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.

Annotated Appendix 2

Mmmmmk, so here we have Episode 3...

It doesn't look like it, but this one kind of took forever to make, even though it's not quite like the information dump that the first episode wound up being.

For one, the info here was a little challenging to parse out when it came to Maria and the Clock Room. It's kind of a lot of info to get through, so I tried to write a script that was as succinct as possible while also covering a lot of ground. Now that it's out in the wild, I hate it, really. This is one of those instances where I recall all of the times I dreamed about doing something like this and what I would say about any given topic. I'm absolutely sure that in my head I had way more interesting things to say (or at least more fun ways of saying them). It's done and it's out, though, so fine. Let's all move on with our lives.

This video was also chock full of little tidbits that weren't in the original script that had to be added with some re-recording later. I'm pretty sure the differences in the dialog levels make that abundantly clear. Truth is, I had to do those extra audio recordings at something like 11:30 at night when everybody's asleep in the house (including my year-old baby), so I couldn't have these saucy tones booming into my little Snowball mic.

More on that end, and really the point I'm slowly getting to, is that this has been a very complicated couple of weeks for me professionally. My work life is changing pretty drastically --and not really for the better-- and this is by far the busiest time of the year for me, so other things like video editing and script writing didn't get the attention they probably could have used. I'm glad I caught some of the glaring flaws before completing the video rendering and putting on the internet, but even though this is much lower on the priority list for me than how I feed my family and pay my mortgage*, I need to be a more careful of the script writing to make sure all of the facts are in there. This is going to be especially true for a few of the upcoming videos like the Outer Wall and the Long Library where there's lot to talk about.

Whew. Ok. Another difficult part of this video is plugging in the background filler to the backtracking moments, like when I opened up the section previously blocked in the Entrance and went back through the Cthulu/Devil fight and back up the chimney with the Marionettes. Not a super long section, but definitely a lot of silence to fill, so it was a matter of finding the best piece of trivia to inject there that's both appropriate in length and situationally useful. I tried a few different chunks of dialog to use, and they were either too long, or it made more sense to use them in a future video when there's an example that's found in the same place (like, say, explaining elemental damage).

Alright. On to the Outer Wall.

*Really, not that much lower.