Annotated Appendix: Q

I couldn't wait to make this one.

Like the Urien episode, I have been bottling up some wild speculation for over a year before I finally sat down and made the thing. I've stockpiled rare art, went through old magazines and strategy guides, and watched lots (and lots) of high-level Q footage to be as prepared as I will ever be to produce this. I mean, it kind of sucks that Capcom finally did something with the character in the form of G, but still, after looking all over the internet to find any more weird explainers for this character and his backstory, I'm confident in the conclusions I've come up, even if they're total bullshit. I really hope you enjoy this one!

Things I should have brought up in this episode: his outfit colors. As Capcom is not shy about their comic book inspirations, Q definitely has some trench coat-sporting antecedents that are called out by whichever button is pressed when selecting him, but these, of course, have never been confirmed. The yellow is certainly Dick Tracy, a 1930s comic strip crime fighter. The others are more open to interpretation. I think the hidden color (big butter Q) is basically the primordial representation, just like how Twelve looks. The white is likely a shout out to the original appearances of DC/ Charleton character The Question, mentioned early in the video. (sadly, there's no blue color scheme to make reference to the 1980s, and by extension, phenomenal 2004 Justice League Unlimited Question) The red? I don't know, Carmen Sandiego? Happy to hear other thoughts on this.

Screw ups: I actually had footage of the kara throw that, for whatever reason, didn't make it into this video. Since I mentioned it prominently, it should have been there. There's also some awkwardness in the clips of his UO after bringing up the dashing overhead punch, but whatever. Sorry, that's never getting fixed.

But that's only the first half. The back half talks briefly at the end about some of the Japanese gods and how they've grokked Q, but only in passing. I've actually done this before in other episodes; some characters have specific names attached to them, but I don't bring them up very often. This is the episode that illustrates why I don't.

By that, I mean that we need to talk about Kuroda.

For those not familiar, perhaps the greatest living 3rd Strike player is a Japanese man named Kenji Kuroda. If you think that that last sentence is hyperbole, trust me when I tell you that he can more than effectively use every character on the roster, has been a mainstay of the game's tournament life since it began, understood its engine so well that whole play styles and setups are named after him, and has had many, many DVDs produced of his play for students of the game to buy. Several of them were officially sanctioned by Gamest magazine. While most people consider Daigo Umehara to be the face of this game after he basically saved mainstream FGs, its Kuroda's influence that largely hangs over 3rd Strike. It's impossible to overstate Kuroda's importance in its continued maturation and legacy.

But Kuroda is also quite possibly a sexual predator. Last year, he was arrested for sexual misconduct with an underage girl. Twice. Other young women seem to have come forward with allegations of wrongdoing, and since there haven't been any updates to these stories in the Western gaming press, it's impossible to know what's really going on or his, perhaps probable, convictions. He has been largely and conspicuously absent from high profile tournaments over the last year, including Cooperation Cup, which is telling. In a time where important fight game players are under scrutiny for horrific behavior, Kuroda is a name that is becoming hushed within 3rd Strike circles after many years of adoration. He's also one of the main reasons Q is a viable tournament pick, even if he's low tier.

While there are certainly other great former and current 3S players that use Q (again I'm going to direct you to one of FrankieBFG's 3S Film Room videos of the inimitable TM), Kuroda basically put this character on the map. Because of what he may be involved with --or perhaps in spite of which-- I have a hard time showing any of his footage or mentioning him by name as opposed to someone like Sugiyama's bonkers Necro play. This may be a situation of me passing sentence before judgment and probably is, but since I'm making these videos, it's for me to decide. I can't tell you not to go looking around YouTube for Kuroda match footage, but I'll never send any your way.

I'm in the writing phase for Chun Li's script, and I might take a quick break for a moment after that's finished. Then again, I might just finish the column of characters with Yang and take a break after that. Either way, a short break is likely coming, and probably to work on this incubating Tekken idea I want to get across. All the same, thanks again for watching, and Happy Holidays!

