The Masked Carnie

When Super Street Fighter 4 was released, I committed myself to getting Zangief's new Siberian Blizzard down enough that I could use it consistently when I needed it, and only then would I decide whether it was worthwhile.  It turns out that was time well-spent, as I swear by it in over half the matchups.  Of course, I've had one heck of a journey identifying where it's appropriate and where it's not.  Believe me, it was a journey full of surprises. UPDATED!   Arcade Edition details follow the other general uses.  Also added Juri... I don't know how I missed her the first time.

I recently made a post on a message board about the importance of guessing games in strategic gaming, and thought it'd be nice to elaborate on such a point here.  In context, someone stated that he'd rather win in a fighter game (Street Fighter 4) by good fundamental play (referring to spacing, reaction, and combo skill) than win by what he perceived as random guesses.  My response: there are always guesses to be made.  Reaction is absolutely more valuable than prediction, but the ability to predict your opponent is vital.  It will be necessary at certain points, and I argue that it is necessary for any strategic game to be good.

Yeah, it's been a while.  I've been doing more classic TV watching on YouTube than gaming, including Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Lucky Star.  This entry will just be some snippets of what gaming I have been doing.  See the tags for what it involves.

Well, good news for the Org, victory was accomplished in a recent Super Street Fighter 4 tournament.  Unfortunately, the attendance was half of the previous one, but hey, money in my pocket and experience earned.  Level up!  I do not wish to be unsportsmanlike, but to be perfectly honest, most of this tournament was easier than I thought it would be (I stress the "most," some of it was downright terrifying).  Therefore, rather than comment on each of my matches like I did last time, I'm gonna talk about what I learned overall from the experience.

I basically was bored today, so I wrote a summary of who dictates what ultra I use for Zangief. When figuring out which was more useful, I had to ask myself several questions. 1) Which is more useful for okizeme (anti-wakeup game)? Keep in mind that I primarily will use body splash crossup tricks by default, and then once in a while throw in Atomic Suplex/Spinning Piledriver. 2) How useful is Siberian Blizzard when I'm down? This is the best time for me to throw it out consistently. 3) How useful is either one in the middle of the overall fight? As you'll see, I often tended toward Siberian Blizzard in my answers, largely because Ultimate Atomic Buster is just a more powerful version of Spinning Piledriver. It's usually better to have a different threat/answer than it is to have a more powerful version of something you already have. *: Characters with a * by their names can be hit by Siberian Blizzard while crumpling. It requires precise timing. After hitting wit...

My ego has finally healed up enough that I can talk about what happened Saturday. I attended a Super Street Fighter 4 tournament that day, hoping to use it as a first step into professional play. Now that I don't have a job, I need to find some way of making income, and I've improved tremendously in my gameplay since the last tournament. If I could win this thing, I would take that as a sign that I absolutely should pursue it seriously. Obviously, that didn't happen. I still can't completely discount it, but something happened to me that hit so hard it'll be a while before I even feel like I can pick up that controller again. I've been avoiding my Xbox for everything but DVDs since.

With the loss of my job, I have significantly more free time, even after going out looking for other jobs.  I can now practice Street Fighter, Doom, Halo, Catan, whatever!  I got to playing some SSF4 last night, and clearly the people there got better while I was grinding my teeth at work.  I haven't worked so hard to win my matches in a long time, even though I was consistently winning.  I also got worse in some aspects, because even though some people were playing really stupidly, they still managed to beat me.  The one thing in which I can now pride myself though, is that I can almost reliably get Ultra 2 out when I want it, and it feels really good.  I can bait out Shoryukens, answer crossups, even finally hit the Reversal EX Spinning Bird Kick.  I can't use it carelessly, but it's still a powerful tool (especially when I can manage to get it twice in a round).

As you can see, a lot of my time is being taken up with Super Street Fighter 4, partly because I've got a game show appearance for it coming up tomorrow.  To at least make that productive with this blog, I've jotted down some interesting things I've noticed with the game.

Well lucky me, Capcom splurged on quick shipping and it was actually overnight!  I received my package on Friday and proceeded right away to my game store to try it with my friends.  Of course someone wanted to play me purely because I didn't know any more about the moves than he did... but he didn't know I was already familiar with T. Hawk from Super Turbo.  We played it throughout the store's weekend (they close Sunday), and I'm happy to report that everybody found something else they're proud to work with.  I'm pleasantly amazed someone could put up a good fight against my Zangief with Adon.  Read past the break for details.

Today, two very interesting things happened.  1) Possibly due to pirate distribution, Super Street Fighter 4 was officially released, although not every place was complying with that.  2) I got an invitation to be a "pro gamer" from a good friend, and possibly get some Youtube fame/infamy as a result.  What's amazing is that none of this was really motivating.  Check it out.

Before I go off on a rant here, keep in mind this is an image from MS Paint using a screenshot from a camcorder, not a direct screenshot from the game.  Please do not blame me for the quality, it's the best I have to work with.  That said, Capcom has made a some questionable choices on their presentation.  For the purpose of this article, I'm talking about the main menu.  You know, that thing you will always have to look at when you start the game, unless you actually take the time to make someone else go through the menu for you every time. Really?  I'm sure I don't even have to check to know that there's slash out there of Ken x Ryu (shotoshipping sounds awfully wrong in this context), but this is just disturbing.  I can read so much into this, it's scary.  You've got Ken on top, staring down in a way that looks anything but fierce.  That establishes him as the seme.  Ryu's face and body positioning is done to look like he's begging for...