Visualizzazione post con etichetta sf4. Mostra tutti i post
Visualizzazione post con etichetta sf4. Mostra tutti i post

5.16.2010

AEX COOP. CUP 1 weekend

Been lazy about this... Anyway, we held this tournament in Milan on April the 25th, at the usual place. It was right after the ranbat season and just before Super Street Fighter IV, perfect timing to do something different. Teamplay is always a cool thing so this time it was the main concept behind the tournaments, with the nice bonus of the first BlazBlue tournament in Italy. So it was like this, SFIV -> 3on3, 3s -> 2on2, BB -> 1on1. I actually wanted 3s to be 3on3 too, and we had the amount of people to do so, but Fugo and Fran suggested otherwise, so whatever. At least the tournament became more unpredictable this way, even though it was all about the 3 best teams hands down: me+LEVA, Fran+Gogu and Fugo+mitsu. But more on this later.

I'll try to be short on the useless stuff. Tournament was Sunday but I managed to reach Milan on Saturday, getting together with 3s heads and eating at Oscar's, an epic pasta place where I wasn't really able to finish off my stuff. Just epic.
After that we met for the first time Vernon from Rome and Stratos, that traveled all the way from Naples with Manlio! This is real love for 3s...
A lot of great / new people showed up the day after as well. I'm mostly talking about the BlazBlue guys (what a great crew, let's keep it up guys) and all the people that filled the 12 spots available for 3rd Strike. We had our usual players plus people from south (team Borbonacchi) and Ziano from center Italy. Great playing with them and see that they did pretty well in tournament too.

Anyway, the day started with BlazBlue. I'm playing and enjoying it A LOT. To be honest nowadays I'm playing BB rather then SSFIV... Anyway, everything went pretty well except for my (lovely) Noel knocked out by two Litchis (Galrod, who I play A LOT online, and Wronged, "old" PS3 player). But no problem, I got to top8 anyway (7th place with Ronove), and Galrod got second place after Kazikal (Noel/Nu), not without some bizzarre pad drama, lol.

Street Fighter IV went like this: team Rome (Beralius, Sean, Shirl) was definitely out of luck for the day, team Milan (Rushing, Bucio, Coden) could have won but didn't, team Torino (MAO, alexarandom, Rambo) won mostly thanks to Rambo, a dictator that proceeded to timeout every-fucking-one to death, viewers included. I gotta say that this game was, and still is, boring as hell. I just can't stand some (a lot of) matchups/characters... Whatever, to each his own I guess.
Oh, good showing from team Milano2 (leva, spinal, trapy) as well. 3rd place, definitely the surprise of the day.

ZZZZZZZZ anyway

Ok, now the main thing. This 3s tournament was probably the best ever because of too many reasons. Me and LEVA played badly most of the time because we're mostly playing other games right now and... Who am I kidding, that's not the right reason for me. Look at me vs. gogu. I had it, did a terrible mistake at the end of 2nd round and then immediately switched my brain off. And against fugo I was doing something like that. Last round, huge lead and I end up winning with only thanks to a lucky hit at the end. Chokkini-time...
Whatever. It went down like this: first of all we defeated Ziano+CFC (DU/MA), then it was WSF already and we defeated Mitsu+Fugo (MA/UR) to enter top3. So in WF we finally met fran+gogu (YUx2, damn) and lost by a hair. In LF we met mitsu+fugo again and won again, only to lose in the first set of GF. MVP of it all was gogu. I talked about him enough, he got serious about the game and with fran he's been the most dedicated player in the last months... Good stuff guys. Of course me and LEVA weren't so happy about the second place but really, between those 3 teams it could have gone in any way. Definitely a great challenge, I want more and I know I'm not the only one. Also, the finals were actually - for once - pretty hyped. This game will never die.

Highlight of the tournament? Accidentally dropping my stick on LEVA's feet after our victory in LF, lol. You can hear him scream in the video too! Talking about the videos, here's the playlist of top3:
>>> AEX COOP. CUP 1 - 3rd Strike 2on2 videos <<<

Oh, our team was named JINBE-SAN. Just wanted to let you know.

