It finally happened. My first ranked victory on Super Street Fighter IV. The hours of practice I put in and my attempt at working out defense strategies have finally paid off.  I feel even more proud of my win due to the fact that my winning fight was against a C+ rated Ryu player. I'd like to think I was better than him, but chances are, he was probably having a bad day. The final result was pretty close. He whupped me in round 1 and I came back strong in round 2, finishing him with just under half my life bar left. The final match got very scrappy towards the end, but a failed super attempt left him wide open and gave me the advantage, leaving my opponent with a sliver of health. Although he did very well in getting my quarter bar down to below an eighth with a well placed dragon punch combo, the killing blow was struck when i anticipated him with a well timed mid air kick.  
 
The rush I received was worth the 50 straight losses that came before it and I feel like a better player now. The adrenaline rush from the closeness and the fact that I won was astounding and confirmed to me that SSFIV is definitely something I should keep playing. Heres to more victories in the the future. I'm under no impression that I'm still very much a scrub, but I know now that I can wrap my head around the game and actually make things come out in my favour. My previously mentioned affinity with Juri is even stronger now and I'll probably continue to train with her. That said, I still haven't tried every single character in the game, so who knows. That's it for this installment of my SSFIV, hopefully I will update with my progress in the near future.

Yesterday I picked up SSFIV after finally caving in and deciding to start playing fighting games. I love the game thus far but I absolutely suck at it. I must have lost about 30 matches in a row now. On the other hand I am winning the odd round now and I've beat arcade mode on medium without too many problems. I'm going to basically use this blog as my official SSFIV diary from herein, updating with my progress on whether or not I can actually get good enough to play this game.