Aiite Ive got tons of shit to write into one post so I apologize in advance for shitty grammar/spelling.
Where to begin…
So first up today was KOF XI. I came about mid way through prelims so I didnt get to watch everything. First fight I saw was Taiwan player, which i cant read (Kula, Clark, Ralph) VS O-ep (kula, gato, Osw). Kyogenshou started Ralph and O-ep started Kula. Ralph was just spamming the double uppercut move with dive punch assist and it connects like 3 times to take out Kula pretty easily. In comes Osw but hes struggling against Ralph. At some point Kyogenshou brings in Clark who throws everybody around and beats O-ep pretty easily.
2nd match was Henboku (Maxim, Duck, Osw) VS *edit Ok i was wrong, it was some Jap guy called Daigosho (Duck, Clark, Ralph). Taiwan guy starts Duck and pretty much rushes down Maxim for a easy kill. In comes Osw who blocks and finally gets away with a well timed roll. He manages to get a jump in combo but messes up the QCFs in the corner for the Ace finish. Ducky does most of the work in this match and 2nd Taiwan player advances.
3rd match was Akuros (Kage, Kula, Mary) VS Mambo (kim, gato, duck) Akuros starts Mary and she beasts on Kim. Duck comes in and gets supered by Mary that takes away like 70% of his health. Gato is snapped in to almost 3 healthy characters. But Gato does his little 2-hit gaurd break target combo into super about 3 times and gets rid of Mary. After that Gato takes contorl and does his usual for the win.
4th match was Uwoz (kula, gato, Jenet) VS 777 (Kim, gato, Kula) Gato gets the start for Uwoz and is trying to rush down Kula. Gato does hit 2-hit gaurd break target combo but Kula does guard cancel roll at guard break to avoid being hit by the super. Gato still persistently chases after Kula and succeeds and gets rid of Jenet too. Other Gato comes in and kills off 1st Gato. kula comes in and brings down Gato to about 5% health while being shaven off to 10% of her own health. Some reason at this point Kula taunts and then switches with Kim. Gato cleans up on Kim and tries to break through when Kula jumps in. But Kula keeps her cool (HAR HAR) and dispatches Kim for Uwoz.
5th match was RF (Kula, Gato, Kim) VS Kyokugenjyou (kim, clark, gato) I cant read the dirty notes I wrote down here. I just remember RF jumping around like Mario with Gato and winning confidently.
6th match was Nemo (Osw, Jenet, kage) VS kyogenshou (kula, clark, ralph) Nemo starts Kage and gets his way past Ralph to face Kula. Kula does her usual charade of no-recovery attacks and beats Kage. In comes Osw who manages to get a few combos in on Kula. Osw tries to jump in when Kula does her icicle super which takes off like 60% of Osw’s health for some reason.
Next up was Samurai Spirits and I know jack shit about this game so not much to write about. One guy (i think) cosplayed as a french maid for the game. The announcers talked a few lines about it, “Well it seems somebody has cosplayed as a maid. Looks disgusting. Lets try not to look at it.”
Next was 3S prelims. PinoAB7 if you remember cosplayed as Necro before. This year he came in dressed as Gill!
Another guy called Te’pe- came in dressed as Elena!
First match was Saver (Sako, Haitani, Teruchika) VS Byounindaihyou (Roo~, Koshun, Jiro-) This is when Team EC USA team started playing at the same time against Lun Lun Delun (Delun, Nihiro, Monokuro) Didnt really watch it closely but Monokuro (Chun) OCVs EC USA. KOf-iend died so fast only the first round was finished for Roo~ and Teruchika. It didnt seem the rest of the team did any better. Roo~ (ryu) starts against Teruchika (ken) and with great spacing control Roo~ beats both Teruchika and Haitani (chun). Sako (yun) comes in and does the usual Yun things and takes care of Roo~. Jiro- (akuma) comes in pressures Sako into corner where Jiro- proceeds to molest him with dive kicks and fierce punches to take round 1. Rd2 Sako gets in a few GJ combos and Jiro- only has about 1/2 inch of life left. Jiro- startsrushing with dive kicks and bait for parrys to get Sako into the corner again with almost no life left. Jiro- dive kicks into FP SRK to chip Yun to death for the win.
