Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo Player Interview with David Boudreau aka XSPR from Japan

[Sorwah]

XSPR and Ganelon have helped me in the past with my ST game, although I wish I could get the time to play it more. GGPO is a hit or miss for me.

[mrdhalsim]

I don’t remember which thread my original discussion with XSPR over the relative strength of competitive scenes took place in but I just wanted to note here that based on Evo 2012 results where MAO and Kusumondo dominated, I have to agree that the top active JP players are currently noticeably stronger than the top active US players.

Thanks Ganelon. Even for the one-on-one metric, I think there’s a common tendency for people to just focus on the best players at the top and forget or not even realize that there are many, many other great Japanese players as well that just don’t get mentioned and you don’t really hear about but I’d say are still above the best anywhere else. For example, the US team came to SBO last year and continued the trend. You guys got to play the best of the best while visiting Japan. I met up with 2/3rds of the US Team (I think your flight left before we had a chance to meet up) and vs. RizOne, never lost, and won the set vs. Damdai. (Nohoho gave me the most losses by far, either by your metric of one-on-one or otherwise). Did they travel all the way to Japan just to play and try to beat me? No way, and I’m happy for them and you to have played so many top Japanese masters. However when I show up to a major ST tournament here like a Gian Recital, I am easily one of the worst players. There are tons of players that can beat me here, yet most of those guys wouldn’t even be recognized by those outside Japan as “top” players or easily overlooked compared to best-of-the-best (usually because they simply never heard of them or ever saw them). So if I can do well in the metric of one-to-one with Team US, and I’m no where near best-of-the-best, that casts doubt at the very least wouldn’t you say?

The Fresh Prince thought he could beat Mike Tyson. Just because there was an actual match with the Fresh Prince and Mike Tyson, that does not mean that the Fresh Prince would beat the next-best-guy under Mike Tyson. Or the 438th best person under Mike Tyson for that matter. And a lot of the time we’re talking, Mike Tyson is actually the spindly guy who’s punching way above his weight class, e.g. Honda winning vs. DGV, Damdai, Afro Legends, with a hernia, not some Dhalsim/Ryu player like myself picking on dictator and Hawk.

And sim does have an “actual” divekick compared to claw, however much slower it is, I can’t deny that. Sim also beats almost everybody/has few bad matchups if any besides claw. For these reasons I have always been the first to admit my wins with sim are not nearly as impressive as with other characters. I see it more as, I was able to use the strengths and keep them out. But if I lose with sim esp lopsided matchups like vs. guile, I consider that a big win for them. Or even a claw player if he can get 5 or 6 Reversal throws in a row out of say short slide noogie. But in any case, I’ve been thinking about how to quantify my complaint and take a close look at the wall dive in TRUST. As a claw player you can help me… the wall dive esp far wall should be a 50/50 mixup to block right? Please help me illustrate a scenario using scripts and frame advance that there is no possible way whatsoever that the ambiguity is unblockable. I.e. a scenario where the wall dive is as close to the center pixel he needs to be, and then repeated from the same savestate but one frame different direction where it’s one pixel the other way or as close as possible. (Actually you have to already be blocking it when Vega’s really high in the air, so the decision of which way to block is already made but please help me rule out it being unblockable basically.)

[mrdhalsim]

Almost a year to the day from my time traveling, and for some strange reason I still see all this “by Seth Killian” stuff around the Controlling Space paper, instead of, “by XSPR/mrdhalsim” http://shoryuken.com/2013/07/24/domination-101-controlling-space/

Ok now that EVO 2012 is done, I’ll go into a little more of my time travels. I am back from the past and have set history straight, however I’m going to need YOU to help, ah, what’s that phrase? “Keep it real”. When you see the proof that my time machine works, please go to the Controlling Space thread and click “Like” on my post there at the bottom (mrdhalsim).

Here is the proof- it’s a bunch of reading, with other unrelated stuff included to make it mesh well with the universe and avoid potential calamities, however, buried somewhere in my verbose writing is nested the essence of controlling space and where Seth clearly got his inspiration. Apparently, in some timewarp factor incident during my travel, Seth and Ponder (Inkblot’s twin brother) commented on it themselves in some rare spin of cosmic justice or something- still workin out the calculations for all that, not sure how it happened exactly yet, but in any case you can see what they say. Or, should I say, have already said. btw Ponder kinda counts as Inkblot himself, because you know they probably have some genius twin power activation where Ponder wrote it on his computer and like, in some other location, Inkblot gets the spider sense and looks up like “huh? I just got this strange feeling like someone just wrote the basis for a thesis on the fundamental fighting game strategy that people will refer to again and again.” Here it is: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/alt.games.sf2/N5JPN7DF0hU
Ok so read all that, or just the parts about controlling space, and Seth’s comments. THEN go to the modern day Controlling Space thread, and see MY comment (mrdhalsim, which should be all the way at the bottom) and click LIKE on it: Controlling Space

This will demonstrate to the world that the real is something that, above all, must be KEPT.

XSPR