Recap of Yesterday

I like my haircut.
I have to go back on daily medicine for my kidneys.
I played horribly in the team tournament.

Although my appointment was for 4:00, the doctor couldn't see me until 4:45. The tournament started at 5 at the other end of Shinjuku. I paid, ran to Mikado, and had just enough time to set up my tripod before playing in my first match.

It was probably the worst match I've played since last summer. The guy I played, I always beat in casuals, but I had 2 things going against me - 1) I didn't get any practice time in, and 2) Mizoteru was coaching me through the match. Mizoteru's a great player, but he doesn't really understand the philosophy of my team and the character matchups. I had my A-Gief going up against a C-Sagat that didn't know the matchup. 10 times out of 10, I smother the guy. Gief doesn't need meter. All he needs is RC Lariat until Sagat can punish it. I was doing this, but Mizoteru kept telling me to build meter. That's good advice, but not necessarily for that matchup. I lost that round, eventually brought it to the final round with my Bison vs. the other guy's Chun. He landed a super combo, but I had just enough life to pull out a win.

My next opponent was another guy that I always beat. Playing my normal way, I would smother him with RCs and pokes, but I was building meter. I lost that game, but Mizoteru beat him and Gao for our team.

Our next opponents were a couple of scrubs and Aniki. Well, I don't know about the A-Groove guy,as I never played him before, but Aniki was the only threat on their team. I swept them.

That put us in the 3-team playoffs. Our first opponent was the team of Seitai (P), CAB (K), and Pinokio (K). I went up against Seitai first. I never knew this guy to be Seitai. Everyone thinks his P-Groove is the best in Tokyo (I think Sakamoto's is better), so I never associated this guy with the name Seitai. I see him every so often at Shibuya Kaikan and normally beat him. I didn't have any problems here. Then I went up against CAB. I beat his Chang with Gief, and finally it came down to my Bison vs. his Gief. I activated after a 2 hit scissors, but I was a bit farther from the corner than I thought I was. I still got some chip, and proceeded to build meter. At one point he was jumping in on me, and I tried to RC Psycho Crusher, but got a roll. He landed with an FAB. I got it kind of close, but the damage did its toll. Ichi came in and beat him, lost to Pinokio, and Mizoteru beat Pinokio.

That team then lost to the all-C-Groove team of Bari, Nakanishi, and Iyo (well, really only Bari), so that meant it was us vs. 3 C-Groovers for the title. My Gief and Blanka got DESTROYED by Nakanishi's Guile, but I came back with Bison to win it American-style. Against Bari, I switched up my order, but his Rolento pulled out a win (I guessed wrong on a dropthru CC). Mizoteru took out Bari and came within fractions of a second of beating Iyo - if his last RAGED fierce hit, it would have been a win. Time ran out before the damage registered though, so Ichi had to come in. Ichi and Iyo play a lot and they trade off with wins. It came to the last characters, but Iyo landed a super and made it difficult for Ichi to come back, so we had to settle for 2nd place.

After the tourney I got a lot of good casual matches with Mulder (we went back and forth), Konto-san, Pinokio, and some others. Ichi thinks I'm getting better, but I think my performance yesterday was shitty. There's another tourney Saturday (2 on 2), so I hope I do better then. Still no teammate tho...

Big Day Today

This is gonna be a busy day. It's just past noon now. I'm gonna go and get an overdue haircut, then have to go to the hospital at 4 for my test results. At 5 is the Mikado 3on3. I'm teaming with Mizoteru and Ichi. I don't know what groove Ichi is using, but his K is better than his N. Bas isn't going to be in the tournament. If he signs up, he'll be by himself and leave before 6. That means first place is wide open. Just read Bas's blog today and found out there's a 2on2 next week at NishiSega. I'll see if Sakamoto wants to team up. He's cool, and I think it'd be fun to team with a P-Groove player.

Yesterday I played a lot of CvS2 at Mikado. Gotta work on my patience a bit, but for the most part my execution is ok. Still can't get supers off at the end of my CCs sometimes, but I'm hoping that my luck in tournaments continues! If not, I have top-tier players behind me, so it's ok. I love team tournaments. :)

Stupid Scrubs

I played at Mikado again today. It's supposed to be Fight Night on Tuesdays, but it was pretty dead. When I got there, there was NO ONE on CvS2, so I went a floor down to play UNO. Yes, there is an arcade version of UNO. Actually, UNO is just one of the games available on that machine. It's a pretty basic version of UNO - you can't do multi-card combos or anything like that, but it's fun. I also found out today that they have a game similar to Pusoy Dos on there. I actually beat the game in that - if you win 3 rounds or something, it automatically ends. Anyway, after that I checked the CvS2 floor again, and there were some ppl playing. One machine had 2 ppl on it already, so I sat down at the one that had one side open. I decided to wait and see what the guy playing could do. He was using some team with C-Ken, and this is what I saw:

jump in nothing, c.forward, c.forward, hurricane kick

so I decided NOT to play that guy and waited for the guy next to me to finish. He lost to some guy using K-Sagat, Hibiki, Cammy2. Because it's Mikado and most ppl that play there suck, I decided to use a fun team first. I used my "wrestler" team - A-Honda, Raiden, Zangief2. I didn't expect to do well or anything, I just wanted to mess around and see what the comp was like. He could do basic combos, and he totally came back on my not-really-doing-anything-Honda. My Raiden somehow evened things up a bit (jumping short, power bomb!), and then my Gief came in.

