Japanese Players: 1 game, 1 character

Have you ever noticed that Japanese players seem to only play one game and use only one character. It seems that stateside majority of the players use multiple characters and play multiple games. The only Japanese players I can think of who play several games are

Daigo - 1 character in 3s, 1 character in SFA3, CVS2, 1 character GGXX
Tokido - 1 character for every game he plays
Ohnuki - multiple games, but always uses Chun-Li

Then there is Kaqn the only Japanese player I know of who uses multiple characters.

It appears that Japanese players for the most part only play one game and use one character. You kind of wonder if they ever experimented with other characters, or even play other games. Big offenders are

Kuroda
Sharon
Hayao
Kokujin
MOV
Ten
Shonen
Owigawa - though I heart he briefly switched to Ky in Slash

And too many other examples to name. Does anyone know what is up with that? Do they just not have the time to play other games?

uhh kuroda is well known for being good with practically every character in 3s lol

All of them play other characters casually, just in tournaments they have their character they play. Many tournaments don’t allow character switching so it’s counter intuitive to have more than one main.

Also there is the thought that you really dilute your chances of mastering a character if you switch to avoid bad matchups. So you learn through perseverance with a single character.

If I remember correctly Daigo used Akuma and Ryu in Alpha 3

A lot of them play multiple games. It?s just that only a few of them are mutants who can be damn good at more than one.

I’ve seen Daigo use various characters in the Street Fighter and Vampire Savior series. I usually try and stick to one character. Lately, I decided to experiment and use random select.

He used Akuma then Ryu.

I mean really that’s how it’s supposed to be.

Tired of seeing people picking like 10 “main’s” in a game before it even comes out, and listing them in their sig.

Daigo switched to Ryu out of respect to Alex Valle, at least that is what I heard. After the controversy concerning the U.S Champ vs. Japanese Champ in A3 back in 1998 I believe.

It would be nice to see Hayao play Zangief or Potemkin. I just wondered if guy like that play a lot of other games. I didn’t know Kuroda was good with everyone. Anyone have any footage of him rocking, let’s say, Yang?

I’m pretty much an exclusive Baiken player in GGXX, and she has been my main since #Reload.

I’ve seen Daigo using O-Sagat and Zangief in ST on youtube.

I have one main in 3s, and a few sub characters I know how to play but dont play as well as my main.

Tokido: Every game, The most braindead character

Better to be really good at one game than be average at a bunch of them. Same goes with characters…

That said, those top players can use everyone. Check out a video on youtube about a Ryu vs. Dudley 3S tournament held in japan. Basically the only characters allowed were Ryu and Dudley. The tournament had many top players, including RX, Namijin, KO, etc. And guess what, pretty much everyone there was a beast with Dudley even though they supposedly don’t use him (RX vs. KO was probably the best fight there, as well as Namijin vs. KO).

Most Japanese players don’t play a bunch of characters because they want to learn/perfect everything there is about one specific character. It’s way harder to do this with many characters.

Anyway what I haven’t seen much of is players being beastly in multiple games that have very different styles…Daigo is probably the best example here…SF2, SF3, VS, GG, CvS2. Ruu is also very good at 3S(uses Ryu) and is a beast in GG(Bridget) and MB(Ren). The fact that other players outside of Japan don’t stick to just one character, is one of the reasons why they get beat so bad by the japanese.

1 game = BS, they play other games.
1 character = BS, they play other character… they just suck with them.

In the end, if your in a tournament, your going to pick the character you trust the most that you can win with. In the end, its normally that “one” character.

Almost every Japanese player I’ve ran into has a handful of chars they dabble with but one they will use for tourneys.

They also would love to have double elim and char changing in tourneys.

Here here. Too many people on SRK list 10 characters as their main in 7 different games, none of which they play competently.

except the japanese do play multiple characters so this is obviously wrong

This is not true. They are generally fairly good with all characters, you just rarely ever see them bother to use them.

They know how to play everyone reasonably well, but they almost never play anyone but their main. Perhaps my definition of “playing a character” is different than the one being suggested by you. For example in kof2k2, my team is Kim, Whip, Athena. I play these characters. Sometimes I random select or I will replace Whip with Clark or Kusanagi. I don’t play those characters though.

Pretty much, Tokido is very good though. He used to use Urien whos far from braindead. Then he realized Chun would take him places.

When you focus on one character your skills increase substantially.