Jeff Schaeffer Interview / Video History of the SF2 years

i wonder when someone is gonna come along and say that LA Akira must be another “japanese dickrider”, lol.

regarding tachigawa, i put the question to a japanese guy i chat with over email who was involved in organising the earlier hyper mania tournaments and other events before those:

“About tachikawa, he’s champ from CE using gray ryu. I have not seen him for long time now, think he is retired(not sure). He wasn’t that good at all SF series since he did not play all SF so hard in his late career iirc, also due to appearances of other strong ryu players made him fade out, I think. His play style was very basic but strong, fireball then sweep or shoryuken, basically. Ryu was enough strong just doing that on CE too, but really was famous at that time, and saw him few times at some local tournys on ST too, but wasn’t that strong anymore then(although far stronger than many), so he faded away,maybe. Those were good old days for me. He really was one of the top players on east then. Things and players has changed now, but there was another strong top ryu player of west named hameken(almost same as retired now). I personally like his ryu, also higaki-san (shooting d) is top ryu player of all time.”

opinions vary, but the general consensus in japan is that shin-dhalsim (during his prime) was the greatest japanese SF2 player ever (during the first few years of ST).

shooting D, komoda, and the maekawa brothers (otochun and aniken) are 1st generation players (ie guys who started back during the WW days), then you’ve got people like daigo who are kinda 1.5 generation (started playing t.hawk at age 12, so i’m told). and guys like taira are kinda the second generation

of course there will be many great players from different parts of the world, but unless these guys ever played each other, or any match footage is ever dug up from somewhere … somehow … then there’s not much point in saying any particular player is the best. especially as some of these “OG’s” can’t even agree on what actually happened in some cases.

tomo is a legend though, no doubt. we need mike watson to make some posts and then this thread will be complete :lovin:

no because he’s quoting actual experiences, however the japanese have very little if nothing to do with the videos that jeff posted. so the very fact that it came up in this thread whispers “japanese dickrider” a little bit.

That whispers it a bit, but Emil’s posting history taken as a whole screams Japan-dickrider. I don’t know anyone I have ever met online or at tourneys/gatherings that takes his stupid Canadian-igloo online playing ass seriously.

Emil doesn’t count, he brings up japanese in threads that have nothing to do with japan just to say that they’re godlike in that game. though he’s never seen or personally played any of them.

But, but, but he’s seen all the match vids. Surely that counts! :karate:

Yeah it is funny when OG’s can’t seem to mutually agree on what happened. Jeff’s hatred for 3S makes me ill. 3S is the greatest game of all time. /kanye

What did Schaeffer exactly say about 3S? I know in the vids he’s said the Three Series was garbage but that was about all he said about any part 3 to my recollection. Did he say more?

While I enjoyed playing HF back in the day, by today’s standards HF is so broken. You get dizzy so easy in that game (Guile/Ryu/Ken combos). ST is way more balanced. Sometimes you don’t even dizzy after four hit combos. And getting caught by Supers isn’t as bad as Schaeffer makes it out to be.

While HF was a great game in it’s time and it paved the way for competitive SF and it spawed ideas for great fighting games in the future, I don’t buy the idea that it was the last great SF2. HF is not a classic in a sense that you can play it seriously today. You can still play ST today serious because it’s perfect (You could even have that old school feel by picking the Super characters). But playing HF today IMO is a joke. Play a game of anniversary Turbo VS ST and you’ll see how stupid the matches are. Absolutely ridiculous.

But props to Schaeffer for leading the way. His passion and dedication to SF2 is inspiring. If I do the math right he started playing SF2 when he was 20 or almost 20. To put yourself out there and play a game seriously when a lot of middle schoolers and high schoolers are your main competition takes super guts. Jeff was just born ten years too late. If he was born ten years earlier, I think he would be playing 3S and even SF4.

I challenge anyone to read that whole post.:wasted:

After hearing all this talk about how the OG’s hate supers, for the OG players who paved the way, I wish Super Turbo never had Super Combos. That way there would be a universal SF2 that everyone could agree on so that different generations of players could play at their full strength. It kinda makes me sad that the OG players don’t like ST because that seems to be the SF2 most ppl play today. It sucks to lose a group of players that are that good.

