The best prescription for such perceived “issues” is to not play the game. Drop out of it.
HF characters are pretty good, but their normal damage is crap, even lower than the crappy ST ones. Usually masochists will go for these two variations.
And those people don’t get the props they deserve because there is no evidence of what they could do in the game. No recordings, no matches. It’s all just sensational talk. Seeing is believing, which in this context it is logical to apply as well.
From the interview he sounded quite reluctant to come back to the scene. Either he got rusty, he lost interest, or, he is just keen on protecting his supposed legacy. He knows himself best.
Not a single video? Dammit, i guess either they didn’t think about recording at the time, or Tomo’s presence was so suprising and they forgot it, or maybe they werent aloud to record at the time.
Anyway, after watching Jeffs videos, Tomo and jeff will NEVER come back to SF. They already hated supers, just imagine ULTRAS. I know this wouldn’t be the only thing, becuase SF4/S has a LONG list mof flaws.
P.S. They would return on SF4 WAAAAAY before they return to SF3.
Sup Gerald…long time no see since 04 when AE was out at Family Fun with my brother Battosai, you , Jeff, and Mike…could you post the vids of Mr Tachikawa and Itoyama.
Anyway take care bro…hope to be able to make it down there and play HF on your cabinet vs you and Jeff, and Mike some day soon
I actually talk to Tomo on an almost daily basis. He told me he indeed does have video of himself playing. I’ll see if I can weasel it away from him. He’s incredibly humble and thinks it’s astounding people still care about something that took place so long ago. He’s really a very nice guy.
Riiighhhtttt
Actually talking to him right now. He said the often reported story about him beating an opponent with nothing but shorts is “a bunch of crap”. Believe what you’d like, though. Tomo pretty much just plays FPS these days, along with Jeff Schaefer, which is how I met the two of them.
THAT WAS A REALLY WELL ARTICULATED POINT YOU MADE TRUESEPHIROTH…I CANNOT AGREE WITH YOU MORE.
also,
i’d just like to add this one last thing…
Daigo<Tomo<every dominican kid playing in make shift underground arcade set ups in dark+dusky budda spots in hunts point bx,ny. circa 1992-1993.
A true account of the golden era with information provided by individuals from amongst the golden greats who prefer to remain anonymous.
It was after hours, a young boy was in training mode of SF2 WW. Practicing combos, spacing, the perfect counter to every situation. Of course there was no training mode but the training was facilitated by his mentor Charles Franco who was older and wealthier than the impressionable Tomo and he provided a stready stream of quarters.
Charles was older than Tomo and had the vision for the game but none of the execution or skill needed to truly excel. Charles recognised Tomo as one of lifes orphans and protected him and provided stability and a moral compass.
He wanted Tomo to remain clean and free of vice and he frowned on some his associates in particular Jeff Plumber and Mike Watson. Jeff Plumber later changed his name to Shaeffer for more recognition in the tourney scene.
Charles knew Jeff from old and was gravely concerned that he was trying to encourage Tomo to engage in binge drinking, LSD and procuring the services of street hookers often prior to tourneys. Mike was heavily into cannabis at the time which is ultimately what led to his psychosis.
For the most part Charles was able to protect the impressionable Tomo but Jeff had a very forceful personality and would not take no for an answer. Charles confronted Jeff one day and advised him to lay off and Jeff turned around spat in his face. Jeff was barred from the arcade and later that day sustained a very bad beating by 2 unknown assailants. It is not decisively established if this was linked to the earlier confrontation but most people in the know say that Charles himself had some powerful backers who took a dim view of what happened.
Tomo began his rise up the ranks winning tourney after tourney. He was regarded as the best player in the US at the time and although he was beatable, noone consistently beat him.
His greatest challenge came in the form of Mike Watson a Ryu and dictator player also well known for his Guile. It is estimated throughout the course of all their matches the outcome was 60-40 in Tomo’s favour.
Tomo, Mike and Jeff rode the wave of this new era as the most dominant players of their time all the way up till Super Turbo when all except Mike retired.
If Video killed the radio star then almost certainly the same can be said of Superturbo.
Superturbo arrived and the transition from the slower simpler games proved to be a difficult one. Tomo was unable to get to grips with the speed coupled with the added moves and the additional depth afforded by the supers.
Tomo and Jeff did well up to a point as people had not yet got to grips with the uses and application of the new moves and for a few short months they continued to dominate, however it became clear that the old school tactics were insufficient in the face of a new breed of opponent. Tomo made the decision to quit on this basis plus some bad losses to newcomers and he recognised the danger to his legacy.
