[Report] Takanobaba 5/29/99 A3 tourney
Julien B Beasley
weekly sfa3 tourney with Kuni. Last time, I got 10-13 th place out of 40
people so I was hoping to at least go for the top 8.
We walk into the arcade, and some V ryu has a 48 win streak! Wow.. I
look over to see who it is, and it's the world champ, Daigo Umehara.
Looks like he decided to actually enter the tournament this time instead
of being late and not entering like last time.
Game 1 - V Karin
round1. I lose my first round somehow to a VC.. I shake my head, decide
to not scrub out, and move to
round2: I go for guard crush and kill him with crowd pleasing string.
round3: I manage to GC him again, but the string isn't charged up. I
eventually charge up again, and he is so terrified that he gets dizzied
trying to avoid GC. String up!
Game 2 - V Rose
round1. Playing a bit too defensively, I get pushed into the corner. He
VC's me, and does an A2 like VC of multiple shawl drills ending in aura
soul throw. Nasty. I get a bit of a comeback, but win
round2. These single elim, 1 game touraments are stressful! I go all out
low fierces, and straight up jump jab his attacks. Like my previous
opponent, I GC him and string him for the win. My opponent seems shaken.
I'm happy at this point that I've killed with 3 SC's already. The
commentator (yes they have commentators at tourneys in Japan) is
wondering whether I prefer american or japanese style sticks. I much
prefer japanese :)
round3: Early low fierces put pressure early. He pushes me into the
corner, and I decide it's preferable to escape, and let him get guard
meter back than to stay and fight a risky war where I might get VC'd
trying to GC him. I escape, and by this time have meter charged. I put
him into "danger" mode with safe low fierces, and let him panic. He goes
NUTS. He knows he is going to die if he blocks again, so he goes all out
attacking. I patiently roll back and low fierce his jumps, or simply
jump up and meet him with a blocked jab. He retreats to the corner, and
starts jumping up and down to regain guard meter. I follow him there,
and simply low fierce, which he lands on and dizzies. He immediately
gets up and leaves while I am executing the super motion :)
Remember, these tournies are split into 8 man blocks, with people who
lose to block winners able to re-enter in another new block. So I'm in
the finals for my block. Even if I lose, I get to re-enter
Kuni had a particularly stressful game 2. He had to play against a girl
playing X Chun Li! His male ego was at stake, and the poor fool who had
lost to her game 1 was sitting in a corner contemplating ritual suicide
:). Kuni plays A Gief, and I was desperately cheering him on. However,
she was playing in a very annoying manner. She would keep her distance,
and use stand strong as air D, followed by low RH juggle. She would also
walk up and throw or low RH every so often. Very annoying, with that
fast foot speed and high priority low RH. In fact, I told kuni that as
Rolento, I feared chun li the most. You could see Kuni was sweating
hard, as he lost round 1!! But he came back and narrowly won round 2,
and did a respectable round 3 win to keep the male ego alive. Whew!!
It turns out this girl was the same girl that I had seen in november at
the japan championship exposition who had gotten a 24 win streak with X
Chun. And I had lost to her then!! Boy, at least I didn't lose to her in
a tournament.
Game 3: A Guy.
The opponent is some guy called Daigo Umehara or something. I hear he's
ok with guy.
At this point, I am having dreams of "American contestant beats world
champ!" and such. Now you all know how easy it looks to beat someone. In
fact, when I was watching the daigo ass beatings after worlds, I kept on
thinking "yeah, alex should have just done this..." or "Cole should have
done this...". You know Will Smith's "I can beat Mike Tyson" rap? "He
shoulda punched left when he tried to jab right". Well, I was in total
"I can beat mike tyson" mode. Anyways, I do try to have a strategy. My
strategy is "If Corner then dead" (me dead). In previous matches, we saw
Daigo just manhandle his opponents in the corner. One poor guy he got
about 10 million kick throws on in the corner. It was sad. Just knock
down, walk up kick throw, walk up kick throw - jab HK, walk up kick
throw jab HK, air supercombo...
