Tournament of Legends 2012 Program Download

Here's a PDF of the ToL program. Lots of good stuff in there.

DOWNLOAD

The "shrink file size" command was a little too strong (100MB to 1.6MB) but you can still read the text.

Tes

This blog is closed. If you need to reach me use nohoho@gmail.com. Art by Okojo

Chun-Li vs. Dhalsim Triptych

Also: I uploaded the rest of the Japan trip footage over here.

Riz0ne's Submission

Contest Results

Thank you to DS and Master Chibi for agreeing to judge I wound up not needing their help.

Runner-up: Jinbe



Winner: PillowFace



Congratulations guys. Thanks to both of you for entering!

Contest Deadline

The contest wraps up this Saturday, March 31st! Send your entries to nohoho@gmail.com.

I'm sending out email receipts so if you don't get one within a day or two of sending me your entry please try again.

Remember everyone who enters gets a Yoga Sniper pin!

Basic outline
Additional notes

Happy Spring

Here's the jacket art for the Code of Princess soundtrack by Kinu.

Contest Expansion - Forbidden Shigurui Lieutenant

Just under two weeks to go for the contest. Basic information from the original post still applies. Please see that for starters.

Prize expand - in addition to the Yoga Sniper shirt and Capcom Art book winner will also get April 1992 issue of EGM. It's a little worn out but a great piece of SF2 history: Sheng Long code, CE preview, Guile handcuff letter to the editor, WW concept art, etc.

Door prize - everyone who enters gets a Yoga Sniper pin! One inch black on silver. While supplies last. Include your snail mail address.

Options 2 and 3

In addition to the screen caps from the previous post you can also use one or more of these if you like.

Here's a zip with all the caps: link.

Kanji's Wish

Let's retire a new tag!



Art by Rokusuke.

Top Ten ST Match-ups, X-Mania EU 2k12, Blog Updates

These are my favorite cards in ST. Which matches do you guys like the best?

1. Ryu vs. Guile
2. Ryu vs. Ryu
3. Guile vs. Dictator
4. Ryu vs. Boxer
5. Dhalsim vs. Dictator
6. Zangief vs. DeeJay
7. Chun-Li vs. Cammy
8. E.Honda vs. Dhalsim
9. Chun-Li vs. Blanka
10. Chun-Li vs. Ryu

Honorable mention:
Honda vs. Claw, Ken vs. Fei-Long, Sagat vs. Boxer, Zangief vs. Ryu

X-Mania Europe 2

This year's X-Mania Europe contest has been scheduled for May 19th and 20th. So far Professor Jones, Damdai, Komoda, yaya, Kusumondo and Kenpachi have been announced as special guests.

Official site

Blog Updates

I made some minor updates to the multi-game champs and favorite search qs posts. Some funny stuff in that last one — take a look.

Also sometime not too long ago Google implemented various alternative view options like this one. Some posts here get broken but the new views seem great for browsing old posts. Also perhaps a nice way to check out the site on a tablet. It looks like most of the views keep on scrolling indefinitely very cool.

Dan Pink TED Talk 072309

What motivates you guys to do well at fighting games?

…It Was Tuesday — Versus Casuals 092011

Sasori came up and asked me if AfroLegends was with us. He looked pretty disappointed when I said no. I guess they've fought on GGPO a lot.

Muteki and Nuki were playing a long, fierce set before the team battle started. You can hear them yelling "are you serious?", "what was that?", etc. in some of these.

I posted some Damdai vs. Nuki videos from that evening a while ago. Plus some pictures from the previous Tuesday.

By the way, over here there's a wonderful collection of Akiman art.

Blanka Diagram and Tourney Trends

The first section below features character ranking information for Super Turbo Blanka from a wide variety of sources. In the second section we'll look at how Blanka players have fared at tournaments for the past decade or so.

