发信人: princepan()
整理人: metalsolo(2003-11-08 16:30:00), 站内信件
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实在太长了，如果大家英文可以，就去慢慢看吧，如果觉得实在太难，或者哪位好心人
想帮忙翻译，欢迎。不过进来睡眠都严重不足，个人已经没有半点脑力去翻译这些东西
了。
先放上序：
Fresh from our completion of the server move, we have a new editorial for yo
u loyal people! Shoryuken.com's own John Choi has written a comprehensive lo
g on his experience in Japan a few weeks ago. For those who are interested i
n the potential of the Japanese, this is required reading.
—————————————————————————————————————
以下是正文：
USA vs. Japan Invitational Log
By John Choi
December 7, 2000 |
Well, the Japan trip was a very memorable experience. I learned a lot of new
stuff, got to see plenty of fun places, and best of all, made lots of new f
riends. David Dial, aka Gunter, covered a lot of the social stuff we did in
Japan so I won't repeat those things. Instead, I'll talk mainly about the ga
ming stuff that everyone has been asking me about over email and IRC.
First of all, what you heard about the abundance of arcades is true. Althoug
h we only played in like 4-5 arcades while we were there, we passed by proba
bly 100 arcades in just the few small cities we visited. There is literally
an arcade every other block. Fortunately, our hotel was close to "More Amuse
ment Arcade" which happens to specialize in most Capcom games and good compe
tition in Alpha 3 and Super Turbo can be found at all times of the day. This
is where we got the majority of our practice. Unfortunately, we did not hav
e access to US joysticks here so we had to play at less than full capacity (
I can dragon punch like 1 out of 5 tries) I got to see many new Variable Com
bos (VCs) here from random Japanese players. One thing I remember well is be
ing there like at 2 PM on a weekday and seeing a pair of V Akuma players tha
t were doing the OTG (off the ground) demon grab combo (BAS combo) with 95%
accuracy. The combo is just too deadly. I also saw many crouch cancel infini
tes with characters like Vega and Cody, and many variations on the standard
VCs we knew about. A good example is V Sakura. In the corner: Fierce, whiff
FB then when timer is about to run out, jumping towards fierce, jumping forw
ard kick out of corner, jumping towards fierce back into corner, jump straig
ht up fierce, low fierce, RH triple hopping punch. That combo like many othe
rs utilized Crouch canceling which allows characters to tack on several more
hits of any VC. OTG VCs with Karin, Akuma, and Zangief were also very popul
ar. Perhaps the most advanced and useful technique I saw was players taking
hits on purpose and causing a major counter so that they can tech and bounce
to safety. Players were doing hurricane kicks with Sakura as they were gett
ing crossed up, so that they can bounce to safety instead of dealing with th
e potential death combos following a crossup. An example of this is when I h
ad Karin down to almost no guard meter and knocked down on the ground. I wen
t for a crossup with Sakura and was thinking of following up with fierce int
o fierce DP to crush guard. The Karin player did a DP+K upon wakeup, which c
aused a major counter and popped Karin air born. Then Karin would then PP te
ch away to safety. If an A-ism character is going for a crossup and you fear
a combo that leads to super, you can take the hit from the crossup using a
variety of specials so you can bounce to safety. Of course, you can counter
this by following up with an appropriate counter to the tech flip on your ow
n but you must keep a sharp eye out. Very useful versus characters with dead
ly crossups such as Sakura, Ryu, Akuma, and Karin.
At some point during the week, we all went to Newton arcade, which is manage
d by Mr. Matsuda who was one of the main organizers for the international to
urnament. His arcade specializes in SF3 3S and several of the 3S Japan team
members were there. Mr. Matsuda was kind enough to install US switch joystic
ks and buttons in one of the cabinets at his arcade. We were glad to have US
sticks and buttons but both were really stiff and everyone thought they wer
e only slightly better than the Japanese setup. We only had a few days befor
e the event so breaking the stick and buttons in was out of the question. Lu
ckily, we anticipated this and also brought over 360 joysticks that would be
installed for the tourney on Sunday. We then unanimously voted to use Japan
ese buttons instead. We got to see lots of new 3S stuff that night. Urien's
unblockable Aegis combos were very scary. I had heard about the unblockable
aegis trick a long time ago, but didn't get to see it in action till that da
y. It simply requires shooting an Aegis out past the opponent after a knockd
own and then crossing you up. There are several advanced ways to set this up
properly and I will need some time to review the footage we got to provide
a clear explanation. Perhaps our next game feature article. And yes, if we m
ake a Japan vs. USA tape, this will be included. Oro can also do this by usi
ng the green ball super. Mr. Matsuda later informed us that there was actual
ly a revision to 3S that was released specifically to fix those 2 unblockabl
es. But the US will never see that revision since only a few selective locat
ions in Japan have this. (The tourney 3S board was not the revised version.
