Japanese Players Enjoying SF HD Remix

Here's a video of Japanese Street Fighter players (including Otochun and Aniken) playing SF HD Remix. Skip to about 1:05:00 or so for when they finally get going.

They are having such a good time that it makes even more fun to watch. They all laugh (in happiness I think!) when Vega's wall dive doesn't knock down, and when someone lands a fake slide into throw with Bison. They also get excited that Ken can now do his super as a reversal.

With Daigo and Tokido both saying good things about the game, Muteki, Yuu Vega, and Jodim all playing on XBLA, and videos like this one, it seems they are pretty into it. Aniken said this (to Masa) in the comment thread about an HD Remix event there:

> Masa
I also think it would be interesting and fun to have HD at the game center
but we have to face reality, there's nothing we can do about it!

For Ken, Remix Ryu and Sagat are very difficult opponents, it's fun!♪
Looking forward to seeing you at Sunday's tourney!

Too bad the game isn't actually released in Japan, it seems like it would do really well.

Advantage Time in Fighting Games

When I see new players try a 3D fighting game such as Soul Calibur or Virtua Fighter, they often have trouble understanding advantage time. The concept matters in 2d fighting games like Street Fighter and Guilty Gear as well, but because 2d games tend to have so much emphasis on zoning and controlling space, advantage time is more of a concept for intermediates or experts, rather than a thing beginners get crushed by. (They are too busy getting crushed by fireball traps or rushdown!)

What is Advantage Time?

In a fighting game, advantage time is the length of time (usually measured in 1/60ths of a second, called frames) that you recover from your attack *before* the opponent recovers from blocking (or getting hit by) your attack. If you do a kick, then the opponent blocks it, you have to recover from your kick (that takes some time) and your opponent gets briefly locked into "blockstun" (a state where they are stuck blocking) and that takes time for them to recover from, too. If you recover 3 frames sooner than the opponent in this situation, we say that you have 3 frames of advantage time. If instead the opponent recovers 3 frames first, most charts of frame data will call that "-3 advantage time" though in spoken English you could just say the opponent has 3 frames of advantage time.

Why does this matter so much?

If after a blocked attack, you recover a few frames before the opponent, that means if you both immediately do a move, yours will probably win. Your move will come out sooner and get to the active/hitting part before his, if the moves were the same speed.

In 3D fighting games, beginners can get totally destroyed by advantage time tricks without even knowing what's going on. The opponent does some moves, then it seems like it's the beginner's "turn" to do something, but whatever he does gets beat out. He's probably attacking in a situation where he has frame disadvantage, but he doesn't even know it. 

Nitaku / Forced Choice / 2-Choice Situations

In 3D fighting games, there's a term called 2-choice (or "nitaku") situation which means you put the opponent in a bad situation where he must choose between 2 things, and the deck is stacked against him, so to speak. If he's attacking from

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Some of My Matches From Evolution 2009

After all the talk on forums about how bad Fei Long is, I played him a lot at Evolution. Here's the first match from the team tournament, Sirlin vs. Ryan Hart (of Tekken fame).

Sirlin vs. Thelo, aka "best defensive Honda." People seem not to know who Thelo is, but they should! He's a sirlin.net regular and annoying down-back player. Is Fei Long vs. Honda impossible?

Sirlin vs. Psychocronic's Bison. I miss the

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Some Positives About Street Fighter 4

Yeah there's a lot of problems in SF4, but there are some good things too.

I don't know how effective Gouken is, but his design is interesting. No dragon punch, but a super and ultra dragon punch. A high counter and low counter that act somewhat like a dragon punch, but worse because he has to guess high or low and it loses to the "breaking glass" moves, like Cammy's cannon spike. The ex counter doesn't require you to guess high or low though. I beat Cammy's ultra once with an ex counter, but got hit the second time I tried. Not sure what's up with that. Also, using the counter drains your life and slowly refills it, like using a focus attack. This is an advantage for the most part, because it means your ultra guage is even more full than usual. Because his ultra is guaranteed off a normal throw (and easy), it's basically a throw super...that doubles as the occasional dragon punch super if you really need it. Ironic that landing it is so easy that it's a better "throw super" than Zangief's, at least for me.

It's painful dealing with Zangief's bad-feeling jump, as if he is a flea of some sort, and not having his hop move. And not having his low fierce from Alpha 2 and 3. But his SPD is good, with jab having ridiculously long range (great!) but low damage. SPD startup time is

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Smash Bros. Brawl Tutorial Series Complete

I forgot to mention this earlier, but all ten parts of my tutorial series for Super Smash Bros. Brawl are now up. Remember that Nintendo's primary distribution for these videos is on the Nintendo Channel (accessible on the Wii itself) in Europe, where the vids are translated into 5 or 6 languages. Secondarily, they are also available on Nintendo's website. I did not put the vids on youtube myself, nor do I even know whose account that is, but I found them there so I linked to them here.

I hope the tutorial series achieves Nintendo's goal of getting more European players to realize that there's more to Smash than meets the eye.

--Sirlin