Monday, August 9, 2010

Niigata CvS2 Summer Festival

Never been to Niigata, so I wanted to go to their tournaments last weekend. Bas was going there with Satoru, but they left Friday night, and I had a date - so fuck that!

Anyway, I rode the train to Omiya, took a Shinkansen, transfered to a local to the closest train station, planning to get a taxi to the arcade.

No dice. It was the middle of nowhere, and there wasn't even a station attendant, much less a taxi. I waited 20 minutes to take another train 3 min away, to a place that I hoped had taxis. Luckily there was ONE. I took it over and started playing casuals. Bas had a 20-something win streak by the time I was there. I wanted to play the locals so I didn't join in on him. I used a bunch of low-tier teams (I usually do that when I play in the outer areas of Japan, since they rarely get to see those characters in action) and got some short streaks, but Niigata's level is pretty good. There was an A-Blanka, Sakura, Hibiki player there that got 20 or so wins (I later learned he was from Sendai), but I didn't play him during that time.

After a while I looked over and saw that Bas was at over 40 wins. I was like, "Fuck that!" and walked over to the other side, but someone said that the button was broken, so I walked back. I dunno what happened, but the dude ended up playing anyay. He lost and I joined in.

Goodbye Bas.

I used my real team and my anti-Bas order (Bison, Yama, Blanka). My Blanka is the only character that can deal with his Blanka, and my Bison does better against his Bison than my Yama does. I forget how I won, but after that he stopped playing. I hope it was recorded by the arcade. It was being shown live on USTREAM, but as far as I know, no one capped it.

Anyway, by the time the tourney rolled around I was fully into playing-for-fun mode. I faced Shima in the first round and lost. He used C-Dhalsim, Sagat, Blanka. I haven't faced a Dhalsim since Iyo retired. I forgot that Blanka is the best of my characters to go up against Dhalsim, and his Sim took out two of my characters. Oh well. Double elim, so I still had a chance.

Unfortunately, Bas decided to go N-Groove (Akuma, Sagat, Blanka) for singles and lost to Tao-chan (A-Iori, Chang, Balrog). After I beat someone in losers, I had to play Bas and lost in a semi-close game, so I was out with a 1-2 record. The weird thing about the tournament was that the pairings were shuffled every round. I think they just wanted to use the Bingo Numbering app on the iPad/iPhone.

Bas ended up losing to Tao-chan again.

The results were

1. Tao-chan
2. Pinokio
3. dunno...


The next day was the 3on3. They had decided on teams combining Tokyo and Niigata players. I was teamed with Shima and Pinokio, Bas and Satoru teamed up with Higecchi, who offered to house all of us.

In our first match, we played a Sendai team. I like going first because there's less pressure, so I went first and took out their first two members. Unfortunately, I was using Zangief, Yamazaki, Blanka for that tourney, and the last guy was the dude that got 20 wins with Blanka, Sakura, Hibiki. He put Hibiki first and I put Zangief first. I was hoping for any other character but Hibiki to be first, and when the screen showed that it was Hibiki, I knew I was in trouble. I basically gave up on any attempt to do damage for a while and concentrated on building meter. I wanted to get an empty jump from an ambiguous distance where her fierce would whiff and I could land with an FAB. Didn't work. He hit every single jump in. I think it ended up being a close match, but I lost. Then Shima lost. And Pinokio got Sakura'd and lost.

We ended up not winning a single match, although I did get to beat some people along the way. One person I got to beat was Satoru, who made a post on some BBS a while back saying that he was the best Yamazaki in Japan and that anyone can beat me if they just know the matchups. We're cool now, but I never forgot that! I beat his Ken with Yamazaki but had little life for his Yama. That brought in my Gief against Yama. I hit like 3 FABs and won (which meant that his Yama didn't beat a single character, and mine had!). My Blanka landed a custom to win. That put me up against Bas's A-Groove team, but I had Gief instead of Bison. I still made it exciting, but there's no way I should win that match.

They ended up winning the 3on3 with Satoru sweeping in the finals.

After that, there was an unscheduled random 2on2. I ended up teaming with K (C-Akuma, Blanka, Bison). We were allowed to change characters, and I always wanted to use King in a Japanese tourney, so I used King, Bison, Blanka. My King won rounds, but I unfortunately didn't get to land any midscreen CCs. However, our team didn't lose at all, and won our round robin tournament. That put us up against Bas and one of the workers at the arcade, who uses C-Chun, Blanka, Sagat (I think). K took that guy out, so we were up 1-0. The tourney was in Waseda-style, which meant that I had to face Bas, and then the 2 winners would play off if it were a 1-1 tie.