round1: "Must... stay... in.. center" I repeat to myself like some kind
of mantra. "Center .. goood... corner... bad". I stick out low fierce
like a maniac, jump straight up jab, even walk forward, in a desperate
attempt to avoid the corner. Suprisingly, this works, and daigo is in
"danger" on guard damage. What joy! As I congratulate myself on this, he
HK's one of my normals and I find myself in the corner. The ass-beatings
that ensued contained severe violence and may be illegal in some states,
including Tennessee.
round2: I get fucked up real bad, real fast. I can almost hear "push
some buttons, Beasley!" in the background as I briefly wonder whether
blocking makes any difference at all...
I think I may have hit him once or something. Maybe.
Game 4:
Into the 8 man losers bracket. This time, there is no way out. Kuni also
lost game 3, so he is back in the other 8 man loser's bracket. Kuni gets
a bye in his first round. I felt I should have gotten one for losing to
Daigo :)
I don't even remember who my opponent was. I think it was a V sakura. I
lost the first round again, and proceeded to win the next two.
Now I want to go a bit into the other players. There was a wierdo A Vega
who somehow won his block. He kept on jumping back with missed throws to
charge meter, and it seemed like all he ever did was jump back. Somehow,
he won. He had one fight vs an A Dhalsim where he just izna dropped over
and over again. I don't understand why, but the Dhalsim player could
just not get out. In fact, the dhalsim player was forced to keep on
teleporting away (which he did very well). The vega player just jumped
100 million times and somehow won. I felt like I was watching two total
scrubs, but I guess this guy made it to the top of the bracket!
There was also an A rolento which I called "Annoying A Rolento". This
guy loved alpha counters. He alpha countered everything, and didn't seem
to care that his meter was at 1 bar. His entire strategy seemed to be to
AC, follow with a few jabs, and then punish the desperate opponent
trying to get out of GC threat. It seemed really sloppy, and he was
always almost dead, but he kept on winning. He managed to beat Kuni in
the first block to become block champ. Again seemed like a total scrub.
Oh yes, and this rolento's AC was the A2 punch AC (baton twirl)
Earth Sodom was in another bracket, playing V Rolento. The announcer
said "And not playing his traditional R Mika". Earth Sodom was really
cool, and did a nice move. He did the A2 kick AC (leap behind opponent),
and then activated VC for a pounding. But earth sodom lost his first
round, and was never seen again. Now I didn't realize that there were 2
different ac's in a3. Is it a difference between V and A ism? Or is
there a way to choose?
Also, since this is when school was ending, a bunch of players from all
over japan had come in to play in this tourney. There was a whole
contingent from Osaka! I was kind of glad to show off my "gaijin
streetfighter" when all these guys were coming, especially since my play
was very crowd-pleasing(lots of SC wins).
On to game 5
Game 5: V Cammy
I really really don't want to lose this. 1) because Cammy is a sad
character to lose to, and 2) because I want to top my performance at the
last tourney, and I lost at this point last time.
Game 1: It's about even, and we both have about 40% energy left. This
guy has an annoying habit of cannon spiking my normals. This is a "bad"
strategy because I can punish it, but I also don't have much time to
adjust and crush him (only 1 game between us). He gets a VC finally that
blows through a normal, and does this vc that goes on FOREVER. Cannon
drill, cannon spike over and over again. He ends with a hooligan throw
to win. This vc was really annoying because it went on for about 20
seconds, doing like 2 pixels each time, but it was enough to kill me.
game2: I'm a bit shaken because he got me last game. I felt I made a
mistake by not playing patiently enough. I should have just let him
panic and punished him. Unfortunately, this game starts out bad as he
hits some of my normals, and cannon drills me just as I am doing
something. Arg... Eventually, I am 40% behind, which is a bad thing for
rolento. I don't want to attack him, b/c the chances of him getting a VC
off on me are high. Nevertheless, I don't have much choice, so I go
after him. Unfortunately, the laws of probability catch up with me, and
after doing some damage, I eat a VC. He does the eternal VC again and
gets me down to like 5%. I then do something very stupid.. I get
discouraged and almost give up. I fight a bit, but I "know" I am going
to lose. Sure enough, I do.
