Annotated Appendix: Dudley

Just to get it out of the way now, this one is going up late because the summer has been kind of rough. About 20 minutes after publishing this video, I had what my doctors are calling a "complex migraine." This means that when my run-of-the-mill migraine headache started, something I don't really get that often to begin with, I lost my ability to speak for about an hour, not unlike having a stroke. After a couple of hospital visits and lots of tests, I was told these stroke-like migraine headaches are going to be the norm for me, and I shouldn't be surprised if I have more symptoms like this when another migraine hits (speech, motor function loss, etc.). I need to treat these like actual strokes, so if/when it happens again, I need to head to the ER to be sure that it's not an actual stroke. Then I got covid. We'll get to that later.

So, Dudley. Dudley, right? Combo machine Dudley. This was a fun video to make, and not because Dudley's just a cool character. Part of it is the chance to make a good turn after kind of going after Elena's design. I know that there were some that disagreed with my approach to her video. I knew it would happen, and it's not like I got it as bad as other folks online when people disagree with them (I'm a straight white guy, so I didn't get it by a long shot), but it was still a bit discouraging. That's maybe why it took a little while to get the Dudley video up, even though it would be something of a counter argument to Elena. Still, to the people that didn't like my Elena video: tough shit. Elena's design is problematic at best, and I stand by that. Plus, now you've got Dudley, and Dudley rules.

When writing this video, a couple of other YouTube video "essays" about Dudley also hit at the same time. This always makes me a little nervous. It's not like I'm the only one doing these kinds of videos on the internet, but I take some pride in being as well-researched as I can be, but to also take context into account as much as possible when outlining design and intent. It doesn't happen often, but I get some things wrong here and there. It also happens that I leave something out, or not find out a crucial piece of design inspiration until after the videos post. I really have to hand it to the comments, then. My dedicated cult of cool people generally point me in the right direction without yelling at me, and I really appreciate that. But context is important. Capcom is notorious for taking what was in the air at the time and dumping it into their games. That's one of the reasons video series like this exist is to capture all of that, especially if a designer actually came out and said, yes, this character is based on this and this and this. That didn't happen at the time of the game's release (Japanese development interviews in the 1980s-2000 were coy as hell), so when it creeps up now, you have to latch on to it and in case it in (internet video) amber.

The thing is, these other videos that I watched on Dudley and other characters just refuse to do this. It's clear to me that the folks making them are just barfing out what they read on wikis and not extrapolating or reading between the lines. Sure, these are people that want to churn out as much content as they can because, hey, that's the gig if you want to make money off of YT videos. But in it's way, they exist as a guide post for me to be better at it, at least from a research perspective. Are these other videos or creators bad because of it? Well, I don't like them, but that's me. But me along with you in the comments are making something better. If I forget something important, and Ashita no Joe is definitely important in Dudley's case, thanks for pointing it out. Thanks for being part of this.

As for the video itself, I'm leaving out a lot of the inputs for moves. I know that the early episodes have them, but as I moved on to the later characters, it just didn't seem worthwhile to point out something that only matters to people that already play the game, and they likely know how to perform a Jet Upper anyway. Specifically, I didn't think it was worthwhile to list the commands for all of Dudley's expansive list of target combos like I didn't for Ibuki. These aren't combo videos, but a taste of how a character plays and why people pick them (or don't) for competitive play. There are tools all over the place to learn individual moves or attack strings, and maybe it was overkill to put this stuff in to begin with.

This also another video where I didn't play any of the mirrors at all. I'm not a Dudley player, but am lucky enough to know a few very good ones. We're all a little rusty without playing in-person during the covid era, though, so son't take it out on these guys for this an the Oro episode when we all drop combos and miss easy opportunities.

Extra credit can always be found at Frankie's Feetwork 101 channel where he breaks down Kokujin's Dudley play. For something a little closer to home, though, Keninblack is easily the best American Dudley player currently competing, and you can find a lot of his play in the Jazzy tournaments. On that note, hats off to Arturo and the rest of the Jazzy folks for keeping it alive during these lean times. This year's tournament was killer. You should watch it. 

