Thanks for the awesome clarification Immortal! And congrats on qualifying and properly representing the U.S. this year at SBO (same to Riz and Damdai as well)!
thx immortal for the input very insightful. And i do agree with Jeff Schaefer, a very wise man, def a must see. About gan he´s probably right as you stated he spent some time over there… but i dont agree about the “you can talk only if you have been in japan”, because is just silly IMO (big IMO).
Thanks for sharing your impressions, imm. I’m glad you were able to help the US team pull through the 1st round this year when once again, no other US team at Tougeki was able to do so. If you have anything else to say about your experiences in Japan, feel free to do so.
Anyway, you’re free to give yourself as much credit as you think you deserve. Personally, I wouldn’t accept that I’m at a 3rd tier playing level, except for a couple of matchups that I admittedly need more experience in against Japan’s top specialists. My opinion here involves only the empirical results I’ve been a part of and not on perceived strengths/weaknesses or other personal impressions. My perspective is from going 3-1 in my only tourney in Japan against three “top 3” JP specialists for the characters I was facing and losing to the only anti-claw Ryu player in the world (who twice OCV’ed 3 of the best JP claw players in his next tourney). Beating and losing to 1st tier opposition seems to imply being near in ability, even with advantageous matchups. I suppose my view will have to be put to the test via more tournaments or exhibition matches if I visit Japan again or if JP players come to visit the US.
And I’m certainly not the only one. I understand the Wolfe brothers didn’t feel noticeably outplayed after their performance and hope that other US players who’ve done fine in tourneys against Japan’s best feel similarly. This isn’t a knock on the world-class performance of top JP players, but rather an observation that it seems we tend to overlook our own champions because their play style isn’t as “surgical.” Anyway, I agree that top JP players tend to move fast; I don’t think faster play is an automatic win—just as a fast-paced offense in football isn’t necessarily the one that performs best—but it’s definitely an overt indicator of mastery since only extreme familiarity with your character will allow you to move without hesitation.
As for Jeff Schaeffer, I think it’s interesting how his view on matchup psychology is the opposite of Alex Valle’s. Schaeffer says that you’re playing against the character and not the player. Valle says that you’re playing against the player and not the character (http://curryallergy.blogspot.com/2008/07/sdt-notes.html). I have a balanced view that focuses on the character but takes note of player tendencies. In 1-match, single elim format, you have little room to judge the player if you haven’t played him much beforehand. But if you know that the other player tends to throw rather than combo in a mixup situation, you have to be smart enough to carefully use that info.
From what I remember of them, I very much liked Schaeffer’s comments on not losing yourself mentally against recognizable top players. While following that advice in itself isn’t enough to overcome a difference of player ability in the vast majority of matches, having a healthy, confident attitude is critical. A player must decide fast and correctly at every opening. The benefit of confidence—focusing on the game itself rather than on the opponent near you—is almost as important to thinking clearly in a match as being well-rested and not being hungry or thirsty.
Malvadisco: The reason I linked to that video wasn’t to imply that HSF2 in general was the same as ST. It was to imply that the particular match with Graham’s claw and Otochun’s Chun Li was the same as in ST. Outside of HSF2’s slower speed, there’s nothing displayed in that video that wouldn’t have happened identically in ST.
Yes, ST claw’s wall dive motion is messed up in HSF2. If you’re saying Graham was affected by that, then you’re supporting the main reason I referred to that video in the first place. I was showing that he didn’t need mechanical superiority to win while you’re implying that he had an additional disadvantage on top of that and still won. I’d accept that support, but I’ve talked to Graham and wall dives weren’t part of his game plan in the first place. BTW, in arcade HSF2, the wall dive motion is “charge down,up,negative edge K” as oldschool_BR pointed out in another topic recently; the “charge down,K,up” motion is only in the initial PS2 port of HSF2.
As for talking about comparative levels only if you’ve experienced both places, I agree in part. I had already expressed my views that Japan didn’t seem entirely dominant well before I went to Japan because I saw that the tournament results were fairly even. From the empirical evidence, JP players had shown a slight advantage but not all-out dominance over the US’s best players in ST. So I felt justified basing my opinion solely from what I saw in tourney history, just like how I, without playing any 3S, can say US 3S hasn’t done well based on the tourney performance of top players. And then when I actually went to Japan and attended Tougeki for ST, that was a chance to reaffirm or shatter my view; I experienced the former so I’ve continued to reiterate my opinion that the US isn’t noticeably worse. Of course, an invitational would easily help answer this discussion, which is why I brought that idea up.