When I first started working on this I thought I would come up with a scientific approach to character rankings. That was foolish of me. It's the ineffability of tier lists that makes them fun to discuss! Some characters are stronger than others, but the precise order is unknowable. Good news is that a simple name change was enough to keep the ship afloat:
Blanka Diagram Project
Blanka Diagram and Tourney Trends

Below I juxtapose players' rankings with real-world tourney results. This is offered as an academic curiosity; I want to stress that I make no claim about a relationship between the two sets of figures.

UPDATE 3/20/12: AFO sent some updated match-up assessments.

Part One: Blanka Diagram

In this table I've compiled character ranking information for Blanka from a wide variety of sources.

Internet
I was going to include the numbers from this wiki but it's broken at the moment.

T.Akiba

Super Diagram Turbo
Average of all rows and columns. Also see that link for a basic explanation of the character ranking diagram concept.

Huekie Saver

Individual Players
Real Decoy and Kareeeeem are new for this post. Thank you, brothers. The other ranks are older — all from before the Arcadia chart.

Magazines
Gamest - 1994

Arcadia - 2008

Real Results
The percentages from part two below rounded to the nearest five with the decimal point moved one place. Again, I make no claim about what this means.

Char.	RY	KE	EH	CH	ZA	GU	DH	TH	CA	FE	DJ	BX	CL	SG	DI	+/-	Source
Internet	3	6	5	5	8	6	4	8	4	4	3	2	4	3	7	-3	T.Akiba
	3.5	4	4	3.5	7	6	5	6	5	5	2.5	3	4	2.5	5	-9	Super Diagram Turbo
	3	5	3	4	8	6	5	7	5	4	4	3	5	6	5	-2	Huekie Saver
Players	5	5	4.5	5.5	7	7.5	6	6	5	5	4.5	2.5	3.5	3	5.5	+0.5	Decoy
	3	4	2	3	7	5	3	8	4	4	2	2	4	3	6	-15	Kareeeeem
	3	5	3	3	6	5	3	7	3	3	3	2	3	3	6	-17	AFO
	4	5	2	5	6	6	3	7	4	4	1	1	5	5	3	-14	AR2-CNA
	4	5	4	4	6.5	5	4.5	8	5	4.5	3.5	3	4.5	4	6	-3.5	Shinryu
Magazines	5	6	3	4	7	6	4	7	6	4	4	4	5	5	5	0	Gamest
	2.5	5	2.5	3	6	4	2	7	4	3.5	2.5	2.5	3.5	2	6.5	-18.5	Arcadia
Results	4.5	5	2.5	4	5.5	5.5	3.5	7	6	4.5	5	2.5	3.5	5.5	4.5	-6	All Matches
	3.5	6	3	4	5.5	5.5	2.5	7	-	4.5	3	1.5	4.5	-	5.5	-9	Top Players

Part Two: Tourney Trends

These two charts show Blanka players' wins and losses going back to 2000. Results come from Japanese tournaments in various formats. I've got events big and small: from X-Mania and SBO through five-man Game41 tourneys but I'm light on Star Cup results as those are not typically posted game-by-game. No gachi battles nor casuals. HSF2 when both sides used ST characters.

The grey bars for Blanka just show how often they encountered each other. Results vs. other Old Honda players were set aside. Also set aside were characters that came up very few times: O.Sagat (10), O.Ryu (8), O.Zangief (6), O.Dhalsim (1), O.Cammy (1), Akuma (1)



The "top player" graph includes fights amongst the following players. There were too few matches for Blanka vs. Cammy and Blanka vs. Sagat.

Ryu: ShootingD, Daigo, Gotoh, Kurahashi
Ken: Mattsun, Aniken
E.Honda: Hamaki, Kusumondo, Roku
Chun-Li: Otochun, Tojo, Nuki
Blanka: Komoda, Nakamu, AFO
Zangief: Kakky, Pony, Gunze
Guile: Kurahashi, Muteki, ShootingD, Kikai
Dhalsim: Gian, Hakase, Yoshimura
Hawk: Mayakon, Viper, Toutanki
DeeJay: Seki, Ito, YuuVega, Yuzuru
Fei-Long: Noguchi, K, Hanashi
Boxer: Tama, Tsuji, Shiki
Claw: ARG, MAO, Noguchi
Dictator: YuuVega, Taira, Onishi

Twitter

I made a Twitter account: NH2_Blanka

For now just silly stuff but I may get into news and links for fighting game stream viewers in a little bit.