And with that, we're only down to a few final entries. The Oro episode is already live, and the Appendix for that one should be up soon (I'm on an island at the moment. I'll get to it when I get to it), and the script for Ryu is already about 70% complete. I'm still trying to figure out if there should be a wrap up episode after Ryu, which is what that one's not further along. If so, I'm thinking about a completely different format for it, but that might blow up in my face. Maybe vacation will give me time to figure it out.

See you soon

Annotated Appendix: Elena

This is an episode I have been dreading since starting this whole thing, which is probably why it took so long to come out. For a game series that trades in broad stereotypes, I've never felt comfortable with Elena. She always felt just a little off to me. Turns out, the more digging I did, the more she is to Street Fighter what "Brown Sugar" is to the Rolling Stones; something that was never a good idea.

To be fair to her, Capcom hasn't exactly been kind to Black characters. Balrog/Boxer is the definition of the "angry Black man" trope, just to give an example. In Elena's case, though, what probably started as good intentions came out in ugly ways, especially since, according to basically all of the art that Capcom has published with her in it, she's basically the teenage fuck bunny of the series. That makes things a whole lot worse. 

Trust me when I say that there was a lot I left on the cutting room floor in terms of Elena and how icky things are with her. And also trust me that I didn't write this episode in a vacuum. I'm a 40 year-old white dude, after all, and I needed other sets of eyes on this script before I even began collecting footage. This passed through a few hands of Black creators that I trust and a PhD faculty member of Gender and Race studies just to be sure I wasn't veering out into a lane I had no business in. 

But that doesn't mean that this episode won't rile some people up. To them, well, that's the breaks. Elena comes off as a racist character to me. That's what this videos about.

Luckily, Dudley is (somehow) the polar opposite to this, but we'll tackle that soon.

Annotated Appendix: Hugo

Want to know a secret? I know next to nothing about professional wrestling. I mean, I'm a dude that just turned 41 so I watched all of that old-timey WWF stuff from the 80s that was a playground requirement, but anything after I hit 6th grade and I just shrug my shoulders. Lucky for me the Venn Diagram of gamers and wrestling fans is a nearly perfect circle, so it was easy to find some technical advisement. I probably really screwed something up (and I'm sure I will be told) but I don't know. I think I faked it pretty well! Thanks, Andre!

This is an episode that seems to be hotly anticipated by my small, beautiful cult (and I love each and every one of you), and I think I can guess why: The Andre thing is so blatant, and there's so much proven history about this character that I think folks just want it confirmed for them. I hope you enjoy all of it in as tidy a package as I could make for you. It was super fun to research, and since the script came quickly and a little more tightly than the Ken episode, this is one of those magical moments where everything just flowed like it should.

EXCEPT when I edited things together. It turns out that adhering to a certain format painted me into a corner with this one because I had to shoehorn in Hugo's Arcade mode path someplace. It just feels super awkward and I wish that I could have found a better way that isn't so obviously crammed in. In fact, this was the first time I considered knowingly dropping it from episode. Have a plan and stick to it, I guess. Still very unhappy with my own planning here, and now you'll never un-see it, either. 

Things that should have been in this episode: For all of the talk of 2nd Impact, I probably should have found a way to show more footage of it. Hugo, for instance, has an infinite, I believe. I mean, there's not a whole lot of reason to show any of it per the script, but the episode feels a bit empty without it.

The other is a video I am still sure existed at some point, but maybe I'm just going lockdown nuts. For the life of me, I remember a promo trailer for Street Fighter X Tekken that made a vague joke about Poison's gender, but I cannot find it anywhere. I took to Twitter and a mutual that used to work for GameTrailers (RIP) couldn't recall it, either, so maybe I've just been hallucinating all of these years. I swear it's out there, though, and you can hear me reference it just after talking about Ono.