Jeff continued but was humilated badly by Thomas Osaki who destroyed him 10-0, 3 times over in a series of casuals. He made the decision to quit shortly after.
Mike continued to play but it became clear that he was not the force he was in the older games. He was facing the young people he used to humilate and dominate in the older games and they had overtaken the master.
People speak of the golden age of Sf2 but often misundertand its meaning. The meaning has been managed and deliberately misunderstood and in reality the golden age referred to an age when SF2 was at its most popular, arcades were packed with great players, tactics that paved the way for the subsequent generations were born but the players were not the best of all time. The games were slower, the competition was not at the level it came to be in later years.
Tomo, jeff and mike dominated at a time when competition and the games were easier. In some ways they were ahead of their time but by the same token they were unable to move with the times.
People persist with the untruth that Tomo was the greatest SF2 player of all time. The forums of shoryuken, youtube etc are replete with Americans gushing about Tomo, embellishing, speaking of tactics that are now considered impossible and yet they never saw him play and there is no video evidence to substantiate the claims.
The jap ST legends stand alone IMO. They are proven and the footage is there to be seen.
These fictions, pious frauds shall we say that continue to be peddled to this day. The idea that players from the golden age of SF were the greatest players that ever lived.
The idea that Tomo wasnt human, used tactics that are consigned to history, is the greatest player that ever lived and would destroy the jap kings of ST.
I dont buy this and one lunatic with a uni-brow is at the centre of this fiction of tomo and unicorns. A retired SF player from the golden era that still has enough passion for the game to make a new vid every other week.
Sure tomo achieved but that was in a time when talent and comp was considerably less.
The fact is, this fiction is borne out of the failings of said individual and his inability to beat Tomo. Instead of overcoming his mental block and admitting his failings, better to elevate Tomo to god status.
Sadly the fiction is reinforced ( well in the eyes of kids and noobs ) by a BS win by said indivual over Daigo on AE. A win yes, but totally distorted and misrepresnted. Daigo jet lagged - check, bat tops -check, casuals -check. The sledgehammer that is CE guile - check. The list goes on.
This was an opportunistic mugging of Daigo and defamation of the highest order. The vid is being used to this day to fuel the narrative that the golden greats are the best of all time.
I reiterate -They werent the best of all time, they were the best in those days. Times changed, a new breed emerged. The golden greats began to lose ground to a new breed of player and instead of taking the losses like men and levelling up even playing second fiddle they retired.
All except for one…watson!!
We need to thank mike for this because he is the key to unravelling the truth of that era and seperating fact from fiction.
I would argue by way of extrapolation that Tomo would never have been as good as the Japanese Kings of ST.
Look at it like this. Tomo’s toughest comp was mike watson. Tomo and mike went 60-40. So we can see that Mike was very much in Tomos league. Mike watson provides the measuring stick by which we assess the skills of Tomo.
By fighting on, this living dinosaur allows us to peer into the primordial ooze of the golden age and assess the claims made about the golden era.
I dont need to elaborate further, Mike Watson was decent but show me what Mike achieved in ST. Less than Sirlin for crying out loud.
People may want to say that he was past his prime. Well Mike was in his prime when he transitioned to ST and continued. We arent talking about boxing here. It’s a game and he’s hardly old. I would argue he is an even better player today but was never more than a journey man.
Sad as it is the great Tomo would have been nothing more than a journey man.
Writing a thesis doesn’t make your post more believable. So the history is murky and we pretty much have to trust certain individuals and their word. At the end of the day it’s not that big of a deal and certainly not worth the effort to post some long ass shit you could’ve said in like two sentences.
You seem jelly over it too. Damn dude.
His post seems more logical then biased, as in Mr Uni Brow.
Seriously just because a guy wins alot does not mean he is god. It was only a few years ago that people regarded Daigo as more or less unbeatable, and for a time, he was. Now look at him, losing 3 (was it 3?) times in seasons beating. Probably others too, but I don’t play ssf4
Daigo never reached god status. If Kuroda would have played SF4 then you would know what god status means and what the early-mid 90s were really like.
