Northwest VF (Pacific NW, North America)

Thursday Night Fights @ Versis (Gresham, OR)

For quite a few Thursday Nights now, we've had some of the fighting game players come out at Versis and it's been fun. It's almost a regular thing now, though different people have shown up on different weeks.

The usual games have been Virtua Fighter 5, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection. We also have Super Puzzle Fighter available and connecting Dreamcasts to the stations is possible.

In any case, I've had a great time playing VF at the events and I'm looking forward to it every Thursday when I can.

Greatly appreciate Mackinzie posting the Versistua thread (on SRK). While there wasn't as much participation in the thread, there was actually decent activity on the nights. Since VF is not the only game featured on those nights though, I felt I should just start a new thread.

Would love to carry some Smash, VF, and T5DR conversations here too ^_^

-Chanchai

Address:

Versis Entertainment Center
1356 NW Civic Dr.
Gresham, OR 97030
(503) 491-1068

http://www.versisonline.com

Located in the Gresham Station shopping area. Behind Old Navy, very close to Big Town Hero. On Civic Dr. between Burnside and Division (approx. where 220th would be).

 

I had the honor of playing against MasaRED last night on Live and had a blast! Jealous of Washington... You guys had YOSUKE, now you have Masa!

Anyways, Masa's Shun is so much fun to fight against. So solid and forces me to give it my all and gamble at times.

I look forward to many more matches and maybe even some good ol' offline VF ^_^

-Chanchai

 

Haven't posted on here in a looong time so here's the updates on what's going on Seattle:

As femto posted before we are having a major up here, but the date has been changed to June 28th.

The tournaments at Zach's have slowed down tremendously. We went down to 1/2 the competitors in a span of 2 weeks, and then not having any tournaments these last 2 weeks. Where is everyone at???? At the last gathering all it was was myself and Clayton going at it for about 20 matches.

So I just want to know where all my regulars are at? I know rob the plummer hasn't been practicing so he hasn't been entering tournaments. And the Rob the Lei-Fei player, along with Zach the mai player just went M.I.A. after showing up for 2 weeks. I haven't seen Ed in a while either. I haven't seen Ryanloop in a minute either, but I'm pretty positive as to why he hasn't been there which I can understand. But with all this being said. There are talks of dropping VF5 from the NW major. And to be quite honest I don't want that to happen. Yeah our scene isn't on the scale of Marvel or ST, but we still have a scene, and yeah I haven't been playing but I'm always down to play when I have time.

So again to recap:

Where are all my regular VFer's at for the tournaments at Zach's?

VF is in danger of being dropped from the NW major.

I got raped against Brisal for my first match in the WCG qualifiers, which in turn makes me want to play even more now.

get at me on here or SRK.

P.S. another issue in regarding the major is they need 360's and games for VF, from what I've seen there are 2 (including mine) and they want to have something along the lines of 5 or 6 total for the tournament. People should step it up and say that they can donate stuff for the tournament. Just hop over to the northwest forums and post a reply. Hopefully PDX can make it out to this too.

http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=151281 <- link to the PNW major loan thread.

 

$5.99 to play fighting games all night.

That's right!

$5.99 to play Smash Bros. and other Fighting Games EVERY THURSDAY from 6pm-Close @ Versis. Again, $5.99 covers the whole night.

We call it Versis' Meet. Greet. Play. and we are marketing the event constantly.

We will be doing this every Thursday Night at Versis and the special price is limited to Smash Bros. and other Fighting Games (I'll even include Fight Night Round 3 though).

BTW, we will let people bring Dreamcasts and VGA Boxes to hook up to our TVs (they have VGA inputs). You are also always allowed to bring your own games, controllers, and accessories if you feel it is necessary.

Hope to see you guys there!

Versis Entertainment Center
1356 NW Civic Dr.
Gresham, OR 97030
(in Gresham Station, behind Old Navy, next to Big Town Hero)
http://www.versisonline.com

Meet. Greet. Play.
Thursdays: 6pm-Close
Smash Bros. Brawl & Other Fighting Games
$5.99
(you will have to go on the clock with a separate rate to play non-fighting games)

 

Hey Chan is versis like a big wig company type thing? Or is this your business? Ever thought about expanding up in Seattle? =D

 

I'll be at the next tourney for sure. Looking for a new place to live is on the forefront for now but hopefully things go cool these next couple of days and me and the roomies can get this new place. IF that happens, I would like hold gatherings(gotta discuss with the roomies first) for VF.

 

Re: Thursday Night Fights @ Versis (Gresham, OR)

If this is still an ongoing thing I should stop by for sure. I've been out of the loop for a while now and really miss my VF.