ST Blanka Diagram later this week!


Bean allergy?


You can have my EpiPen!

eLive SF2, Gemaga Cover

eLive Fighter II Turbo via Ken Bogard. Brilliant!




April Gemaga cover by Kinu.

Persona Video 030112, Chun-Li B-Day

Blog update: links spruced up a little.

Let's break in a new tag!

Persona Day One Video

Buppa vs. Shadow at Goi Chariot

Happy Birthday Chun-Li

Art by M-Tomoyohi

Mikado 091611 Vids Part 2

Mattsun has a reputation for being a little chilly but he would always light up when he saw Damdai. He said it was funny that Damdai used a different character each time he came to visit: Zangief, Shotos, Hawk. For me, scooping up Mattsun videos from the old Hameko uploader six years ago was one of the first things that led me to this point so capping some footage myself was a treat.


Masao, Makky, Saito, (Gunze). Pic from Tougeki website.

Masao Ken had arrived with his teammates from Osaka that afternoon. Their home arcade is Neyagawa ABC, Shooting D's stomping ground. Masao's Ken was excellent and very different from Mattsun's. His mashing was especially on point; over here you can see how Hawk let a cross-up chance slip by because Ken broke out after one elbow.

I put the videos from that night in this playlist. Check it out!

Dry Mouthedness

This is from the movie White Men Can't Jump.

Gloria: Honey?

Gloria: My mouth is dry.

Gloria: Honey. I'm thirsty.

Billy: Umm...

*Water Runs*

Billy: There you go. honey.

Gloria: When I said I was thirsty it doesn't mean I want a glass of water.

Billy: It doesn't?

Gloria: You're missing the whole point of me saying I'm thirsty.

Gloria: If I have a problem you're not supposed to solve it.

Gloria: Men always make the mistake of thinking they can solve a woman's problem.

Gloria: It makes them feel omnipotent.

Billy: Omnipotent? Did you have a bad dream?

Gloria: It's a way of controlling a woman.

Billy: Bringing them a glass of water?

Gloria: Yes.

Gloria: I read it in a magazine.

Gloria: See. if I'm thirsty.

Gloria: I don't want a glass of water.

Gloria: I want you to sympathize.

Gloria: I want you to say, "Gloria I, too, know what it feels like to be thirsty. I too have had a dry mouth."

Gloria: I want you to connect with me through sharing and understanding the concept of dry mouthedness.

VIPER Explains the Hajiki Screw

A hajiki Screw ("flick SPD") motion lets you do a Spinning Pile Driver or Mexican Typhoon extremely quickly, and it's ideal for grabbing whiffed low kicks. More explanation below but first a quick 2ch note.

I've been reading about the hajiki Screw technique on 2ch for a long time, but based on context I thought it simply referred to a quick walk-in SPD. Also the term comes up most commonly when people are saying silly stuff about Rikiya so I never paid much attention.

One night at Versus, VIPER kindly explained the motion to us Yanks. To do a hajiki Screw you give the joystick a small but firm flick in a circular direction and tear your hand away allowing the spring to carry it around. For 1P side you start with the joystick right and flick it clockwise. For 2P start at left and flick counter-clockwise.

It might sound a little alien but this motion isn't very difficult. VIPER said it took him twenty minutes practice to get the hang of it on one side and about an hour on the other. Your humble blog editor was able to do a hajiki Hyper Bomb almost immediately. You can try it on the character select screen: with a proper hajiki motion the highlight rectangle should go around and land where it started.


Do not practice Flick SPDs on your laundry!