The next match shown on the big screen was Champion Road (Ishimatsu, Shiouwa, Match) VS Y-da no nounaikanojyo (Y-da, Dainama, Hiro-chan) This was a quick game where Ishimatsu (yun) easily beat the 3 with the usual Yun shiet.
3rd featured match was Monkey House (Deshiken, Ushi!?, Goemon) VS Muhou (Matsuda, Shiroitachi, Umezono) Deshiken (ken) starts for Monkey house and is in full beast mode. Against Umezono (chun) he rushes very well and does shit like parry in corner to jab SRKx2. Against Shiro was pretty much the same deal with very good spacing and nice agressive attacking. In comes Matsuda (Yun) who gave Deshiken some trouble with GJ but was not enough. After finishing a GJ combo Matsuda tries to jump in but Deshi walks under for MP->HP SA3 target combo. Then Deshiken on Yun wakeup does empty jump target combo into SA3 for the win.
While that match was going on Ji-en (Uni, Namijin, Tanatos) VS Gatchapin (Nakano, Taoru, Genki) I didnt get to see all of it but apparently Uni and Namijin lost and Tanatos comes back to beat 3 in a row. He was yelling like always and when he won the final match he turned to Pyro and yelled “I try my best! Thank you!”
Next match was WC USA vs Keeper (keeper, Tepe-, Tokido) Tepe- is the Elena guy. So Frank goes first up against Keeper (Ken). Frank was not able to play his usual game and was getting pushed around most of the match. In the end he got hit by a crossup EX air tatsu and juggled by standing MK to get peaced out. Next came Ricky who had a close match but got hit by UOHxSA3 to be beaten as well. Then came Pyro who was getting spaced too. If he tried to dive kick in he got SRKed. When he did GJ he only got chip dmg. In the end Pyro activates GJ does lunge punch and Keeper parries 3 times into target combo SA3. US is elminated in the first round already. During the match the announcers were talking about the Keeper team, “So Keeper and Tokido are both from Tokyo University (Japan’s best university).” “Yes so we have two Tokyo University students and weird guy dressed as Elena… Interesting…”
Team Festival (Billy kane, pecheur, UltraYox) after this gets OCVed by Yukiotoko to get taken out as well. The next match was Champion Road VS Lun Lun Delun. Match starts off for Champion Road and OCVs Lun Lun. Match loves to do anti-jump in SRK (gets parried) into SA1. Pretty much guaranteed damage. He beasts on both Delun’s Yun and Monokuro’s Chun. Then comes Nihiro. First round Match throws alot of fireballs from air and ground to keep Urien from moving freely. At the very end Match has about 1/2 inch of life left while Nihiro has pretty much nothing. Match scores a knockdown, rushes up to Urien. Then crazyness breaks loose. On Urien’s wake up Match does HCBxFP then crouching mk into HK tatsu. Urien has none of that and parries EVERYTHING and throws Gouki at the end of the tatsu for a crazy victory RD1. Then in RD2 it was again a close match and at the end Urien jumps in, Match does anti-jump in SRk, Urien parrys, and cancells the SRK into SA1. Urien starts parrying, so Match jumps up and does air HK tatsu. Urien still parrys the first hit of the tatsu but cannot keep it going and dies for end of RD2. Rd3 was not as close and Match with his solid rushdown beats Nihiro for a great highlight reel fight.
Next game was Team Shibu Supo (Misawa, Issei, MaJr) VS Intelligent Fighters (Nanaichi, C13, Hoshi-) Misawa (ken) starts for Shibu Supo and beats Nanaichi (ken) fairly normally. C13 (makoto) comes in and beats Misawa and MaJr (chun) easily to bring out Issei (yun). Issei with his great percision and playing Yun’s game, beats the rest of the team.
