So, here it is, my inaugural video for my Eternal Pupil blog! I am pretty happy overall with how it turned out, although me holding the camera probably wasn't the best choice... hopefully this works, I am not used to embedding on blogger. oh, hey, here is a thought: Want some new characters for SSF4:AE? I have an idea, lets get Capcom to release a flavor of it on the Vita! IF they decided to do that, they'd probably provide additional incentives to buy the game on another platform, and perhaps port those additions to consoles!

Well, I am back for a stint, folks. I should probably change a few things around here, since it may not be entirely relevant. Since making this page I have stopped maining Juri (even though she's really good in AEv2012) and had picked up Ibuki, Rufus, Fei Long, and eventually my current main, Oni. I initially created this as a way to hold myself accountable to playing how I wanted too; as a person who can always learn something new. I want to approach each match I play as a learning experience, and try to improve as a player. I've let that languish a bit, partially due to work and partially due to burnout on the genre. Thankfully, with my brother, Brutalion, getting back into SF4 and Mahvel, I'm starting to dust off the games as well. Along with this "rebirth" comes some new ideas. I am considering doing a VLog on my blogger, hopefully making a companion youtube account (or using an existing one, I haven't figured out how "shows" work yet). Perhaps commentating on my own matches, posting my epic L's and maybe some wins. I would love to get constructive criticism, and my goal is to help other players, whether it be seeing casual players struggling too (the whole camaraderie aspect) or any intuition/advice I may be able to provide. Blind-leading-the-blind sort of thing. These are all just ideas until I implement them. Until then, I have a ton of drawing projects that are started and unfinished, including my new TE stick art. I wanted to do my art from scratch this time instead of using stock art or deviantart drawings. I'm pretty happy with it so far. The sketching I'm getting good at, the inking/coloring is...another story. But I will do it! eventually.

I'm also very patiently waiting for my ProjectGiantSword to get finished. I'm case 75 I think and he's on 50 something. They're looking sweet, I can't wait to see the art he comes up with! I'll leave you with this: I'm working hard to pick up Rufus, which is hard to do, since he's so fat.

Initial impressions of SFxT

Caveat: I will be using the term "lame". The modern day fighting game definition of "lame" I intend it to mean is a tactic that is known to be too tricky for the current crop of players even though it is not the ideal or favored tactic. In SF4 these type of tactics can be considered "jump fireballing" "jump back heavy kick" etc.

So my brother (Brutalion) and myself (cowboy_soultaker) made a PSN ID a while ago called "brootecks" in which we plan on planning cooperatively versus online foes, kinda like Gootecks and Mike Ross's "Excellent Adventures" series. In SF4 we passed off the stick, but in SFxT we are able to play side-by-side (or at least on the same team). This weekend we were able to put a solid amount of time into the game, as a team and as players in general. In our online adventures some things have come to light.

Two very popular characters (unsurprisingly) are Kazuya and Ryu. This paragraph is for people who pick either or even both, and I mean this as constructive criticism. (just saying.) 99% of the Kazuya's we fought did the same thing: his demon's wrath combo as a block string. Folks, it might seem like a built in mixup now, but it's gonna get read and it's gonna get punished down the road. My advice is to break yourself of the habit now and start looking at mixing-up your mix-ups. Fishing for hits with that combo won't get you the big yield the same way as fishing with a lp or lk hit string, and whats better, getting some W's now or becoming better now? And Ryu's....please, for the love of all that is holy, stop playing SF4 ryu. I'd also like to reiterate to play how you want, but this is some advice: you are gimping yourself by not thinking outside of the box. I am not seeing ANY axe kicks out there, and while I don't claim to know all that much about ryu, nor am I saying he's combo heavy, I know he's got better moves than jump hk sweep. It is very tempting to play a SF4 character the way you did before but it'd be in your best interest to look at it with fresh eyes.