Let me know if there are any weeks in particular that you plan on being present if that is possible. I know, from when we last spoke, that your work schedule is wonky.

 

Re: Thursday Night Fights @ Versis (Gresham, OR)

Ratgoat, OMG! Was just talking about you today and hoping you could start coming out to these things. Since you're out in Beaverton, you can take the Max to Gresham (long ride, but worth it!).

It's an ongoing thing! I really hope you can make it because I really would love to have you playing with us in the VF scene.

I'm present every week, it's actually my company (I'm the Chief of Operations/Secretary/General Manager) ^___^

Side Note: We do a similar thing for Halo 3 every Tuesday night. Same price, $5.99 for the whole evening.

-Chanchai

 

Frank,

Versis is run by my partner and myself, but we're working hard to make it big. We want to expand, but current focus is to make our Gresham store as big of a success as can be, if we can do that, then we can talk about growth.

Fortunately, we have some very talented people and some very strong backers but in no way is it going to be easy ^_^

-Chanchai

 

Want to thank Thomas, Ray, Anthony, Hien, Andrew (T), and Kent for coming out tonight! I had a great time with the VF matches. Smash matches looked good. Sorry the Tekken matches started late, but I hope those went well.

Hyper Fighting matches between Ray and Anthony were fun to watch ^_^

Kent, sorry I'm always heading out when you get there but I'll try to find time to work on the Steve tips you're helping me out with! While it's late to be playing T5DR, I'd like to at least be competent enough to hang in there a few seconds more against you guys!

Anthony, glad you made it out and hope we can get more T5DR and other games going on in the future. We'll try to arrange Dreamcasts or something to bring more 2d fighters back into the mix. I appreciate you watching our VF matches. While VF probably is more of an up-close in-your-face fighter, I hope it grows on you. You can actually play VF5 very defensively with spacing, but it can be hard.

Thomas, enjoyed watching your VF and Smash games. For a good while now, you've been very solid on maximizing damage and taking advantage of stagger opportunities decently. And from the beginning you've been great at playing patiently. You're steadily reducing the 50/50 opportunities that I create, but they are still the bane of your Aoi's existence--namely, I setup a lot of interrupts with the low and high punch. But over the course of all the matches recently, you're improving in this area. Don't worry though, it's the bane of Northwest VF existence at the moment (or at least Portland). The only ones I see handling this situation okay sometimes (not all the time) is Ray and Myself. But we still get it tough here--50/50 is tough when your opponent knows how to make the damage huge for a wrong guess.

Hien, your Jacky actually is handling things better overall but as we went over--I want to improve some basic snap reflexes for you. Getting used to doing a fast poke (elbow or low punch) immediately when blocking a low punch. It's tough at first because you can easily not realize you're blocking a low punch--but with practice and reasonable focus over time, you'll get the hang of it and it'll become a sharper reflex. After that, it's forcing 50/50 guessing games whenever you elbow stagger someone since that's a strong potential element of your game.

Ray, great matches tonight. Your Wolf drives me insane and I have to keep it really basic while reducing your 50/50 opportunities. Great overall Wolf game, especially near the edge of the ring. Your Vanessa always drives me insane once you initiate a rush, especially since you know when I try to low punch interrupt you. I need to research Vanessa sometime to see when I can stop that rush of yours but it is very frustrating and you make excellent use of her full arsenal. You're the only North American Vanessa that I know that uses such a large variety of her moves (to good effect). It's a real pleasure fighting you when you're playing any of your characters. I wish I could be so proficient with multiple characters, but it's really hard for me to get there.

Anyways, I had a blast and thanks guys!

-Chanchai

 

Good games to Nick! Still waxing me even though I got the stick. Still need the skill tho'...

So what's up with this MasaRED? I sent him in an invite and hope to hear from him soon. Is he still in the WA area?

 

Great games, Femto! I'll admit, it can be frustrating for me to play on a 360 pad, but we had some good matches in there ^_^

You have some mean tricks with your Blaze. We'll hopefully get some time to play some offline VF to tighten up your up-close exchanges--I think your game could improve a lot there and El Blaze can hold his own up close.

That said, there are some times where you really know how to pile on the damage. I'm looking forward to next time ^_^

I didn't mean to cut short our last session, but I was playing on the side while the A/C repairman was doing his thing on the roof of one of our stores.

-Chanchai

 

Got 1st tonight!

Frank is a weiner.


Masa good games the other night. I'll be getting you next time or at least sometime before I die.

Nick get a stick mang!

 

Anyone still playing online? I've hopped on the past few nights, but I didn't see anyone on there. Actually, that's not true, I saw Mike but I couldn't remember how to invite people into matches.

BTW, apparently I randomly fought MasaRED a long time ago.

