Evolution 2010: The Miracle Man with Zangief
Monday, July 12, 2010 at 8:40PM I want to tell you about Snake Eyes. To me, he really was the most interesting story this year at Evolution 2010. Everyone was talking about him the day or two before the tournament, and how great he was. Snake Eyes is a pretty new player (strike one) who plays Zangief (strike two) on a pad (strike 3). "Real" players play on a joystick, and it's rare for pad players to do well. It's also rare for Zangief players in ST/HD Remix to do well, not to mention players who are unknowns on the tournament scene.
I played Snake Eyes a long time ago on Xbox Live, and I didn't think a lot of him. Yeah he's good, but so are a lot of other players. Zangief has a lot of bad matchups, so I can counterpick and be fine, whatever. But people told me "no really, this guy is GOOD." AquaSnake claimed Snake Eyes would make top 8 "for sure, guaranteed" and that he would probably make top 2. This seemed crazy to me. Another player told me there was some casual play of Street Fighter HD Remix with about 20 known players, and Snake Eyes beat all of them in a row with no losses, then beat all of them again. (What??)
Another thing to factor in was the other tournament he attended. Yeah "the" other because he had only ever been to one: West Coast WarZone 2. He lost to AfroLegends there (winner of last year's Evolution), but he had an incredibly good showing. He beat superstar player Alex Valle...twice in the same tournament. I didn't see the first time they faced each other, but the second time Snake Eyes won 6 rounds to 0. Pretty much no one beats Valle like that. Even a hero like Valle can have a bad tournament or a bad day though, so maybe that's all it was?
Snake Eyes was in my pool, along with Kuni the famous Zangief player, John Choi, Pete Talley, Masaka, and some other good players I'm probably forgetting. Incidentally, I double eliminated Kuni (I played Cammy both times), but I lost to Choi. I was too busy playing to see much of Snake Eyes play, but i saw a couple rounds where he just stomped whoever it was. At some point, he beat Choi but that might have been in the semi-finals, I'm not sure. By that night, Snake Eyes made top 8 (winners side, so no match losses yet) and he would face Tokido the next day. If he won, he would face the winner of DGV (Ryu) and Jason Cole (Dhalsim) for the top of the winner's bracket. If he won that he would need only one more win to win Evolution 2010.
He seemed like a nice guy and all, so I made sure he understood some facts of the match, such as how useful low fierce is against a far-away Vega wall dive, and how good lariat is against a crossup dive. We decided to go practice for his sake, because I had made top 8 at Evolution with Vega before, so he could at least prepare for his match against Tokido a bit. After a bit of Vega, he said to play whoever I wanted so as I usually do, I picked like 8 different characters against him.
In casual play, I do fine against even top players. The one player who has beat me worse than anyone ever in casual play was AfroLegends. Like 25 to 3 or something once, just destroyed me. Now I have to add Snake Eyes to that list. I think the score was about 40 to 8, it was brutal. It's actually nothing like being beaten by AfroLegends though. Against Afro, I struggle to even play my game because he controls the whole match, and he sets the pace. Against Snake Eyes though, I can do whatever I want. I'm in control and I keep him out...and then suddenly I lose. I knew all about this phenomenon from Kuni's Zangief. He taught me long ago that Zangief can literally win the entire round off one of your mistakes, but somehow Snake Eyes implements this even better than Kuni. It's all well and good, then suddenly he gets in, and that's it. (Safe jump, some unknown number of force blocked jabs into spd or bait your reversal then sweep, repeat).
I started keeping track of just how Snake Eyes managed to get in each time. I played my impenetrable wall of Cammy stuff, thinking "seriously, how can this go wrong?" Or just stand there with Blanka doing stand strong (beats all Zangief jump attacks) wondering what he could possibly do, even theoretically. Remarkably, I lost several rounds without even KNOWING what went wrong. SweetJohnnyV was watching and he didn't know either half the time. The times I did keep track of it, the critical mistake was when he a) got a jump in I didn't counter, b) snuck in running grab, c) did walk up sweep, d) did walk up spd, e) hit a random move of mine with lariat for the knock down, f) hop into spd...and so on. The point is that there was no single thing, it was a whole lot of different things. Too many things to think about avoiding at any given time.
I now realized...he could actually win this thing. Judging by how he fought my Vega, then adjusting for the Tokido-factor, I thought he had advantage against Tokido. I also thought he actually had more advantage vs Jason Cole (Dhalsim), if they were to play. Could Zangief actually win a tournament though?
I asked Kuni (remember, he's the Japanese player who's famous for Zangief) about the upcoming match and told him how good Snake Eyes was and how soundly he beat me. This was after I had double eliminated Kuni, ha. I asked if Tokido has any special training in this particular match, because I remember I picked Blanka against Tokido before as a surprise, only later to find out that Tokido had recently lost a big tournament to a Blanka and practiced for days and days that match only, vowing never to lose it again. Kuni's response was "hmmmmm....could be an upset." Ha!
