Seems to me that single elim strengthens mental toughness better then anything. I mean if we look at 3S evo, our top american players got peaced out to the japanese, not just cause they know the game better and the mind games, but because that format is so common over there, like you said.
It probably is that format that makes them better, they adapt quicker because they have no choice.
I agree that we should take things apart and learn things ourselves, but these top players from other countries are solid in ways where they innovate these weird mind game block strings. Dakou and Xiaohai are notorious for this in 98, and its interesting to watch, also really helpful to bite off of. A lot of those guys inspired me to pick up chars I didn’t care about before.
Lets also consider that these players have been playing for ages, and they just have searched out some of the best methods of what to do. Having copied this mindset to a lesser extent (much), its helped my game considerably, and I’m improving more these days then before, cause I had no clue. I’ll let people argue who is better when I’m being innovated by watching it all.
For example my 98 Yamazaki, who I am pretty decent with offline picked up ideas from older pak players who centered there game around building meter via cancel, and the guy has some great block strings, fake outs and his sA stops so much shit if you time it properly, also his sD is a really amazing poke and covers a lot of area.
People widely underestimate yama’s usefulness, sure he isn’t top tier at poking like Daimon is, but he can hold his own anyways.
I like to pretty much study every method thats good, its easy to tell whats not good as Emil has mentioned before, the lack of freshness or repeating a very obvious block string over and over. For me the hardest lesson to learn in KOF is knowing when to guard and when not to. So over all, we need to contribute more as american players, I mean we don’t contribute enough really useful strategy to the international scene because we don’t have the competition that demands it from us, so we level up a whole lot slower. For example; I got good with max mode in 2002 because when I originally was playing this mexican player who would consistently land 100% type shit, I kept playing him and he called me a copy cat, but we had some really fun matches. That was a awesome day to learn things. That was years ago though.
I’m thinking GGPO may be the saving grace for us americans when it blows up more, because no matter what we host at evo, its not gonna bring those international players who REALLY REALLY shine in these games stateside. Sure we all want to see it happen, and I do attend evo worlds, so maybe next year we’ll get more lucky.
The best american kof players are online players, its ignorant for me to state, I admit, but I am in cali and I play a lot of these chinese, and they don’t hold a candle to some of the sickness that some of these mame players are throwing down now. So cal had a great KOF scene at super arcade back in 2000.
Also to the post that mentions honor, I say fuck honor, if its abusive learn it, so it happens to you, its in your arsenal. Learn 100%'s, learn infinites, learn all things with those characters you dedicate to.
Infinites in 98 and 2002 are generally way hard anyways, so no worries, the 2001 bullshit factor isn’t in effect as much.