You’re full of shit and don’t know what you’re talking about. There were multiple arcades on every block and every one of them was full and if you weren’t good or didn’t know people you would be waiting a couple hours to play once and the better people got to play hundreds of different people in a day if they could stay on by winning. Today, you won’t find a dozen people who play Street Fighter on your block, you have to travel or resort to online. You may think that OMG SF4 BEST FIGHTING GAME OF ALL TIMES but it’s really dead compared to the old days. People didn’t wait all that time to go up and play like shit in front of everyone, the average SF2 player would shit on almost all players today. The only player I have seen lately with zoning/footsies/ability to control space with anyone from the early/mid 90s arcade is Kuroda but he said SF4 sucks and didn’t bother with it plus he’s still mad people leaked his DvD.
at less comp. Everyone played SF2 back in the day. Now no one plays Street Fighter games. You have a lot of people playing games like Starcraft, WoW, DFO, shooting games like CoD, and tons of other games nowadays. Back in the day, everyone played SF2. That was the cool thing to do, hit the arcades, play SF2, whatever pinball machine they had, and some other random stuff like shoot pool or play table tennis.
Also I’m smh at people talking about “back in the day” when you kids weren’t even born yet. Stay free.
Also, I’m going to call the current Alex Valle a scrub. That’s right. The dude is slow and his ability to read situations and react to them are dead. Saying Alex is good right now would be an insult to when he was actually good, although the term good has been greatly degraded over the years. Asking Tomo to play right now is retarded after such a long break and wouldn’t prove anything. The only way to prove anything would be for you to create a time machine so you could go back in time to the early-mid 90s, bring SF4 back with you, and then get raped by an average SF2 player who never played SF4 in his life.
Stfu lol, Kuroda is good, but the fact that he loses and has lost on more then one occasion at SBO is proof that he isn’t all that people make him out to be. He’s a very entertaining player I’ll give him that, but as we’ve all seen he seems to choke at the critical moment.
Now MOV on the other hand, he may be boring to watch, but he’s easily the most consistent player out there.
He didn’t take 3S seriously. Everyone in Japan knows how good he is. He helped RX learn Urien, he taught Hayao Hugo, etc.
This argument is pointless because you can’t realize the past without living in it.
Also asking players is pointless because they’re bound by their ego. It would be like asking Sanford and Erik who taught who how to play Cable in MvC2 and we already know how that discussion ended up.
Nobody plays a game for 5+ years and doesn’t take it seriously. That’s ridiculous.
As far as teaching RX and Hayao that is horseshit. He showed them a few things they didn’t know. He did not by any means teach them.
So why are you arguing then?
Seriously nobody, no matter how good they are is a god (in street fighter or otherwise). Stop being a scrub and go train instead of trying to tend to your wounded ego by elevating players to godlike statuses.
Oh dear you have undertood nothing. Yes the arcades were full, i made that point clear when i defined the golden era. I quote.
"People speak of the golden age of Sf2 but often misundertand its meaning. The meaning has been managed and deliberately misunderstood and in reality the golden age referred to an age when SF2 was at its most popular, arcades were packed with great players, tactics that paved the way for the subsequent generations were born but the players were not the best of all time. The games were slower, the competition was not at the level it came to be in later years. "
Im not even going to address the rest of your foolish rant.
What’s with all the Tomo and Jeff dick lickers recently anyway?
As for that about Kuroda. The fact that he’s the only player you seem to be able to bring up kinda proves you’re just another random fanboy. What about MOV, Ino, Boss, Nuki, Deshiken, Chinta, and so on and so forth.
Elton Chong: I think you’re selling Mike Watson very short. A journeyman in boxing would be someone who is good, but not good enough to get over the top and actually win the big fights, or even gain championship belts, basically, gatekeeper level. A journeyman in the fighting game sense is someone who is good, but can’t win or place that high in majors or nationals. Mike Watson has won or placed very high in nationals well after the Golden Age (B4, in Super Turbo), as well as in other different games (Alpha 3, 3rd Strike, early age MvC2, early age SF4). Even though he doesn’t practice as much as he used to, when motivated, he can still clearly hang with the best. There is also the Console doesn’t equal Arcade debate.
And Jeff Schaefer was able to get 4th place in arguably the biggest competitive video game in 1996 in SFA2 (PC games like Quake were just starting to gain ground at this time), even though he didn’t put as much time as he did in SF2.
I’m not saying you’re full of it. I’m actually interested about the SF2 Golden Age, and would like to read more about it. By the way, I want to know why you think the competition that came after the Golden Age was better than the competition in the Golden Age, even though almost always, more competition breeds better players, which is what the Golden Age had more of?
Try not to pay attention to this fool Elton Chong. He posted elsewhere that he completely made up that story. He is one of the vocal minority that is mad about people shitting on HDR as a game and not acknowledging that the current online players are on the same level as the OG greats. He has no clue so he chooses to put down the old players in an attempt to elevate the current crop.
Address my points so as to demonstrate why im a fool.
Linky to where i posted i made it all up.