Luckily, no Urien or Oro was on their team) We also got to see their robotic
Chuns that would sit back and charge up and then add on the kick super afte
r ANY connected low forward kick. I later watched the Chun player from his s
ide and noticed he was doing the super motion after every low forward. Wheth
er he was doing low forward on offense while poking or on defense while tryi
ng to avoid throws, he would always be doing the super motion. This is very
tiring but very effective. You just need fast reflexes and some arm enduranc
e to press the kick button again in order to give Chun a 60% low forward kic
k. We also saw 3S team member, Mester get streaks with his Yun using a varie
ty of supers. The shadow super made Yun seem like a V-ism character. Any con
nected chain leads into a longer combo with the super and any time you manag
e to block, he would mix up overheads and low attacks getting virtually free
damage. Other things to note were an Akuma player doing dashing raging demo
n with no other animation coming out and Hugo doing walk up 720 supers. The
walk up 720 super is a kara cancel super. Scary stuff.
On to the next page...
Ricky racked up lots of wins in MvC2 during the night vs. team Japan members
. We all took turns playing and at the end of the night, we felt pretty conf
ident in MvC2. At one point when Ricky had like 20 wins, one frustrated play
er did the Gambit glitch to end the streak. He later apologized to Ricky. I
guess that cheap game can make even the humble Japanese frustrated. =)
Everyone from team USA and some members of team Japan met for a formal dinne
r the next night. It was at a really expensive traditional Japanese restaura
nt that cost about $100 a person. There were about 20 people present so dinn
er came out to at least $2000. Thank god JSF picked up the bill. The food wa
s really good although some members of the team got scared when a dish came
out and it looked like something was crawling around on the plate. Turns out
it was just thin fish flakes on a hot food item which made it move around.
It almost looked live. =) No matter how crazy it looked, I ate it out of res
pect for everyone there. Tony had a good time cause he loves sushi. Ricky on
the other hand survived on McDonalds the whole week cause he doesn't like J
apanese food. It was entertaining to see the look on his face as plate after
plate of crazy Japanese food came out. J Anyway, through Kuni, both sides w
ere able to exchange words with each other. Lots of points were brought up i
ncluding our predictions on the outcomes of the games on Sunday. They said t
hey were very confident in 3S but conceded MvC2 to us right there. Last few
words were that Super Turbo would be a decisive game in the tourney. And we
would soon find that to be true… Shin-Ya Ohnuki was one of the players pres
ent. Ohnuki is one of the top Japanese players along with Daigo. Ohnuki actu
ally defeated Daigo in the Alpha 3 Japan regional tournament to take first p
lace but lost to Daigo in the finals of the national tournament to decide wh
o would come to the US. Ohnuki commented that he along with many other playe
rs were amazed when they saw the match between Alex and Daigo. He said that
they saw techniques with Ryu that they have never seen before and were actua
lly moved by the way Alex played. They thought Daigo's V Akuma was unbeatabl
e and couldn't believe it when they saw Alex beating Daigo. Alex was 1 round
away from winning the whole thing when Daigo was able to come back and win.
Although Daigo won the match, lasting impressions were made on countless pl
ayers. Ohnuki said that he was so impressed by Alex's play that if he had de
feated Daigo and came to the US to play against Alex, he would have lost. Ma
ny more compliments followed back and forth. Kuni then explained that Daigo
saw the game in a whole new light after the match and that is the main reaso
n he switched to V Ryu as his main character shortly after that. Kuni said D
aigo played V Ryu to show respect to Alex. Also, the Ryu midscreen confusion
VC that Alex used during the match (VC2, low short, low RH, jab FB, hop kic
k, jumping forward kick to crossup, etc) was labeled by the Japanese as "Ale
x Combo." We saw several VCs in Japan that were variations of that combo. It
's sort of funny since some of the VCs we learned from the Japanese actually
had roots from the US. And that Daigo switched to V Ryu after playing vs. A
lex while Alex switched to V Akuma. (For a while anyway) The words exchanged
at the dinner table that night left me thinking for a long time.
The next night was a trip out to TZW's arcade. It was an honor finally meeti
ng the combo god. I got to play against him several games in Super Turbo and
managed to win all of them. =) Naturally, he tried to cross me up a lot int
o a big combo. Good thing he didn't land a crossup or I would have been a vi
ctim of big combo exhibition. >_< He treated us to a live combo exhibition l
ater on that night. He had a special setup with a machine equipped with turb
o on all the buttons! No wonder his jabs look so fast. He still has amazing
timing though since he was landing the most ridiculous combos in less than 1
0 tries. He also did the following Ryu combo on his 2nd try. Cross up Roundh
ouse vs. crouching Zangief, rushing fierce punch, low strong, low fierce, su
per fireball. He also gave us a copy of his combo tape, which was very gener
ous of him.