Some people think that Cammy vs. Gief is an impossible fight for Gief. Granted, it's very, VERY hard, but if you know what to do it's very winnable. I know what to do. However, my scrub for an opponent didn't know that I knew what to do. At one point in the round, he hit me with something. It might have been s.fierce -> super, I dunno. Anyway, what he hit me with didn't matter. It's what he did afterwards.

He taunted me.

I didn't know the guy, and OBVIOUSLY HE DIDN'T KNOW ME! So, because he's a scrub, and I was MOTHER FUCKING A-ZANGIEF, I came back on his ass to win. Man, he must have felt stupid. He was about to feel stupider, because now I decided to play serious. My Honda (ghetto as it was) took out his Sagat and half of his Hibiki. Raiden took out Hibiki, then lost to Cammy pretty easily. The last round was full life Cammy vs. full life MOTHER FUCKING A-ZANGIEF. Of COURSE I won. And OF COURSE I taunted a lot. He came back again. And I beat him again, taunting a lot again. The guy played me SEVEN TIMES, switching off between K and C. SEVEN TIMES he lost, and EVERY SINGLE GAME I taunted like crazy. I decided that the guy wasn't worth my time, so when he jumped in after that 7th win, I went to the next machine - MAKING SURE TO TAUNT HIM AT THE START OF ROUND 1! Just to make sure I wouldn't have any problems in case he decided to follow me to that machine, I used my real team. He did end up following me there, after I had already racked up a few wins on whoever was playing me. He still didn't (COULDN'T!) beat me. He even used Team Ricky on me and I OCV'd his ass. The guy was pathetic, and he didn't even know it. My streak went up to 10 and I had to beat the game. I put in my initials as DAV just so he would know who he lost to .

Let this be a lesson to you - unless the guy you're playing is using K-Groove and it's a tactical taunt, don't taunt people you don't know. You may think you're better than them, but you could be wrong. If you ARE wrong, you just end up looking like an idiot.

NEXT!

So I wake up early yesterday and check the 2ch cvs2 board and see that there's another tourney coming up - a 3on3 at Mikado this Saturday. Signups at 4, starts at 5. PROBLEM: I have a reservation at the hospital (took a blood test for my kidney condition and have to get the results) at 4. It's in Shinjuku, so provided the results are good and I don't need any NEW tests done, I should be fine, as long as I have someone to sign me up. I email Bas, but he says he doesn't know if he's going to enter, and even if he does, he'd have leave at around 5:40. Tournament rules would have our team going with 2 members the rest of the way (likely the whole tournament, considering late starts), so I msg Yoshio to see if he can put me on the list of ppl with no team.

I was working on basically the same train line as Mikado, and on the way home I fell asleep on the train and got woken up at Seibu Shinjuku, so I walked across the street to the arcade. It was 50 yen for 2 credits, so I hopped on with A-King, Gief, Bison and got some wins. Lost eventually and switched to my bidness team. During my streak, Gao showed up so I lost and switched to his machine. For some reason, I couldn't finish my CCs with supers the entire night, and on a couple of occasions, that would have won it for me. I got really good practice against his Nakoruru though. I'm not as scared of her as I used to be.

Mizoteru showed up and I got him to team with me this Saturday. He gave me some pointers against some of the random competition - basically be more patient building meter, and what K-Groovers tend to look for when facing A. Since Bas isn't going to enter, I think Mizoteru can basically take out anyone in the tournament. After Bas, the major threats are Iyo, Pinokio, AO and Kisshi. Everyone else I have confidence against. Hopefully, one of them can be our third member.

Took the day off today. I'll probably play a little later, and bring my camera with me.

Shizuoka CvS2 tourney

Went down to Shizuoka with Bas, Mulder, Touru ("Sougeishin"), and Mii (some girl that uses K-Groove). We stopped along the way for some BOMB ASS melon bread. I also got kinda carsick, but I survived the trip. We got there about 2 hrs before the tourney, and no one was there. We practiced, and I couldn't do shit on the 2P controller. It seemed really loose (I would get headstomps instead of scissor kicks a LOT), and fierce seemed to randomly be slow (c.fierce in the Blanka custom missed a lot, as did s.fierce in the corner with Bison), but the 1P side seemed fine. Apparently, the 2P side was fine for Mulder and Bas also.

