practicing on the 360 pad for the Gamestop Tournament, but even despite that I feel I’ve grown more and skilled up on the stick.

So anyways, March 14th I’m going to New York with a car full of people and we’re going to see if I can beat Justin Wong and anyone else that gets in my way of California.

Wish me luck!

In terms of events coming up we have:
1. Game Universe
• When: March 6th (this Friday) Want to leave early! (6-7)
• Where: Game Universe in Framingham, MA
• What: SFIV Tournament on xbox (can use whatever controller you’d like)

2. Street Fighter IV Round 3 Gamestop Tourney
• When: March 14th 2PM (we’ll probably leave at 7 or • Where: 1286 Broadway, New York, NY I think
• What: Round 3 of the Gamestop Tournament
• Wish me luck :]

That’s all for now! Go for broke!

A quick update.

I got Street Fighter IV yesterday and I finally got to play SFIV Gen. He is subtlety different that A3 Gen, but I think I can manage his differences. The game plays really smooth and everything feels really good.

A couple tidbits on Gen in SFIV:
His Hyakurenko (hand slaps) comes out too easily for me, but I probably need to practice my combos. I don’t notice, but maybe I mash LP too much instead of the intended two taps.

His Oga ceiling kick is slower than I’m used to and the input is different from A3. It’s been throwing me off, but I know I can get used to it.

Gekiro is a bit harder to pull off all 6,7,8 hits but again that’s something that’ll come in time. I only played him once and can complete it semi-consistently.

Lastly, I need to figure out his Jyakoha trajectories because I missed it after a Oga wall kick.

This might all sound like gibberish, but these are things I’m thinking about.

I’m having a lot of fun with it and hope I can work to become a challenging opponent.

Speaking of work, I’m going to talk about my A3 progression.

One night when I was sitting in bed waiting to fall asleep something hit me. For a good month or so (probably longer) I’ve been trying to figure out how to do my Super Special link from my chain normals. All it really is is buffering my super special motion. While doing my c.lk, I do a QCF motion, and while at the bottom of my c.mk i do another QCF pressing a punch at the top of the QCF. It sound simple enough but I could never get the timing down. Well one night I was just sitting in bed thinking about it and all of sudden I realized I could do it. I can’t really explain it, I just saw myself doing it. I wanted to try it right there at that moment, but Doe was sleeping and I couldn’t. But it didn’t stop me from just doing the button motions in my head. So a couple days later which would be this night, I tried actually doing it. It wasn’t really consistent but I was doing them and really excited. Ever since I started playing on a stick I’ve been making crazy progress. Not only in move execution but I believe I’ve been seeing the game differently and better than I did before. So seeing that I am actually doing Gen’s SS link on command was awesome. I missed it more than I hit it, but it’s just the beginning and with practice I’ll be hitting it every time. It was great to see it coming out after I’ve been practicing for so long. Unfortunately, that whole Win/Loss thing is a loss. 2DF ratings have been shut off for a while and I can’t easily keep track of my win/loss record as I planned. I think I’m going to start a notebook and tracking everything as it happens rather than taking a look back. I played with Jim for a little bit today, I’m not sure when he switched to the ps3 pad but he seemed like he was getting better game play wise (switch in controller wouldn’t effect this). I personally think Jim needs to work on ways of getting close to his opponent other than jumping. I hit him a lot with anti-air because i expected him to jump every time. The great thing was that he did stop jumping towards the end of our matches. Most people I play with on 2df don’t learn like that. Gen is a good character to learn that from since his AA is so annoying to whoever get hit by it. I saw that his medium kick (the kick that makes him shoot down at an angle) is a good jump in because sometimes I can’t get my waterfall kick out in time, but a SRK would definitely punish that. I think other ways to get in close would probably be jump in > air hadoken, but I’ve seen that punished too. Basically, if the jumps were less consistent he’d be more safe in his jumping. It’s hard for me to say really how to get in close with Gouki since I obviously don’t play him! Jim and CP could probably work together on this, since I did see CP jumping quite a bit at GU, but he was a bit off his game. He still beat me though. But like he tells me I should punish him more for his jumping, for some reason I don’t. Jim’s 180 fireball also needs work as we discussed. I believe it’s because he doesn’t put enough emphasis the forward part of his 180 and instead doing maybe downforward to back. That’s the only thing that would explain his rolling. We all have a lot of improvements to make if we want to get placed high at Georgia, which I’ll discuss now!

Final Round 12 – Atlanta, Georgia

I’m not sure who plans on going, but I recently saw on the 2DF forums of this tournament going down in Georgia. It’s a three day event and eighteen games are being played. I think I’m only competing in two, but we’ll see if I want to take the time and practice any other games. Registrations are on Friday morning at 9:30am, so I think we’ll have to leave on Thursday evening. I’d like to know who is going to compete for sure. I know Jim and CP are in and of course myself, but we’ll see who else wants to. I’ll be competing in the SFIV tourney as well as the A3 tourney. I have high hopes for my performance and I’m definitely going to devote a lot of time and practice in the weeks before the tournament. And I would hope that everyone else going will do the same. I believe we are getting better and that we can get better! It’s just about experience, time and determination. A lot of these players have been playing for 9+ years and I would actually consider myself to be a competitive player for only a couple of months. Because to be honest, before 2DF my game play (our game play) was awful. To train for Georgia the competitors from The Basement need to sit down and have little sessions where we’ll play for a while and I’d say just critique each other. You can probably tell I’m thinking about gootecks and his offer to play with someone for an hour and talk to them about their matches. It’s a great little setup. Well, here’s looking forward to that!

I’m going to keep the blogspot one up for a little bit longer until I decide what is going on!

Later!

*clicking the thumbnail brings you to the full version*

I thank gootecks and his podcast at gootecks.com for a lot of the advanced material.

Also, one month and eight days until Street Fighter IV!