So the tourney day finally arrives and everyone is very excited. Going out o
n stage in front of 300 audience members was very exciting. They even had sm
oke machines on stage. It reminded me of a dual meet in wrestling. The organ
izers catered to our needs well and even drilled new holes in the cabinets t
o match US configuration. The Japanese cabinets have the buttons really clos
e to the stick and in an arc that fits ergonomically with your fingers. They
tried their best to get the straight US configuration. Although it wasn't p
erfect US setup, it was 95% close. Much thanks goes out to all the staff tha
t made it possible. After a brief introduction, all of team US lined up to f
ace team Japan and everybody bowed. I looked over my team and counted 7 peop
le total. 4 of which were playing in most of the games and not able to focus
on just 1 game. Then I looked over at team Japan and saw 25 players, which
included the likes of Daigo Umehara (Alpha 3 and CvS champ) and Shinya-Ohnuk
i (A2 and 3S champ). All of them were there for just 1 game and I knew they
have been focusing on their specialty. Needless to say, we were in for a fig
ht.
The tournament begins...
Super Turbo started off and we had no idea what to expect. The ST team membe
rs for Japan all lived far away from where we were staying at and none of th
em were able to make it down to play us during the week. I was expecting all
kinds of crazy tricks and tactics but things looked pretty standard. They w
ere all excellent players but nothing we haven't seen before unlike 3S. I gu
ess since the game has been out for so long, our knowledge and experience of
the game is comparable even though the US doesn't really have a strong ST f
ollowing currently. Interesting enough though, Japan doesn't seem to really
use the old characters much. They were very surprised to find that Old Sagat
was so strong. During one of my matches, I threw maybe 20 tigers one after
another and that got the crowd really excited. The announcer even said somet
hing to the effect of, "How many tigers was that? We can count them by watch
ing the footage later!" and "John shows off his Tiger Form!" =)
3S soon followed and we got dominated as expected. They were simply better t
han us at this game. 3S is very popular in Japan and out of the 4 tourney ga
mes, is the least popular in the US. The situation is reversed for MvC2, so
the lopsided results of the 2 tourneys make complete sense. You need good co
mpetition to breed good players and techniques. Daigo was very impressive wi
th his aggressive Ken and the Q player carefully controlled the pace of the
match and slowly wore his opponents down with careful attacks and utilizing
the defense power up taunt well. The robotic Chuns simply managed to land a
low forward to super every round and Mester overwhelmed people with his ultr
a quick Yun and dive kick mix-ups.
A3 was next and we were treated to a variety of new VCs. The A-Rolento and D
halsim were very good, and only used super meter to AC out of VCs. Since Rol
ento can run away so well and Dhalsim keep out well, they don't really need
lots of guard meter in most cases. So they played a solid game and countered
powerful VC threats with ACs. The V Karin had all sorts of VCs for all the
occasions. Anti air VC starting with her palm attack, OTG VC after a knockdo
wn using her 360 kick throw, and anti FB VC by activating VC through a FB, f
ollowed by low RH knockdown to her jumping overhead punch to OTG 360 kick th
row then combo of choice from there. The Zangief player seemed to have a 7th
SPD button and would suck in people at all times. He also had OTG VCs. Then
the final member of the A3 team was Da-Yoshi, aka BAS. BAS is famous for hi
s OTG demon flip combos and sure enough, he busted them out. The damage rang
ed from 50%-75% Basically, if you get hit by a VC, you are dead. BAS is a ve
ry nice guy and I got to hang out with him lots more later on. I got to play
him lots more too and the results were similar every game. If I managed to
avoid a knockdown and stay away from the dreaded OTG VC, I would win. But as
soon as he landed it, it was over. Of course, he had like a thousand differ
ent ways to setup the VC. And I had to take many losses to see all the diffe
rent setups. He later gave me his combo tape he made, and it is pure madness
. 100% combos with V Birdie, Rolento, Mika, and near 100% combos with everyb
ody else. BAS told me he really wanted to come to the US next summer for B5.
His English is very good and an all around great guy. I really hope he can
make it.
After some complications, the MvC2 tourney went under way. We were scheduled
to only have 4 players per team but due to some circumstances, we were give
n a chance to have 5 for our MvC2 team. The tourney was a reverse of the 3S
beat down we got earlier on. MvC2 didn't seem to be too popular in Japan, an
d it showed in the tourney results. We really didn't see anything new and th
ey seemed amazed with some of our techniques. I had a long discussion with B
AS, LiquidMetal, and White right after the tourney. LiquidMetal told me he w
ould be practicing MvC2 and will be ready for us next time. Him and GQ both
showed interest in coming to US for B5 as well.