Anyway, enough people showed up eventually, so the tourney was held, albeit a little behind schedule. We drew our numbers and Mulder gets Bas 1st round. Poor him. Bas said he would use N-Groove, but as always, right before the match he changes his mind. Mulder loses. My first match was against some guy who was using Bas's N-Groove team (Akuma, Blanka, Sagat), but he put Blanka first. My Gief did okay, but lost the first round. My Blanka proceeded to romp, and I easily won. My second match was against another N-Groover, this time Honda, Sakura, Sagat. Mulder (who I look up to for his Zangief skills) immediately called it a win for me, as Gief does well against all three characters. I did pretty good, and got to the next round....

where I lose to Bas.

ANYWAY. That was the semifinals, so I got to play another match afterwards, for 3rd place: Funapi-, who uses K-Cammy, Sagat, Morrigan. I won that and got 3rd.

Final Results:

1. Bas
2. Marai (that side of the bracket was pretty easy, but he was definitely the best. K-Rock, Blanka, Sagat. He beat Shizuoka Saikyo in the first round).
3. Me

BLEH

CvS2 in Ikebukuro, my opinion of Zero/Alpha 3

So my plans for the evening changed and I decided to play CvS2 in Ikebukuro. When I got there, there was someone on there with a 3 game win streak using C-Yuri, Balrog the Boxer, Cammy-2. Since the Shizuoka tournament is coming up, I jumped in using my real team. I played him a couple of times, this K-Groove guy (various mixtures of Beni, Haoh, Raiden, Geese, and other random characters), some C-Groove guy, and some N-Groove guy. I didn't lose, and after 12 or 13 wins ppl stopped playing me, so I left the game and went to a manga kissa.

After meeting up with Wakamatsu and getting some Italian food (and for some reason, they had escargot, which was pretty fucking good), we stopped by the Sega arcade. Miu was randomly there, playing Z3, using V-Gouki. He doesn't play the game, but he had 1 win. I jumped in with Z-Gief, took him out in 3 straight rounds (yes, they had it set to "first to 3"). Wakamatsu came in with Z-Cody. I took him out in 3 straight rounds also. Then some guy came in with V-Ken and reminded me why I hate the game.

The guy had no ground game whatsoever. He was fireball-DP, corner the opponent, and hadou rave. That's it. But because V-ism is so ridiculous in that game, I lost to him several times. Many times I would have a huge lead, then get corner VC'd. The game is sooooooooo stupid. I can't see how anyone in their right minds would rate it higher than Zero 2. In Zero 2, everyone has 4 ways to use their meter. Because of this, it came down to who was better with what character. In Zero 3, you only have at most 2 ways to use it (not counting VC strengths - but if you do, that's another reason the game is so shitty). The game seemed less about who was better with which character, and more about which -ism is better.

Although CvS2 has 6 grooves, they're balanced a lot better than the 4 tournament-accepted -isms in Zero 3. In each groove there are numerous characters that can be used. In Z3, no one is good in no-ism. 3 or 4 characters are good in Z-ism. Basically the game requires you to use V-ism, where everyone is capable. I never liked V-ism. It just seems so, for lack of a better word, GAY. Since, for all intents and purposes, Z3 = V-ism, Zero 3 is GAY.

Tourney Training, a new toy, etc.

Yesterday I went to Mikado. Monday is "2 credits for 50 yen" day there, so I figured there would be a bunch of ppl. I was wrong. There was only some scrub there, so I picked A-Maki, Raiden, Gief-2 on him and got a 6 game win streak. He left and the K-Yamazaki player came on. He's probably the best in Tokyo at not being thrown. Throwing is a big part of my game with Bison (as you can see in my match with Tokido at the Sega 3on3), so it was good practice. The only thing is, at Mikado, when I win, people leave. So I did what was necessary - every time I was about to win, I let go of the controls and let him beat me. I don't think he liked that much. He started taunting me, but hey... there's a tournament on Sunday in Shizuoka that I'm preparing for. I also practiced using Bison without meter, so I would burn it before or at the beginning of the last round, for no apparent reason (at least to him). We'll see if my training pays off. After 300 yen I left and went to Shibuya where there were a good number of people on all three machines. I got a lot of A-Maki practice in (there's this girl I know named Maki that I think is cute, so I like using the character), but I'm not changing my main team.