That being said, this weekend was a stark reminder how far I have to go as a player of fighting games. My general comprehension and tactics for any fighter is so focused and narrow minded it's been gimping me. For SFxT specifically, my footsies and "fishing" moves are lacking, and hitting with them for the full damage is incredibly tough. For example, King's BnB (according to the Bradygames guide) is cr. lp, cr. lp, cr. mp, Konvict Kick + DDT. Talk about tough! Its not as simple as other characters and becomes very discouraging. cr. lp to cr. mp is a 1 frame and doing a 1F consistently is gonna be tough, especially online. Where-as characters like Nina have a much easier time making something out of nothing, for about the same damage as a king combo.

A friend of ours has shown us some glimpses at high level play (gg-eclipze) his use of tag cancels (using mp + mk during attacks) has lead to some highly damaging combos and seems to be the future of the game. I see people using this tactic improperly, with characters like Ryu on the finisher or continuer end. Ryu won't get you the maximum DPS as a juggler, but if he were to start it, tag out, then get tagged back in with a finisher like ex shoryuken (Which will have been 3 meters) could make it worthwhile. When building a team you might want to examine if this is a card on the table for your particular choices. I will continue to pick characters I enjoy and try to work out these things in the lab, but I think some pairings are just going to be better in the long run. King is a great juggler and combo finisher. With Tag Canceling reseting the jungle potential, you can do some crazy up-forward mk juggling as a builder, and do the same for finisher ending with a grab for 3 meters all used on Tag Cancels.

This game shines in the cooperative arena. It can be very frustrating, with players going Kobe on you (glares at Brutalion....) not giving a tag out, but this is mostly indicative of the importance of tag canceling. The sidelined player has that particular button. So if you are sidelined, and your partner needs to tag out, its going to be on: 1. Your partner to not use the last cross gauge bar if trying to get a safe launcher tag and 2. You to see a good opportunity to press mp+mk to tag in. Block strings are a great chance if you know you can continue it. Juggles are the ideal moment but lets be honest, if your back is against the wall you may not have the luxury. What I call "vanilla tag outs" should be left on the table, and thats what I call tagging at stand still. Yes, against a skilled opponent you will be punished, and you make take half health if your opponent has the meter, BUT if your partner is fresh and you have a pixel, it's a punish you can afford to take. However, this is assuming your partner is above 90% health.

Also, using Cross ASsault in a match....please just use this on round two when you've already got a win. If it's Round 1, Round 2 with you down a round, or round 3 you shouldn't use it. In case you haven't noticed, it combines and splits the totaled health of you and your partner. Round 1 you'll need the meter you can scrape up for the life leads (so opponent can lame out a "Time out"). if you are down a round, again, you'll need the life lead. At round 3, you both have won a round so you probably don't have the luxury to "Floss" for minimal reward. I imagine that some who play co-op will be able to work out routines that could yield some damage (although with Juggle Potential and no EX that seems questionable) single player Cross Assaults will be nearly impossible to capitalize on. Round 2 with a win has little risk for a fun, stylish way to put on the pressure and try something you couldn't normally do.

Mostly tag canceling is going to be the wave of Brootecks' future. Me and brut coordinating attacks for frequent switching will have to be added to our repertoire, and I suggest this for any of you hoping to have a run with cooperative play. I've heard this is online training (co-op only) so those of you playing with online partners will have a chance to work out these types of combos from afar. Who knows what Brut or I will do or pick in the future, but It's left me wanting more, and makes me slightly reluctant to play on my own.

Oh, if you're curious, my solo team is still Rolento and King. My Nina is still rated G for now but I hope to get her on her way soon and I want to add Hwoarang and Paul to my repertoire as well.

DLC controversy

Recently, it's been discovered that, in SFxT, there are folders and files for some dlc, namely the alternate costumes. To some this is controversial because it is content you "purchased" (i.e. on the disc you bought) but are kept from using as it is locked by capcom.