I end up 10-13th again.
I stick around to watch the top 8.
Number 4 was this wierdo vega.
Number 3 was annoying A Rolento alpha counter man
Number 2 was an X Chun Li from Osaka
Number 1 was of course, Daigo, with A Guy.
The finals were interesting in that the X Chun player actually managed
to win a round off Daigo! I think that was daigo's only loss. The win
was by a super of course.
I also observed daigo's guy and got to note a bit of his strategy when
he's not pummeling hapless clueless americans to bloody bits.
1. Daigo NEVER jumps. Not offensively, that is. He also never tries to
get "lucky" Bushin grabs. When far, he attacks with 2 things - The low
slide, and stand/crouch strong. The stand strong has suprising range,
and hits many normals. The low strong has less range, but also a lot of
priority. After hitting with one of these 2 moves, he can combo into
mountain breaker.
When extremely far, he does the running move into slide sometimes. The
slide has very good recovery, and he can follow with jabs or a HK
2. In the corner. Daigo uses the bushin chain to set up pressure, and
then intermixes with either a mountain breaker, OR a very quick
run/stop. The run/stop is key, because if he only did mountain breakers,
you could react and DP. However, when he does the run, he stops almost
instantaneously and is in a great position to punish anything stupid you
tried to do. He can then throw, or resume the bushin chain pressure. He
had one great fight (or perhaps I should say pummelled some poor fool
very entertainingly) where he did jab strong, run, jab, run, jab, run,
throw. The jab, runs were VERY fast.
If he connects a bushin chain, he can either combo into super (you're
dead), or combo into jab-strong-fierce, RH HK. He sometiems only does
jab, RH HK depending on range.
3. Air defense. Daigo doesn't use the HK as air defense. He uses
standing punches, which can be followed by a bushin chain, or else low
strong-> air super (devasating). He won the last game of the finals with
a low strong-> super.
-Julien (press some buttons, Beasley), who can't beat Mike Tyson.
--
It may take a litte courage to ask your doctor about Erectile
Dysfunction.
But everything worthwhile usually does.
-Bob Dole
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Share what you know. Learn what you don't.
Lion
Now I didn't realize that there were 2
> different ac's in a3. Is it a difference between V and A ism? Or is
> there a way to choose?
>
One AC for Zism, one AC for Vism
Nice report by the way, please continue whenever you can.
--
= Lion =
"This is supposed to be a happy occasion.
Let's not argue about who killed who."
YeOldeHead
immensely entertaining and informative report. Everything, from the vivid
match descriptions to the observations of Daigo's A-Guy techniques, was really
great.
It seems almost a shame that only a.g.sf2 will get a chance to see it--have you
ever thought about having a web page or something post your reports? I know
fighters.net posted some brief ECC4 results, so they maybe they'd be
interested. Then again, I suppose most people who'd really appreciate these
reports are already here.
By the way, is there much of a social atmosphere at Japanese tourneys--any
mingling or the like betwixt players? If I saw Earth Sodom or Daigo, despite
being many, _many_ steps removed from their status on the SF food chain, I'd be
tempted to try and strike up a conversation, or at least "talk-shop" a bit and
compliment them on their skills.
Much thanks,
Steve
David Spence
Julien B Beasley (j...@my-deja.com) writes:
[snipped EXCELLENT post]
julien, if u keep posting this stuff, hell, noone will *have* to go to
tournaments; we'll know exactly what its like just reading these synopses.
i like the web page idea, but i still believe agsf2 is perfect forum for
these posts.
after seeing ec vega (runaway v vega) its interesting that the japanese
have found something useful withhis a ism. were those timout victories?
just another confirmation tath x chun is a good char. (too bad i can
barely use her).
'til next time,
--
^^^d.spence ==>dub...@freenet.carleton.ca<== d.sp...@utoronto.ca
<<nulli secundus>> spe...@medlib.georgetown.edu
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