I dunno if I can make it out to Versis for the special, but if enough people can make it I'll try and go.

 

Hey Andrew! Great to see you here ^_^

We had a good Fight Night this past Thursday with Rayblade, Jetay, Ratgoat, and myself playing VF5. We also had Anthony playing Tekken 5 DR (with Ray and Jetay--Kent couldn't make it out early enough) and Thomas and Andrew Tran on Smash.


<u>VF5 Battles Overview</u>
I had a great time with the VF battles. While I took the edge against Ratgoat, each match was a lot of fun and whenever he could muster up courage, confidence, and focus--well, he would either put up one helluva fight and we would have creative battles, or he would take me down. Very fun and it's a very different kind of match than the ones I have against almost anyone else in Portland. He had a lot more courage and strength under pressure this week than last week--and he gave everyone else a good run for their money.

Ratgoat vs. Rayblade matches were very, very fun matches to watch! I don't often sit and watch matches, but I was really enjoying watching the two fight with their styles of play matching up nicely.


<u>Ray's Wolf from Hell</u>
Ray didn't peak until around 9pm, but at that time, his Wolf tore me a new one for a good long streak of games. I think the count during those matches we played straight was like 7-2 for Ray (I won a ton of matches the rest of the night and before, but when Ray was in the zone with Wolf, it felt almost impossible to fight but I think we produced some of the best matches between us during those bouts).

It's really hard fighting against Wolf for me because of Wolf's damage if you guess wrong. If I force the 50/50 game too much in an aggressive gambling game, it's hard because it's like giving Wolf the advantage in a way because he has more high damage options and will do greater damage for each guess. But being aggressive against Ray's Wolf is what made our matches so interesting when I was losing, it was just a lot of fun to pretty much go All In constantly.

Later in the night, I was able to deal with his Wolf better when I played less aggressive and would poke a lot until he might be convinced I won't rush so much, and then rush him. But that plan is hard and sometimes he can feel when I'll break out of the poking game because of his experience fighting against me. The thing I am having trouble dealing with is the way Ray will use Wolf's DM (dodging attack). It's a dodging catch throw and it is very annoying for me because it can get me out of certain attacks but I will often be a deer in the headlights standing and blocking when it's coming because I was expecting an attack for some reason. I used to not have trouble with Wolf's DM, but with the way I've been playing VF5 in 2008 (more 50/50, more aggressive), I am getting nailed by it a lot more than I used to.


<u>Ratgoat's Shun: advanced, but will get much stronger with more battles</u>
Can't criticize Ratgoat's game much at all because it's so well grounded and fundamentally correct on so many levels. The guy plays Shun right and proper as far as I can tell.

When his confidence is high, the same thing doesn't work on him twice. But if you break that confidence, then he can freeze up, but I feel that when he freezes up, he does fine against others--just not against me because I will attack him like a pitbull if I smell fear (when people get a bit afraid or lose confidence, they tend to block too much, I tend to poke and throw like nobody's business if I sense them blocking too much).

My experiences against LA Akira (a Shun player) last year is why I give Ratgoat so much of a hard time. I played marathon series of matches in Southern California with LA Akira and it taught me a ridiculous amount about fighting against Shun and why Lion has so many anti-Shun options. Some of the things that work for me in fighting against Shun:

-Since VF3, neutral throw and df+P+G are the only throws you really have to worry against Shun outside of heavy drinking and ring outs.

-If Shun is playing machi at mid-range in VF5, be wary of him going into Back-Turned Sou Stance where he can use that vicious windmill sabaki. The weakness against this sabaki is that you can do ranged low attacks if you can sense when he might do this. I can partially see it and I have a good instinct on when Shun players use this. I tend to punish even Japanese Shun players online for using BT Sou at mid-long range. Lion's b,df+P is a gift here.

-Evading when fighting up-close against Shun can be dangerous because he has some nice half-circulars and side-throw setups. Ray's love of evading is probably the bane of his existence when he fights against strong Shun players including Ratgoat.

-Footsying around at mid-long range isn't exclusive to Shun. Most characters have whiff punishers and ways to bait their opponents. While Shun excels at zoning opponents... with some experience against Shun, zoning Shun isn't a bad idea. Because I am a zoning type of player, this is one of the ways I level the playing field against Shun, I'll try to beat him at his own game and if he commits to something and doesn't connect in any way, he is often left wide open.

Anyways, I'm not trying to discourage Ratgoat from playing at all. The guy plays so solid and his damage maximizing is pretty darn good. I think his stance game could improve (it is already good though) and I never feel threatened near the edge of the ring or near a wall (he does do wall-combos though)--but I've always had a mentality of enjoying the fight on the edge.