This is not controversial to me. Content that is imperative to the game being locked away would be, such as DLC characters, because if they have time to develop a character and put it on the disc, why not make it available? Then you get into the quagmire of what your 60 dollars purchases and what shouldn't be considered part of the 60 dollars.

Basically you have Microsoft, who has fronted the cost of providing the bandwidth to give everyone the ability to view alternate costumes in SSF4, while Sony did not. You couldn't see DLC costumes on PS3 unless you owned it.

Having it on the disc has 2 luxuries: the first being apparent, that whether you're on PS3 or Xbox you can see the costumes you didn't buy. I think everyone can at least appreciate that. But think about this: As a developer, you put the lionshare of the files for DLC on the disc (in this case costumes) even if it's not quite finished. You prepare a patch for glitches etc. and include supplemental data for the onboard DLC to fix any glitches discovered in testing. This could be an acceptable explanation for DLC characters locked away on discs, if they had time to make them but not time to balance them. Supplemental data could also be provided via the store purchase.

DLC characters are going to be a tough one. I think that for the most part, Shuma and Jill were a flop...I haven't seen many people use them, the pros don't seem to pay attention to them either. And I'm not sure that non-buyers can play with people who had them in vanilla mvc3.

What you will probably see is Volumes (using the word in a similar fashion to magazines). Clusters of characters, perhaps tagged with features and balancing, in much the same way as SSF4:AE v. 2012. This makes it a lot easier to keep everyone up to speed, give everyone what they want, and for a drastically reduced cost (and far less overhead cost for capcom as it is digital distribution.) The problem with this is, these types of updates will be far between. Besides the fact that consumers want to get their moneys worth, Capcom wants the content they provided to get a fair shake before make additions or changes.

Meanwhile, we wait. The most frustrating part to this is that our promise of characters that weren't in SF4 are not present. In fact, with Vita characters announced, only 3 characters that weren't in 4 are in SFxT, and a 4th one that hasn't been in any SF (the 3 being Elena, Hugo and Rolento, the 4th being poison). No R. Mika, no Karin or Sodom. One can't help but think that 3rd strike versions of SF4 characters would've been better in this game (i.e. Necro instead of Dhalsim, Remy instead of Guile, Urien or Sean instead of Abel). So, having broken this promise, to a degree, they aren't even making it right in the near future with the Vita characters! So, even if the Vita characters get ported over to consoles, that still leaves a very large gap between sept/oct and when we could logically expect the next volley of characters.

There, that is most of what I wanted to get off my chest. Lets face the facts, we have a whole half of the roster that is brand new and shiney in the Tekken characters, as well as new twists on older characters. Enjoy the content to it's fullest so when the new characters come around you can honestly appreciate it. As you know, the grass is always greener on the other side, sometimes you should just appreciate the things in the now, and save pining for your missing characters for another day :-) (i got rolento so I'm happy ;-P)

Nintendo Vs. Capcom: Why this cannot be made

For proper context about what this is about, please click the following link: http://wii.ign.com/articles/114/1148074p1.html it is an IGN editor apologizing for a previous entry (which is linked in the article).

In short, this IGN editor is hyping Nintendo vs. Capcom as the best game never made, and that "everyone wants this". False.

Here's why I think it's false.

Fighting games have just had a resurgence in popularity thanks to Street Fighter IV. Love it or hate it, people can't get enough of it, it's "deep enough to drown an elephant, and shallow enough a child can play in". If you remember the fighting game boon in the 90's, we were seeing a lot of crazy things, like the mvc series, the cool twists on existing characters in alpha 3 (shin akuma and evil ryu), pocket fighter etc. But that was before games cost a fortune to make and companies didn't want to take risks. Now the SF team has incorporated newer twists on older twists (revamped evil ryu and oni akuma) and the community, that before was unreceptive to this concept, is lauding these additions.