Annotated Appendix: Remy

Oh, Remy. I don't feel as bad for him as I do for Sean, I suppose. But having saying that, Remy was basically made to be screwed, and I don't think I could come up with changes that could help alleviate that based on the game (without totally breaking it). I'm not a smart video game designer, though.

This column of characters on the roster screen is maybe the easiest because so many are specific to 3rd Strike. It makes each episode of the series a little dry of long explanation, but they feel very focused, which is nice. It also helps in getting the videos done quickly, so please rejoice in this time of bounty. I've been sick off and on lately, so I apologize for the raspy voice in this and a few future episodes.

Fun stuff about Remy that I probably should have mentioned in this episode: I've brought up several times that 3rd Strike is a very clever amalgamation of different fighting game mechanics, not just "Street Fighter II with parries." It's subtle to the untrained eye; some characters have launchers for juggles like in 3D fighting games, while others have air dashes like "anime" games, etc. Remy, though, represents this in a regressive sense. His gameplay actually is, essentially, "SFII with parries," which is precisely why he kind of sucks. Even the fan hack 4rd Strike fundamentally changes him given the buffs to the Cold Blue Kick (at least, in my opinion). Still, there are good, high-level Remy players out there, but they're few and far between. For reference, FrankieBFG, perhaps the best American 3rd Strike player (definitely the best Ken player) has a YouTube channel that breaks down the gameplay of a few Japanese masters. His Pierrot video is great, and counts for you as extra credit.

Fun stuff about Remy that never really fit into this video: First, famous FGC player Viscant went on an equally famous screed some years ago decrying the parry system that is still widely available to read online. He doesn't call Remy out specifically, but it's clear that the character is in the back of Viscant's mind since he levels his biggest criticisms via zoning characters, which Remy clearly is. I don't 100% agree with everything he says, but he makes valid points, so much that I included some of them as counter arguments in the parry episode. It's worth reading if you can put up with insipidly childish forum behavior from over a decade ago.

Second, and I cannot prove this, but I'm convinced that Remy is either Guile or Charlie Nash's illegitimate son. His hair color is blond in most of his alternative outfits, is the only male character with long enough hair to gel it in the ways that these past heroes can, and his goddamn move set is just so similar. I'm more inclined to lean into Charlie, actually, because of Remy's one-handed Sonic Boom toss, which was also a Charlie thing. In the grand scheme of things, this shit is completely inconsequential given that Capcom has essentially disowned Remy over the years, but still. The Truth is Out There.

Aaaaaaand speaking of which, the Q episode is in the can and will drop in two weeks. It's nice to be on a schedule, but this might be the last one for a little bit so I can get my people together to record Chun/ Makoto/ Yang footage. I do them in chunks that way. Look forward to the next episode, though. I go into some seriously out-there speculation about the character which in no way holds up under scrutiny.

Other than that, I'm planning a footnote episode on a Tekken combo. Yes, one specific combo. I think you'll enjoy it. The Demon's Souls long play video also got some traction, and I'd love to do another one of those someday, but it's really a matter of finding the right game to stream. I'm liking this streaming thing, though, so who knows.

Enjoy the video, and thanks again for sticking with me!

Annotated Appendix: Yun

There is nothing more scary than Yun.

Chun is manageable, even with her busted super, because that's all she's really got. Yang is something I can put up with, even with Yun-like movement. Ken is Ken, and everybody knows how to play against Shotos. But Yun's a motherfucker; that tiny super meter gives him almost constant Genei Jin. That sucks. I didn't mention it in the video because I feel it gets a little too far into the weeds, but the Genei Jin makes the game feel like a Capcom Vs. game or Tekken-- it activates, and you're just sitting there taking damage. Half the time, I just take my hands off the stick when I get caught up in GJ combos. There's nothing you can do once a decent player lands a hit except to watch your HP slowly bleed out. Screw Yun and the Genei Jin. SCREW HIM.