Finally the time for the tournament came. Snake Eyes was so far undefeated, in the winner's side of of top 8 with a match against Tokido. That's the exact same situation I was in two years ago, but I lost to Tokido. I told Snake Eyes it was up to him to do what I didn't...and he did. He beat Tokido, but he then lost to DGV's Ryu (barely!!!) and was sent to the loser's bracket. He fought his way all the way up, beating AfroLegends along the way. Remember that Afrolegends won last year's Evolution tournament and also beat Snake Eyes at the only other tournament Snake Eyes attended. Afterwards, Afro told me he really underestimated Snake Eyes and had no real "plan B" approach to the match because he didn't think he needed one.
Snake Eyes made it to the top of the loser's bracket and into the grand finals with DGV (Ryu). Snake Eyes had to win two sets of 3 out of 5, and he did. DGV did well but it was a pretty convincing win. A Zangief just won Evolution. On a pad. And it was his second tournament ever.
I thought it was a pretty interesting development in the metagame, something that was kind of begging to happen if only a Zangief player ever appeared to do it. Balrog is certainly one of the best characters in the game, probably THE best, and we all know that Afrolegends has the ability to win (and he plays Balrog). We also know that Ryu is strong, and that regardless of how good he is, there are several top players who will play him almost no matter what (Choi, Valle, DGV to name a few). Then there's Daigo who plays Ryu and Balrog. But the thing is, Zangief is good against both those characters, so even though he has bad matches against several other characters, he just happens to have an edge on the two characters that are most likely to show up at the end. If only there were some Cammys, Blankas, and Fei Longs to take him out, maybe it would have ended differently?
Those characters would have made it tougher on Snake Eyes, but in the end, let's be real. He played the best of anyone this year, hands down, no question. And as if all that wasn't enough, the night the tournament ended, about 15 or 20 of us were in a hotel room for HD Remix casual play. Snake Eye's Evolution 2010 first place trophy was right next to the TV. He dominated us all for hours on end as we all looked at each other, confused. Two-time Evolution champion Jason Cole was there too, and when Cole played him, we were all ok with stopping to rotation to let them get in several games. This was the match they *almost* had to play on stage, after all, if only Cole had beat DGV. I don't know the actual match score here, but it was a massacre. I'm guessing like 8 games to 0 or something (correct me if I'm wrong, Cole).
Snake Eyes, the Miracle Man of Evolution 2010.
Reader Comments (59)
So clearly he *could* be beatable but he has learned zangief to breaking point.
The questions are now:
Does he know something the community does not?
Or,
Is he just amazingly talented?
mmm...
When snake eyes defeats Daigo, then we can talk about that super duper player that came from nowhere....
And of course centric is right, Tokido and Daigo hardly play SF HD.
on another note, i think that it would be hard for Snakeeyes to win the next evo, mainly because nobody was expecting gief to win, now everybody knows what gief is capable, so everybody is going to get a counter against him, it would be pure luck if he gets to top 8 in the next evo.
Blur: is that a troll post or your actual real belief? Just checking here, but you're saying "we can talk" only after he beats Daigo, but not after he beat Choi, Tokido, Afrolegends in one tournament: three players who have all won evolution before? Let's throw in Valle from the only other tournament he went to. Seriously, you are just posting here to make sure we don't say that a good player is good, or what?
It's a really shitty attitude actually, to see someone come out of nowhere, dominate everyone, and then have people like you say he is not a super duper player. Uh, yes he is and don't take that away from him. What he did, basically never happens. Why not say "Wow that was impressive" instead of trying to cut someone down?
If Snake Eyes' amazing Zangief play inspires more people to pick him up, does anyone think that the rarely played characters with positive matchups against him (Guile immediately comes to mind, I'm sure there are more) will also see more play? It'd be nice if we saw an even greater variety of characters to come in upcoming tournaments.
Also, what does this say about people who play on pad vs. stick? Inthul on the SF4 side also played a very respectful set of matches on a pad (and he plays Fei, so I love him).
A quick aside: If you weren't extremely excited about the idea of an underplayed character doing so well against so many of the big-name great players, you probably hate Street Fighter. The reason people like to see people like Snake Eyes, Vangief, and Gamerbee do well is because it represents the idea that there is still more knowledge to glean from these games, even after decades of play.
Snakeyes gets props but for rising star? 1 ssfiv pool was bigger than whole hdr tourney, come on! Also its well known tokido and daigo do not play HDR and they still wrecked just playing strait super turbo.
