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: 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.

Annotated Appendix: Sean

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.

EVOh Yes

So the internet is still aflutter over this past weekend's Evolution (EVO for short) fighting game tournament. That Hakan fight! That Justin Wong comeback! Waitadarnminute, someone ran the SFIV finals with Gen?! Priceless.

EVO has it really figured out, and you have to hand it to Mr. Wizard and the crowd he runs with for not only starting a fighting game tournament way back in the early 2000s when nobody was playing fighting games, but keeping it alive for when the genre would return en vogue. This has given EVO a unique opportunity to not only be a battleground for the biggest and best players, but also a sort of semi-conference for the non-competitive fan. Panel discussions take place. Dealer tables are on exhibition. Major game announcements. If you really dig fighting games, EVO is your annual summer pilgrimage to Mecca.

What I found most interesting this year was the unveiling of Ultra Street Fighter IV. While the internet at large knew that SFIV was getting another round of tweaks in the near future, I doubt that a lot of folks saw the addition of five extra characters to an already loaded game coming. I call that a nice package for $15 DLC, but I didn't used to think so. No, this kind of shit used to get my no-nos in a twist.

Here's why: Capcom, smarmy minx that it tends to be, is notorious for nickel and dime-ing its customers. When Street Fighter II was success, they made updates for it. When Resident Evil was at its height, they played the spinoff game until it was close to irrelevance. The point is, Capcom is a great company that has a history of not leave well enough alone. A further update to Street Fighter IV, now four years old on the console side, looks to be the same thing. Former Capcom employee and fighting game czar Seth Killian even said of the v.2012 update that they were done messing with the game, which (by no fault of his) turns out to be a bald-faced lie. So why flip sides and decide that it's a fine plan?

Two things, really: a little honesty and a whole lot of common sense, which are two things that I appreciate more than bagels and coffee in bed. Capcom has not been on its best legs over the past few years, and the last week has shown it. A company restructuring is taking place, and US senior VP Christian Svensson opted to resign amidst the round of layoffs. That could mean a ton of things, but my personal favorite close-to-the-truth conjecture is that lots of past passion projects for the company (like an under performing Darkstalkers rerelease) just didn't pan out like they thought they would, and a company rejiggering will halt development of extensions of those projects, like oft-rumored sequels. It's sad, but that's business. Plus, larger developers and publishers have to get some things finished for the new consoles that are going to drop by the end of the year, so they don't really have a lot of time and money to toss around.

Case in point, this tweet by Street Fighter series producer (and loveable kook) Yoshinori Ono:

I don't have R&D budget and staff who they're just only make USF4.RT @MC_Odd: @warmlettuce Are you secretly working on a SF V for next gen?
— Yoshinori Ono (@Yoshi_OnoChin) July 15, 2013

Straight from the horse's mouth, the company just doesn't have the cash or staff to make a full sequel to one of their largest franchises. Still sad? Sure, but again, that's the way the cookie crumbles.

Still, they are throwing resources at updating a four year old game, and it will fundamentally change it. All characters will have tweaks to their move sets, and five new characters (even though 80% of them are taken straight from another game) drastically alters the landscape of any fighting game, especially if even one or two of them is accepted as tournament-level competitive by the fan base. To me, this is a sign that the developer is going through some hard times, but they haven't turned their back on their customers. Sure, it still seems a little dumb from a casual perspective that they're adding on to a game that will be five years old when Ultra finally arrives, but from a different perspective, Ono's transparency buys him a little bit of good will. At least from me, anyway.

Today's homework is for you to read The Psychology of Steam's Summer Sale over on the The Psychology of Video Games (which is a website I've only become familiar with recently). I was just having a conversation with a friend about the horn of plenty that Steam becomes when the weather turns oppressively hot. This turns out to be eerily timely. Stay tuned for more Tomb Dater later this week. I think so, anyway...