Full results for every game and stuff will be up on arcade-extreme sooner or later. In the meanwhile... Play more BlazBlue!
Really, do so. I'm loving Noel a lot (playing her properly feels kinda great, plus learning all that stuff was almost natural... Great feeling) but I'm actually looking forward to play Tsubaki on Continuum Shift. More on this in some other post, maybe.

3.14.2010

AEX Ranbat Milano - season 2 results

Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike
  1. Fran (YU) - 185 pts. / center
  2. LUN (CH) - 115 pts. / left
  3. SpinalBlood (KE) - 100 pts. / right



Street Fighter IV
  1. Rushing Monkey (CA) - 165 pts. / left
  2. Coden (SA) - 128 pts. / center
  3. BlackHole85 - 118 pts. / right


Read everything about season 2 here!

3.13.2010

AEX Ranbat Milano #2.8 - season finale!

Oh yes, it's over. It's been a long season, with many difficulties to face but it's been great anyway. Let's put it down as it is: our scene is poor. In many ways. We've had some major tournaments in both Milan and Rome with sponsorships and stuff, but ranbats are just put together for passion. It's supposed to be some regular meeting that offers players something more than just freeplay. It's precious tournament experience, and the ranking should motivate everyone even more. Too bad some people here up north didn't understand this at all... SF4 players, of course. I won't go into details, but it's so stupid and so italian that we have good players that will never show up because... Woah, whatever. The support for 3s has been ok instead. Nothing crazy, but at least the game is still alive. There are still a number of problems that I won't name in order not to type a gigantic post, but let's sum it up like this: the competition is still not good enough. And I'm in the not good enough category, just to be perfectly clear. We all need more TIME and even more dedication. Because that's it, we're just a few players, so we need more efforts. This game is the cruelest game ever. And also, coincidentally, the best.

But let's go to the point of the post. Oh, the tournament took place on february the 27th.
SF4: who cares. Oh well, congrats to Kelgar for his first top3 (with Chun), Rushing (CA) won again, Coden second. So the final standings for the season are... I'll post later about it.
3s: decent turnout. My main concern was EXG / gogu with his Yun, and I had to face him in the first phase. The scenario was like this: winner gets a supposedly easy road to the final, loser gets to face Fran in semi-final. I won almost easily because clearly gogu was way more nervous then I was, but I played him a lot during the 2 days we spent together and I know for a fact that both of us could have won. He's really, really good now. And usually more concentrated and on point than me, to say the least.
But let's go back to the subject. In an unexpected upset, Makhbeth (YA) beat Spinal (KE) to get to my semi. Makh is not (yet) an expert 3s player so it wasn't a big problem to reach the final, but it was good to see him get 4th place (he later lost the 3rd place playoff against gogu), and hopefully he'll keep playing and improving.
He also got second (IIRC) in the scrubs tournament we've held for the first time. That's right, we've had a quick 8 men bracket set up randomly just for... New players and SF4 heads, lol. BlackHole85 (KE) ended up winning that, so now he's a well known SF4 player and the king of 3s scrubs at the same time. Woah!
Whatever, the big boys (ehr...) tournament went as you could expect: I got destroyed by Fran in the final. I just let it go, again :/

Good times chilling with Togo and gogu afterwards. Late night dinner with pasta and Nutella (no less) and all night long 3s session with gogu (Togo passed out too soon, lol). Great games indeed!
The day after Makhbeth joined us and we went to Steve's house to play 3s (other people were there playing SF4, of course) with Fran also. It was PS2 version but on a Versus City. Great feeling, but it just wasn't the real thing, you know... Ehr, it's ok if you don't, really.
Whatever, it was good times.

Later on I'll post the final standings for second ranbat season of both games. Be prepared for some fancy shots...

