Welcome to episode 2 of Jett Vs., a series of blog posts where I post one of my Super Street Fighter IV match videos and analyze it for your viewing and reading pleasure.
This episode features my Rufus against an Italian player’s Dhalsim. Dhalsim can be frustrating to fight against because of his ability to keep opponents away, but I was able to capitalize on some critical mistakes to squeak out a win.
For all of those PC gamers anxiously awaiting the follow-up to the great PC Street Fighter IV port, you’re out of luck. A few days ago, Capcom Producer Yoshinori Ono during an interview with 4gamer revealed that there are no plans to bring Super Street Fighter IV to the PC due to piracy. Even though the original sold great, it also was a pirate favourite.
I know there are a lot of people who feel that video game piracy is a victimless crime because they feel like they’re only one person taking a product away from a faceless, multi-billion dollar corporation. However, there are consequences to pirating, and this is one of them. Not only does it hurt legitimate gamers that actually wanted to pay for it, but now pirates can’t even pirate it.
Don’t blame Capcom for this. They’re not here to just give away all of their work for us to enjoy. They run a business, and their purpose as a business is to make money. Releasing that type of game on the platform that is a pirate-haven such as the PC has proven time and time again to be bad business. I’m sure that the potential sales they lost due to piracy far outweighs the money they made on legitimate sales. To be honest, from a business perspective, I don’t know why any major companies would want to put out their big budget games in the traditional fashion on PC.
Where paying gamers can complain is the fact that Capcom doesn’t want to distribute this digitally through a protected system like Steam, which they feel is unfair to gamers who don’t have the service and limiting to gamers. Maybe someday they’ll change their mind on this decision.
Say what you will about much cheaper it is to pirate games rather than pay for them, but this is the end result of rampant piracy. The catalogue from which to pirate from will disappear and everyone loses. I sympathize for the PC only crowd that would have to buy new hardware to play Super Street Fighter IV in some form. As for the pirates that ruined everything…
When it comes to owning multiple copies of the same game, I’ve set this precedent for myself before. I’ve owned Mario All-Stars when I had the original NES versions. I also own SNES and Virtual Console versions of Street Fighter II and Contra III because those games are awesome.
I love Super Street Fighter IV. It very well might be my favourite Street Fighter game of all-time. When it’s all said and done, this game might even be in my top 10 for favourite game of all-time. But do I need two copies of this game? Now? My wallet said yes, but I’m not so sure I really do.
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Day two started much like the first day did. My girlfriend and I found ourselves in a huge line, one that was actually twice as big as the one we stood in yesterday and growing fast. I was hoping that as with yesterday, luck would be on our side. Within 20 minutes of the show floor opening, we were in the building. Showing up as early as we did helped us greatly, as those who ended up arriving later were not as fortunate.
I know it’s really early on a Saturday morning (at least in my part of the world), but if you’re a big Street Fighter fan and you’re reading this shortly after I post this, you should definitely check out the GODSGARDEN 2.5 live stream, featuring some of the best Japanese Street Fighter players. Hit the “Read More” button to grab the link.
Daigo Umehara is one of the most popular and successful competitive video game players on the planet. For well over a decade, he’s been the Michael Jordan of Street Fighter. Long before I ever took fighting games seriously, I still knew him by name.
As I continue training for my first-ever fighting game tournament at FanExpo, I realize that I am nowhere near Daigo good and probably never will be. Forget about being the best in the world right now; I may not be the best player on my block. Instead of being positive and spending the time to get better, I spent my time writing this post that highlights 4 reasons Daigo is better than me at Street Fighter.
My girlfriend and I will be attending FanExpo this year. Neither of us have ever gone to a convention before (or done anything this nerdy before) but between the two of us, there is enough cool stuff to see and do there for that whole weekend. We’re both really excited to be a part of the experience.
One of those experiences includes a few game tournaments. I know I have no business in the Modern Warfare 2 tournament and the existence of a competitive Smash Bros. scene still baffles me. However, I’m heavily debating in my head whether or not I should throw my name in the hat for the Super Street Fighter IV tourney. Maybe by writing down my thought process I’ll come to a decision.
This is an on-going series where I discuss the thinking involved in Street Fighter that I’ve applied to basketball. If you want to see earlier entries in the series, hit the link: Part 1: Spacing
PUNISHING MISTAKES
One of the most common mistakes in Street Fighter is a poorly-timed projectile attack. For instance, if I’m Ryu, and you properly react to my fireball, you can jump over the fireball and kick me in the face before I can do anything to defend myself. In Street Fighter, when your opponent makes a mistake, you want to punish them for their mistakes by hitting them with the most powerful attacks as possible.
For many years, I’ve been an avid basketball player. I’ve played in a few leagues, on a few school teams and participated in a few basketball camps. I am by no means the next LeBron James, but I had the skills to make some noise on almost any given local court. Over the last few years though, finding the time to hit the court has been extremely difficult. During my basketball downtime though, I got really into Street Fighter IV on a serious level. I began to really pay attention to the concepts behind the game and how to use them to my advantage.
This year, my life has really settled down and I now regularly play basketball again. While I’ve had to work hard to get back into game shape (I lost 20 lbs and counting since I started playing again in April), and I’ll never have the raw physical talent that I did in my prime, I do have something now that I didn’t have before: Street Fighter knowledge.
Oddly, I’ve been able to apply much of the thinking involved in playing Street Fighter into my thinking of basketball. Has it made me a better player? I think it has. I’m not saying that Kobe Bryant should dust off his E. Honda to get better, but having that parallel helps me see basketball in a different way, allowing me to play the game smarter. For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to apply these concepts in a one-on-one basketball situation, because adding in more players will make this more difficult to explain than it should be. I have at least four parts to this series ready to go, with more possibly in the future.
I don’t need to set this up any more. Here is part one of Street Fighter concepts that made me a better basketball player.
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Last year was a monumental one for everyone involved in the Evolution fighting game tournament. Besides it being the debut of the massively-popular Street Fighter IV, it broke records for participants, attendance and for the first time ever, it was all viewable live to anyone with an Internet connection. EVO was no longer just the one YouTube clip of Daigo parrying all of Justin Wong’s super combo hits. Hundreds of thousands of people tuned in throughout the weekend to watch Daigo and company play out the fighting game magic. I was glued to my computer that entire weekend; watching arguably the best fighting game action I’d ever seen in my life. That tournament even went as far as inspiring me to level up my own skills.
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In Third Person 