It took a long time to get to this point. The 10 year gap between SFIV and 3S, the next couple years to see super fulfill almost everyone's dreams (no rolento :-() and now AE. What could destroy this fan-fest? Over extending and trivializing how important this boon is to fans.

I'm guessing more than half (probably 80%) of the people that want NvC to happen play Nintendo games almost exclusively, which is why they remember Mega Man so fondly. They know nintendo makes "great" fighters because they play smash bros. Don't get me wrong, SB has tournies, but Evo is the creme de le creme of fighting tournaments and I don't know when SB was last there, people just aren't hype to see tournament level SB play.

Next, look at the graphic at the top of the IGN article I linked. On the one side you have capcom characters, realistically drawn and looking cool, on the other side you have very cartoony and undetailed Nintendo characters, most of them are not considered cool designs. To give the game continuity, you'd have to let either capcom OR nintendo have creative control on this project, which would mean you'd see either pocket fighter-style capcom characters or "realistic" reinventions of nintendo characters. Either way it would not be pretty.

The main reason SSFIV has had such a large hardcore base, and that it remains so popular, is because of youtube and live streams. Never has it been easier to watch the pros play these games, share tips and tricks and show how fun the community can be. Wii players might have had a glimpse of this if they played TvC (I wonder how many NvC fans played that one?). The community that continues to support the game and the pros that continue to play the game in tournies feed off each other and blow it up to almost mainstream status. It may even happen this year, that Evo will be on G4, who knows.

People get a rush from playing the game that is supported most by the pros. They may never win money playing it but they love playing and honing their skills at the thought they might play daigo or J.wong someday. More and more casual players are leveling up in SSF4 that you almost have to know something about the game to get anywhere in ranked now. This is a very good thing.

NvC, to have a chance, would have to be marketed to the casual market, which makes up the majority of the Wii's installed user base. I.e. i don't think you'd see fight sticks marketed for this game. You also would cut out a lot of potential characters, such as the resident evil and devil may cry games, as these characters may be a bit "mature" for a game marketed with mario in it. you have to think of the concept.

We want capcom to take risks. But did everyone forget the project schedule? SSFIV AE, with strong rumors it will be brought to consoles (with possible additional characters), SSFIV for the 3DS (with pro mode, a feature fans wanted on the consoles), not to mention MvC3 coming out in a week. Thats just in the next couple months. We also have Tekken v SF and SF v Tekken (yes 2 projects, one by namco one by capcom), as well as 3S online. All of this takes man-power, money and resources. All of these games need to sell a certain amount of copies to be profitable and worthwhile. And how many risks will Capcom be willing to take while some of them will not even be one when MvC3 hits shelves?

MVC3 will sell well and be supported because the pros are already playing it. end of story. TvSF and SFvT will probably NOT do well because these 2 communities are generally mutually exclusive. The big names on the one side differ from the big names on the other. And also, more buzz was around a MK vs SF game, I had never heard a desire for TvSF before (though I admit that doesn't mean there wasn't demand). Why do I think they did it? The biggest names in Evo teaming up for a game is good publicity. but 2 games competing? That is madness.


In short, the fighting community has come too far and has waited to long for this renaissance for it to be risked on a poorly thought-out concept. The target market is too niche and hardcore gamers would have to buy a wii to play it since there would never be a cross-platform game with Nintendo characters. You have to understand how deep this cuts numbers. Please, for our sake, pray for a couple capcom characters in the next SB instead of a full fledged vs. series.

The New Renaissance

Fighting games had lost their imagination.

This is what I thought after playing SF4 for a year. I wasn't even close to the fighting caliber that I am today, when I was half my age, but even I knew we were living in a golden age of fighters during the reign of the Playstation and Playstation 2.