Next game was Perfect Freeman (AFM, Aruka, Pierre) VS a team I dont remember (probabblly team KITA--------(’^’)-------!!) I didnt get to see this match really but Pierre was missing some unblockables due to execution but Aruka made up for his loss with his usual crazy parrying skills.
We joined next game already in progress with team Banyuuhiryoku (Raoh, Mester, Inoue) VS Monkey House (Ushi!?, Deshiken, Goemon) Mester (yun) was going against Goemon (yang) and Goemon beats mester in a very close match. Yang had no life left but got a dive kick into c.lkxEXmantis for the win. Next came Inoue (Makoto) back from his long absence and he seems to be his old good self. In the Rd1 Inoue is down to very little life when he starts stringing together a bunch of hits to get a comeback victory in RD1. In RD2 both are very eavenly matched. Goemon gets a standing MK to hit and misses with the SA2 follow up which would have most likely killed. Inoue recovers and gets the victory. Then comes Ushi!? (urien) During the match Ushi!? did a cool reset which was: air to air jab, land EX Aegis, Inoue gets hit, shoulder rush. Looks pretty usefull actually. So Ushi beats Inoue to bring out Raoh. I dont remember the results for this match but Monkey house eventually advances to the final 4.
They interviewed the top 4 teams and here are some notables:
Spellmaster J “Yes its good to be back. And this year I will get naked again! Be prepared for it!”
MOV looks around “it doesnt seem like were going to lose”
Okay so next was the Top 8 for KOF XI. First up was SaSa@SMK (Kula, Gato, Kim) VS Kyogenshou (Kula, Ryo, Gato) Both came out with Kula and unlike the usual rushdown fest, this was a pretty tense battle with poking and spacing. But Kyogenshou from Taiwan had reaction skills like a fox and was able to counter much of what SaSa was doing to advance.
Second game was Riki (Clark, Ralph, Gato) VS Cabbage (Terry, Kula, Kim) Before the match Riki had this to say about his opponent:
“I will cook him real good”
takes swig from canned coffee
Announcer: “cheers to that”
Riki starts with Ralph and he was going crazy with the uppercuts against Cabbage’s Kula. After Kula gets killed Terry comes in and takes a few hits. Riki brings in Clark and Cabbage gets scared or something and gets hit by dash up throw and simple shit like that. After taking out Terry, Kim jumps into the greeting arms of Clark and he rewards him with a suplex. Easy win for Riki.
3rd game was Mago (Kula, Gato, Osw) VS Axel (Terry, Osw, Gato) Beneath his name, Mago had this little line, “Everybody say it with me, 2D 2D 2D 2D, 2-D GOD!”
and at the interview before the match…
Announcer “what are you thoughts right now?”
Mago looks around “who me? well to put it bluntly, all of these other contestants, their just in my way. I cant be stopped cuz I have the world with me. Okay everybody 1, 2, 3,…”
points mic to audience
audience “…giggle…”
Mago "Cmon! we practiced this! "
Axel grabs mic
Axel “what a loner”
Onto the match, Mago clearly has an upperhand with having Kula, and not much of a contest here.
4th game was Kaoru (kula, Osw, Gato) VS other Taiwan dude (kula, clark, Ralph) I dont remember much from this fight but Kaoru’s Gato rushes like crazy and pretty much beats the whole team.
5th game was Riki VS Kyogenshou. Riki starts off with Ralph and Kyo starts with Kula. Ralph tries to play his usual game but is no match for Kula. If he tries to jump in Kyo has future vision or some shit and SRKs him. If hes not jumping hes getting peppered by all sorts of ice shit. After Ralph gets taken out Kyo does one crazy ass combo that I cant even describe due to my lack of knowledge about the game. Ill just say that it includes like 5 snap ins and Ryo’s one hit dizzy thing. Youll have to see it to know what I mean.