With that out of the way, this was another episode where I needed to rely on other players for help. My distaste for Yun is such that I refuse to learn to play him, which you can clearly tell in the mirror match footage in the first half of the episode. Since it actually does take significant skill to use Genei Jin effectively, I tasked my other player with using it exclusively while I rotated the other two supers. This also meant that I could just recycle his super combos for the back half of the video. This is something that I don't like doing, but there was no better footage to be made based on how he played unless we started rotating opponents (the SF3 games have many, many character-specific combos).

I also wimped out on making video for the New Generation infinite combos. Yes, there's clear documentation on the process of landing/ completing them online, but you know. It's Yun. I hate Yun. If you follow me on Twitter (which you should), you will even find me hating on Yun there. Mostly on the weekends when I'm drinking. Seriously, fuck Yun.

(Again, I am compelled to relent a little and say that it's very hard to use the Genei Jin well. Players really need to put in some time in the training lab to get things right, and since there are so many character-specific combos, it can be a lot to account for. Big thanks to my buddy John P. that plays a slamming Yun.)

Anyway, I have a bit more freelance work coming up in the next week, but the next episode is just about ready to go. The great Demon's Souls 10th Anniversary Stream/ Long Play was a nice little success (the whole thing is on the YouTube channel in one big clump), and it helped get my rump in gear to finish a few more episodes on the quick. I've also got the script for Q ready to record, and am outlining Chun's episode starting today. Progress! Anyhoo, expect the Remy video to go up in two weeks.

In the meantime, thanks again for watching and supporting the series. Tell all of your friends, and remind them that Yun is bad. He's bad for all of us.

Annotated Appendix: Parries

Here's something that I didn't mention in this episode: The background here is clearly New York City. If a player scoots backward enough that the camera moves, which isn't that hard since players naturally want added distance from the thrown basketballs for more time to parry, they can see the Empire State Building in the upper left corner. It's pretty easily missed, actually. Your eyes don't shoot right up there when Sean is tossing balls at you. Sean has some sort of relationship with NYC, though. His stage in New Generation is set there, and there seems to be some sort of background as to why in NG's Gamest Mook strategy guide. Sadly, though, it's all in Japanese, and outside of the katakana, there's only so much I can glean from it.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the first Bonus Stage episode. As we worm our way through the rest of the cast, we'll have another one right before we hit Ken (it will probably be obvious what that's going to be about sooner or later). Some inside dope- I actually tried to do more clever things with the editing in this one, but it didn't exactly work out, which is why some of the characters repeat. Not worth getting into what that was going to be, but it was a learning experience. For the clips on the right side of the page, and I don't know why I feel I need to apologize for this, but I was stuck using the record-able training footage from the SF 30th Anniversary Collection. For some reason, I couldn't get a second controller to work the other day when I was trying to do some little things (and my poor wife was even willing to help out. Very game of her), which is why you see the little "play" icons and stuff on the lower right side of a lot the side windows. I find that hideous. Sometimes, though, you just have to suck it up.

I probably should have also included some footage of really amazing parries, but I figured you can probably find a lot of that on the internet. For something to start with, here's a stone cold classic. There are more out there, just do a quick search after you're done watching my video and nagging all of your friends to do the same thing.

Lastly, for those that don't know the game very well, it probably sounds stupid that I called the blocking parry a "red" parry based on the footage in the side window. The thing is, a character flashes red when this parry happens, and this often doesn't come across in game footage running at 30fps, which this video series is. If you look for more parry footage on YouTube you'll find that this is a constant, but by no means egregious, problem. Just trust me, though, that if you're learning the game you've probably already stumbled into a red parry and maybe didn't know why. You're welcome!

Thanks again for watching!

Annotated Appendix: Akuma

This one was intimidating.

There are a lot of Akuma videos on the internet, and many of them basically touch on the same subjects. The trick with this episode, and essentially how I want to do things, is to make sure that everything I record is verifiable and cited. We're lucky that we live in times when most of this info is starting to come out and can easily be obtained, but still, the Street Fighter series has a real problem with facts vs. "internet wisdom." So that was the first real challenge with this episode.

The other, of course, is length. I've touch on this before, but legacy characters like Akuma have a lot of baggage, so wrestling with how long these episodes should be is going to be hard. At just under 26 minutes, this is just about too long, and things are only going to be worse for characters like Ryu and Ken that have been around from the beginning and have a ton of things to talk about.