Rudy: more hater attitude I see. So doing the unthinkable is not good enough to be called a rising star because SF4 pools were large? Actually, beating down every good player in HD Remix is enough to be called a rising star. Also, how is it even relevant what you're saying about Tokido and Daigo? Snake Eyes beat down everyone, regardless of who they were or anything. And how is Tokido's match different? He knows about zangief's hop and he countered it very well just about every time in the match. He knows about wall dive not knocking down, which hardly matters vs zangief anyway. It's not like some crazy new things surprised him, he did same old vega stuff, which is just what you should do.
Bardic, yeah a lot of characters have advantage over Zangief. Cammy, Fei Long, and Blanka to name a few. Zangief is a good metagame call if there are a lot of Balrogs and Ryu's, but those other characters are better the more Zangiefs there are. ;)
Hey what's up sirlin met you at evo in pools and it was fun talking to you about hd and a lot of the changes made for the better. And I can say that snake eyes is the real deal I was amazed not so much what he was doing it but how. Like little minute things he would take advantage to just rape people.
@rudy
Quanity does not equal quality look at gootecks with la riots and the godsgarden touranments.While you can make the distinction tha those are invite only. My cousin played daigo first round. And I had the privilege of playing john choi after winning I think two matches in winners.
How does Zangief match up favorably with Ryu? I understand a little, like that Zangief has ways to get around the fireballs, and up close he eats everyone alive, but I don't get the real specific reasons. Would you enlighten me, Sirlin?
Ryu's best weapon is his fireball, and Zangief can nullify that best weapon. That's what Choi said once about that match in ST, and it's right. Lariat can avoid most fireballs and actually hit fireballs thrown at the wrong time (hit Ryu's hands). That's what makes him tough for Ryu. In ST at the super expert level, it's probably Zangief advantage.
In HD Remix, some of Zangief's changes are irrelevant. Like his low fierce being 1 pixel different helps vs Vega's wall dive, but doesn't come into play here. His hop is not bad, but Ryu isn't exactly afraid of that. A few few frames faster recovery on green hand barely makes any difference either. The thing that really does matter though is the foot invulnerability at the beginning of the kick lariat. Ryu (or anyone) can still sweep it, but you just can't hit the very beginning of it. That lets Zangief use the lariat even a little more, making it even a little tougher for Ryu. HD Remix Ryu can use his fake fireball though, as that can bait Zangief into trying the lariat at times where he's just going to get swept.
Short answer though, the lariat is the key thing in that match.
Cmon Sirlin, just because some people disagrees with you, doenst mean that they are wrong.
I truly believe that even if Snake eyes defeated all those guys, half of them were obliterated by Daigo in Super turbo.
He won evo, thats great.. but he didnt defeat Daigo, now that would have made an impresion.
Its like winning a tournament were the defending champion, is not participating.
Afrolegends its a good player but just because he won hdr (a game that the japanese players hardly play at all) last evo, means that we should crown snake eyez as the god of sf.
On another note im sure that you have some kind of hidden agenda against Vega, first you nerf him in hdr and then you "make sure" Tokido cant win hahahaha.
Man you make me laugh... you also havent clarify why you counter picked in the last evo when you clearely stated that you will only play Fei long....
That counter pick seemed like a desperate act to win....
If someone disagrees with me, it doesn't mean they are wrong. Yeah that's true, but we're not talking about the general case, just your shitty attitude in this situation that aims to cut down Snake Eyes for some reason instead just congratulating him.
What is all this about beating Daigo? You're aware he beat down like everyone he faced? Including valle at the other tournament and cole in casual play? And that he WON Evolution? Cole and Afrolegends beat Daigo, btw, and we know how Snake Eyes did against them.
What are you even talking about with me regarding last Evolution? I never said anything about what I would do. I decided to play Fei Long mostly and I did. I beat down 3 different hondas, and then had a winning record vs Thelo and EA Megaman's hondas in hours of casual play. Against a deejay player, I tried Vega and won. You are somehow offended at this and calling me names over it. You're just being a troll, I think we've heard enough from you. Try posting on the forums if you're just interested in insults and cutting people down.
Yeah, Vega is so gimped that he is only like the second best character. Get out of here, troll.
Snake Eyes beat everyone he faced, including a lot of big names. That's damn impressive. I don't know why some of you guys are trying to take away from that.
Calling you names??
Sirlin i havent mentioned anything resembling an insult.
I will only mention facts.
1.- Japanese players dont play this game as much as USA players
2.- Hdr is not the same as sf 2.
3.- It is understandable that some guy out of nowhere can win a small/medium size tournament ( sorry guys evo hdr tournament was way smaller than the sf iv tournament) we can see an examples of this in football.