If I didn’t have know the historical results and was judging only based on what I personally felt, I wouldn’t have said anything before going to Japan. For me, judging solely from videos would be equivalent to talking about how high level Cammy-Fei Long matches go when I don’t play either of those characters at a high level. In the mid-1990s, some US players had TZW videos and claimed that TZW’s Guile would be unstoppable judging from the crazy combos that they saw. While TZW-ART? is a legend in the combo community, based on his average JP tourney performance, I think we can say these US players made a silly assumption that combo ability translated to tourney performance. Similarly, we can’t be too quick to judge play that looks amazing—or easy—to us without results or firsthand accounts. Impressive techniques are good signs of strong play, but not guaranteed indicators of superiority over less impressive styles.
Edited with more detail.
i can understand now what you are trying to explain gan, so no more scrub talk from me, i promise (lol).
in the other hand TZW was an amazing combo maestro back in the day, he invented all the stuff that is used today in combo videos, but muteki is still being to me a more consistent guile and a crazy one too (cross up lk, close mk xx super is still something i cant understand or do).
correct me if im wrong but chun cant do walk up super in AE, right? that can change that MU imo. Anyways i´ve always said if you can beat otochun and arg in the same tourney you are probably going to take the first place… just like oka´s team did /japfag. In the other hand i would love to play against nakamura´s cammy, but who knows maybe one day… I´ve learned most of my foundations just watching ST jap vids or reading NKI/T.akiba´s page, not only combos but positioning, zoning patterns, corner pressure, throw loops and what not, but the problem around here is the competition very few knows how to play ST (im from chile, Southamerica btw), but yeah that´s all i have, no tournaments and very casual fights here and there.
Malv, don’t think of it as scrub talk or that you can’t have an opinion. 
if anything from my brief experience versus mr. Otochun (1 SBO match and 2 casual matches the following day) if you really wanted to say that vid from AE isn’t sufficient evidence it could be more from a timeline perspective, to say that vid has ran it’s course and aged out. it’s from 2007 so that is now 4 years old. i’m not taking your side or Gan’s side but just noting if anything that would be the reason to argue against that vid.
Otochun is now using some stuff that wasn’t present in that video. not only against me but against my pards as well. as noted in my last post these top guys get together often and of course they still hold tourneys all the time. he’s had 4 years to solidify his game even more. i guess my point here isn’t related to the topic. it’s got me sidetracked and thinking how neat it is that for such an old game it’s cool to see both sides of the world still making adjustments and bettering ourselves constantly.
anyway to wrap up my post, the real reason i was mentioning the above stuff was to further address one of my previous comments that if we Americans had this constant access to top play here or if we picked up and moved to their country, we can certainly be equals. my SBO match w/ Oto was close overall i think. he had like maybe 25-33% of his health left in round 3 i guess. then when i played 2 casuals w/ him the following day i had already closed the gap. we split 1-1 and the match that he won was due to me looking to punish a big whiff of his and throwing for the win… but instead of a throw coming out i got a close standing fierce and went over her head and then he killed me. :oops: but just having 1 match w/ him and then seeing him 1 day later already gave me the chance to become a more equal rival to him. just think if i had constant access to him and other top players for that matter! makes ya think…
That’s a good point, imm. Players change all the time and it’s unwise to judge someone solely from a years-past event or a rare poor showing. I know I was pretty much helpless prey back in 2007… That said, my original point about the US having historically competitive results with Japan still stands. If anybody wants to count international match results, be my guest.
I agree that as JP players adapt, so will we. And even those who haven’t played them can be part of the act. Rather than waiting for Japan to unveil its next secret weapon, folks here ought to be creating new techniques that even top JP specialists will want to copy. I already have a trick currently in testing that I’ve never seen used by JP claw players…
Mal: By default, ST Chun Li in HSF2 doesn’t have the stored super. However, if you hold Start while selecting SuperX/SuperT mode, you’ll hear a sound and will then be able to use stored super if you choose Chun Li. This trick also works with E.Honda for both stored super and stored oicho. That way, these 2 characters play just like their ST counterparts.
Naka hosted the weekly Wed. gatherings at Mikado when I was there last year so if you ever visit Tokyo, you should easily find him. His Cammy is very impressive and quite fun to play against. And if you want to have a rough picture of how you’re faring, give online GGPO a try if you haven’t already.
i do play in ggpo, but nobody play with me due the lag xD, +200ping is not very playable, like i said here in my country ppl doesn’t play ST… they play CE, fugly i know.