The CvS exhibition started a short time after MvC2 ended. Random Japanese pl
ayers were matched up with US players. The highlights were seeing wicked Nak
oruru traps in the corner utilizing fierce, firebird, repeat and Daigo's ama
zing Guile go to work. He applies pressure really well and dashes back and f
orth a lot. It almost looked like a Versus game pressure tactic since he was
always dashing with low jabs and forwards. An amazing player.
After the tournament...
When the day was over with, everybody took tons of pictures and everyone was
in good spirits. It didn't really feel like a competition but a big party.
Everyone and I mean EVERYONE I met in Japan was all very nice and courteous.
They treated us with the utmost respect and I felt nothing but love from ev
eryone. We complimented them on their play and they did the same to us. It w
as great seeing and showing off new tactics. I think everybody from both sid
es learned a lot. Although Daigo(he is known for being shy) remained quiet a
s usual, many players including Ohnuki, GQ, and Raoh were very outgoing and
we all had great laughs. Many people went out to a nearby restaurant right a
fterwards and had a nice feast. Alex, Mike, GQ, Mr. Matsuda, and several oth
ers got really drunk and eventually ended up passing out at Alex's hotel roo
m. To be able to just hang out like that with the people from Japan was an e
xperience in itself.
The next night, lots of players gathered at More arcade once more to hang ou
t one last time. Daigo was actually present for this event though he rarely
shows up for any functions since he is so shy. Apparently, he had something
to say to Alex and we all went outside with a translator. He told us that he
had prior commitments elsewhere but he pushed those aside so that he could
have this little talk before we left. This was where Daigo expressed his adm
iration for Alex in person finally. He said that he had lots to say after hi
s encounter with him 2 years ago and was finally happy that he could get it
off his chest. Most of it was compliments saying that not only does Alex ins
pire you with his style of play, but that he actually brings a presence to t
he room that he's never seen before. Alex and I returned many compliments as
well especially emphasizing on Daigo's aggressive gameplay in every game. D
aigo revealed to us then that he practiced V Ryu over and over after seeing
the potential he had after facing Alex. He told us he came up with the Ryu c
orner VC and even discovered the crouch cancel infinite. We then talked abou
t the difference in gaming from the states to Japan. We explained to him tha
t the US is very big and top players are very spread out from each other and
that we only face each other a few times a year. Daigo responded saying tha
t he couldn't believe how good we were given our limited amount of interacti
on with each other. In Japan, a train ride of 45 minutes max is all you need
to face top players from all over. Big difference to 6 hours of driving fro
m northern California to southern and 6 hours of flight time from west coast
to east coast. Daigo also said that he wondered about the state of future i
nternational competition and was even thinking about quitting since he didn'
t think there would be any more. I tried to assure him that this was simply
a beginning and that this event should happen annually from now on. He seeme
d excited with the idea and hoped it would be true. I think we all feel the
same way. Daigo then had to get going to his prior commitment and told us he
wanted to talk to us some more through email. We exchanged farewells and on
ce again, I was left with lots to think about. It was truly a memorable trip
…
I'm really proud of all the members of team USA for their hard work. You guy
s gave it your all and represented the US nicely not only in gameplay but in
the way you guys carried yourself. And thanks to Tony Cannon (Ponder) and P
eter Nguyen (Mouko) for coming out and getting footage and supporting us. Yo
u guys all did a great job.
I want to thank Kuni for all the hard work he did transporting people to and
from the airport, all the translations, and for simply being a great guy. A
nd Mr. Matsuda, Waka, GQ, Julien, Gunter, Mi Jung, and Mayu for helping us o
ut and showing us a good time. We all appreciate it. I can't wait till I see
you guys next year. Hopefully, it will be on US soil so we can try to repay
the kindness you have shown us. And as someone suggested, we can perhaps ev
en have mixed international competition. You are on my team GQ! =)
We left for Japan to play some games but came back with new knowledge, a new
outlook, and new friends. I sincerely hope this event can continue througho
ut the years. Looking at some of the discussions on the forums, it's easy to
see people getting lost in competitiveness to the point where the enjoyment
of the game is lost. The players in the tourney all played at the highest l
evels of competitiveness but their common respect for each other was always
there. They never badmouthed anyone and it was the most enjoyable experience
ever. We need to keep in mind that we are united by a common love for a gam
e and we are here to help each other increase that love. I thank all of you
out there who supported us. Shoryuken.com and this international tournament
would have never happened without the support of people like you. This was a
historical beginning in a series of international competitions and friendsh
ips to come forth. With your help and support, we can all experience it toge
ther. Shoryuken!
John Choi
--
我站在无边的黑夜中,追求明天的光芒万丈.
在黎明的第一道曙光到来之前,我淡出在迷蒙的黑色中.
我生存就是为了迎接曙光,但是曙光不属于我.
黎明不是我的目的,而是我永远的目标.
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