You Will Never Be This Good At Street Fighter

The Escapist's Jared Rea (MrJared to you and me) tipped me off to a post over on the NeoGAF forums collecting a series of recorded Street Fighter IV matches between Daigo Umehara, the number one SFIV player in Japan based on in-game ranking, and a list of other top Japanese players. I have fun playing Street Fighter games because I know how to do most of the moves and have a vague sense of which jump kicks have higher priorities on which characters. But these dudes are just on a whole different plane of skill.



The NeoGAF post has more match-ups against Crimson Viper, Bison, Sagat, Chun-Li, and others.

It seems first-person shooters have gotten the most attention in the competitive gaming world, but for my money I find fighting game matches between skilled players the most exciting and technically interesting to watch. Certainly they're closer to an actual spectator sport, in my mind. There's much more depth there than you might realize from watching a single match. Here's an excerpt from an eye-opening IM conversation Jared and I had (edited into paragraph form) that reveals a little of that depth.

Me: Did they really differentiate Ryu and Ken that much in Street Fighter 3?

Him: Yeah, Third Strike is probably where they have the biggest differences. Major differences in their normals, all their specials act differently and have different properties, totally different super arts. But the biggest difference is that Ken has great chains and Ryu really doesn't. So up close, Ken can always go medium punch to fierce to hadouken and it's typically safe to push someone back. Ryu doesn't have anything of that magnitude up close. Really, Ken just has dozens of weapons over Ryu. Stuff like EX hurricane kick in mid-air that can cross people up that Ryu can't do. Ryu's only advantage is that he can apply solid pressure with EX hadoukens to control the ground, where Ken typically has to either combo his way in to lead to a knockdown, or he just doesn't do it at all and pokes them into making a mistake for an easy SA3.

Me: That's an interesting contrast. But it's gone in IV?

Him: Actually, I think they retain most of those differences in IV, only with different properties. But without parries, Ryu winds up being the better choice. Because now, unlike Third Strike, knocking down is a huge deal. Now Ryu has better options after the EX hadouken for easy damage and knockdown, more consistent shoryuken (thanks to jumping being risky again) and of course, the ease of comboing his ultra. His ultra is also extremely safe, so that helps. The way it's shaping up though, US plays Ken, Japan plays Ryu. But everyone plays Sagat. How appropriate.

I can totally respect that kind of hardcore devotion to the minutiae of one single fighting series, even if I can never fully grasp it. But it does make me really want to put some serious time into learning Street Fighter IV a little better.

And no post about Daigo Umehara is complete without this gem of a video, which is second for second the most exciting competitive gaming video I've ever seen. Dude comes back from basically zero health to perfectly parry every single hit of his opponent's super art and then bust into his own combo to own the match. The crowd's response tells you all you need to know about how impressive that feat was.



I'd pay to watch stuff like this.