Hi guys, Gan and some of the others in this thread, sorry to trump this notion that you’re on the same level as Japanese players or just about on it, but it’s false… this isn’t just my opinion, and not only my personal experience, but the plain numbers in tournament results over the years speaking for themselves.
This is a common tendency in our community- you play some opponent, and they don’t win EVERY single game so you figure, “yeah, hm, I’m about on their level; I held my own”. (I’ve been guilty of this myself in the past.) Even if you lived here, it’s not safe to assume you’d get up to that level, and no offense to the guys that have tried doing exactly that, to whatever degree. Even if you played as the guy with the claw. It’s one thing to be able to go straight to playing games (tournament or not) with the very best of the best and talk about how close some game was. But there’s this big implication that you’d totally walk all over the 100th best guy behind him, which isn’t a very valid assumption either. It’s like we all tend to forget that the top players are as popular as they really are, and you’re about to beat Daigo but then suddenly whoops, I lost to some guys from Kuwait, thaaat wasn’t supposed to happen.
Of course, this is all just crazy talk from someone who thinks the rankings follow the list below so what do I know:
Claw
O.Sagat, Boxer, Chun-Li, Dhalsim
Ryu, DeeJay
Guile, O.Hawk, Dictator, Honda, Ken, Sagat, Fei-Long
Zangief, T.Hawk, Blanka, Cammy
I’d probably put Zangief higher by a tier actually.
XSPR
XSPR: Although I don’t agree with your opinion, I respect it. We’re discussing a controversial topic after all. But what numbers speak for your findings? Japan went 12-8 in the 2000 exhibition with Seth subbing in at the last moment. Japan took 2/3 of the Evo titles if you don’t count HSF2 and the 1 year they entered HDR. Otherwise, if you count all SF2 or only count arcade ST, it’d be even (I’d love to have more Evo head-to-head results but I’m not sure if those are recorded anywhere). Our Tougeki teams have defeated and lost to respected players, but nobody questions that Tougeki is mostly for the cream-of-the-crop (and where we may not always field the best potential team available) whereas Evo is filled with players of all levels. All these results are what prompted me to say that Japan only has a slight edge in tourneys.
I agree with your comment about the ridiculousness of winning 1 match out of 5 and then thinking you’re suddenly competitive. If you’re referring to casual matches, then on behalf of others, I didn’t encounter that sort of blowout except for 1 of the unfamiliar matchups as I admitted above. And even for the rest where I went even or held a slight advantage/disadvantage, I didn’t think much of the situation. I went on 10+ win streaks at Mikado last year but didn’t make a big deal out of it because I knew it was just a practice environment. From what I’ve seen, even though top JP players seem to try their best in casuals, it’s generally in tourney play that they prove their best by consistently beating 2nd tier players. That’s why I don’t refer to casuals as being conclusive of actual performance. I almost never try my mental best and I’m certain others don’t either.
And if you’re referring to tourneys, we only have a relatively small set of results to work with. And the only results I have don’t seem to show clear dominance for Japan, or the US. I’m not familiar enough with everyone’s full international records besides knowing folks like Jason Cole have won some and lost some, but feel free to take my own international record, of which I’m sure of, as an example. Is there anything you can extrapolate from it besides not being a large enough data set that would indicate my play being far from high level JP claws specialists? If the only issue is on the sample size being too small, then I think that’s a dead end in this discussion where we’ll have to agree to disagree.
From Evo, we know only that the 100th best guys, or even the 20th best guys, after the top US players haven’t been a match for Japan’s best. I think we can all agree that our pool is much shallower than what you’ll find in Japan. You’re right that there are plenty of unheralded players in Japan that could do very well at majors here in the US. But the players we’ve both beaten and lost to in ST don’t seem to be those players so it’s hard to tell. As for most other non-ST fighters, I already implied that we’ve often fallen to the 100th best guys there so I’d agree with you that tourney results have shown that we don’t tend to perform well there.
Anyway, I use the best character in the game according to your chart so maybe I’m not the right person to comment. The last time I discussed this subject was actually 2 years back, before I competed in Japan, where I made mostly the same arguments (Super Street Fighter II Turbo, in the house). I suppose I’m vocal about this issue because I was surprised by inconclusive tourney outcomes the first time I saw them (having had a strong belief before that JP players were always better based on NKI’s blog and impressive X-Mania videos) and it seems not many others on SRK have a say (beyond fanboy comments): many have moved on, some have conceded, and others never had faith in the first place. If you’re in active contact with JP players, XSPR, then perhaps we can work out exhibition matches of some sort depending on everyone’s availability in the next year or two. It’s probably obvious, but I’m a big fan of proving opinions with empirical results, whether I’m right or wrong.
