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...