6th game was Mago VS Kaoru. Both start off with Kula and are playing defensively. But Kaoru gains the advantage and takes out Mago’s Kula. From then on Kaoru rushes down with Kula and Mago is dissapointedly makes an exit. After his loss Mago bowed his head for forgivness to the crowd.
Finals was Kaoru (Kula, Gato, Kage) VS Kyogenshou (Kula, Ryo, King). At the finals both players decide to change up their team a little, with surprise Kyogenshou putting King in as the 3rd character. Would it make a difference… not really. Kaoru starts off with Kage against Kyo who starts with Kula. Kaoru does a great job of playing keep away and selectively jumping in for attacks. With a hard defense that even Kula cant break through Kyo brings in King, who save for a few attacks doesnt do much. At the very end Karou brings in Gato and Kyo looked like he gave up and let Kaoru finish him off in a fancy way with his hop kick into rising dragon super.
Taiwan players made a great showing in KOF XI and they should be happy with themselves. But… the announcers were talking about the game itself afterwards and they agreed that whoever utilizes Kula to the fullest and best will eventually come out on top. So will we see King of Kula in next year’s SBO? Only time can tell…
Next was the top 4 for Samura Spirits. Now I watched these with pretty much no knowledge of the game mechanics and shit but I know one thig: Mina is one fucking cheap ass bitch. She’s the little girl with the bow and arrow. She can shoot it pretty much anywhere on the screen and a few you can store “up above” to call down later. Plus when you shoot it has like as much recovery as a jab. Ridiculous. And when you watch the game it seems so slow, even though its really not that slow. Its just a game that seems a lot more fun to play than to watch. In the end though Team Meikyosisui from Hokaidou won it all with Iroha.
Ok so the top 4 for 3S is finally here! First match was Champion Road VS Monkey House. Match and Goemon go first. Match starts pressuring and gets a couple of hits on Goemon in the corner. Goemon escapes the corner with HK dash which I thought was pretty neat, but eventually Goemon gets caught and that brings up Deshiken. Ken and Gouki is a pretty (almost) even match but Ken is pressuring more. Both characters down to low health when Deshiken does an air EX tatsu when Gouki was jumping as well. Gouki starts parrying but misses the last hit and gets hammered. Ishimatsu comes out 2nd for Champion Road (Although his name is Ishimatsu, people just called him “Chibi” meaning midget, or kid) Chibi’s Yun is pretty complete. He pressures Deshiken real well and he doesnt have much opportunity to do his favorite parry into low mk jab SRK. Chibi instead of getting baited, does numerous Zenpotenshins to keep Deshiken off his game. Chibi beats Deshi to bring in anchor Ushi!? Standard normal fight here for a Yun VS Urien. Although at one point Ushi puts Aegis up mid screen, Chibi dive kicks and crosses up Ushi to get on other side, then after going forward a little Chibi zenpotenshins himself into the Aegis. 0_o. Well Ushi ends up winning to bring up Boss who uses Makoto now. Boss’s makoto is pretty mean, and he rushes and rushes at Ushi with success. Near the end of RD1 Ushi is in the left corner with barely any life left with Boss having about 1/5 life left. Boss dashes up to Ushi and does a c.lk into EX chop, but Ushi blocks the low kick and parries the chop and goes into his C.HP. Unfortunately due to distance only the first hit of the C.HP hits and Ushi eats it for RD1. In RD2 Ushi is doing good with about 1/2 life left and gets Boss with almost no life left and into the right corner. Boss on wake up starts poking away at Ushi and then he goes forward does a standing FP and hit confirms into SA2 which takes off almost all of his life. Unfortunately that doesnt save him and Champion Road advances to the Finals.