Here’s a quick rundown of some results I got from Kuroppi’s fantastic site http://www.kuroppi.com/tournamentresults/ --big kudos to him for coming up with this, not only helping us answer these kinds of questions but good to have in general. Basically, looking at that data, it seems that the best you could possibly argue the US has done over the years is 4 to Japan’s 5. I’m only looking at Evo results here and ignoring Tougeki (as we know, Tougeki/SBO results always have Japan winning every single year).
At Evo, the 4-5 stat is when you count any ST-like game (including HSF2/HDR as well as ST). When you look at ST-only, it’s only 2 to Japan’s 5. I’m not including any tournament that didn’t have any Japanese players. Also keep in mind, that aside from maybe a few cases such as Gian’s win year, it was almost always the case that the Japanese entrants likely traveled to America for other games as well like SF3 or SF4, Guilty Gear, etc that usually had bigger payouts, and likely got more of their focus/prep time but whatever.
2002 - US (Nuki 2nd to Cole)
2003 - JPN (Daigo, Nuki top 2)
2004 - JPN Daigo 1st
2005 - JPN Gian, Nuki, Tokido top 3
(2006’s HSF2 - US Tokido 3rd, Daigo 5th)
2007 - JPN Tokido (Nuki got 7th)
2008 - US (Choi 1st, Nuki 2nd, 4th and 5th places JPN players)
(2009 - HDR, but no Japanese players entered)
(2010 - there was an ST side tourny, but no Japanese players entered;
(2010’s HDR, Daigo 4th, Tokido 5th)
2011 JPN Daigo (Tokido 3rd)
btw Daigo has definitely not been active at all in the ST scene at all, for many years now. If you look at this year’s ST tournament, Damdai got 2nd, beating out Tokido (a claw player no less! ) and “almost” took it all vs. The Beast himself. While Damdai has definitely proven himself getting consistently far in tournaments he enters over the years… so has Daigo. I don’t know, if I got 2nd to Daigo in any tournament, I’d probably be singin a different tune, like yeah, Dre comes over to my house all the time, he be goin’ through my music 'n shit. But Dre ain’t really goin through my music. In any case, while I’m not a huge fan of single elim/team tournament format, the plain fact of the matter is that the US hasn’t won once over all the years. It’s good when people that didn’t win say “I’ll try again next year”, but if you consistently see the same results year after year after year, AND say “yeah, but you know, if only this had happened and that happened, we’re about as good” it just doesn’t match up.
fwiw X-MANIA would mean just as much to me if not more to me than Tougeki when it comes to ST, but foreigners rarely enter this series at all. Cole or whoever American player might do well at one of these, but they simply haven’t. Japan’s proven themselves over a long span of time.
You strictly showed the us results. How does nuki, daigo, and tokido perform in jp tournaments?
-trolls suck-
Nuki has been taking lots of tournaments in Japan, including this year’s Gian Recital. I have compared his recent gameplay with Otochun’s videos, and could not notice a trick Oto uses that he did not. He is very strong.
I only used Evo results because that’s the closest comparison we have results for of Japanese players and American players playing directly against each other in the same tournament, over a span of years, and based it on who got first place, i.e. how many Japanese players (among the mere two or three Japanese players that entered each time) got first place, compared to US players (many more) that entered the same tournaments. Maybe there’s another way you’d look at the results over the years but I thought this was the fairest way to put the American players in the best possible light for ST-related tournaments. No American has ever taken a major Japanese tournament (where it’s the opposite situation; several Americans vs. many Japanese).
Nuki’s done well in tournaments in Japan, for example his team won Gian’s Recital this year. Last year he was in Tougeki on a team that tied for 3rd, and in 2007 won HSF2 with Kurahashi but didn’t make other Tougekis (either didn’t qualify or didn’t enter, I don’t know). I’m pretty certain he was in this year’s X-MANIA but didn’t place. (I saw the bracket last Friday, could have checked it then how far he got.) Daigo hasn’t entered an ST-related tournament since maybe the days of HSF2’s first few years, I think. Before that, the ones he entered, he tended to win or place highly and in his area of Kanto he was the biggest threat, even rivaling other Japanese areas noted for strong ST players. Tokido is very good but like Nuki also has fewer showings at Tougekis.
