So the past two weeks I’ve been in Okinawa playin games and shit, and these guys are pretty dope. First time I went was a sunday afternoon. I picked makoto first vs. some yun player. This guy has the best kara palms I have ever seen. Super consistent and very dope with all his specific combos. I actually beat him twice right when I walked in, landed 100% stun first game. He switched to ken, and boy oh boy! Ken is pretty fucking good playas. I hadn’t fought any kens that moved this way. I have started to think that true dominance is beating people with your movement, and this guy made me wiff all my shit all the time. After I beat ken, he picked hugo. This was the best hugo I have ever played. I was still makoto, and I felt like I was at a disadvantage. Homeboy had standing 720 when he wanted it. The kinda guy that will 720 every time you wiff divekick with yun/yang. I had never seen anything like it. He was also a wizard of arcade mode. He parried necro electricity for like 40 hits or something. You know how elena’s uppercut puts her a little far on block? He would red parry the last hit and get an optimal punish. I feel like his game knowledge was very very high just from playing arcade mode. After I beat hugo he switched back to yun, and I lost 29 games before taking him out again. I landed a tkd on him and that was cool. This was on the 3/5 round cabinet, I think he switched from the 2/3 in order to more consistently body me. What a dick.
The second time I went I played until closing on a thursday night. I fought a blue ken that blew the hugo/yun player’s ken out of the water. Definitely the single best ken I have ever fought. Sick ass movement, made me look really really dumb. He beat me down 30 straight before I got him. 2/3 rounds. This guy had x-up ex tatsu, shoryu shoryu DOWN. I hadn’t ever been hit by it in the U.S. and holy shit does that stuff hurt gouki. After I beat him I fought a few uriens, and I beat them all but wtf I’m playing gouki. One urien had triple tackles down and that stuff is pain as well. Next up I got a bunch of games with this makoto player. DOPEST makoto I have ever fought. I was almost ready to say that none of these makotos could fuck with mami, but this guy is on another level. I think he hit me with like every sick combo from the mimora vid in one 3/5 game. Double tsurugi’s, sa1 juggles, tsurugi>dash up fuki, and all that shit. Played him like 7-8 times before I had to leave.
Third time I went on a saturday, basically the entire day. I watched the kara palm guy from before get bodied by a pretty dope makoto player. I thought I MUST AVENGE HIM. So I played the makoto mirror and I basically got the read on him post hayate like 100%. Felt good. I even stunned him with a tsurugi, hayate, dash up sa1 juggle. Me and this guy went back and forth for a while, screwing around with a bunch of different characters.
My last day I went for about the whole day again. First I played with kara palm guy a bunch of games. A kof player came on and played no one but sean and twelve lol. He was actually really sick. He would red parry yun shoulder in genei jin, red parry after jump ins, and other stuff too. I jumped on and bodied him with makoto. Then he picked makoto and beat me. I was pissed. His makoto wasn’t even really as good as mine but I was playing like a starving white boy who had been at the arcade for 5 hours. After I beat his makoto he picked yun. Yun was his real main. He would do hp loop pretty consistently. What an asshole. Later I got to fight the purple ken from one of theshend’s vids of game in naha(forgot to mention this is where I was). I was playing makoto and I beat him about a million times. He wasn’t ready for me somehow. I must have landed 100% stun like 5 times on him in our 4 games. Everyone was laughing their asses off on the other side of the h2h. Then I fought the first japanese(if you count okinawa as japan) chun I have ever fought. And boy was that a wakeup call. I realized that I actually prefer to turtle this match rather than go ham, whether I’m playing makoto or gouki. His defense against ham was way too strong, probably because they eat a lot of soba. It’s also harder to take down characters like chun/yun/ken when you have to fight them in 3/5 rounds IMO. I think gouki and makoto are definitely 2/3 characters. While those 3(chunyunken) are just as good in 2/3 I think they are made even stronger in 3/5. I beat this guy after maybe 4-5 games, with a dope kkz reset into ambiguous crossup. Afterwards some guy picked elena and I bodied him and then someone picked Q and I got fucked up. I got beat up hella times by this Q. He would do all the shit too, stand up through grabs, C&DB>dash punch cross under, dash punch opposite way. Crazy guy. I think I lost to him more than anyone else that night. Blame it mostly on me not fighting Q for Q, and also the fatigue of playing for 8 hours starting to make me not give a shit. Then the makoto from my second night played me again. I still could not touch this guy. He was a really crazy one. I felt like I was getting destroyed with no hope, but after I took a break I realized that not even once had I tried to forward/backdash to make his stuffs wiff. Can’t play this game that long and maintain. Afterward I just watched him fight this really sick yun player a few times. The yun player got him after like 3 games, and I decided I would make my last game in Okinawa vs this guy. I lost to him 3-1 rounds, in very very mediocre fashion.
Total TKDs: 4
Total 100% stun: countless
All in all great learning experience.
EDIT: The purple ken I refer to and the yun from my last night are most likely these ones: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwHJ1jdvKjg
The colors are the same and the styles are too close to deny
![[IMG]http://i1012.photobucket.com/albums/af244/dayumblair/naha/CIMG0255.jpg](http://s1012.photobucket.com/user/dayumblair/media/naha/CIMG0255.jpg.html){kind=link}
![[IMG]http://i1012.photobucket.com/albums/af244/dayumblair/naha/CIMG0339.jpg](http://s1012.photobucket.com/user/dayumblair/media/naha/CIMG0339.jpg.html){kind=link}