Results are current up through the last standard Japanese qualifier. Now, only the Euro and last chance qualifiers remain.
elivepro|Ken Bogard (S-TH) / WDM|CCL (CH) / elivepro|Kenpachi (RY) won the Euro qualifier and qualified for Tougeki.
Thanks for the heads up, Vernon. Now that all the Tougeki SBO preliminary qualifiers have finished, we wait for Sept. to see which team will make it to the end.
Overall, I think that since the number of teams has increased and the strongest JP players are more diluted, the 2 foreign teams should have better chances at advancing than ever. I wish them luck and hope they have as much fun as I did last year. If only I were so lucky as to have NH2 as a guide in Japan…
Two of the most interesting outcomes of the qualifiers are that for a 2nd straight year, each team has a unique set of characters and each character is represented (in either old or new form). With 32 3-man teams this year in the strongest competitive field, these results are indicative of ST’s maintained balance.
Damn… It will be paid, again. Will it be possible for someone to record the stream, in case no DVD is released (again)?
If folks want info, come on GGPO…
Team USA just got knocked out according to SKill’s twitter
Lost offstream to a Chun
ST top 4 teams:
KKY (Dhalsim), Mattsun (Ken), Kikai (Guile)
Keshin (Chun Li), Yoshimura (Dhalsim), YuuVega (dictator)
Otochun (Chun Li), ARG (claw), Gunze (Zangief)
OkaFei (Fei Long), Seki (Dee Jay), Shooting D (Ryu)
Per Vorkosigan’s post, US team status from Seth Killian (http://twitter.com/#!/sethkillian/status/114919525304119297):
“team Hope” from US loses off stream to a Chun after making it to 2nd round 
otsukaresama deshita guys!
At least they made it past the 1st round, same as last year, so it’s not a step back.
I’ll be rooting for Mattsun and Shooting D’s teams now.
That’s a pretty good Top 4 this year, lots of variety
The outcome isn’t exactly the same as last year’s since the field last year had 16 tighter teams (US tying for 5th) as opposed to the 32 this year (US tying for 9th). In any case, it’s good to see we’re establishing a trend in Tougeki of getting past the first round in SF2 and I’m sure players will try their best to advance even further in future years.
Great job USA team. A better result would have been nice for sure but there’s no shame in losing to Otochun.
Final results have been added to the first post. As I mentioned before, ST stands up to its reputation of balance with each of the 32 three-man teams featuring a different combination of characters. The final four featured 10 different characters out of a possible 12 while the winning team eschewed the top quartile of characters altogether. And once again, it appears ST was the only game where westerners managed to advance.
This year’s Tougeki looked great and I hope that both Super Street Fighter II Turbo and the US will continue to be represented next year and in future years. For firsthand recaps of Tougeki SBO 2011, please refer to NH2’s site at: http://curryallergy.blogspot.com/
And for perspectives from the US team, keep an eye out on the official Don’t Blow This support thread: http://www.dontblowthis.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=326&pid=2691
LOL. ST has a reputation for balance? You have really drunk the cool aid on that one.
And are you seriously saying that the results of SBO, which is a) a three-man format, and b) features the very best players in the world, are generalizable?
no sagats ? i taught he was a popular character ?
geo: Players online have referred to ST as a balanced game ever since SFA1 came out and throughout the MVC2 and 3S eras. Since then, HDR might be more balanced but either way, that doesn’t change the fact that ST was already perceived as fairly well balanced with just a few strong moves that could be toned down to squeeze the tiers closer. Anyway, the point of my post wasn’t to disparage HDR (which also has a reputation for balance) if that’s what you were thinking but to point out that ST had another remarkably well-represented showing.
Year in and year out, different ST characters are able to win in high level play (a level found primarily in Japan). Just check out the Japanese ST tourneys at Kuroppi’s tourney results page (http://www.kuroppi.com/tournamentresults/) and calculate which characters are most dominant solely from the results themselves and not on any preconceived or external knowledge about balance. I think you’ll find the results fairly balanced and surprisingly not representative of the game’s commonly accepted tiers.
Compare those results to JP 3S results gathered from the same empirical methodology and it should be clear from 3S’s homogeneous results that the variety in ST isn’t present just because of the commonly used single elim team play format. This year’s Tougeki result simply etches that historical ST balance a degree further. That’s not to say the weakest characters have a high chance at winning but rather that there’s plenty of variety in tourney finals.
EcKo Zero Cool: Sagat is one of the least popular ST characters in Japan. That includes both versions: mediocre n.Sagat and strong o.Sagat. None of the 4 teams with Sagat that qualified made it into the top 4.
Your position is that when people think of ST and balance they think “the game is really well balanced”. And moreover, that this is the reaction that the majority of people have. I simply don’t agree.
On the second point, you seem to be conceding that SBO is only representative of very high level play.
Edit to add: the three-person team format of SBO almost certainly creates more of a perception of ‘balance’ than a one-person one-character tournament, for self-evident reasons.
st shines in 3v3 format. it has some interesting matches between certain low and high tier characters. top doesn’t always beat bottom.
Nice job guys! I hope you had a blast 