Utopia, Part 2

To finish up Street Fighter 4, I figured I'd mention some one more character who the outside community wouldn't know (partially due to him being new). Here, we have Rufus, the ultimate American stereotype. Fat, arrogant, yet surprisingly quick and strong, Rufus is a hideously good rushdown character. He has the highest amount of combos into ultra in the game, though Ryu's are easier to setup. In addition, because of his size, he plays footsies rather well, and his dive kick lets him actually approach aerially (god forbid). In addition, he has the mighty EX Messiah Kick, which is probably the best move in the game due to its great startup invincibility and ability to FADC into ultra. To finish up his rushdown ability, good tick throws and blockstrings let him do things regardless of the opponent's blocking ability.

Here in this video, we have Justin Wong repping his Rufus against Chris Hu's Ryu. While Hu does miss a few FADC ultras in the video (due to nerves, stupidity, whatever), he still shows he's a high calibur player against Wong's Rufus, while Wong shows off Rufus' potential at such a high calibur in this game. There's not much in particular I can comment on here, because its all done so well.

Utopia

So, in the interest of making a better world, I've decided to link some videos and basic info about some characters to various fighting games that aren't Brawl, since we all know only Brawl players and Weng actually ever read this, and I doubt anyone except Trav reads it anymore. Oh well, what the heck.

Street Fighter 4:

To start things off, we have the most popular fighting game in the world at the moment. I would've done it chronologically, but Super Turbo is probably too indepth to start people off with, and thus may have bored people away from the rest of the article. Street Fighter 4 is the newest game in the most played fighting game series, the one that started off the genre, and this popularity is shown by the fact everyone and their dog knows Ryu. The main new mechanic in SF4 is Focus Attacks, activated by pressing/holding medium punch and medium kick at the same time, replacing Street Fighter 3's Universal Overhead. The Focus Attack (abbreivated as FA, or SA sometimes, as its called Saving Attack in Japan) is a move which can be charged up while the buttons are held, can absorb up to one hit from any non-armour breaking move and the damage from the hit will slowly be restored. In addition, FAs can be done to cancel a move, by focus attacking as the move hits, which consumes half your super bar. This is particularly well known on Ryu's Shoryuken, as it can then combo into Metsu Hadouken, his ultra, for damn nice damage.

The flagship character, Ryu, is well known in the SF4 community for being able to do anything he wants. Hadouken, his signature projectile, is fast to recover and has nice speed, allowing him to turtle it up, using a crouching Shoryuken (a shoryuken done using the shortcut motion of down-forward, down, down-forward, allowing you to wait until the invincibility frames of the shoryuken will dodge anything they use) to defeat any aerial approach easily. His pokes are great, with good range and speed, allowing him to play footsies easily. In addition, due to the FA cancels (commonly abbreviated FADC, to mean Focus Attack Dash Cancel), he can have free shoryukens, as an FADC'd shoryuken is safe on block, and if it hit, then you can land Metsu Hadouken for great damage, letting him play the offense game as well. However, he doesn't suffer from the typical 'jack-of-all-trades, master of none' curse, as he can do any of them so well its landed him at second in the tierlist, below only the Muay Thai tank, Sagat.

This match, though old, is probably one of the best of Daigo Umehara (also known as The Beast, current reigning world champion of Street Fighter 4) playing his Ryu, and writing the book on 'how to read Justin Wong'. The fact Daigo missed the Shoryuken link early on in the first round is surprising, but that could be summed up by the American crowds being vastly different to Japanese crowds, in that they get hype. Daigo is also a great exhibitor of the fact that Ryu can play however he wants to, as he takes up quite a few stances in the video. (If you want to watch any of the videos linked in this article, they'll all be in their respective playlists at www.youtube.com/user/PetesCappucino)

