Secret: I love Sean. I don't know if it's because he's such an underdog or something else, but he's always appealed to me as a character, and I love pulling Sean out of my pocket when I used to go to weeklies or the occasional tournament. Sean's got a lot going against him, as this video certainly demonstrates, but his moves are so odd, his short-range game so quirky, that other players just don't know how to deal with them (the fact that nobody plays Sean probably helped, too).
For this video and his spot in the series, though, Sean is an important link in the chain of truth that I'm trying to pull on regarding the Street Fighter III games. The prevailing myth around them, that Ryu and Ken were never meant to be part of the cast and that angry/ bewildered players demanded them at location tests, is only partly true. Honestly, it even seems that it's only a small part, too, if recent interviews are to be believed (and they are).
What gets tricky here is that there is a lot more info out there about the SF3 games, but very little of it is translated in English for us to comb through (again, we need to bow down and thank whatever god you believe in for shmuplations.com). I have a handful of Japanese strategy guides and fan books that are just pages and pages of text from developers, and mostly about the first SF3 game, New Generation, that I certainly can't read. I know others out there are working slowly on getting some of these things localized and on the internet for people like me to use for projects like this, but this takes time and can be expensive if you hire someone to do it for you (though the price is typically worthwhile). What I'm getting at it is that there could be more info about what actually happened with development, and perhaps some evidence that refutes what I personally found, but this info isn't readily available yet, so we have to use what's at hand. And what's at hand, in this case, is that Sean was a super late-game development inclusion. If you play him in New Generation, I would argue, you can tell.
Anyway, this episode came a little quickly because I worked two scripts in advance after the Attract Mode episode. It also helps that I know Sean and his gameplay. What I don't know, though, is depth for Ibuki and Necro, the next two on the roster. Sure, development notes and design info aren't a problem, but I need to get into the lab for these two to really dig into them. That means the next episode or two might come a bit later than others (especially Ibuki. She has nine target combos and nine command normals. Nine. Apiece!). I'm going to try to go a few scripts in advance with these two as well, because I think that worked out pretty well.
Last thing: Sean's MP-HK target combo definitely links into SA3, but it's frame perfect, meaning the timing is absolutely fucking bonkers. But it works. I promise.
Friday, October 26, 2018
Thursday, October 4, 2018
Annotated Appendix: Alex
Whew, here we are. Want to know what's hard? Fighting game videos.
Honestly, that's part of the reason I'm doing this game as a series. The SOTN stuff was all straightforward; once I plotted out the correct course through the game, it was just a matter of getting from points A to B in each video. Fighting games aren't like that, though, and I took this on as a challenge to myself to become a better editor. You could say it's been a learning process.
First, going through movesets for characters is a bit bland, and I feel as though this video in particular didn't make it any better. I miscalculated how much varied footage I should have gotten for move examples, which is why you're seeing a lot of repeated clips of moves here. As the time allows, this should change going forward.
Second, I can do all of the moveset stuff on my own with a training dummy, but actual match footage is another story. I recorded everything that bookends the videos in May because that was the only time I could get together with other 3S players I know to have some legit footage. I don't want to pull random match footage from online games. Not only are they unpredictable from a quality standpoint, part of me (and I know that it's probably all in my head) doesn't think that's fair to the other players that I'm essentially using them without their knowledge. I know there are tons of YouTube videos that do nothing but pull online matches and replay them, but that's not me, and not the point of what I'm trying to do here.
The nasty byproduct of that is, well, I don't have a good Alex, and neither do many of my friends, so the actual match footage is pretty lousy. Sure, there are some nice parry moments and a few situations that I come back around to in the VO later in the video, but it's pretty mid- and low-tier stuff. I'm sorry to say that you're just going to have to get used to that as we move ahead. Between the three or four guys that are going to help me with record matches, our knowledge of the roster is fairly wide and varied, but it's not all-encompassing for high level play. Hopefully, the stuff in the VO and the side window will make you forget that none of us have an Ibuki in a few weeks.
