See that? That gets explained on Tuesday. That will go a long way towards reducing my surprisingly epic amount of stress right now. And, as tempting as it seems, I promise not to use it to smack around some of the people causing said stress. Have you held a modern life jacket recently? So light but so solid. I’m pretty confident I could hurt someone with this with some effort. I’d rather not, though. Yellow is so completely not my colour — I’ll likely share a pic of me in that sucker later and you can see how me + yellow = omghaveyouseenadoctororange? That’s an official Crayola colour, btw… — but I like being seen on the water and not run-the-heck-over by people not paying attention. If they aren’t paying attention and are bigger than me then I’m not gonna have a lot of luck no matter the colour but, hey, I’m doing what I can. Wow, that took a turn there. This is supposed to be happy!
You know what else makes me happy? Free EVO Coverage!!! I’m not sure how much I’ll get to watch today but I suggest that all fighting game fans check in at least once, no matter the match. Go EVO*! This will bring back memories whether you used to play in arcades, on your SNES, or with your kick ass Hori stick and/or custom cabinet. These players are awesome (Daigo among them, of course) and I’ve learned so much just by watching them. The rotating commentators grew on me and they do know their stuff. It can get a little ‘inside baseball’ at times, but I guarantee that you will pick up tons, even if you just know the basics.
See how awesome this is? This is very awesome.
I never got the hang of the parry system since I was waaaaaaaaaaaay too used to Alpha 3. But these kind of awesome exchanges do happen on a routine basis when the top players get together and mix it up. I’m rarely disappointed in a match, even if the guy I was rooting for lost, since it’s just so fun to watch!
*Basically it’s the world SF (and other fighting game) championships. Top rank players from all over the world gather here to provide us with epic youtube footage see who stands above all. A lot of my links about the background of the whole thing seem to redirect to the stream or timeout but, really, there’s not much else you need to know :)
You might want to 303 that thing before you use it too much
http://www.303products.com/shop303/index.cfm/category/65/303-aerospace-protectant.cfm
http://www.wheretobuy303.com/results_list.php?showonly=CA&tab=CA&zip=&distance=10&state=ON
I don’t want to take over the page, but Evolution just brings to mind so many things to share with others about fighting games.
Daigo “The Beast” Umehara, besides earning a special mention in Episode 11 of the original Pure Pwnage, won last year’s Street Fighter IV EVO tournament. Here’s an interview from afterwards where he mentioned how much time he spends practicing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmS6PqgUH6Y
In April he played against Justin Wong in an exhibition match for Capcom to promote Super SF IV. It was an incredible match! Seth Killian (s-kill became a Capcom community manager and got SF IV’s boss named after him) provided fairly transparent commentary, live from the event.
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/6400836
Can’t mention Justin Wong without bringing up the “Never Give Up” video from the Marvel vs Capcom 2 finals at EVO 2007.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVmc5ZepdVs And I can’t mention “Never Give Up” without linking “Never GET Up.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMHc32ygldk That one was Final Round, not EVO, but it’s an important lesson to learn and you can see there was a lot of excitement.
I don’t know about Toronto, but I hear that Montreal has a Street Fighter tournament scene. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BhRWG6KM5E
Finally, there’s Shoryuken.com There is a wiki there that can help with understanding the jargon, but most of the posts I find on the forums there usually abbreviate that jargon even further. The new glossary threads might help, but I think I would rather just watch the combo videos that those forum members make. There’s also the occasional hilarious animated .gif.
http://shoryuken.com/avatars/capn-spanky-52610.gif?dateline=1250357202
http://shoryuken.com/avatars/jae-hoon-15023.gif?dateline=1276801828
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/1003/Folestet/Street%20Fighter/howiroll.gif
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/1003/Folestet/Street%20Fighter/SRK_AV_10.gif
Oops! Your comment got caught in the spam filter with the number of links but I’m glad I check these things manually so I could let it out!!
My Shoryuken sign up date – 08-19-2001 ^_^
Thanks for the great links! I’ll include your comment in my EVO post tomorrow so that everyone can take a look, if they haven’t already.
Toronto does have a scene but I’ve been shy and never tried to take part. I used to have a neighbourhood SNES SFII thing going on in grade 5, but it was basically me (Ken/Chun-li), my brother (Ryu/ Guile), Local Kid 1 (the world’s worst Blanka), and Local Kid 2 (Ryu and only ever Ryu. Ever. Would quit otherwise). Oh, the cries of “CHEAP! CHEAP!” echoed into the night. That’s why every fighter should make sure to read http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win-part-1.html at some point if they want to actually play other people.
You know, I was going to include David Sirlin, but that comment was huge enough already. I was also going to mention the FightPads, but I think that Snake Eyes just won the HD Remix tournament with one; they’ll get enough coverage from others, so I’ll just share a warning for any PS3 owners out there to not buy more than one since they all use the same radio frequency for the wireless dongle (not BlueTooth).
I watched some EVO last night (totaly forgotten it, till i saw it on your twitter) saw the Tekken matches. Those where awsome, to bad i almost falled asleep (06:00 in the morning here) and had to go bed to not look like a zombie all day.
I realy liked to watch these kind of e-sport events live, i hope they do this next year or more often.