Here's the thing with YouTube videos: the creator suites that are available on the site give you tons of metrics- how many views you get, sure, but also how long people watch videos. This is important because you can tell with some range of accuracy when folks dip out of the stuff they're watching. A video close to a half hour long is far outside of this, at least for me, since the majority of people watching only tune in for about the first half of each episode. Honestly, that's fine for me. It seems people want more of the design and trivia info than gameplay (which, I guess, would only interest me, too), but I think the latter half is still essential viewing to get the scope of a character. But, again, that means you're sitting in front of a loooong video. One solution is to break them in half, but I don't feel as though you the viewer are watching a sort of "complete set" that way. Things even out, though. For every giant Akuma video, there's a 13 minute Necro episode. Some of the other characters (Q and Remy, I'm looking at you) are going to wind up on the shorter side, and this should balance the time for everything else. Whatever. Sorry for the long episode.

Some inside baseball: I recorded this and initially put it up for Patreon backers last week, but forgot the "time over" and "jab kill" animations, so I plugged them in this morning and uploaded it again to YouTube. Also, as I was getting footage for the next couple of characters, it turns out that Akuma is not the only character with silent rival dialog. Instead of re-recording the voice for that section, I tried to carefully delete some of it, which is why it might sound a little awkward when I get to the part about fighting Ryu in 2nd Impact.

Next up is a Bonus Episode about Bonus Stages. The plan for the series is to go through each character in order of column, and the end of each column is a good place to plug in extras. I've got the script mostly ready to go, and should record the voice for it tonight. I know I say this every time, but hopefully this means a faster turnaround time. Man, I need to get on a schedule...

Thanks again for watching!

The 3rd Strike Retrospective

Hi there.

Several years ago, I wrote the below piece and pitched it various outlets for 3S's 15th anniversary. It was never picked up, and that kind of bothered me. Not that I think that this is a chunk of unrefined genius or something (there are lots of problems to edit), but maybe this was too much of a part of me and I couldn't let it go. I hung on to it, and today, USGamer.net posted a more timely birthday celebration to 3S I wrote that has bits and pieces of what was originally there. This is probably self serving, but I thought you might like to read how it was and maybe glean a little bit more what this game means to me. I hope you enjoy it.

Note: This is a unaltered and very, very rough draft.

If I can pull it off, she’ll never read this. She’ll never know.

It will die with me like the mounting lies of a terrible man shackled by his own misdeeds, at least for now. In time, I might be able to solve this for myself as it is a ruin of my own making. But that could be years away, and this Urien just got off the ground to meet the business end of a punch to the face. Another punch comes, and then the screen freezes with a flash of light while this nobody Ken combos into a fury of spinning kicks as a vomit of profanity quietly spews from my mouth. There should have been some defense, here. There should have been a parry followed by an embarrassing chain reaction that only an assured ass-kicking will bring. But not this time. I am playing 3rd Strike. I am playing it on a brand new 4K television. There is input lag. I’ll never tell my wife, because that’s what love is.

Our relationship is complicated, this Street Fighter game and me. It is the second revision of a fighting game that, by the time it was released, met with shrugs from the general populace that had since moved away from the franchise’s arcade salad days. By 2000 when it hit the Dreamcast in the US, we had already seen how Final our Fantasies could be with polygons and tried to decode the batshit zaniness of Tekken genealogy four times over. But the Street Fighter III series of games always held an oddly sinister air about them, as if they seemed to be made for an older crowd than mine even though I could legally drink when I finally got my hands on them. Ralph Bakshi making anime, but really loony anime. I bootlegged it on Dreamcast and then received it as a gift for my PlayStation 2, but I was too busy aggressively shitting my time down a sewer of dozens of subpar JRPGs to really get to know 3rd Strike; I’d play it, but never with the monastic devotion it demanded. But it was with me through my entire adult life looming behind me; a presence forever lingering over my shoulder.