Small countries with unique styles can advance a lot in a competition where the big teams havent really been having a lot of practice against that particular style.
One undeniable fact is that those small countries never repeat the same feat.
I bet snake eyez has some skills but it would be naive to think that he will win evo again.
Expect some heavy zangief counter strategies.
I would be willing to say that the guy won because nobody was expecting a zangief.
4.- The guys that were defeated in my opinion were caught off guard.. They werent expecting a unique zangief, and when they wanted to fix the problem, they just couldnt.
5.- Not defeating Daigo subtracts a lot to his victory. Daigo is the guy to beat even at Chess!!
6.- Fighting games are like rock paper scissors, for example i may be able to defeat the champion of evo in a private/money match but that doesnt mean that just because of that im gonna be the winner of the next evo.
I dont care how good the other guy is, skill levels cant be mesuared with comparisons or with adjustment to "factors", Im amazed on how loosely you have used comparisons and generalizations in this topic.
Cheer up sirlin im not trolling, that guy has skills but not at the level that you are putting him.
6
Too much bad logic in there for me to go into detail. SF4 tournament being large doesn't have anything to do with this. HD Remix tournament was large compared to the tournaments we've ran for the last 15 years. I actually laughed out loud that you think him not being Daigo "takes away from his victory." He beat the guy who beat Daigo and he beat the other soundly the night after the tournament when they played a "what would it have been like if we played in the tournament" series. I mean Snake Eyes also didn't beat no-name Sagat who lost first round, so how do we know if he's better than that guy??
Also, I think you are just not in a position to judge how good or bad Snake Eyes is. Having played him myself for hours in person, offline and watching him play against roomfulls of top players and beating them all, I am in a position to tell you how good or bad he is. And I told you. I'm sorry for you if you need to feel better about yourself by imagining that some of the best players there are "aren't' really that good" though. I think it's pretty shitty when someone pulls of something so unheard of as this and you treat it like it was no big deal. It was a big fucking deal.
Another hater who feels like he has to cut down someone who achieved greatness to feed his own ego, I wonder why the comments section was re-opened to be honest.
Hi David,
first of all, thanks for your hard work for the community and the great write up behind the awesome story of SnakeEyes.
Would you be willing to enlighten us as to how Zangief has an advantage over Balrog, as well?
-Derrick
Yeah sure Derrick. Against any character, it's deadly for Zangief to do a safe jump against a knocked down opponent. If the opponent blocks, Zangief can then continue with some unknown number of jabs, maybe 1 or 2 or 3. The opponent will have to block those too, and he won't know when to reversal exactly. Zangief can push himself out of throw range with those, then SPD. If the opponent did do a reversal against that first jump in, Zangief can block it (that's the definition of safe jump) then sweep or SPD or something. Seem my ST tutorial videos for an explanation of safe jump.
Against Balrog in particular, this is easier than usual because Balrog's startup for his headbutt (his reversal attack) is so long. That gives Zangief more leeway to do a correct safe jump. If Zangief can get in, he can threaten to repeat these throws and win. The other component of the match is getting in and not dying to Balrog's low rush, which is usually his main weapon. To beat the low rush, Zangief can sweep a lot. Just whiff it, and if Balrog rushes into it, he'll get hit. A very good Balrog can low rush at just the right time to hit the recovery of your sweep. To prevent this, Zangief can mix doing sweep and low short. They both look the same if Balrog reacts to the low short, he'll probably get hit by the sweep right after it. At the very least, it makes it hard to tell when to rush. Hesitation means Zangief can do a hop or walk up or something and get closer.
Zangief can also beat the low rush by doing standing jab. If you do it just right, it hits the rush. I personally think it's best to do that only sometimes though, because the reward for hitting isn't as great as the sweep. Finally, Zangief can do lariat that the very last moment to hit a low rush. That is pretty hard actually, but I saw Snake Eyes do it a few times. Between lariat, stand jab, and sweeps, you can at least make Balrog hesitate to rush, which as I said above lets you walk up or hop or whatever, to get close.
Great write-up, I don't even play SF and I enjoyed it. Under-dog taking the prize is always neat.
Why all the fuss surrounding Diago? Until he beats Snake Eyes can we really even be sure he's a good player?
If snake eyes had beaten diago, it'd be because it was HDR. if snake eyes had won in ST it'd be because it was zangief. if diago had spent months practicing against zangief it'd be because of the high humidity at the tournament site.
i'm not sure why we bother having tournaments any more. we should most likely just mail the prize money to which ever player the fanbois love the most.
Nice write up Sirlin, and definatley got to give props to Snake Eyes. He seems to have pulled off the impossible and im sure thats what we all love to see. Except perhaps a few.
Anyways id like to hear about your time at evolution Sirlin. Did you make it out of pools? What characters did you play?