We had the Marvel vs. games, the SNK vs. games, familiar characters were tweaked in small and large ways (from Ryu's knife kick in SF3 to Akuma's demon flip in CvS2 [credible?]), and many new franchises waiting to happen. We had Rival Schools, Vampire Savior, Darkstalkers, Guilty Gear and many others. These games received their chance during this renaissance. But what happened was what normally happens, a status quo is established and trends set in.

So for the past decade we've been stuck with the "Safe" releases. More versions of the same Guilty Gear XX, more incarnations of Tekken (which ended up "Breaking" in the most recent version) and a long drought of any kind of Street Fighter.

Enter Street Fighter 4. Street Fighter 4 explodes and brings competitive fighting to the casual player. Anybody can become "an expert" of the game if he wants to learn. While Arcsys was innovating with HD sprites in their new venture, "Blazblue", the complexity often mistaken for "button mashing" nearly dammed the river that was soon to burst forth in a torrent.

Thankfully it didn't stop with SF4, and the current version, Super is born and thriving. With such a vibrant cast it is much the better game in so many regards (though some skeptics remain). Capcom is buzzing with activity, with rumors of a TVC port, MVC3 coming out with crispy 2.5 D action, and more fighting news around the corner. Arcsys has news too, and with Continuum Shift, Blazblue's "fixed" newest version, one can only hope it will be Guilty Gear's big jump to the current generation of consoles.

Imaginations running wild, it is once again looking like it did a decade ago. Who will be added in the arcade version of SSF4? A trial mode for Blazblue to teach people the nuances of this complicated fighting game, with their own DLC characters. One thing I leave with you, dear readers. If your characters are not in MVC3, so what? If Rolento gets snubbed in the SSF4 arcade version, so what? Look beyond "what is safe". Even if MVC3 is full of movie tie-ins that feel shoe-horned, it's new content to be explored and enjoyed. Don't boycott a game because your team isn't in it, you should support it because it's new and different and you don't want the same ol' same ol' every time. (cough) dynasty warriors (cough)_

Playing to Win vs. Anything to Win

I am a big fan of Sirlin's Playing to Win article. He's got a lot of things right in it. you can check out the blog here: http://www.sirlin.net/ptw

I want to take a new stance on this topic and subdivide things a bit. Playing to Win's idea is that no tactic is scrub, if it beats you, it's up to you to overcome it. Many "scrub tactics" are actually well calculated, and should you break it, they have a deeper game then you'd think. That is what Sirlin of hints at in parts of his article. I want to divide the Playing to Win group into 2 catagories. Playing to Win and Doing ANything to Win.

Doing Anything to Win is the most common strategy for competitive online play for Super/Vanilla Street Fighter 4. It can be as simple as exploiting difficult to counter tactics (such as Blanka balls or dhalsim "yoga sniper") to as complex as polished shenanigan tactics. This is the type of stuff Sirlin says is not scrub, and I am with him on this. These people have their specific game down, and even though in tournament play it wouldn't work, they can win some points with it online. These people will do anything to win, even if it includes making their game two-dimensional in the process. This is not in the spirit of Playing to Win.

Playing to win is using every tool, glitch, combo, mixup, shenanigans etc in your characters arsenal (within tournament guidelines) to win. Sometimes it can overlap "Anything to Win" but never coincides with it. If you favor a tactic for extensive amounts of time, you will eventually find yourself in that rut when you most need to back up and change your play style. Playing to Win conflicts with Anything to Win in this spirit. Unfortunately, online you will find yourself fighting opponents that do the same thing over and over, which may, in some cases, force you to do the same thing over and over. But this is usually only a few matches here and there.

By the same token, I come across players that like to "teach me" how to counter something, so they do something over and over again till I am so furious I am yelling at the screen. This private lesson does nothing but aggrivate me (I'm trying to play to win, versus an opponent who is not) and hurt the other persons game in the long term. It's up to me to figure out the way around the tactic, i will do that on my own time not while I'm fighting to win.

Playing to Win is the most fun prospect in gaming I have come across, but only after I started really thinking about it.