See that title up there? Yeah, it's on purpose. When writing this episode, it became clear very quickly that it was going to be boring. If you had followed the series up to this point, a dedicated Yang show would have been a whole lot of retreaded info, from the Gundam allusion to the long discussion on imitative Kung Fu. After reading the script, I decided that it wasn't worth it, and pretty much started from scratch.
I didn't want it this way, honestly. I wanted each episode to stand on their own and viewable in a vacuum compared to the others. The more I worked through the roster, though, the more I was referring back to previous episodes assuming that people had seen those already. It seems that this original mandate had fallen by the wayside, so I swerved into it with Yang, making the whole of the script something of a self-referential recap of what I've shown you thus far. I think it worked for the most part, and decided that because he and his brother are so entwined, that I should rename the Yun episode to reflect it, and thereby make the twins a "2-parter."
One of the things I wanted to make clear with Yang is his changing status as a tournament character. While there aren't a lot of ways to verify this other than the anecdotal "people say Yang's good, actually," I can direct you to tournament results of the last several Cooperation Cups where Yang players tend to consistently end up on winning teams, and in the last few years, Pre-Coop Cup Yang squads make the top 5. Without crunching the numbers, he makes it into winner's circles at least much as Dudley and Urien, two consistently strong mid- to mid/high- tier characters.
For further evidence, look no further than NicaKO, without a doubt one of the best American 3rd Strike players, who is frequently seen playing Yang in US tournaments like last year's Jazzy Circuit final. Yang did not have this kind of allegiance in the game's early competitive life, especially after everyone figured out how good Yun and Chun-Li are.
(I know I could have just linked you to an actual tournament video for the final, but that short doc is definitely worth watching anyway, and still gets the point across. Also, Nica's 3S training videos are exhaustive, but phenomenally in-depth. That's your homework).
We're on to the next episode, a bonus ep about Gill. This one should be pretty beefy, I think.
Thanks again for watching
Tuesday, June 23, 2020
Tuesday, June 2, 2020
Annotated Appendix: Twelve
Like Necro, Twelve is another character that I have a perverse respect for after making this video. Specifically, I mean I didn't realize the two characters share more than a backstory after analyzing their normal move sets. Not that I want to play as Twelve after this, of course, but still, that's a cool touch that one would expect of Capcom games of this vintage.
I just never paid attention. I never wanted to. Twelve suuuuuucks. I know he has his fans, and there's a few decent high-level Japanese Twelve players out there, but goddammit, if the first of half of this video shows nothing at all, it's that none of my other player team or myself can do any real work with the character because there's. Just. Nothing. There. He's only got one actual combo, and everything else he can do is completely dependent on super meter. I mean, Samurai Shodown games are essentially built this way at their core, but at least in those, one good attack can do decent damage. Poor Twelve just can't dish it out.
But enough complaining. This video was a pleasure to put together because after being away so long, it's nice to come back with a character that doesn't have as much baggage as, say, Akuma or Chun. With the pandemic going (and going and going), I've been much more busy working than I thought I would be, and that's really ground things to a halt. At least with the Twelve episode, I can shake off the cobwebs because the next few are going to be meaty. One is going to be a Bonus Stage episode in between Yang and Ken, just to spoil things a bit.
And speaking of bonus stages, who knew that Twelve had a unique win pose during his? I sure didn't.
Things that should have been in this video: Twelve has a wide variety of combos out of the XCOPY that are dependent on the other character. Like everything else, it starts with crouching LK into the AXE, comboing the super, and then a move out of that. Imagine it like V-Trigger in Street Fighter V, but with a much shorter window for timing the post-super link. It can be a little easier if the opponent jumps at you and Twelve just goes into the AXE/SA/character attack, but this is one of those instances where I was frankly too lazy to record them. They're hard, and never worth it, since high-level Twelve players, such as they are, never even use the XCOPY. Yeah.
Speaking of Supers, SA2 can combo from a close MK, a super jump cancel, and then the SA. I should have notated it better in the video. I also could not for the life of me do it against another Twelve, which makes me think that it only works against taller characters like Urien. After inspecting the second 3rd Strike Gamest Mook which pictures it working against Necro, though, I'm probably wrong. It still might be character dependent, but like the above XCOPY screed, I just stopped giving a shit once I landed a combo that worked. Apologies.
