You can get all the Arcadia magazines and Tougeki DVDs ('08 and some previous years) through Amazon Japan, as long as you’re willing to pay the outrageous shipping. (~$25).
Someone requested a compiled Q&A. Obviously Sabin shouldn’t have to do that after giving us so much info, so here it is.
Rather than getting all the questions and all the responses, I just took Sabin’s responses and categorized them. I also included posts from other members when appropriate.
I obviously excluded stuff about Meru, Emil, 2ch and random shit. This is just substantive stuff Sabin/others brought back from Japan.
Abel
Spoiler
Akuma
Spoiler
[spoiler=Ghostal] Oh man, no wonder you got beat.
That Akuma was Yuu?, dude is quite a tough character.
For reference and name comparison:
[media=youtube]gx2DcyyHUrU[/media][/details]
Blanka
Spoiler
Boxer
Spoiler
Chun
Spoiler
[spoiler=Azreal]I got to play against Nuki at casuals at SBO, and I played next to Nemo for a few rounds at casual before the Shiozawa Cup.
SFIV Chun actually has a great toolset. She?s got a great mixup game, can get in fairly easily, can also play keep-away fairly well. The main difficulty with the character is that her options are all very specific to certain situations. For example, if Ryu jumps in at Chun with J.RH, depending on the distance and timing of the jump, Chun?s best options may change from S.MK, C.RH, C.MP, EX SBK, FA dash backwards, or just block it. As a Chun player, you have like half a second to figure out which option is best and use it.
Nemo and Nuki, they just knew. No hesistation, no mistakes. In this situation, use this. It?s the kind of knowledge you can only gain from a lot of experience with the character, as they have. Like many other Japanese players, they?re also really good at reading their opponents, as well as setting them up - baiting them into a specific response, and then countering with the best possible option. When I fought against Nuki, he kept getting me with sweep a lot. I had to take a moment and figure out that he was reading exactly when I was going to get up off DB and try to move forwards or backwards, and that?s when I was getting hit with sweep. He?d then safe jump in, and with my AA options pretty much null I tried backdashing to safety, but he?d already anticipated that and hit me with sweep as he landed.
They?re also really smart about meter usage. Meterless combos to start the fight, and so if they need to use it in clutch situations later on they have plenty. Plus, Chun with a full super bar takes away a LOT of options.
Nuki is really solid with his fundamentals, footsies, and spacing. He will just beat you methodically. Nemo is more or a risk taker. Chun has low vitality, so many people will try to be somewhat defensive with her late in the round to conserve health. Nemo will just go at you. Its not completely reckless - he does set up a lot of his attacks beforehand. I also noticed that Nemo will kind of take a beating for the entire first half of the round, and then just unleash a string of successful attacks and before you know it the round is his. [/details]
[spoiler=DevilJin 01] Yeah he’s hard to use at high level almost exclusively based on the fact that his tools are limited as far as being able to win matches at high level. Same reason why Elena was tough to use. She was easy to pick up and had some solid normals and options but tough to master because her lack of powerful consistent win options. She didn’t have Genei Jin, 2 high priority normals that went into a 2 stock half life super, a million ways to combo into a 3 stock super, half life EX combos (dudley) etc. Which inherently forced her to think and react to the opponent more in order to win. You can only make Elena better after a certain point by just playing the best players and playing them often. Before and after tournaments.
Dictators tools are better for flustering than they are for winning. Winning with Dictator basically asks of you to block a lot when pressure and be tricky with your defensive maneuvers which none of that sets up any real scary offensive. Even Dhalsim technically has a potentially scarier offense than Dictator and he’s just trying to keep you out most of the time. If you lost to Dictator it’s basically because you fell for one too many of his low damage mix ups which gave him a health lead and then he continued to pressure and zone you until you lost. Which can basically be remedied by picking a better character or someone who generally has better options for turning the match around.
Unless Arturo was a Dictator player himself I don’t see him seeing much more than what he’s already told you. The rest of the Japanese Dictators performing as well as they do is just basically going hardbody and playing everyday at the arcade. That alone will suffice for a character that has enough options to put up a fight like Dictator. They’re not going to be doing anything different other than reacting quicker and keeping themselves out of more situations. Which is not something anyone can come from Japan and tell you how to do. You just gotta be playing with nice people and put that together for yourself. Especially with a character as bare as Dictator.[/details]
Fuerte
Spoiler
Guile
Spoiler
Ken
Spoiler
Honda
Spoiler
Rufus
Spoiler
[spoiler=Destin]You can choose whether you option select with lk or lp by staggering your input similar to a p link. If you go from lp~lk, you should get the throw break as well as the low punch, and the throw break comes out a frame later which is usually a plus in the great scheme of things. That helps depending on the height he is dive kicking.
Also while blocking and holding DB, an input of df, db, KKK+lp will option select a backwards teleport and throw break without standing, so you can do the teleport attempt late, still get a throw break, and not have to worry too much about the low kicks. Hopefully that helps a bit (at least in my head), I’m not a sim player.