Challenge accepted. It wasn’t long at all, really. If we’re talkin’ inches? Sure. Words? Not at all, heheh.

I’m just poppin’ in to say thanks to those who have posted in appreciation of some of our posts(Viscant, Alex, Jeff and myself). Seeing the scene now and that it’s noted as special enough to some to warrant research into its’ beginnings reminds me that I probably still don’t fully grasp what an incredible community we have. Heh, and I’ve been around since CE and for the entire duration of the formation of the national scene.

I’m just sayin’ the appreciation is appreciated. Trust me, Jeff appreciates it too. I know he does. If he didn’t care about the scene and even miss the old days a bit, he wouldn’t have ever made those vids. As much as it was his telling of his history, it was a nice trip down memory lane too. Jeff and I used to be pretty close friends before he settled down so, I think I know his SF side well enough to say, lol.

I really like the idea of others making vids. I may do some in the coming months but I’d really like to see Tom and Tony, Seth, Jason Wilson and Wiz do some. As much as the players impacted the scene, so did tourney organizers. You can’t have players without tourneys or tourneys without players. I think their take would be unique.

Apoc.

Don’t think I don’t like ST or HD. I do! I just prefer HF and believe it to be the superior game with regard to strategy. ST is pretty close and as far as bs subsystems go, ST did it best with the supers. You can only charge with specials that can leave you open or you have to be on top of the guy. That makes for some active and exciting play without diminishing the strategy completely.

I like the 3 series too. It’s nice and skillful. I just prefer a Street game to have strategy with skill complimenting that. I don’t think skill should thwart strategy. There’s much more gambling in the 3 series by nature of the system.

I can’t really speak on SF4 since I’ve barely played it. I really haven’t begun to learn it. It wasn’t initially fun enough for me to want to. The pace is pretty slow in a lot of matches and the way it’s balanced is wacky. You got guys like Rufus who are fast AND can land ultras in a ton of ways and then you have average characters. The whole ultra system is disgusting by design. It’s there so if you get your a** whooped you can make an instant comeback. Very K-Groovish and not SF at all. They may as well call it a “comeback meter.” It’s not as lame as K-groove but building meter for failing seems like rewarding failure to me. Then again, like I said, I don’t know the game at all.

In the end, I’ve learned to appreciate a game on its’ own merits. I used to turn my nose up at anything that made it easy to win(still trying to change that). I would avoid those things as a player because I didn’t feel I’d earned my win. A2 Chun and CCs come to mind, lol. For awhile, I refused those on principal. lol Same with Chun on 3s! I like my characters good but not stupid good. I like to win but how I win matters, lol.

That reminds me, Mike used to get on me about my character choices, heheh.

Apoc.

This is going to be a waste of time if you actually agree to do it. It may even derail the thread but do you mind giving detailed commentary on this match?
[media=youtube]QlxAhJXkLN8[/media]

IMO it shows how well OG’s adapt to different systems because of strong fundamentals.

This is a little late since the thread seems to have moved on, but–thank you for taking the time to go through your memory and write this. :woot:

Yo wtf he just out footsies them and used alphacounters to counter slow pokes hes godlike he didnt even CC!

Awesome post Scrub dum. Damn I wish I could go back in time to face everyone at Worlds Finest.

Did you really quote that whole post to respond with one line

really

My brother and I went down to LA a few years ago to face against Jeff on AE a couple of days after he played Daigo. Not only did I get to play against Jeff, but also Gearld Abraham and Mike Watson…the only person missing was Tomo. price less moment.

T37 Rampage- Yeah I got lazy sorry

not sure if thats sarcasm, but Balrog was A-ism and couldn’t CC, or rather VC as its refered to in A3.

I have commented to Apoc in person how inspiring this match was, completely awesome…this whole tourney where he repped A-rog was very inspirational.

lol /\

Yeah tomo sounds beast, dont know why you’re defending that when noone is claiming otherwise, i think you wasted a lot of your time writing all that crap. thats a seriously long and fluffy post.