This brings up a good point about this particular video: there just wasn't that much to say about Alex. I mean, sure, I found some nice tidbits for the guy from the usual sources, but he couldn't possibly have as much meat to him as series regulars like Ryu and Ken (you can expect those videos to be on the long side). It did, however, dip our toes into what makes this game --and fighting games in general-- so fascinating to me on a character level. Most characters in this genre tend to be cobbled together cultural forces. By that, I mean that we have representations of folk heroes, of pop culture icons, of mythic figures. In some characters' cases, it's a lot of that stuff cobbled together. Yes, this can get very speculative. I've found no concrete evidence that Alex is named after Alexander the Great. However, when we get to other characters in the game, particularly those that have a relationship with Alex, we'll see that possible references like this fit contextually when we step back and take it as a whole. I think you'll know what I mean as I get deeper into the cast.
From a more practical side, the movest footage is still windowed because I needed to make references to other stuff on the side, but it winds up sitting in front of lots of empty space. Curious what your thoughts are because this might evolve, but future videos might do away with that format in the second half so there isn't so much dead real estate.
Sorry that this took so long to develop. I'm still working out some of the kinks here, and the VO on this particular episode is straight up bad, and these are things I'm actively working to fix. If I ever find the time to circle back to some of these for any kind of remastering, this will be the first video on the list. We'll see.
Thanks again for watching. Your feedback is always appreciated if you have a second. I'm already hard at work on the next episode, so I'll hopefully have another one up in a week or so.
Honestly, that's part of the reason I'm doing this game as a series. The SOTN stuff was all straightforward; once I plotted out the correct course through the game, it was just a matter of getting from points A to B in each video. Fighting games aren't like that, though, and I took this on as a challenge to myself to become a better editor. You could say it's been a learning process.
First, going through movesets for characters is a bit bland, and I feel as though this video in particular didn't make it any better. I miscalculated how much varied footage I should have gotten for move examples, which is why you're seeing a lot of repeated clips of moves here. As the time allows, this should change going forward.
Second, I can do all of the moveset stuff on my own with a training dummy, but actual match footage is another story. I recorded everything that bookends the videos in May because that was the only time I could get together with other 3S players I know to have some legit footage. I don't want to pull random match footage from online games. Not only are they unpredictable from a quality standpoint, part of me (and I know that it's probably all in my head) doesn't think that's fair to the other players that I'm essentially using them without their knowledge. I know there are tons of YouTube videos that do nothing but pull online matches and replay them, but that's not me, and not the point of what I'm trying to do here.
The nasty byproduct of that is, well, I don't have a good Alex, and neither do many of my friends, so the actual match footage is pretty lousy. Sure, there are some nice parry moments and a few situations that I come back around to in the VO later in the video, but it's pretty mid- and low-tier stuff. I'm sorry to say that you're just going to have to get used to that as we move ahead. Between the three or four guys that are going to help me with record matches, our knowledge of the roster is fairly wide and varied, but it's not all-encompassing for high level play. Hopefully, the stuff in the VO and the side window will make you forget that none of us have an Ibuki in a few weeks.
This brings up a good point about this particular video: there just wasn't that much to say about Alex. I mean, sure, I found some nice tidbits for the guy from the usual sources, but he couldn't possibly have as much meat to him as series regulars like Ryu and Ken (you can expect those videos to be on the long side). It did, however, dip our toes into what makes this game --and fighting games in general-- so fascinating to me on a character level. Most characters in this genre tend to be cobbled together cultural forces. By that, I mean that we have representations of folk heroes, of pop culture icons, of mythic figures. In some characters' cases, it's a lot of that stuff cobbled together. Yes, this can get very speculative. I've found no concrete evidence that Alex is named after Alexander the Great. However, when we get to other characters in the game, particularly those that have a relationship with Alex, we'll see that possible references like this fit contextually when we step back and take it as a whole. I think you'll know what I mean as I get deeper into the cast.
From a more practical side, the movest footage is still windowed because I needed to make references to other stuff on the side, but it winds up sitting in front of lots of empty space. Curious what your thoughts are because this might evolve, but future videos might do away with that format in the second half so there isn't so much dead real estate.
Sorry that this took so long to develop. I'm still working out some of the kinks here, and the VO on this particular episode is straight up bad, and these are things I'm actively working to fix. If I ever find the time to circle back to some of these for any kind of remastering, this will be the first video on the list. We'll see.
Thanks again for watching. Your feedback is always appreciated if you have a second. I'm already hard at work on the next episode, so I'll hopefully have another one up in a week or so.
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