VIPER said the motion is easier on a looser (broken-in) stick. He didn't mention this, but I'd speculate that it's easier on Seimitsu than on Sanwa — dead zone is a little different — but it's definitely possible on both.

Here's a quick video of VIPER demonstrating the hajiki Screw. First for 1P side then for 2P side.



I asked if Pony used hajiki Screw and Shu (Ken player) laughed and said no but he said Gunze and most Hawks use it. Shu said that when a Zangief player uses it well vs. whiffed Shoto low medium kick and low roundhouse the match starts to get unwinnable. Daigo supposedly said as much after losing to Rikiya thirty times in a row.

Here's one more video of an actual match. Attempted Hajiki early in the second round. The YouTube interface covers it up; you have to mouse away to see it.

Mikado 091611 Vids Part 1

Blog Updates

New tags: interviews, [character] rankings, comics, trickery

Some of Gunze's 2009 results added to the chart below. The post title makes more sense now.

I'm working on something small for everyone who enters the contest. Please include your snail mail address with your entry if you're interested. Also international entries are welcome!

Mikado on the Eve of SBO 2k11

I got to thank Kurahashi in person for the X-Mania EU Q&A. He said he would like to attend a US tourney but it'd probably be boring because he'd win easily.

The Kyushu team had flown up earlier that day. They qualified at G-COM Wajiro but their home arcade is "Supolakuhonji." Chai wrote it out for me like that — I think it's a Sega joint further to the South. Hal traveled with her husband; she had a decent Chun-Li.


Chai, Hal, Kumadhal, Aiderun

Here's a highlight for the evening. More to come!

Ze Contest

Please tell your friends about this. Try one of the share buttons at the bottom!

Unrelated note: I plan on uploading Mattsun vs. Shiro and Mattsun vs. Damdai this week. Take a look at AHOJagi for that footage. Also add me on Facebook if you want.

Concept

Using one or more of the screen caps below, put together a collage or comic strip poking fun at some part of the fighting game world.

UPDATE 3/18/12: rules expanded, free pins

Rules

Comic strip should be between one and sixteen panels.

Two megabytes or less. Jpeg, pict or (non-animated) gif.

The subject can be from SF2, Alpha, SF3 or SF4. Characters, story, specific match-ups, specific matches, tourney history, players, MCs - anything Street Fighter.

Screen caps can be cropped, manipulated or even recreated. Get more or re-do if you like from the source; FWIW, the Shigurui show is on Hulu.

If you reference a specific match or moment in fighting game history please include a YouTube link if possible.

No memes:
Fighting game slang, terminology and basic catchphrases ("look at the damage") are ok, but I don't want recent stream-era stuff like "8.95" and "esports."

Using the structure and/or background graphics from forum macros is fine, but no "over 9000", ceiling cat or FUUUUUUU- guy please.

Prize

-Gamest Mook Volume 17 - Capcom Illustrations
Really nice 1995 art book with design works by Akiman, Shoei, Kinu, Sensei and Bengus.

and

-A Yoga Sniper T-Shirt!



Something for runners up TBD.

Judging

Send entries to nohoho@gmail.com. Please put 'Shigurui' in the subject line and (optionally) your nickname in the body of the message.

Starting immediately and ending March 31st.

Entries should be striking: funny would be great, but clever, sexy, cute, disgusting, scary, etc. would also be great. Or some sort of Blue Velvety combination of those things.

DS and Master Chibi have kindly agreed to help judge.

Screen Caps

Click for full size.

To-do List, Special Thanks, Best Posts

I'm going to wrap up Super Turbo coverage on this blog pretty soon. There are some things I'd like to post before then - in particular:

• Contest!
• Player Report Update
• Videos from Japan Trip
• Hajiki Screw with VIPER
• Blanka Diagram
• Miscellaneous Graphs
• Secret Project JBH-1KG-FIG

Please look for those posts over the next few months. This blog may stay open after that with a bit of Morrigan fan art, some translated comics and possibly some Persona Ultimate news. We'll see.