Somehow, against every law of nature, Capcom made Street Fighter IV and fighting games were back in the collective nerd gestalt. In 2011, realizing that they needed to keep making money on these things, the publisher finally updated 3rd Strike for consoles. Ok, I told it, let’s finally get to know each other. Third Strike took off its glasses and let its hair down. Six years, several joysticks, and hundreds of thousands of matches won and lost by a wakeup parry timing later, it whispered back “what took you so long” like a goddamn Cameron Crowe movie.

To be sure, mine is not a name that will be spoken at tournaments in hushed, reverent tones. I will never fly to Japan to prove my mettle; never go down in history with glorious displays of showman-like comeback gusto (maybe!). I am no chump by most means, but I’m also not willing to live a life of lies. But, by God, I play it enough that I may as well have programmed Third Strike myself. A weekly meetup at a local bar with friends. Another evening at home online as my wife and baby sleep. I study YouTube matches several years-old during bored lunch breaks and discuss the game with friends routinely. I play a lot of video games, but Third Strike and I, we got a thing going on. It’s a devotion, and a respect, and a pursuit.

That’s what love is.

Our first joint purchase was an Olevia television. It was made via the coitus of two government stimulus checks prospected on sharing a living space –taboo to my family at that point as there were no rings on any fingers. But we saw our nascent lives together built on promise, much like the television industry of 2008 saw in high definition viewing. Though I can promise you that this paragraph did not intend the television set in question to be a metaphor, in fairness, I need to tell you that the Olevia gave us almost ten solid years of reliable use. It is old and breaking, but still welcome in the the genial rest home of a spare bedroom. Olevia as a company no longer exists –my marriage, thankfully, outlasting it—but its gift to the world will live hallowed within our house.

To be honest, though, it was sheer stupid luck and a really good deal on a television that the Olevia was as perfect for fighting games as an HD setup could be, as this fantastically beautiful new 4K job currently living in my family room can attest. You see, as HD televisions became the norm, the horrid side effect of the time between a user’s signal, the moments it is encoded into the console, and the milliseconds this takes to be decoded by the television for display means there is an incremental time delay we call input lag. Basically, if I hit a button, I expect the character on-screen to react instantaneously (or as near to it as possible). By their construction, older cathode-tube televisions never had this problem, but without getting to be a bore about it, it’s a problem of HD sets that manufacturers either choose not to fix or never bothered to care about.

To the average person, or one that may have begun playing games in the HD era, it’s infinitesimal; a frame of animation lost here and there. For games that demand a certain precision, though, this is a problem. For Third Strike, which demands frame-specific precision, however, it’s almost a deal breaker. The 4K television was an assumed, inevitable purchase after we bought our house a few years ago; something larger for the family room because we had the space and beautiful beyond measure because I’m a snob. But we’re talking two people with a baby and a mortgage. If science and human nature had taught us anything, it was that only a buffoon spends their shekels on a television outside of the right Black Friday deal, so patience was key. But we could wait no longer; the Olevia was drifting quickly into a peaceful grave of busted screen pixels. You also get an extra 5% off with your Target card. We bought a new television.

But I didn’t do my homework. Some 4Ks on the market are optimized for low input lag. The second I entered the character select screen, though, I knew what I was in for. I could feel it. When errant Aegis Reflectors don’t trigger after a Chariot Tackle and Denjin Hadokens refuse to spring to life after a carefully timed Shoryuken, I can (finally) no longer blame the booze sitting next to me for botched matches and losses that we can charitably call unearned. This was a flaw eight years in the making from one TV to the next, and as I hoisted the Olevia in its monstrosity into the solitude of this spare bedroom, feverishly concocting how I might still use it at night without waking my family as the primary mode for Third Strike consumption, I concluded that I just didn’t know what I had until it was gone. I can’t fit it into my tiny, storage-only basement, and the loud clicks and slaps of buttons and sticks does not a comfortable sleeping environment make on the second floor of my home. I stared at the Olevia, and it looked back at me; weathered, a veteran of a now drifted age. It was time to retire, and time for me to let go.

That’s what love is.