<u>Chanchai's Idea of Shun Tips (for better or worse)</u>
Something we worked on and something that can turn the tides if I start rushing him with pokes and throws is Shun's u+K+G when well timed. If the opponent is going for a throw, this attack will beat the throw, even in clash situations. It's unclashable and I am going to say this is one of those times that Shun can gamble if he senses the opponent likes to throw. It would definitely reduce how much I throw.

Another thing that will make Ratgoat's Shun more powerful: stepping. A really good machi step is backdash --> evade --> backdash (b,b,d,b,b -or- b,b,u,b,b). I think Ratgoat should start mixing this into his opening option (b,b,d is a good opener, though it can get abused--Ray uses it well but I think he uses it too much at the start of the round).

Again... /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/b.gif /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/b.gif /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/d.gif /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/b.gif /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/b.gif is your friend. Your evade will cancel the backdash and he second backdash will cancel the evade. If your opponent does a linear attack against you during the backdash, you will evade it. For Shun, this makes him a bit stronger. You can also mix in crouchdashes and Shun's special maneuvers.

Mastering /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/b.gif /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/b.gif --> /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/d.gif /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/df.gif /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/f.gif /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/p.gif will strengthen your Shun. Let's call this "Modified Chouwan" (chouwan is the name of Shun's uppercut using the QCF+P command). Here are the reasons I think this will strengthen your Shun:

1) This will reduce your chance of getting a crouch while doing chouwan--the problem is that Shun cannot do a chouwan from crouch.

2) If you block a very deep sweep (one that will be in a very bad disadvantage on block, especially Pai's sweep or Lion's sweep), then there's a good chance you will hit your opponent for free if you can do this move as fast as possible. Buffering this attack properly (for example, doing it while you are recovering from an attack) should only add 1 frame to the execution of this attack. This should be fast enough to punish a deep sweep. With enough drinks, this might be stronger than using /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/u.gif /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/k.gif + /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/g.gif.

3) Eventually you can get comfortable using the Chouwan as a whiff punisher. A great setup is /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/d.gif /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/p.gif --> /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/b.gif /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/b.gif /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/d.gif /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/df.gif /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/f.gif /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/p.gif. If you are poking from mid-range, the low kick might also work as a setup poke.

Anyways, those are just my thoughts on your Shun. Despite my advice giving and all of that, I am really glad that the Northwest has someone that's very strong with Shun.


<u>Jetay, Rising from the Ashes</u>
Jetay was fun to play VF with as always. He hasn't played VF5 since the last time we met which was a few months ago, but it's always great playing when he's able to join us. More experience more often with up-close poke wars will make Jetay's Pai much stronger. It'll be a hard road though, but with experience he'll develop a sharper ability up-close in VF. However, his mid-range play can be very tricky and damaging. I always gotta be a bit more careful in those situations.


<u>Thomas and Andrew Might Get to Play at Versis for FREE!</u>
Awesome news for Thomas and Andrew: they are almost certainly going to be Versis' June MVPs because they are in position to win our Monthly Challenge for May which is to get the highest score doing Endless Smash (aka Survival Mode) in Smash Bros with 2 players. They beat the best score at the time, 518, with a shattering 599.

Anyways, if they become June's MVPs, they will get 2000 points (enough for 2 free hours -or- 4 free medium sodas -or- free food, etc... each). But the best part about becoming the MVP is that because they will have the highest Versis Points for the Challenges in May (we also have weekly challenges), THEY GET TO PLAY AT VERSIS FOR FREE ALL JUNE.

It was a very fun night. I hope people don't mind it when I post details on gameplay. I don't think I gave away anything damaging about Ray's game, but that would be hard to say because he's so good and even across many characters he carries his strengths.

Looking forward to next week!

-Chanchai

 

Ray's one nasty individual in this game. Your Vanessa is too good!

Chancahi - You are the man. Thanks for explanation here http://virtuafighter.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=158957&Board=15 . Also I'm down for a work shop after the Majors.

 

Thanks for the analysis Chanchai! I will try to work on your suggestions and I think they are all very legit.
Also, awesome roller coaster matches tonight! I really enjoyed those matches. Wish I would have saved them all.

 

Damn Chanchai, didn't know you were in Thailand still. Stay safe.


Anyways...gonna switch to Jacky for the time being. I lost because I sucked it up but also I need a fresh start. Maybe I'll play ST while R still makes it's way to console. Then again I wanna up my game so maybe I should just start playing people from VFDC....rambling.

 

Yes, everybody better be there on the 4th. I'll be there, and I'll finally be a little in practice!

 

Man, R is fucking broooooooke!

I hope there is some VF on the 4th, because I wanna go anyway and PDX VF would be icing on the cake.