12.16.2009

AEX Ranbat Milano #2.6 we + Peyosan's magic

Not so much to say I guess... Missed out another practice opportunity on friday, I just arrived in Milan on Saturday right before the beginning of tournaments. It was the last ranbat before Christmas (is it that big of a deal? Apparently yes), so the turnout was a bit lower than expected. Well, SFIV was still around 16 people, with some new guys joining, but 3rd Strike was just a 5 men battle. Yeah... A lot of our usual people had other things to do, other guys there could have joined but weren't really interested, so I said fuck it and let's roll this way. I placed 2nd again but this time it didn't feel that good, Spinal got 3rd place and of course fran won (using Yun all the time). I beat everyone else quite convincingly during the tournament, but he just destroyed me both in group and final, so I've got a lot to think about for next time. In the final I just looked like a food with no solution to his improved dive kick game, I guess...
It's a shame that we keep missing players like LEVA and mitsu at the ranbats, by the way. And many others could come more as well, but that's how it goes this season, so whatever.
SFIV results were pretty much the usual, with Rushing (AB/VI) taking it, followed by Coden (SA) and Bucio (RY). This weekend they'll go to this tournament in Rome to clash again with the guys that, as of now, won more in SFIV. Let's hope for a good battle. Yeah, because that kinda rivalry is the only interesting thing I can find in SFIV :/
But let's back to us. We spent Sat night at EXG's playing 3rd Strike, of course. Fran immediately passed out for like some hours (and later came back to beast on us), while me, EXG and Togo kept rotating. Following day I was in good company and took a nice walk in the center of the city, which was nice. I also found the lamest Starbucks' ripoff ever, THIS, but let me say that it rocked, ahah. It's just starbucks with a different name, so it worked out pretty well!

And that's it for the weekend. Let's talk about shooting games now. It's been a while since last time we had something this big, but this week we published Peyosan's amazing Dodonpachi Dai Ou Jou western record. Check it out here, it's worth it. Definitely made me miss those good old shmups times... Well, Mushi Futari 1.5 etc. etc. will definitely pass by my house for some reason, so I'll check it out. I don't know if I want to mess with downloads and stuff, and they also say that Black Label is fucked up somehow, so maybe I'll just check out Ultra to see what happens... You never now.
Anyway, major props to Jck for encoding Peyo's video that well. It looks amazing even on YouTube.

So that's all. Next post will be about... Uh, I have no idea.

11.01.2009

AEX Ranbat Milano #2.4 & Inferno Cyber League

Took me like a week to finally sit down and write this, but whatever. Last weekend, Ranbat #2.4 and ICL SFIV tournament took place in Milan. 2 days of gaming that attracted players from everywhere in north Italy (Milan, Turin, Trieste, Veneto etc., everyone was chill as hell), Rome (these guys are on fire), Slovenia (Kekken & Champ too good as usual), Naples (Jinbe and Manlio = top tiers IRL) and even Spain! It was nice to meet RickyTTT (SVB 2009 champion), Kenichi and Amano. He's living in Padova at the moment, so we plan to play together again soon, and that's a cool bonus.
So, who won in SFIV? Italy or Spain? And who cares?
For full results check AEX in a few days, but well... Saturday Ricky (Sagat) won the ranbat. But the fight against Mitsu (Rufus) was close. Sunday we all went to Monza at the local Lan Point, where Beta and the Inferno esports team organized a pretty sweet event. We helped with the rules and ran the thing (it was a very demanding task, ~70 players attended and there were a few minor issues, but it went down quite well), so we did our job as well. Ricky this time wasn't abel to confirm his invincibility, and top3 was like: Shirl (Gouki, Rome), Sean (Viper, Rome), Champion (Gouki, Slovenia). There were a few upsets during the tournament but eventually it was nice to see Shirl take his revenge (even though indirectly) on Ricky! I got in top 32 and it was the right place for me, top16 was all made of dedicated players... And fran, who hates the game but is good enough and uses Rufus.

