Kuroda Interview by Shueisha's Weekly Playboy Magazine

Alexisdabomb · May 21, 2014, 8:49pm

97 Has a rep for being one of the most broken but fun of the KOF titles. I wonder if he mained Terry.

WTF-AKUMA-HAX · May 25, 2014, 7:50am

That’s the 2P color from the WW SNES days, right? URDLYB(I always pressed A too. YBA) Mirror match now possible!

Yeah, some old ones transferred to SF3 didn’t look as good. Palette editing could fix some of that, maybe?

& Roundhouse is the most sick. You don’t want a clean white gi with blue streaks in your hair.
Knowledge built up in that brown one like you hear for belts. Gets darker as you get better/learn more.

hismit · June 6, 2014, 9:18pm

Same series, this time Kuroda (Q) vs Tominaga (Makoto) FT10:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27jvjVkpCUA&hd=1&html5=1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxyxqpKsusE&hd=1&html5=1

Tebbo · June 6, 2014, 9:48pm

but ultradavid said this matchup is 9-1 makoto.
‘it’s kuroda’ isn’t an excuse.

an acceptable excuse is 'this is third strike.'
thanks for the links hismit

HarmoNaz · June 6, 2014, 10:05pm

PEE PEE

ryan · June 6, 2014, 10:44pm

Q vs Mak isn’t his worst matchup. It’s just an American urban legend.

Tebbo · June 6, 2014, 10:51pm

ya that was my point.
american urban legend lol

Alexisdabomb · June 6, 2014, 10:57pm

Yeah, Alex is clearly his worst matchup. Am I right fellas? High five!

pherai · June 7, 2014, 12:56am

I dunno, when I watch TM vs Mimora it looks pretty bad

either way exciting to see more from king kuroda

aku · June 7, 2014, 6:01pm

Nope.

Alex gets him in the corner but he’s not nearly as scary as Makoto.

DiegoBoy · June 9, 2014, 11:32am

Do I remember Kuroda losing SBO to this matchup? Yeah I think around 09… To a Boss maybe…

Hol_Horse · June 9, 2014, 2:53pm

Might not be the* worst* matchup but I don’t see how this isn’t an uphill battle for Q. Great set anyways!!

it was vs Momochi.

gameinn2 · June 9, 2014, 4:30pm

Yeah I can’t tell if it’s the matchup vs Makoto or that the regular players of Japan have caught up to Kuroda. I’d definitely like to see a new FT10 that most people generally agree is 5-5 before I come to any rash conclusions.

NAP · June 9, 2014, 5:05pm

I was under the impression that he plays more SF4 than 3S these days anyway. Maybe it’s a combo of being rusty and other players catching up.

ryan · June 9, 2014, 5:21pm

You can clearly see from the matches that the things Kuroda does are inhuman. The matchup is difficult and tominaga is no slouch. The way tominaga plays is very janken (rps) and played keep away.

No ones caught up to him lol

Fran3S · June 9, 2014, 10:16pm

ocd post,i guess

it is worth noting that there is an alternative upload for both gachi sets where players are commentating the action
i’m sure uncle K is dropping that knowledge as always

vs cogliao

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v=r-nL_Y1aZm8

vs tomi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v=EeznEpddJAg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v=h-AU1wDEA2Q

and a couple extra matches vs cogliao,as far as i know they are not part of the gachi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v=xmu9qpH8-YA

some guy elsewhere [eventhubs] translated part 2 and 4 of kuroda’s blog / interview / column
might as well post it here

pt 2

pt 4

translated pt 2

Brief notes on Kuroda’s beginnings as a Street Fighter player:

Started playing fighting games when he was in 4th grade (9~10 years old).

Kuroda was raised by a single mom. As his mother would often return home late from work, Kuroda was not allowed to go out at night, unless it was to stay at the game shop nearby; which allowed for Kuroda’s mother to locate him easily when heading home from work.

Mostly played SNK games such as Fatal Fury and The King of Fighters '95. Kuroda liked the speedy feel of SNK’s fighters, and found the graphics to be appealing.

Although games like Pokemon were popular at the time, Kuroda said he took to fighting games because they were the easiest to play – all you do is hit buttons to throw out punches and kicks, beat the CPU opponents to clear the game.

At that age, Kuroda did not go to arcades often, mostly due to middle school/junior high delinquents often hanging out at his local arcade.

When he did go to arcades, however, Kuroda spent his time mostly spectating matches, and memorising combos and footsie tools – which he tried out in single-player against CPU opponents.

Kuroda did not take pen and paper notes, as he thought he’d look pretty silly doing that for video games. Rather, everything he learned he would commit to memory.

When Kuroda was in 6th grade, he started going to a particular arcade in Saitama where Japan’s no.2 KOF’97 player hanged out at. Kuroda never got to learn his name, but would often refer to him as “Macho”, due to his body physique.

In the span of about 3 months, Kuroda finally became good enough at KOF’97 to beat Macho for the very first time.

At some point, Macho moved on to playing darts for a hobby. In the meantime, Kuroda looked up to some other players whom he’d gradually learn to beat at SNK fighting games – mostly The Last Blade 2 and KOF’97 and onwards.

Kuroda did not actually play any SF3 until two years after it had come out. He had tried it on a whim after beating one of his rivals in The Last Blade 2 and King of Fighters, and he was shocked to find himself getting completely bodied in SF3.

Kuroda began to learn the game, and a friend of his advised him to take a look at the way “Riki”, a top SF3 player who plays Q.

At that point in time, Kuroda did not actually play against human opponents much for SF3; he had mostly spectated, and practiced the tactics he learned against CPU opponents.