It probably could have also used better match footage, I guess. My players aren't experts with the character, even though they definitely have some skill. So with that, here are the videos that are worth a look if you're down to pick up Hugo:

SFV player/ streamer AutoMattock is also a 3rd Strike believer and made a nice video covering some high-concept Hugo play. Not necessarily a tutorial video on the character, but some good ground to cover. I give him a shout in the episode. Seems like a nice enough cat. 

For PhD Hugo study, though, there are two well-know Japanese masters: Hayao and YSB. A quick YT search will net you plenty of footage to comb through (both still regularly play at Game Newton exhibitions in Japan), but go-to 3S channel Feetwork 101 has a great breakdown of YSB play. I generally gain a new appreciation for every character that I cover, but I don't think I'll really mess around with this guy now that this episode is out the door. Watching this video, though, makes me occasionally reconsider.

One last thing: try to count all of the Princess Bride references. Do it. Count them.

Closing out on something not necessarily connected, with the pandemic not slowing down, FGC tournaments are doing the best they can to give players an avenue to test their mettle. I think this is worth supporting. Today, in fact, Chicago major Frosty Faustings announced their annual midwinter event will be completely online with totally free entry fees. The format for each game is platform-specific, and 3rd Strike will have theirs over Fightcade 2, which is pretty nice. Even if you get pounded into dirt, everybody should enter this. If you've got a PC that's wired to the internet, the only thing you'll lose is your time. 

Thanks again for sticking with me! 

Annotated Appendix: Ken

 A good place to start the home stretch is many players' favorite character. Well, a character that basically everybody can play, at least. Ken is awesome in this game, which is something most anybody that's heard of 3rd Strike knows well, even if it's only from the Daigo Parry. It's hard to really know why, though, which was maybe the biggest point I tried to make with this episode. The other is what happens at the top: Ken represents competition -- in fighting games, in video games, in series lore-- and there's credit owed to him that I think both lay gamers and FGC mainstays often overlook. A little high concept, but that's also one of the reasons I make these things.

This episode was tough to make from a writing perspective. I hadn't written a script in a long time, and this one was curiously difficult to pound out while I got back into the swing of things. Flaws in early drafts meant that I just kept adding things (and adding, and adding, and then adding some more), and while I knew this episode was going to be long, I didn't think it would end up this long. Still, I don't think its egregious (at least, I hope it isn't), but I probably could have used an editor here. The Hugo script is mostly written at this point, and it already feels tighter. Maybe I just needed Ken to help me shake off the cobwebs. 

Things that should have been in this video: I mention Eliza as having a famously re-drawn sprite for her early appearances in the various SFII endings, but I just couldn't squeeze them in here without really mucking up the timing for everything else. You should look them up, though. It's some nutty shit.

Something that you might find funny about the match footage in the first part of these videos is how one player is always getting beat on by the others. I don't mind telling you at this point that this is me. I play with a handful of really talented players, and one in particular is just about great with the entire cast. When we get together and play (largely online these days), it's a real bloodbath for me. Most of the time, you can probably figure out when I'm playing now that I've said that. Just thought you might find it funny.

Things purposely left out: The Daigo Parry. Yes, it's famous and even alluded to in the voiceover, but if you're watching this video series you have already seen it, and probably dozens of times. It's also not entirely illustrative of Ken's abilities more so than Daigo's for pulling it off under that kind of pressure. At the point it happens in the match, Justin Wong's Chun had so little life left that nearly every character could have come down on him with a round-ending combo. This isn't to take anything away from Daigo and his skill, but he could have done it with Dudley or Yun or whoever. 

BUT, if you want to learn high-level Ken play, you could certainly do worse than watching old Daigo match footage, which is all over YouTube. For my money, though (and, surprisingly, Daigo's, too), Deshiken is the best Ken player on Earth. Your Ken homework should start with this video from the best American Ken player, FrankieBFG. I know I link to his stuff a lot in these appendices, but the guy breaks down expert play to the point of mutating them into master classes. All of these are worth a watch. 