Anyway, let's talk about serious business. This time (well, Saturday at the ranbat) 3rd Strike was big enough with 21 players, or something along that line. Unfortunately I hit the 5th place wall again. Now that it's single elim, I can't get to the semis, last year with double elim I got there almost everytime. What's wrong with me? Part of the reason is the stress of running events (doubled this year with SFIV), it's an excuse but it really hurts my play. Also, talking with some other "new generation" (lol) player we realized that we just lack consistency and we should be able to always hit that minimum of performance that we must expect from us. No matter what. Anyway, I really believe that all this time isn't wasted. We have some players in Milan that can do well, we just need the years. We started last year to have regular tournaments so it's like we are in our 2003 or something. Plus, the situation isn't exactly easy, so props to us anyway.
Sunday night I had a nice private freeplay session with EXG too. Let's keep it up, it's all I have to say! And just to reinforce my statement, I quit SFIV once and for all, lol. I never want to waste my time again playing this game in tournaments. I don't like it, I don't like my useless character (but that's my fault, lol) and I never practice it anyway, so it's all good. More energy for 3rd Strike.

Next weekend in Milan will be in November, and maybe I'll travel to Slovenia as well for one of their awesome tournaments. Stay tuned for other news from AEX as well...

10.06.2009

Videogames History 2009 weekend (Oct. 2/3/4)

During the last months we had several ranbats/meetings in Milan, but this event was special enough to make me feel like writing about it. First of all, what is VGH? It's an annual exhibition about the history of videogames, with a very nice "museum" (which I didn't care much about, but it was indeed nice) and a lot of space for gaming-related communities, shops and such. Me, Jck and Nev put together a stand for Arcade-Extreme, with STG arcade boards, a 3rd Strike setup and our videos going on the whole time. It was quite a success, with a lot of random people getting interested as well as well known faces getting there all the time (lol at this sentence). We even arranged a SFIV tournament but... Let's start from the beginning.
Friday was the day before VGH. I had to get to Milan that day because we were supposed to set up everything during the night. So I ended up having a whole free afternoon in Milan, because the only decent cheap train was in the morning... And it was great because I was able to join fran for a 3rd Strike session with just him. Superb practice for the following days, and great to find out some other patterns and problems with my game. Play against him is useful every single time for a lot of reasons... Well, you kinda have to have the right attitude though. Otherwise it can be difficult, lol.
The following day, Saturday, was VGH day one. We did standard stand "work" all the time... Well, I played A LOT of 3rd Strike against a lot of various people, basically. In the end we were able to run a 3rd Strike tournament as planned, the interest was high enough, and we even had to cap the tournament to 16 people only (double elim) in order to finish it on time. Fran was supposed to come at the exhibition that day but... He was a no show! Therefore I was able to win the whole thing without big troubles, except for Jck's Urien that suddendly decided to perfect me once during winner's final just to add a bit of suspance! Anyway, it was good to get some people interested in the game, SFIV players included (this is very important, in my opinion). The prize was nice as well. Oh, the after party was not bad either, good times and some beers with SFIV heads, basically.
Day two, Sunday. This was supposed to be the main day, and it was true. Way more people joined the event, there were some tv reporters as well... Some crazy stuff happened, lol. It was good to take a picture of Rushing Monkey (top SFIV player) with a PS3 PAD in his hand while getting interview by tv about "how he got started with videogames"... That was random!
Eventually we were able to set up some 360s and run a proper SFIV tournament, which ended up being pretty fun overall for some reason. During the day I was able to enjoy Mushihimesama Futari as well (thanks Nev!), with some real time coaching by RF2 (well, AST-DGN), another owner of the board. I wasn't able to try Ultra as much as I wanted, but Original was good enough. And Ultra-easy, which is good when you have clueless people watching you play in ecstasy, lol. The 360 port is going to be region free... I'm gonna think about buying it, but I don't know. The only STG that I'd really like to (maybe) play nowadays is Futari's GOD mode, which is not included in the port. Damn.
Anyway, the day ended well and I was able to get on a cheap train in time to get home at 1:30AM after a 6 hours long stupid trip. Not too bad :/
Whatever. For full results and stuff about VGH, please check AEX's homepage in a few days. We'll have pictures uploaded soon as well, so watch out for our galleries as well.
Geez, this post was long... Not going to happen again soon, I guess!