As love affairs go, the Olevia Era was action-packed. We weren’t quite engaged before its purchase (when the Target card was opened, now that I think about it), but that wasn’t far off. It nestled into the one-bedroom apartment we eventually shared for more years that I want to admit in perfect fashion; its 42” size a monolith. Connecting it for the first time to my PlayStation 3 with a then-very expensive HDMI cable –a term I had never heard before this—nearly brought a tear to my eye while watching the intro to Assassin’s Creed. It was a time of optimism and promise, of unknown excitement and rebirth. But that first Assassin’s Creed was shitty.

We played Rock Band with my friends and out-of-town family whenever we could after our wedding a year later, the Olevia’s speakers beginning to crackle at the loud tone that late night apartment parties could bestow (often stumbling drunk while channeling our inner RJD). It was one of the few video games she would often play with me, because that’s just the sort of experience Rock Band was. My wife liked things streamlined, and not the war of wills that Third Strike becomes at mid- or high-level.

We fell asleep in front of the Olevia after chemotherapy, stuffing food in my mouth as quickly as possible before further sickness prevented me from eating for days at a time. I would push her out of the house to see her family on weekends, her reluctance to leave often amused me while I sat in silence forcing myself to break Demon’s Souls over my knee. The truth was that I often didn’t want her to see me that way, weak and hollow. Plus, she needed time on her own, and even cancer can’t force two people to be in the same space at all times.

We slept on the foldout couch for a month; movie after movie after terrible comedy after terrible action movie. I had to make sure she didn’t move too much in bed after the mastectomy, and we decided that we’d cut out the middle man and just stay in front of the Olevia since that’s where she’d spend the majority of her recovery. You can only tell someone how beautiful and perfect they are during their worst moments before it sounds callous and disingenuous to them, but she, at least, never let on if that was the case.

We literally threw the couch down a stairwell after bed bugs infested the apartment building. Having been forced to sleep on it for months while our bedroom became a demilitarized quarantine zone, we found a house as soon as possible, and in an act of enraged, satisfying defiance, made sure that no human would use the infernal sitting implement ever again. The Olevia and PlayStation were lovingly packed (and dutifully doused with various bug killing chemicals) for their new home.

We had our timing down: I go to bed at midnight, she got up around 2:00am for feeding, and then I’d be up again between 4:00 and 5:00 while she slept, my baby hearing the early morning cries of “Snake?! SNAKE?!” before drifting back into a nap. At least my baby’s earliest memories won’t have to be incessant, pretentious rambling about ripped jeans in this one, I would think to myself. All of that side info is on optional cassette tapes. I listened to them anyway.

She never complained, only accepted. Often, it was just a matter of overcoming and moving on. Burn within you, now, the image of a man trying to cram a brand new, giant television into his car; for it was Cyber Monday and a decision was made. The store was crawling with slack-jawed idiots on a similar mission, and no employees were available to help him find out the hard way that his trunk was too small. Recoil in horror as he nearly injures himself to stuff it within the back seat after a long, frequently bloody battle with the baby chair. Cheer at his triumph as he comes home to his wife and child with a brand new 4K television, one that will replace and old and trusty friend. Light a candle’s vigil in sadness for Third Strike, a love-that-dare-not-speak-its-name, and how I can never let on that things will never be the same. As a supportive wife whom is, yes, beautiful and perfect, she would feel guilty; she knows what fireballs and parries and dragon punches mean to me. It’s too late to take the TV back now, so I’ll do the best I can, copious bullshit and inane losses along for the ride. She doesn’t need to know. I can never tell her.

That’s what love is.

John Learned is a freelance writer that wrote something you just read. He tweets sometimes (@john_learned) and is slowly, lovingly annotating Symphony of the Night on YouTube.

Annotated Appendix: Urien

While the Ibuki video might have been the hardest one to put together so far because of how little I knew of the character, the Urien video was challenging for the opposite reason -- I might know too much.

