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!

Annotated Appendix 3

Finally, Episode 4. Be thrilled and amazed (please).



This one was actually pretty easy to make, all things considered, because there wasn't as many strange and outlandish things to reference like last episode's Bela Lugosi clip. I say that with a caveat, though; it turns out that I have copious footage from PC Engine's Rondo of Blood, but only the normal route through the game. It turns out that I'm an idiot, and didn't record the alternate levels, which certain enemies are exclusive to. I guess this one would have been up a lot sooner than it is because I had to grab some more video last night, but hey, if that's what it takes to show you what a vintage Armor Lord looks like, so be it.



I went digging around the vast internets to see if there were any shreds of evidence to the Alucard Bedroom that would have been at the top of the castle, but no dice. There's some nice stuff on The Cutting Room Floor, though, which will definitely show up in future videos about our next stop, the Long Library. It's a great site for that and piles of other fun stuff, but the problem is a lot of those things don't really fit into this video series that well, like their whole separate page for unused audio recordings. I mean, I have to bring some of that stuff up, but things like alternate Richter grunts and such are really minor in comparison. Check it out anyway because whomever runs that site is a goddamn internet hero.



I guess the only other beef I might have with this one is the choreography problems. I'm really trying to get that stuff locked down. I really am.



Thanks again for watching, cats and kittens.