Kuroda then bought an SF3 mook (fighting game strategy guide) – his very first mook ever – that had frame data for the characters. This allowed him to better understand the timing with which Riki had been using Q’s footsie tools.

translated pt 4

Weekly Playboy News has published a new entry in their “Kuroda Throws Down the Gauntlet” special interview column.

In this week’s entry, Kuroda goes head-to-head with Makoto maestro Tominaga in a first-to-10 with his main man, Q – the character with which he started learning the game with, as he marveled and was influenced by top 3S player Riki’s style of play.

In the interview part of the column, Kuroda also talks about his humble beginnings in Capcom’s 1999 fighter, and the training he put himself through to develop his reflexes.

“In the beginning, my reflexes and ability to be in the zone, were not quite there yet,” Kuroda says.

"For instance, in 3rd Strike Dudley has this Dart Short overhead that I’d always get hit by simply because I couldn’t react fast enough to switch from a crouching block stance, to a standing one. As Dart Short’s start-up is 13F (approximately 0.21 seconds), it is actually very possible to react to it consistently.

"Also, even if I did manage to block Dudley’s overhead correctly, I would oftentimes be caught not knowing what to do after that. As it took all of my concentration to react to that 13F move, I often did not had the reactions to input something after blocking it right.

“And that’s when I saw it, on a TV screen – a 1968 baseball match where legendary pitcher Yutaka Enatsu faced off against batter Sadaharu Oh/Wang Zhenzhi.”

Although Kuroda was not a fan of baseball, that particular baseball match would end up inspiring him and completely changing the way he thought about fighting games.

“Enatsu had been throwing out pitches that travelled at over 150km/h, yet Oh was unfazed by those pitches. Although I did not have any interest in baseball whatsoever, I could not draw myself away from watching the face-off between Enatsu and Oh,” Kuroda said.

"The reflexes and ability to stay in the zone, which both players possessed, were simply amazing. And I thought, if I did some research on them, I may be able to figure out how to train myself to develop the areas I’m lacking in (as a 3S player). So I went to the library, and began reading up on both players.

"Before seeing the Enatsu vs. Oh baseball match, I’ve always thought fighting game players were like the pitchers in baseball: the whole point of the game is to keep coming at your opponent, until they get dizzy.

"But the truth was that fighting game players needed to be like the batters, who could react to a pitcher’s multitude of attacks.

"And Oh’s ability to do that was simply remarkable. Regardless of a pitch’s speed or variety, he could react to it. Both his reflexes and ability to stay in the zone were god-like. To get those traits to that level, I read that Oh apparently did a lot of reflex training exercises.

“I tried to imitate those exercises in a way, by training my reflexes while I was on my bicycle (laughs). When the traffic light turned from red to green, I’d step on the peddle at that very instance. When I saw traffic lights go from green to red, I’d hit the brakes immediately. Stealthily, I began training my reflexes while cycling to and fro locations.”

Of course, that’s not all Kuroda did to train his reflexes. He also did quite a bit of specialised training in 3rd STrike itself.

"For instance, in order to further improve my reflexes and concentration level, I’d play against the CPU and tell myself to ‘only guard against attacks’. I’d play entire sessions just guarding against all sorts of attacks of different timings, and punishing them accordingly.

“I must have had done this sort of training thousands of times, maybe tens of thousands of times.” Kuroda told the Weekly Playboy News writer.

Eventually, Kuroda decided to join his first 3rd Strike tournament when he was 15 (in 2002).

At the time, he wasn’t quite ready to compete yet, but decided to join the tournament because that was the easiest way for him to gain the latest intel for 3rd Strike.

“At the time, game magazines did not publish information such as the latest combos. Besides, I had also wanted to witness first-hand what high-level 3S matches were like. I also thought I might be able to see Riki (the top 3rd Strike player whose matches Kuroda learned a lot from) there.”

Kuroda explained that at some point, Riki stopped going to the arcade that Kuroda frequented.

He had heard rumours that Riki frequented a particular arcade in Shinjuku instead. But Kuroda never saw Riki at that arcade either, when he cycled all the way to Shinjuku.

“Every time I’d just play a bunch of 3rd Strike matches against the CPU, go home, and rinse and repeat,” Kuroda said.

And that about does it for this latest entry; in the next one, Kuroda talks about the experience he had with his very first 3S tournament.

he told me / us several of those stories ;
personally,i was particularly interested in snk anecdotes - being a huge neo geo fan and all
i still regret not playing him @ kof 98 but the button layout for kof at versus is dreadful

oh,i just remembered another one :
there’s this weird but super strong guilty gear player called ogawa
won tougeki a few times and all that,eddie user
well,kuroda told me that ogawa didn’t discover some of the best combos / setups himself
it was actually kuroda who came up with those and then graciously showed them to him é_é

and,finally,because now this is pretty much the official kuroda thread…
guess not many people know he actually qualified for tougeki in samurai spirits zero (2005)
a shameful defeat in the first round,decimated by the usual yoshitora bullshit :\

omake

Alexisdabomb · June 9, 2014, 11:18pm

Wow, he played Samurai Shodown too, eh? I wonder if he played V SP which is the fixed version of the V. WTF is up with the Hanzo’s player’s name there?

Dander · June 9, 2014, 11:34pm

Kuroda doesn’t play the nerve game. That was what made him my favorite player from the start. He doesn’t throw you off your game, he’s just really good at his.

gameinn2 · June 10, 2014, 2:10am

I have to disagree. The impression I always got that he is mostly always playing the nerve and mind games with his opponent. He’ll sit most of the match in the corner holding down back. To me that’s like saying “I’m just gonna sit in the corner and no matter what you pull, I’m gonna get you for it. You may as well walk away”.

aku · June 10, 2014, 2:44am

The Ogawa story might be true. Kuroda’s known for being a former Guilty Gear player and innovated various Eddie combos.