I'll explain. This video is the one I've been waiting to make all along. When I originally envisioned this project when closing in on the finish line of the Annotated Symphony of the Night, I thought how interesting it would be to make a video out of Urien alone. Collectively, the internet has figured out quite about the character already, and the official supplemental material filled in the gaps nicely, but it never felt concise to me. Sure, everyone kind of figured out how he's basically a bronze Greek statue come to life (figuratively), but that was largely the depth of it. Nobody got into the minute physical characteristics, or the implications of the name, or the dopey miss-localisations of his attacks. For that matter, I had never seen a video or piece of physical media that tied those things to his gameplay. That's where this series started to take shape; it was a thought experiment that I tried to make work as a series of character studies. So, when I say that he is probably the thesis statement for the whole project, I hope it makes a little more sense. It all started with this character, and I'm happy so far that there are plenty of interesting things to say about everyone else that it didn't end with him.

Except there's just so much going on with this guy that I found myself getting really deep into the weeds with his script. After a while, I took a step back and cut a few large chunks out of it because it was already getting long. These happened from the gameplay side, mostly. There's some much going on under the hood of most fighting games, this one in particular, that it gets hard to draw a line between what the world should know about a character and the game that he's in and what only the hardcore need to know. You've probably figured this out so far, but I've used each character in the game to illustrate one or two little things hidden within 3S's mechanics. Urien ultimately has four that I went over: the EX Super (or hidden supers), charge partitioning, alternate input commands for special moves, and the unblockable setups. For most other characters in the cast, this is too many for one individual video, but in his case, each of them define his high-level gameplay because players exclusively use his Aegis Reflector super in tournaments. It's true that I could have waited to use one or two of them for other characters (say, Remy showing off the alternate inputs), but I felt that these characteristics define this one individual more than most, and into the script they went. It's likely I'll run out of neat, "hidden" stuff to talk about in the future and will feel that Urien bit me in the ass here, but that's the point I'm making, I suppose: it's tough to know when too much is just enough.

I promise you that the Akuma video coming up will be just as meaty, but will come loaded with the same problems for me. There are a few "hidden" things to discuss about the inner workings of the game, which makes sense given we're talking about a perennially hidden character, but I've already axed plenty from that script because it's just too hardcore, and the hardcore already know about that stuff. Perhaps I'll circle back around to those things when I start to run out of that kind of stuff to say, but I suppose we'll find out.

I've also realized that I should be linking to some tutorial videos or something for some of these characters. Maybe I'll start doing that soon, but for now, let's talk about actual gameplay for a sec. I know Urien gameplay pretty well, but I'm shit at charge partitioning, which is an important component to high-level play. For all of the reasons I stated above, I purposely didn't go over the specifics of it because there are piles of videos on the internet about CP. For whatever reason, I figured each video would give people interested in learning the finer points of gameplay incentive
to do some further digging, but that might assume too much. Therefore, here's a few links to vids that each about CP that I found better than most:

Partitioning for Dummies
Urien Charge Partitioning 101

Plans are still sort of formalizing for a final episode, and it will probably include shoutouts to 3S true believers like The Shend that have been spreading the word for the last 20 years of competitive SF3 play. Let me know if that sounds good or not.

Anyway, thanks again for watching these. Please leave comments and ask questions. Sadly, I have some freelance work to get to over the next few weeks so the Akuma video might be a little slower coming than I'd like, but I can at least promise one about every month, so let's tentatively shoot for mid-April. After that is a full video on the parry system, though that will probably be much shorter (and harder to edit) (whoa is me).

Annotated Appendix: Necro

Now we're getting somewhere.

I was a little intimidated by this episode until I got into the writing. The Ibuki ep was difficult to put together, especially since she's a character I was never really interested in as an observer or invested in as a player. Necro for me was the same thing on both counts. But this one turned into the tightest episode so far from both an editing perspective and writing. I'm pretty happy with it.

If you've watched the previous episodes, you'll probably notice that this one didn't compartmentalize things like normal moves/special moves/ supers like the other ones had, and that's because Necro players sort of rely on opportunities for hook punches wherever they get them. Knowing that I was just going to lead into descriptions of that move and its applications, the gameplay section of his video was a straight line there and how his Super Arts complement the hook punch. I like that it wasn't just "here's this, and then this, and then this." Future episodes will employ this same approach, and some more than others.