With that, I think I owe you an apology. I went into this video series expecting to be finished a year ago, and this has dragged on way, way too long. I start basically every one of these appendixes moaning about how it took so long to make x episode, and that's something that needs to stop. It turns out, the pandemic really hit a lot harder than I thought it would. Between trading parenting duties with my wife and teaching our 5yo kindergarten while also working our full-time jobs, the thought of doing anything after the day is over besides having a drink and falling asleep felt like more work than I wanted it to. That ground things to a halt. I don't make money off of these and I enjoy doing them, but once they feel like work it can be hard to get back on the bike, as it were. The end is in site, though. As I said, the Hugo script is pretty much done, and the footage has been captured, so I should be able to knock that one out quickly. I just want this stupid year to be over. I bet you do, too.

I hope you're safe. Happy Holidays, and thanks for sticking with me.

Annotated Appendix: Gill

You know, I was really on a roll with these since the pandemic started, and then I finally got to the Gill episode and *poof* all of my footage had disappeared. That sucked. Anyway, we should be back to our biweekly schedule now (maybe!).

This is the first episode that is wholly affected by the Covid pandemic, too, and you can probably tell. I had always planned for this episode to have more CPU interaction as a last resort, since nobody I know plays 3S Online Edition where Gill is playable. That means I needed to be a little creative with the footage for the first part of the episode, and dig out my PS3 to record training footage for his move set for the second. It works out fine, but the visual differences between versions of the game kind of drive me nuts. Nothing you can do about that now, I guess.

But, and here's a little inside baseball, I thought there was. I also own the game on 360, where the quality of recording via Elgato is supposed to be better (PS3 recording only goes up to 1080i). It's not egregious, I guess, but I can tell the difference in the 30th Ann. Collection vs. 3SOE and I bet others will, too. Why did didn't I get 360 footage? Well, it turns out there's some weird HDCP issues with Xboxes using HDMI cables. At least, it was a problem I was running into. The footage was recording correctly on my computer, but the image on the TV was too distorted to make anything out. The real problem is the 2-3 second delay from button input to what gets recorded, though, and since I needed a single player run of the game to capture win quotes and CPU opponent paths, this was untenable, even for a busted character like Gill. History is saddled with 1080i, it seems. 

Other fun weirdness: 3SOE runs the game in its proper resolution, but only during matches (unless you were one of the savages that stretched the game to widescreen in the options menu. Please stop following me if this is you). The win quotes, player select, and opponent paths are all widescreen. This made the windows in the episode a little different to size. Not that big of a deal. This is the first, and hopefully only, episode, though, that I needed to pull SFIII game footage off of other YouTube channels. If you've ever watched my Annotated Symphony of the Night series, you can tell that this is something I try to actively avoid. I like to source my own video footage because I can control the quality of the output (above paragraphs notwithstanding), but since I don't own a Dreamcast or a copy of Double Impact, I needed to get Gill's ending footage from 2I from another YouTuber. This person was credited during the ending card. Oh, and yes, I call it "Double Impact" in the episode but show the Japanese version of the game, which is formally titled "W Impact." The Japanese box art is just cooler. An intentional screw up.

Things that should have been in this video: I mention at the end of the episode that Gill's face for one of his win poses is redrawn. Should have included that. The smirk on his face for NG and 2I is just too dopey not to see it. Sorry.

Finally, I thought about calling this one Gill and Urien, Part 2 just like how I renamed the Yun and Yang episodes. After finishing the script and the episode, though, I found that they don't rely on each other like the twins do. The differences in design inspirations are just too far apart for the episodes to be coupled together, even if we're just talking the title of a YouTube video. I also wanted to make it somewhat special by calling it another BONUS STAGE, even though it's not a video about punching a car or whatever. I mean, he's not playable in most builds of 3rd Strike, especially these days with 30th AC and Fightcade emulation being the most accessible way of playing the game, so it's a bonus, right?

...Right?

Annotated Appendix: Yang and Yun, part 2

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

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.