Remember, I ended Bas's 47 game win streak. I made it close against his N-Groove team, and almost pulled out a win in the 3on3.

Bas was SERIOUS.

I got OCV'd in about 2 minutes. K got past his Bison, but it ended up being a 2-1 win for Bas's team, and we took 2nd.

Fun times. There's another tourney in Kumamoto this weekend, but that's like $700 roundtrip (NOT GONNA DO IT!), and then another tourney in Kobe the week after. I haven't decided on that, but I'll probably end up not going. I really need to play more ball....

Shizuoka Tourney 7/31

Even though it was a Shizuoka tourney, most of my opponents were from Tokyo.

First match, I played Matsuura (C-Ryu, Sagat, Rolento). His Ryu did well, but there's no way he was going to beat my Blanka with his Rolento. I've been playing Kisshi- so much lately, I know it too well. I tried to take video of it, but the camera was in an odd position and I couldn't get the whole screen.

2nd match, I played Kisshi-. Normally, my order is Yama, Bison, Blanka2. His normal order is Hibiki, Kyo, Rolento2 (hence my experience vs. Rolento). On this day, he switched up his ratios to make Hibiki ratio 2, obviously to make a better matchup for Blanka. I had already selected my ratios, but when I saw that he put Hibiki at R2, I decided to go Blanka2, Yama, Bison. If he put R2 Hibiki last (which was a likely bet), R1 Bison could still do well against her. Yama kills her. Blanka is the worst matchup for her, but it's doable. As for Kyo, I'm about even with all my characters against him. The main thing that I wanted was my Blanka against his Rolento, which is why I put him first, even though he was R2.

The gamble paid off. I tore apart his Rolento like nothing. His Kyo did a good job but still lost. Against his Hibiki, I did a drop through CC but for some reason the second hit of the combo didn't connect, so I ended up losing that round - although I DID take it past the all-important 50 second mark. Yamazaki ate an overhead-super combo, but once her meter was gone, there was absolutely nothing to fear. I've played the Hibiki-Yama matchup to death against Bas (AND against Kisshi-). It basically comes down to us both RCing slashes, but if she misses something at a certain range, I can still hit her with a s.roundhouse. Against C-Hibiki, she can't jump in from far away because it's basically a free s.strong anti-air. Mix in some rolls to BnBs and that should be it.

And it was.

In the semis, I had to play Musasabi, who I haven't played in months. Hindsight being 20/20, I know what I should have done. He had R2 Guile, so I should have gone R2 Bison last to matchup better. But I didn't. I went my regular order. I was doing pretty well until it came to Sagat vs. Bison. I went in for a throw, he did a straight up jump and landed a huge combo on me. I couldn't recover from it and lost, although I made a valiant effort.

That put me in the match for 3rd against Abe - a C-Ken, Blanka, Sagat player who I had no worries about. He's obviously not used to Yama, and I'm very used to his characters. Against Ken, I just want to keep him out (that's basically the gameplan for every character). Against Blanka, I look for him to jump in with j.roundhouse so I can do an anti-tripguard CC. Against Sagat, I look for a jump in as well - but I want to go for a jumping roundhouse CC. Anyway, the Ken round took longer than I wanted, I was able to take him out as well as Blanka, but I had little life for Sagat. I still won in the end, but I really want that match with Musasabi back....

Anyway, the results were

1. Shizuoka Saikyo (I got to play him a couple of days later. It would have been a fun final, but his Blanka is better than mine).
2. Musasabi
3. Me
4. Abe

CvS2 Nationals

It's been a while since I've updated.

CvS2 nationals were last month. I didn't really decide on going until really late, so I didn't have a 3on3 team until the day of the singles tourney. The week before, I asked Yane if I could team with him and GAO, but Maeda wanted to team with them too, so we had a play off for it and I lost 0-6.

Anyway, singles was pretty bad for me. I drew Uma in the first round and obviously lost. But, so did everyone else that played Uma in tourney that weekend, so I don't feel bad. It was double elimination though, so in losers I won 3 times, including beating Code (revenge for that Ibaraki VIP tourney!), before losing to Sakamoto.

3on3 I didn't expect much. I was teaming with Kodama (K-Balrog, Blanka, Bison?) and Izumi (S-Beni, Sagat, Cammy?). I honestly don't remember much about the tourney. I basically just wanted to play in casuals that weekend anyway. CvS2 is now like a cult game - only the regulars play... so in Tokyo it gets kinda boring. It's only at big tournaments that I get to play new people anymore, and I got to play a lot there. I even got some wins with my C-Groove team (Blanka, Gief, Yama). Anyway, fun times.