Full details on this Friday's 1v1 @ AMK+a special prize

Pictured above is a Samsung WEP301 Bluetooth headset worth $40 that's going to the winner of this Friday's tournament! This was kindly donated by Kenny from the community, and I think this is really cool because people are stepping up to help me on my quest to build a positive, internationally competitive Street Fighter scene here in Singapore.

As the winner get's the Bluetooth headset (which he can easily sell away for say, half the retail price if he doesn't want it), I'm re-structuring the token prizes so 2nd and 3rd place get more. Below are the full details of the tournament and also the prize update.

Time: Tournament starts at 8pm sharp. Registration opens at 7pm. Look for the microphone/laptop booth near the SF4 machines. Come down after work and dinner!

Place: Virtualand, Level 2 Bic Mac Centre Ang Mo Kio (Next to AMK Hub)Website: http://www.tkaworld.com/

Entry Fee and Prizes: $2, pay for your own games. All entry fees will be converted into TKA Virtualand tokens that will make up the 'pot'. This must be done because prizes cannot be in cash, as doing such would violate the anti-gambling laws of the land.

1st Place wins 40% of the total token pot.
2nd Place wins 35% of the total token pot.
3rd Place wins 25% of the total token pot.

TKA has decided to chip in and effectively DOUBLE the pot prize. This means that for every dollar collected from entry fees, TKA will be topping up an additional dollar to that.


Other rules
- No characters are banned.
- Each match will be best of 3.
- All players must indicate the character they wish to use upon registration. No switching mid-tournament allowed, Japanese style.
- No forms of physical and/or verbal intimidation outside of the game shall be used whatsoever. This is a friendly tournament people.
- Due to legal issues, winners may NOT sell their tokens for cash within the TKA Virtualand premises.

Format: Group stage matches. This allows every player to get at least 3-4 games in. Best 2 of each group advance to the knockout stages.

***UPDATED: Frequently asked questions!!***


Q: Why should I join this tournament? Won't all the 'pros' be there?! I won't have a chance of winning!
A: Because of this.

The above link is a must-read in my opinion.

And also because I hope we'll all have a good time knowing the rest of the people in the Singapore SF4 scene. Let's all have fun playing this game that we all love together!

For those that think they're really good, come down and prove it.

Q: Why are you hosting this tournament? What do you have to gain from it?
A: I don't receive any money whatsoever from this. There are two big reasons why I'm doing this.
1) To get the whole SF4 Singapore community together. Currently, it's pretty fragmented.
2) To increase the level of SF4 play in Singapore. From what I hear, there's a good chance that top Japanese players will be invited to compete at the next TKA SF4 tournament here. The possibility of that, and I want to put Singapore's SF4 scene on the world map with match videos and hopefully see some Singaporeans at international tournaments soon!


Remember to check out past tournament and casual videos @ http://www.youtube.com/user/atatashai .

If you have any questions you can email me at tien_lang@hotmail.com. See you this Friday!

~Lang

Special thanks to Bernard from TKA Virtualand for giving this event the green light and full support.

Next stop: Ang Mo Kio!

Heads up on the next tournament this Friday! (27/2/09)

In line with my goal to develop the SF4 scene around the country, the next venue of the tournament won't be at Bugis but instead will be at Virtualand Ang Mo Kio, which is located @ Big Mac Centre Level 2. A picture of the outlet location can be found here (Just scroll down). It like, right next to Ang Mo Kio hub, which is right on top of Ang Mo Kio MRT.

The format will be reverted back to 1v1 since it's a new venue and we want to encourage as many 'walk-in' participants as possible. Rules and everything will be the same as the last tournament. I'm looking to include a very special prize on top of the token winnings this time around, so check back soon for updates on that!

I've always loved the 'traveling to find new opponents' aspect of Street Fighter, and I'm hoping to meet and connect with some serious players there that I haven't met before.

After all, in these hard economic times, competition gets tougher everywhere you look! Just look at this...

Stick it to the man

With the release of Street Fighter 4 for the consoles has come an unprecedented demand for fighting sticks for home use. Not only are sticks selling out across the country, but every time I pop into a SF4 discussion board 80% of the posts are on sticks! This is a really good thing because the interest in sticks means that people want to play this game seriously, which can only be good for the scene as a whole. I'm not going to be elitist, but you aren't going to play this game to it's full potential if you insist on using a pad.