Today I only had work in the morning - I gotta use up my vacation days before the second week of March, so I took the afternoon off. Since it was payday, I treated myself to some new toys. I got a long LAN cable so I can use the internet in the living room without switching to wireless. I also got a webcam and headset. But the best thing I got was an SD card video camera. This thing is so dope. It runs on 4 AA batteries, records straight to SD, and is lighter than 2 cell phones (but about the same size!). It's basically the same model as shown here. That's the 572, mine is the 570. No idea what the differences are, but I don't care. Now I can easily upload footage to my computer without having to capture it first. Including a 2gb SD card, it came to about US$100. I'm going to love using this. Afterwards I just came home and watched wrestling on dailymotion.

On last week's Raw, for some reason Charlie Haas put on a mask and shouted "It's Time!" to JR and King. Kim thought this was really funny and thought about making it his new line. So I made him this avatar:





I originally planned to just have Rolento holding a clock, but there was hardly any good art for Rolento, and the good images weren't ideal for manipulating. Then I came up with the idea of using the Rolex logo and changing it to "Rolento". I like the result, but I don't know if Kim will use it. WHATEVER!

Goodbye Mikado Z2 tourneys～

Today was the last Street Fighter Zero 2 tournament ever to be held at Mikado in Shinjuku. Apparently they're closing down and moving activities to another location. They'll still have tournaments there (today there were 22 entries!), but this was the last one at "Mikado".

I almost missed it. Today's the middle day of a three-day weekend, and I stayed in bed the whole day. I messed around with ImageReady, making a fake avatar for Campbell:



and crunching (i.e. watching a video on crunchyroll.com) a subtitled version of "Say Hello for Me", my new favorite Japanese movie. At 6pm I remembered there was a tournament. Since I live on the line that goes to Mikado, I hopped on a train and got there at a little past 6:30, and the tourney was scheduled to start at 7. I rushed up to the tourney floor, but no one had signed up yet. I decided to get some practice in, since I hadn't played since last month's tourney (taking 3rd by losing to Leonhard's Gouki/Akuma - he took 2nd that tourney). I didn't do too well with Gief, and seriously considered using Dan this tourney, but I decided that I have a much easier time with Gief all across the board. Ken is the only matchup I'd rather have Dan (besides Rolento, but I'd rather have ANYONE but Gief against Rolento). I paid my entry and signed up with Gief. When I drew my lottery number, I got 17. That resulted in me having a first round match (most people got byes). It ended up being against Ranran, my first ever tourney opponent at Mikado. In that tourney, we were both using Dan and I lost the last round by time. This time I had Gief and took him out. My next opponent was against some Birdie player. There were actually TWO Birdies in this tournament, and they were both pretty good. Birdie is the worst character in Z2, but in a single-game, single-elimination tourney, anything can happen. I won the first round, lost the second, and then dug in and convinced myself there was NO WAY I was getting peaced out by Birdie today, and won the last round fairly convincingly.
My next opponent was some Nash/Charlie player. Most people not in the know consider this to be Nash's fight. Those in the know put Gief over Nash. I am in the know. I actually almost jinxed myself by looking ahead in the bracket to see who my next opponent was. You should never really do that in a tournament. You should only care about the current opponent. You can't get to the next opponent without beating the current one. But I saw that if I won this match, I could likely face Yosaku, a Rose player that I faced at the last tournament and won easily against. Anyway, against Nash, I won the first round, lost the second, and won the last. I don't really remember details. All the matches should be up in a month or so. I think I got a lucky CC in. I ended up facing Yosaku and won easily, which put me in the finals against Leonhard.
Leonhard is easily the best Z2 player at Mikado. He uses several characters. Last month he went on a 30 game win streak with Ryu before the tournament, but used Gouki/Akuma in the tournament (and as I wrote above, he took 2nd). This month he was using Gen. In his first match, he took out the most dangerous (and ONLY!) Sakura player in the tournament - Nazo no Otoko (the Spiderman guy). He also took out a couple(?) of Kens, and BBC - the most illogical Rolento player ever (but even an illogical Rolento player will destroy Gief). Anyway, I haven't faced a good Z2 Gen in years (actually never - the only good Gen I ever played was Choi's on Alpha 2, which is basically the same thing, but with an extra character), so I didn't know what to expect. I decided to play it safe and do standard footsies, hope to get jumping knees to SPD, and try not to get crossed up into super. I won the first round with a CC I think, and I think I lost the second (I believe I got crossed up into super!). In the last round, I got supered again, but he was going for a level 2 rush super into a level 1 airthrow super. Apparently, you can't get the second super against Gief. I overheard him talking to someone else after the tournament, and he said he remembered that as soon as he pressed the button. I was alive still, and he was in the corner. I snuck in a jumping hit (either knees or splash, I don't remember), and because I figured he thought I was going to go for a SPD, I inserted a c.short before that. Z2 being the great game that it is and ticks actually being effective, the SPD connected for the win.

I am the last-ever Street Fighter Zero 2 Champion at Mikado!