Lastly, I wanted to show the exact translations of his binary code win quotes, and even get some footage of the console-specific Urien quote, but I honestly didn't have any room. I backed myself into a corner when I wrote and recorded the script, and it would have been too much to fix when I started editing everything together. Sorry, but you're just going to have to take my (and the internet at-large's) word for it when it comes what he's saying. I actually did try to run these codes into binary/ascii translation tools that I found online and they never matched up, which is why I mention in the video that they're not a 1:1 translation.
Today, I am trying again to file for unemployment after my work furloughed me. So far, it has gone as awesome as you may have heard from everyone else trying to do the same thing. I'd like to take this moment to really thank my Patreon supporters out there. I don't make a ton of money on these, but your help really means a lot to me, especially in this moment.
With that, I hope you're doing well and staying safe. These are hard times, and even harder in the face of racial tensions that, in a perfect world, should have been eradicated millions of years ago. As a straight, white 40 year-old dude, I don't have any right to say anything other than I support protesters, grieve for their losses and champion their gains. Black lives matter. In a way, it's a pleasure to work on a series of videos about a game, one of the first that I can think of across the medium, that embraced the African American community. Maybe you can find some comfort in that if you can.
Take care.
I just never paid attention. I never wanted to. Twelve suuuuuucks. I know he has his fans, and there's a few decent high-level Japanese Twelve players out there, but goddammit, if the first of half of this video shows nothing at all, it's that none of my other player team or myself can do any real work with the character because there's. Just. Nothing. There. He's only got one actual combo, and everything else he can do is completely dependent on super meter. I mean, Samurai Shodown games are essentially built this way at their core, but at least in those, one good attack can do decent damage. Poor Twelve just can't dish it out.
But enough complaining. This video was a pleasure to put together because after being away so long, it's nice to come back with a character that doesn't have as much baggage as, say, Akuma or Chun. With the pandemic going (and going and going), I've been much more busy working than I thought I would be, and that's really ground things to a halt. At least with the Twelve episode, I can shake off the cobwebs because the next few are going to be meaty. One is going to be a Bonus Stage episode in between Yang and Ken, just to spoil things a bit.
And speaking of bonus stages, who knew that Twelve had a unique win pose during his? I sure didn't.
Things that should have been in this video: Twelve has a wide variety of combos out of the XCOPY that are dependent on the other character. Like everything else, it starts with crouching LK into the AXE, comboing the super, and then a move out of that. Imagine it like V-Trigger in Street Fighter V, but with a much shorter window for timing the post-super link. It can be a little easier if the opponent jumps at you and Twelve just goes into the AXE/SA/character attack, but this is one of those instances where I was frankly too lazy to record them. They're hard, and never worth it, since high-level Twelve players, such as they are, never even use the XCOPY. Yeah.
Speaking of Supers, SA2 can combo from a close MK, a super jump cancel, and then the SA. I should have notated it better in the video. I also could not for the life of me do it against another Twelve, which makes me think that it only works against taller characters like Urien. After inspecting the second 3rd Strike Gamest Mook which pictures it working against Necro, though, I'm probably wrong. It still might be character dependent, but like the above XCOPY screed, I just stopped giving a shit once I landed a combo that worked. Apologies.
Lastly, I wanted to show the exact translations of his binary code win quotes, and even get some footage of the console-specific Urien quote, but I honestly didn't have any room. I backed myself into a corner when I wrote and recorded the script, and it would have been too much to fix when I started editing everything together. Sorry, but you're just going to have to take my (and the internet at-large's) word for it when it comes what he's saying. I actually did try to run these codes into binary/ascii translation tools that I found online and they never matched up, which is why I mention in the video that they're not a 1:1 translation.
Today, I am trying again to file for unemployment after my work furloughed me. So far, it has gone as awesome as you may have heard from everyone else trying to do the same thing. I'd like to take this moment to really thank my Patreon supporters out there. I don't make a ton of money on these, but your help really means a lot to me, especially in this moment.
With that, I hope you're doing well and staying safe. These are hard times, and even harder in the face of racial tensions that, in a perfect world, should have been eradicated millions of years ago. As a straight, white 40 year-old dude, I don't have any right to say anything other than I support protesters, grieve for their losses and champion their gains. Black lives matter. In a way, it's a pleasure to work on a series of videos about a game, one of the first that I can think of across the medium, that embraced the African American community. Maybe you can find some comfort in that if you can.
Take care.
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