Sabin SF4 Japan Q/A - match of the day: Barfights II

Classic Fighting Games Street Fighter IV
1

So yeah…everywhere I have been posting people have been asking me random questions about Japanese SF4 scene, and I dont wanna derail said threads. I figured its better to make one thread where you guys can ask me questions. Ill respond when I have time so please ask away.

Heres the last question that someone asked me -

The only time I was able to play Seth so far was at the SBO afterparty. I played Uryo and he beat me 4-2 with his Viper. Im sure he didnt have any experience fighting Seth and I dont have much viper experience, so it was really fun! The match went like how I thought it would - I get a knockdown, hes free, he gets a knockdown, then im free lol. Viper isnt that good on defense so if I sucked him in with a tandem at close range, he would just backdash…and get hit everytime lol. Also on knockdown he would do anything to avoid blocking my crossup roundhouse, so I could take advantage of this )he would try to backdash (which loses to tandem), or focus crossup RH and dash away (this loses to DP after the focus dash.)

As for TKD, I was able to play him last night @ bigbox with my Sim. First game I played him, I won and I know hes a past TRF winner. :china: I think we went about 4-4 for the night overall. Everyone is REALLY scared to play him here, since noone really knows how to fight Fuerte but because I have so much Fuerte experience (thanks to OJ, Manny, cheapocrespo from FL, halcyonryu for all the fuerte exp!) I was able to do really well vs him. Actually, his fuerte fights totally different from what I expected. He actually turtles a lot vs my sim and waits for me to throw a reckless fireball so he can walljump into loop. If I dont throw a fireball tho, I can catch him with j. strong off the wall…basically im trying to stop him from goign crazy. When he gets in on me, he will keep doing run stop low fwd run stop low short to prevent me from doing anything to move, but if I block a few reps and THEN IAT, I can usually get away. Of course his execution is on point and if i dont mess up hes dead etc but its hard for him to land the loop on me. At one point he just knocked me down and tried to do it raw, lol. And hes good at punishing my teleports.

As for me vs the rest of the japanese players…
any arcade outside bigbox? im going on winning streaks mostly and i have a lot of wins vs master card players (50k BP etc…) so its not about how many points you have. There was a 50K rufus player that I scraped with my sim that didnt know the sim/rufus fight as well as someone like, Marn…so yeah…BP doesnt tell the full story.

my record right now I think is close to 50 something/46 something losses, and Im C plus class right now. My card is registered as Sabin so you can look it up whenever I guess.

At bigbox though…its so hard to beat the top players here. If I play well I can get 2 out of 6 wins maybe but quite often I lose a lot. Plus people here have experience fighting Iyo, so its definetely tough. Good thing is I can see where my holes are in my sim game, and playing at bigbox is like being in the hyperbolic time chamber so its all good.

Will respond more later!

2

they understand the wheel of options better than most western giefs (except for maybe UltraDavid and Temujin perhaps)

I can antiair him every time if I guess right…but thats what it is, a straight guess. B. RH, stand rh, j. strong etc etc ALL work as antiairs, but if the gief player catches on, he can beat those options cleanly every time…with the exception of EX upflame, which is my get off me move. I have to be REALLY aware of his options and be sure not to do the same antiair more than 2 times in a row otherwise i will get vortexed into my death. I get scared to use b. rh here since gief players here have mastered empty jump arcs into spd/ultra etc.

It only takes two wrong guesses for me to start losing in this matchup. Im getting better at keepign them away, but Japanese zangief players def took m me by surprise, I thought it was free. Intelligent use of standing RH to stop my IAT backwards teleports, smart short jumps to bait me into throwing a fireball, then they green glove -> ex greenglove to punish me from fullscreen…good use o fstanding jab, and swiching up antiair options often to keep me guessing (early or late j. fwd, knee, splash, HEADBUTT, j strong etc etc, just gotta find out what beats what.)

3

Join the SRK Guild man!

Name: ???
Pass: 2399

I dunno how many players on it are still active, but its there. :rofl:

4

did you play against momochi ??

and will there be videos of you playing the jap ppl ??

5

azrael will do, i will use gf to help me register for the guild so i can join u guys.
ramsi no i did not play against momochi but i played against tokido, went like 1-4 or some shit. very very tough.

after i get comboed by gouki, they do tatsu (hurricane) into cr. rh. (sweep)
then they do 3 way mixup which is REALLY hard to fuckin see.

they will cross me up and repeat the loop all over again until im dizzy into death (crossup jumpin, into combo, into stand jab -> stand rh loop x3, finish with tatsu ended into sweep, then repeat until death.

once I catch on, they will mix it up with demon flip divekick (which never crosses up) or fake crossup with j. forward. Its really tough. The best way for me to avoid this as a sim player is to do a turn around EX upflame…which i cant do consistently. I have to learn how to do this.

as for vids…well i will try to go to TRF this friday so maybe you can watch me play on the stream!

6

So far, where do you think the biggest difference between Japan and the west is? Is it mainly execution, or are they pulling tricks you haven’t seen yet?

7

Have you fought mizuteru?

8

+1

Also did you face any Blanka’s that gave you any trouble? If they did what kind of style did they use?

9

this would be my question as well. top american players seem to have the combos perfected, strategies and matchups memorized - yet they cant even get past the 1st round… why the hell is this?

10

Good stuff man, it would be most appreciated if you could record your matches at big box so those who can’t go to Japan can at least pick up on some of the strategies over there.

11

how can players in the u.s improve when they only really play each other at tournaments?

12

your explanation of what their gief/akuma gameplans are is really good, just keep dissecting each of their characters the same way and we’ll all level up.

13

While useful, such information is time sensitive and it would take him a while to write all of it up. That’s why I asked a more general question… we need to know why they’re better in the first place, or we’ll keep playing catchup forever.

14

Good stuff

15

This.

16

Art how much better would you say Japanese Sagats are compared to American Sagat’s?

What do they do differently or do they just have Sagat down to a science?

17

Why do female Sagat players own you?

18

How are the Guile players over there and are there any black people that are stationed there of born in Japan that play SF4? Thanks.

19

This is probably a longshot, but did you ever get to speak to them about what they think the biggest problems with the game are and how they think it could be improved?

20

Have you played shiro’s abel ? how did the matches go ? He must play Iyo a lot so he must know the matchup pretty well

Would be nice if you could ask him what he thinks about the charcater abel. Where he stands in the tiers and what his hardest matchups are . That is If he even speaks english.