Match 2 was supposed to be another stepping stone for the Vision team to their ultimate goal. But this fight with Masters VS Vision was not meant to be. KO started off strong with an easy win over Spell J. Then the top 2 Yun’s in the world battled it out with the first RD going to Nitto after parrying KO’s crossup target combo into his own. KO however comes back to perfect Nitto in the 2nd RD. With that push KO finishes off Nitto to bring in anchor MOV. MOV pretty easily beats KO as KO wasnt able to do much and messed up a few things he doesnt such as not being close enough for zenpotenshin during GJ. Next Vision decided to bring in Nuki for a Chun mirror match. At the beginning both are poking away and keeping distance. Both eventually get super and start to edge in closer. Then Nuki does a c.mk that totally wiffes MOV BUT Nuki goes ahead and does Hyoyokusen. Now was it a mistake? Or was he trying to catch MOV trying to pull a move? Whatever the case may be, MOV starts parrying the super from the second series of kicks, jumps up and does a spread eagle RH into b.FPxSA2. From then on the momentum was all MOV and Nuki loses not looking like his usual consistent self. This brings up poor Kokujin to bring up anchor. Now as you know this match up is hard as hell and without some hard luck, its almost impossible. Kokujin gets in a few shots but eventually team Vision is peaced out and poor KO suffers another defeat at SBO.
So this is the final battle with Champion Road VS Masters. First off Match comes up and Spell J comes up first after tearing off his shirt just like he promised. Match once again shows his anti-air prowress with the parried SRK into SA1 tactic. Also does a SA1 to chase Spell J when he’s jumping back and such. Spell J gets fairly owned and Match finishes him off in the corner with an air messatsu gouhadou for the chip win. Next up for Masters was Nitto. Nitto came in and steadily kept his ground against Match when he attacked. Nitto didnt have much problem and evaded Match’s attempt at a wakeup raging demon near the end. Nitto takes care of Match to bring up mirror match Yun/Yun with Chibi. Chibi, I believe, gets beaten pretty easily but… I dont remember much from this fight. And some reason i wrote down MK and HK but i have no clue what I mean by that. Well anways Nitto beats Chibi to bring out anchor Boss makoto (for somereason Boss changed his name to Shouwa). Nitto plays safe and gains advantage with a few GJ combos. With almost no life left Boss starts rushing like mad and getting in very well. C.mpxhayate, c.lkxhayate, hayate etc. etc. However 2 things happened in this fight that was a deciding factor. 1 was that almost everytime Boss tried to command grab Nitto, he would jump away correctly. 2nd thing was Boss was able to get Nitto down to about 1/2 inch of life. But he would dash up and do c.lkxEXchop which Nitto would block BOTH. And he did it like FOUR TIMES! So even though Boss fought valiently and was just one clean hit away from winning, Nitto guessed correctly and came up with the win.
OK so this is all the non-tourny part.
According to Pyro AFM’s name stands for Anal Fucking Machine.
KOF-iend apparently choked some foo at a restuarant after the guy came out cosplaying as a monster (it was a themed restuarant) and he got paranoid.
I had a chance to talk to KO
me on the left.
So I asked him if he planned on coming to EVO this year. He said that most likely not. He sais he loves gambling and Vegas is somewhere he would like to go eventually, but he is seriously into Pachinko and Pachi-slot right now. He sais he makes about 2 - 3 grand in $s per month from his winnings.
As of now, Japanese players looking to coming to EVO this year are… RF, Nuki, Kokujin, possibly Yamazaki.
I talked to Mr. Kuni and I asked him if Hokuto no Ken will be in the line up for next year’s SBO. He sais that unless they do a expansion, most likely not. When asked if 3S will still be in next year he said, “We’ll see”
And lastly I inquired KO about Daigo and this is what he has said. Daigo is apparently working at some Mahjong joint and he is working and playing hella. So much so that apparently he has stopped playing games completely. And in fact he might actually have gone into… gasp… retirement… Who knows whats going through Mr. Umehara’s mind? Only time will tell if this it is true or not… Only time…
Well its fuckin 3 am already and i hope i wake up early enough to make it to some MB or at LEAST GGXXSlash. I know nothing about the 3 games being played tommorow but ill do my best to get notes on them. Aiite thanx for reading.
peace,
matt
PS: my memory sucks. so most likely certain details such as rounds won and shit might be off. hopefully theres video soon. possibly the china-men might have got some?