If the rufus is doing dive kicks high though, maybe you could option select a slide forwards? [/details]
[spoiler=Alioune][Sagat?s cheap shit] Kara option-selects , kara fb , kara dp ,kara knee ,zoning etc…[/details]
hfz69
[details=Spoiler]oh and some random info from mago’s blog:
he had a session vs TKD(fuerte) and the results:
(Mago???)
???
???
???
2)vs umehara(ryu)
(mago???umehara?)
???
??
???
he lost and kinda pissed at that fact and swore that in their next meeting it will be his(umehara) death anniversary lol
vs dragon boy(ken)
?mago???dragon boy??
???
???
???
???
???
he said despite winning more than losing, he felt that he lost against dragon boy lol…[/details]
Sim
Spoiler
[spoiler=Iyo]
[/details]
Zangief
Spoiler
[spoiler=UltraDavid] If it hits, you get a free combo. If it doesn’t, there’s one open frame between the mk slide and the short slide/back+short, meaning that if Gief tries regular spd it’ll lose to your short because it has 2 frames of startup and no invincibility. He could do ultra or ex spd, but that’s not too likely. So yeah, it’s a potentially unsafe string on block, but it’s much safer than rh slide and pushes Zangief back a little more than rh slide. Early antiair meaty mk slide to teleport back is 100% safe though, obviously depending on the location on screen.
Like I said, personally I don’t like sliding on Gief. But if I was gonna use a slide, it’d be mk.[/details]
[spoiler=HeartNana] Keep in mind that there’s a LOT of players that you don’t see vids of. Just because you don’t see youtube vids doesn’t mean that player doesn’t exist. The playerbase in Japan is so much bigger that for every character, there’s someone who’s REALLY good with them that you’ve never heard of. You can’t generalize all the players like that because there’s just too many to group into one category.
There could be an average honda who knows the Sim matchup well, and might do better than a better honda with a higher BP who doesn’t understand the matchup as well.
There are all sorts of players with all sorts of playing styles using all sorts of characters, so generlization questions can’t really be answered because the answer is the same: “it depends.” [/details]
BoggleMinds
Spoiler
There is a rivalry between East (Kanto) and West (Kansai). Although they probably don’t travel frequently across country (Japan is like the size of California), they do meet up for major tournaments. These include Tougeki, Cooperation Cup (3S), X-Mania (ST) etc.
[quote=Sabinnewsflash: theres no best in japan. anyone can beat anyone on any given day and ive learned that. also, even the best players are not gods. theyre just REALLY FUCKING GOOD lol. as i said in the beginning of the thread were NOT THAT FAR BEHIND. we just need access to the same kind of high level comp that theyre so lucky to get.[/quote]
[spoiler=Azreal] a-cho tourney had 24 teams it seems… don’t know the real number but all I know is that there were six pools (we were in Pool 6) with four teams in each pool. We got out of our pool but had to play a tiebreaker round robin and got OCV’d by RF, so they advanced to the final 8, and eventually won the whole thing. I guess we’re tied for 9th then? It was a bit confusing because it wasn’t really single elim until the top 8 bracket.
Anyway!
Our pool was:
Sabin (DH), Azrael (CH), me (HO)
Uyro (VI), Cantona (ZA), Kuronuko (CH) – #1 Viper + #1 Gief in Kansai… dunno who the Kuronuko was but he’s a Chun player and really solid
Yassun (RY), Hagoromo (AB), Johnny Jongi (ZA) – Dunno who they were… seemed like nice guys though.
Ponsuke (KE), Tanao (AB), Wareware Wadebu Senda (CH) – Dunno who this was to be honest and didn’t play them either.
Basically the setup was that the team that went 3 - 0 would advance automatically, and anyone that went 2 - 1 would have to play a tiebreaker to determine who goes on. Then the team that won that tiebreaker would have to face the other pool’s tiebreaker winners to see who would advance to the top 8. So basically, you’d have 6 teams going 3 - 0, and 2 teams who went 2 - 1.
First match was against Johnny Jongi’s team. I went up first, and i was actually convinced I’d scrub it out cuz I’m not good against Abel at all. I was so confident in my scrubiness, in fact, that I told my boss I’d be able to come to a work function after I lost lol.
Reno vs. Yassun, Reno 2 - 0
Reno vs. Hagoromo, Reno 2 - 1
Reno vs. Johnny Jongi, Reno 2 - 0
Well, guess I had to cancel that work function! We went on to face Uryo’s team next…
Reno vs. Kuronuko, Kuronuko 2 - 0
Azrael vs. Kuronuko, Azrael 2 - 1 (?)
Azrael vs. Cantona, Cantona 2 - 0 (?)