Sagat is slowly becoming more and more well known to those who don't play SF, because his position on the tier list and the large amount of scrubs who like to whine have made him seem vastly overpowered or even broken, when in reality he's not -that- much better than the rest of the cast. Its fairly obvious to most, even at first when you see his walking speed, that Sagat is meant to be an immobile tank, just throwing Tiger Shots and Tiger Uppercuts to stop you coming in. If you get in, he has to get you out, he can't just run away. Sagat's power in SF4 that wasn't in Super Turbo (I'll use ST later on) comes from two things. First of all, allowing him to kara (cancel before the move comes out to gain distance) his uppercut and his knee off of his forward + heavy kick (under common notation, its f.hk or f.rh), which gave him great distance on both, made him more mobile than the immobile tank is supposed to be. If you jump anywhere on the screen, there's a good chance Sagat can uppercut you now. Tiger Destruction is the other reason. Easily jugged into via the well-known combo of Tiger Uppercut FADC f.rh > Ultra, it does great damage, equal with Zangief's ultra for most damage in the game. Even if FADC > Ultra combos where an oversight by the developers, surely they could've realised that an anti-air f.rh comboing into the highest damage ultra in the game was a bit over the top. Its lead to Sagat being able to KO most people easily if he's losing at that point in time, which, of course, is a bad thing for the already best character in the game to have.

Mago is probably the best Sagat in the world at the moment, and (though this video is relatively old, again) it shows off Sagat's defensive strength so well, in addition to the Tiger Knee blockstrings and tick throws (blockstring being a 'combo' on their block to pressure them, while a tick throw is a throw done after a quick, safe on block move that'd normally be followed up by another blockstring). He also lands a Tiger Destruction from an FADC Upper, which shows just how much damage Sagat can do if he feels like it.

To change things up from the two fireballers above, we have a character that hates fireballs, Zangief. Though most people assume Zangief to be a godlike rushdown character, he's more often that not the turtle, because why bother approaching rushdown characters if they're going to have to approach you, and they die when they do? Nonetheless, against fireballers, you're going to have to approach with a combination of Lariat (because spinning in a circle let's you dodge fireballs, obviously) and Focus Attacks to absorb them. The first method generates more super meter for EX Glove (a move which lets him punish poorly spaced fireballs, to put it plainly) and Focus Attacks give him more Ultra meter, to land his 0 frame grab of instantaneous death. Zangief's signature move, his Spinning Piledriver, allows him to win all mixups when the opponent's best answer is grab, because it'll go right through their grabs, and pretty much their anything as long as it isn't a jump and doesn't have invincibility.

Though he may not be the best player in the world, UltraDavid is a favourite of mine, and the only player in America I know who consistantly reps Zangief, which he compares to a drug ('if you don't use, you'll only lose to the guys that do'). Gootecks is also a fairly good Boxer, and though this is a good matchup for Zangief, its not that much in his favour (6-4, since Boxer can camp. Obviously if Boxer approaches, he dies). He shows how a Zangief is meant to be played much, much better than I do (i.e. he doesn't SPD at all possible times).

Since I'm not going to go through all the characters individually, if anyone has any requests of basic summaries, ask and I can provide. If you want more indepth, ask Weng :P. Obviously just three videos would be a copout, though, so here's some more links.

More updates coming later.

Pete's Sigs

So Alzi's a lazy fuck who probably wouldn't have done a good job anyway, so I decided to work on my sigs in GIMP. Previously, I'd done courses on using photoshop and done quite well (top of the class, since I worked out of spite). However, this was counteracted by the fact that GIMP is completely fucking useless. Anyway, I tried hard enough, following a fairly simple formula for the sigs, and here they are:

Dudley (Street Fighter 3/Super Street Fighter 4)

Q (Street Fighter 3)

Eddie/Zato-1 (Guilty Gear)

Hazama (BlazBlue)

Morrigan and Lilith (Darkstalkers)

Robo-Ky (Guilty Gear)

Hisui and Kohaku (Melty Blood/Tsukihime)

Olimar (Pikmin)

Comment on what you like, what should be improved, etc.