Are we the best judge of that? I mean, if you (or I) noticed the other tricks going on, maybe we wouldn’t fall into them ourselves if it were us playing against those guys… i.e. if Otochun played Nuki I think Otochun would win, and I might come up with some theories to explain why, but that’s all conjecture because if I really knew what was going on, I would probably be able to get wins on both myself a lot more. I like Ganelon’s idea of arranging some games among the players to find out, though it’s probably unlikely. Since Japanese champs have proven themselves in America, and US champs have not proven themselves in Japan I think Japanese players have demonstrated they’d have the edge.
Is it more expensive to travel to japan or america, or are the expenses equal.
-trolls suck-
Prove worthy of being champ n win SBO, period
Well, for Evo, the difference is you counted this year’s side tourney whereas I only counted official tourneys. I also didn’t count Evo 2k9 HDR where Daigo didn’t make top 8 since I doubt he was familiar with how the game worked at the time. And taking only top 8 for example leaves out years when JP visitors like Gian and KKY didn’t make top 8. Like I said, nobody is saying the US has comparable player depth in ST; I think the first thing US players note is that any random player would have the potential to become a contender here in the US (not necessarily based on win rate but on overall combo ability and knowledge of tricks). But when you see players such as Nuki who are located at the very top of JP danisen rankings for overall ST skill, you expect him to crush US players; and he does get consistent top 8 results but ultimately seems to have been eliminated by top US players as often as by fellow JP players.
As for Daigo, I’m curious how well his boxer performs in Japan so if you have that info, please share. I’ve rarely seen him use it there and don’t know the tourney results. If it’s top tier, well, then there are plenty of other strong JP players that often lose to the top of the best. Tokido doesn’t seem to do as well in Japan but he also seems much more moderate in wall dive use over there. Whether that’s due to the tactic not working well against top JP players.or whether he exhibits some sort of “honor” when playing at home is unclear to me. But like I said, I agree that overall, the Japanese seem to have done a bit better from the results. But it’s not obvious whether individual top US players may be fairly even or at a slight advantage/disadvantage against individual JP players.
The whole reason for an exhibition is to get rid of majority bias and non-ideal teams present in the existing formats. If you tracked a random JP top player at Tougeki, his chances of winning would have been 0 or 1 in 4 chances (5 with HSF2). And if we give him only a decent teammate, he wouldn’t be able to get anywhere (at least since 2007, I haven’t seen a player in the winning team remain undefeated en route to victory). So far, have any of our teams matched the equivalent of a Daigo/Nuki/Tokido team that’s come our way for Evo? I’m not sure and, with only 1 chance compared to 15 or 30 JP chances each time (almost all top level comp, unlike Evo), it’s not easy to prove. That’s why I think individual player performance is important, but those records are much more elusive. If we knew who the Japanese at Evo beat and lost to, we’d have a good sense of how the very best US players perform against a select group of counterparts. And we don’t go to singles tourneys in Japan so it’s not clear how that would go (it would be very telling though).
That’s why the 2000 exhibition was great because both sides fielded a near-comparable number of players and, except for Seth as a hasty substitute, the players were well-represented. Too bad it was from so long ago and It’s unlikely we’ll be able to amass such a group of US and JP talent again but at least we can have more results from anybody able and willing. Even if we play slightly less successful JP players, I agree that would be telling as well.
then the SBO quals have failed to find that equivalent? who would have u suggested to represent USA this year?
check out diago’s sf2 resume:
http://daigothebeast.com/history/index.html
besides EVO 2010 2009 (HDR) and 2006 (HSF), he has won all sf2 tourney that he entered oversea.
john choi said he is not going to play sf2 anymore because there is no local comp in norcal
i don’t know why daigo stopped playing st in japan. there are still lots of comp and 2 big tourney every year
my guess is that he has to practice to hang with nuki and co and he simply spent all his time in sf4
he might have dropped mvc3 already, idk.
also, notice at EVO japan sent a handful of their players over and they won / placed very well in SF series. while in tougeki we sent a handful of our players over they usually don’t make it first round or maybe advanced once.
i have to agreed that jp is quite a bit stronger in sf series.
random link:
- Fuudo actually started playing 2D fighting games since Super Street Fighter II X, he used to form a team with Itabashi Zangief for a Tougeki qualifier.
- Fuudo planned to play SSF2T (EVO side tournament) but overslept. (Umehara won it.) He was impressed that Umehara can use many character such as T. Hawk, Boxer, Sagat.
about being honorable with claw… i have a question to ganelon, in the time you played in japan did you have any problems with the fact that claw is considered very scrubby and cheap? (i remembered reading something about this long time ago)