Sabin vs. Cantona, Cantona 2 - 1
Kuronuko pretty much owned me for free here. His Chun is solid and I have a lot of trouble with that match as a Honda player. The Az vs Kuronuko match was really good on both sides. Good decision-making and good use of pokes IMO. The Sabin vs. Cantona match was kind of annoying because Sabin would literally get a good three j.fierces in, but then Cantona would pull out a lariat and beat the j.fierce clean and even it up. The end basically came with Sabin (according to him) flubbed up the Ultra and ate a lariat (? I forget)
Johnny Jongi’s team had to fight Ponsuke’s team as both of them were 0 - 1, and Johnny Jongi’s team won so we had to roll that match back.
Reno vs. Yassun, Reno 2 - 0
Reno vs. Hagoromo, Hagoromo 2 - 1
Azrael vs. Hagoromo, Azrael 2 - 1
Azrael vs. Johnny Jongi, Azrael 2 - 1
Good shit by Az to HOLD IT TOGETHER against a solid gief that really showed no fear and didn’t care about taking 23984237943 s.roundhouses to the head.
So we ended up going 2 - 1 in our pool so we had to advance to the tiebreaker round robin to see who would advance to the top 8.
Too bad RF’s team went 2 - 1 too. He OCV’d us pretty fucking quickly, and those guys were seriously not fucking around lol. Usually RF was either 2nd or 3rd for their matches but this time he went first to mop us up. So we were out after that.
Still, we had a decent run IMO. I’m sure Az and Sabin will fill in more details.
Just for the record, before anyone calls out Sabin for not winning in the tourney, he was doing very well in his matches before and after the tourney, and even Rikuson (top 15 Sagat player) went up to him and said he was awesome, and most of the players who were watching his matches were impressed too. It’s just too bad that he got stuck with matches against the #1 gief in Osaka and the #4 player in the country.[/details]
Azreal
[details=Spoiler] My left middle finger is fucked up, but I’m gonna try this anyway.
I probably should have lost the Chun mirror against Kuroneko. We were both fighting pretty evenly going into the last round. I was watching his super meter, because Chun’s super punishes EVERYTHING. We Chun players tend to abuse sweep as a poke, and Chun’s super can punish a BLOCKED sweep. I had been watching his meter, but either he gained a full bar and I didn’t notice, or I’m stupid, but I threw a sweep that got blocked. He tried to punish with super, but must have done it too late, because I was able to block. The trade off for 2 frames of startup is 14 years of recovery, so I was able to counter ultra FTW.
The Gief I fought against…he had that No Fear Style…basically, he just keeps moving forward no matter what, and eventually you end up in a corner. NEVER where you want to be against Gief. I got creamed the first round but adjusted somehow.
I could have taken the first round off RF, but I couldn’t clutch it out and he took the V. That’s why he’s a top player and I’m not.
Reno held it down, OCV’ing that team the first time and taking out their first the second go.
Watching Sabin play, I can definitely say he can hang with these guys. 30,000BP in one month fighting against nothing but top players is nothing to sneeze at. Yeah, he won and lost some, but everybody loses in this game. Sometimes people act like the top Japanese players don’t lost, and that’s not even remotely true. Get the SBO DVD, Gosho makes Mago and Nemo look like scrubs. Sabin had win streaks, and even matches he lost, it was by no means free. So haters should STFU.
Oh, and I can’t believe there’s a fuckin MAID CAFE right in the middle of a-cho now. That’s new, I didn’t see it there last month. And there’s a monitor connected to the action, so you can get fried chicken and coke served to you by a Japanese girl in a maid outfit, and watch SFIV while you eat and play Dragon Quest. Ridiculous.
Sabin so a lot of people in the usa really hate on zangief and i saw your post saying that you thought he was shit but after seeing him in japan you understand him being high tier.
Have you seen what giefs do against dictators and boxers? ALso can you comment on where viper is in the scheme of tiers. I was looking for a tier list based on your opinions, if someone can poinst me to one or Sabin can you do a rough list for us?
Regarding a tier list, it would probably look like the Arcadia ones. Something like…
Top: Sagat
High: Akuma, Ryu, Zangief
Upper-mid: Boxer, Rufus, Viper, maybe Dictator & Honda (yes, really)
Mid/Low-mid (not sure who would fall where): Chun, Abel, Blanka, Fuerte, Dhalsim
Low: Guile, Ken
LOL: Claw
If I had to guess, I think Art would put Chun & Abel in mid and Fuerte in lower-mid. Oh yeah, and Sim in low. But it wouldn’t be hugely different from that basic outline above, I’d think.
Been keeping up with this thread everyday. Some real great info in here. Congrats on getting your Master rank too!
Here’s a question that I don’t think has been asked yet…
What do the Japanese think of the voices? I know the majority of people in the west despise the english voices, but do Japanese think the voice acting is ridiculous since it’s their native tongue?
My best example would have to be Fei-Long:
Shouting "I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOST’ when he’s defeated in english sounds recockulous, but even though “ORE NO MAKENAAAAA” has generally the same meaning, it sounds… correct.