Acknowledgements

Better late than never!?

NKI
I got back into ST after nearly 10 years away because of Nick. The way he played Chun-Li blew my mind. Also his enthusiasm and level-headedness online really inspired me.

Quick personal confession: I have a serious problem taking "yes" for an answer. If I agree with someone, but they're using a faulty premise or mixing up correlation with causation, I'm never satisfied. NKI always makes an effort to argue in good faith and I really appreciate it.

Tianyuan2k4
This guy encouraged me to start this blog in the first place. Also he uploaded most of the videos to the Superturbor account. Thank you, brother.

Harahi
People think I got started with Blanka by watching Komoda videos, but it was Harahi's web page that *cough* got the ball rolling: studying what he wrote, chatting about it with TY! and trying stuff out against NY players like FlashG, Doyle Bros and Shag.

Best Hits

Here are some of my favorite posts:

Muteki Interview
Even though it was just a stock Tougeki Spirits questionnaire, Mute Guile put a lot of thought into his answers. One of the best ST player interviews.

Emiko Iwasaki Interview
Fascinating look at the state of fighting games (before SF4 at least) — take a look at this even if you aren't interested in Battle Fantasia.

Haitani Interview
Short but insightful Q&A with one of the toughest multi-game players. Again highly recommended even if you don't follow the games Haitani plays.

The Red Cyclone of Ko-Hatsu

In this post I've got a short interview with Gunze from the Tougeki program plus some of his tourney placings from the last couple years. State of the blog: please check back next week! Art by Keroman.

Looking back at the qualifier, how did it go?

Even though we got through with three OCVs, I could keenly feel the difference in team strength between 2on2s and 3on3s.

Any rival teams you're looking out for?

I'm personally watching Team Byakkotai [Taira, Sashishi, yaya] since they've got three cool masters. I see Gotoh as my rival. In studliness.*

Tell us a bit about your teammates.

Of course, my faith in the SBO '08 champs is absolute. With Otochun who can break through any situation and the mature tachimawari** of ARG you couldn't hope for better synergy. A guy like me was lucky to wind up with them. Whether or not I can show the appropriate strength to back up those two is the biggest question.

Any specific things to look out for?

In a single elimination tourney the mental game is relatively important. But with teams, particularly 3on or more, tactics based on counter picks become extremely important. Watching the matches with an eye for characters' strengths and weaknesses is fascinating.

Anything you'd like to say to the spectators?

In the past the early round games happen simultaneously, so there may be a lot of matches that can't be viewed from the stands. Still, those early rounds have many exciting games. Remember the excitement of the event and when the DVD comes out (it will, right?) see our way of life for yourself!

* "Gotoh is a stud," is an old 2ch ST player thread refrain.
** cf.

I made a list like this a couple years ago for Seki.

UPDATE 2/16/12: added some 2009 results

Gunze Zangief 2009-2011
6/6/09	Ko-Hatsu	Third (w/ Teppei)
7/12	Ko-Hatsu	First
7/30	Ko-Hatsu	First (w/ Seki)
8/16	Ko-Hatsu	First
8/23	X-Mania 10	First (w/ Seki, Otochun)
9/13	Ko-Hatsu	First (w/ Kusumondo)
11/1	Ko-Hatsu	Second (w/ Seki)
2/21	Thunder Beast Cup	First (w/ Otochun, Seki)
1/31/10	Ko-Hatsu	First (w/ Kuro)
2/21	Ko-Hatsu	Second
3/22	Sega Avion	Second
10/31	Ko-Hatsu	First
11/14	A-cho	Second (w/ Kusumondo)
12/26	Ko-Hatsu	Second
4/24/11	A-cho	Second (w/ Yomiaido)
7/31	Ko-Hatsu	Second (w/ Teppei)
9/17	SBO	Second (w/ Otochun, ARG)
9/18	X-Mania 12 Dash	Second (w/ Komoda, Kusumondo)
12/18	Ko-Hatsu	Second