The first part is more interesting for me, though. Yes, it's a lot of speculation on my part to infer that Necro has some sort of connection to Pagilacci. But as one of the comments rightly pointed out, Capcom has been very stingy over the years with real design notes for any of the SFIII games, at least in English. Outside of obvious visual influences for characters like Alex and Hugo, inference and speculation is all we can really go on unless proven otherwise, which is the direction I took the script here. The FGC and larger gaming community has pitched in over the years to make some connections and suss out possible influences for a lot of characters with little to no design documentation for us (me) to go on, so don't be surprised to hear these things bubble up in future episodes.

Having said that, Necro is a character that I've really come around to after putting this episode together. I don't really see myself using him for really competitive matches since I'm too old and have too little time to practice new characters, but I get why people like using him and have fun tinkering with him now more than I ever had. But now I'm wishing more people had put the time in with Necro so he would make for more of a tournament draw. Sugiyama videos (which you should look up) are great, but it can't be just one guy carrying the Necro torch!

I've got a script written and am laying down the voice for the next video, Urien, later tonight. The new PC is fabulous for editing video -which was the whole point of buying it- so I'm confident that I can put together the next ep as expeditiously as this one had come. After that, it's on to writing the Akuma episode, which should be on the long side. Further into the future is an episode about the parry system. Should be late into February, I'm thinking.

Thanks again for watching!

Annotated Appendix: Ibuki

Hi there, Happy Near Year, and happy week-after-Cooperation Cup!

Again I find myself apologizing for a long delay, but I think it was worth it this time. I have a new desktop with a lot of muscle, and this made editing the current video a little easier than on my poor, rickety old laptop. The added bonus is that I can work on the desktop at home and occasionally do some things during my lunch break at my 8-5 on that laptop, which can double my output. See? All good things.

The truth is, Ibuki was a hard character to script and just as hard to edit together. Nobody I know plays her with any kind of seriousness, so I needed to look at a lot of footage and supplemental material to be authoritative on gameplay. Her monstrous move set made things pretty challenging, and well, I kind of got a little lazy with the Holidays looming this year. So there you go; in all honesty, this video was hard to make, and I wimped out a little bit making it.

Now that it's behind me, though, I can see why people like to play Ibuki, especially a few folks I know that are hardcore KOF players. But I don't ever want to touch this character again. Not that she's bad, mind you. One of the cooler aspects about fighting games is roster size and depth and how a player gravitates toward characters that they connect with. I don't connect with Ibuki. She has unique qualities, but after busting my hump to get this video edited over the past few days (in between family obligations and watching Coop Cup matches), I'm burned out just looking at her.

But what a time to be an Ibuki fan, though! The Pre-Coop Cup grand finals had an Ibuki team for the first time in the tournament's history, and this video series can help the lay person demystify what they actually saw. Sadly, those brave heroes that made it that far into the tournament with a mid-tier character didn't win it all, but that just goes to show the strength of strong play with a slippery character coupled with intimate knowledge of SFIII's other systems. It was a great tournament this year, and even greater seeing some mid- and low-tier pros get in there and put on a clinic.The next few videos are for Necro and Urien, two characters that also had some nice, crowd-pleasing moments in the hands of a master players (look up that RX comeback over an Akuma that was pounding him into dirt). Look forward to those.

Aaaaand speaking of the next videos, the wait should be shorter for Necro than it was for Ibuki. I'm deep into the editing process for his episode, and about halfway through writing the script for Urien right now. The latter of which is the longest script so far, but that could be because of both my character bias (I play a pocket Urien and so do a few friends) and the fact that he's got a lot more to unpack about his design than a lot of people may realize.

Anyhoo, thanks again for watching these videos and any support you throw me on YouTube, Twitter, and especially Patreon (gotta pay off this new computer somehow). Pretty soon, we'll be getting through characters that I kind of dread and onto ones that I have more working knowledge of (and with much more out there about their design history), so get excited.