Now, as some of you may know, I personally own a Madcatz SF4 Tournament Edition stick, which in my opinion is the greatest mass-produced fighting stick ever made. Even though this baby cost me about US$180, it's definitely worth the price. People have been asking me left and right how I got my hands it so I thought I'd post a heads up here on my blog. Here are some things you should know about the stick (pictured above) and how I got it.
- I pre-ordered the stick late December last year from Barnes and Noble, a retailer from the USA. I ordered from them because they accept paypal and most credit cards without the need for you to verify. Some of you guys have probably heard the name Gamestop USA being thrown around on www.shoryuken.com as one of the US distributors of the stick and that's the case here: Barnes and Noble is only a middleman. Gamestop actually ships the stick and stocks it.
- Why is this important to you, aspiring Madcatz TE stick owner? Because, currently, the sticks are sold out even in the US and on the two sites mentioned. With only a limited run of 3000 and only a US/Europe license (Hori got the Asian license from Capcom), Madcatz has to prioritize customers that bought from US sources before they can even think about sending any units over to Asia. This means that its absolutely pointless to pre-order your sticks from shops here. In fact, all shops here that placed a pre-order with Madcatz got a letter from them saying that they didn't have stock to ship to Asia. As a matter of policy and because of the HORI Asia license, this has to be done.
- www.play-asia.com WAS stocking the sticks, but at an inflated price. My guess was that they pre-ordered not from Madcatz, but from a US retailer like Gamestop, so therefore their overhead was higher and therefore the higher price.
- So what's the solution? My advice is to keep watching the US retailers for when they start taking pre-orders for the next batch of sticks, rumored to come late March/early April. Aside from Barnes and Noble and Gamestop, www.lizardlick.com also stocks these sticks.

So there you have it, I hope this gives everyone interested a good idea of the situation at hand. If I get any news on their availability with any US retailers, I'll be sure to post it up. In the meantime, it looks like I'm the only person in Singapore with this bundle of love because a) Everyone I know hardcore enough to get this hasn't and b) Not a single shop in Singapore managed to bring it in. BUT! I'd like to be proven wrong so, just out of curiosity if you know anyone else who has this do let me know! Maybe he can give everyone tips as to how to get it as well.

Also, importantly, if you've already splashed the cash on a HRAP/any other stick and want the same quality that the Madcatz TE stick is offering without having to buy a second stick, you can get your stick modded to the genuine Sanwa Denshi parts that the Madtcatz TE stick uses. How? A friend of mine, Farp, is one of Singapore's premier stick modders and he's offering a Sanwa upgrade to almost any stick at $50 (parts and labor). If you're interested, you can email him at farpenoodle AT gmail DOT com.
EDIT:

- The price listed on SF4SG ($50) is for Hori REAL ARCADE PROs only.
This is because the parts are easily replaced and you will be paying for parts + his traveling/labor fee etc.

- For Fighting Stick EX2.. these require soldering and pretty much opening up the whole stick. These jobs will be around the $100 mark. He'll be holding on to your stick for a few days if you want this done. If you are considering adding a decal on to the stick. You'll want to contact him for the template, get the decal designed and printed (or he can help you print it I think, added costs) and pass it to him before changing buttons. As changing the decals post button-swap is comparatively tedious.

Now, practice your set-ups and combos at home and test them at the arcade and tournaments!

Coming soon: how to use SF4's training mode to effectively break the game down.

13 Feb 2v2 Tournament Results and Finals Videos

Man, what a tournament! 18 teams of two descended upon Bugis Virtualand on Friday the 13th for our third bi-weekly tournament, this time with a 2v2 format. There were lots of incredible matches between great players, and I'm really believing that if the level of play keeps improving as it's done weekly, then Singapore will be recognized as a major Street Fighter 4 power very soon. I'll be uploading my choice videos from the tournament in the coming days, but in the meantime here's the video of the EPIC, SIMPLY EPIC final match between Leslie, using Abel, and Raven, using Balrog.

But before that, the results.

1st place: Team Shadowlaw- Ganguro (M.Bison) and Leslie (Abel)
2nd place: Team Watermelon- Raven (Balrog) and Yama (Rufus)
3rd place: Team Tan and Guan- Ah Guan (Akuma) and Peihoon (Balrog)
4th place: Team Ninja Turtle- Kenny (Ken!) and Simon (Ryu)

And here are your champions!


From Left: Team Watermelon, Team Shadowlaw and Team Tan & Guan

Here are the videos of the finals. At first, Yama from Team Watermelon and Leslie from Team Shadowlaw faced off..



Since Yama lost, Raven had to win his match or else it was game over.



And he did! So we have the deciding match between Raven and Leslie. Simply Epic.



This game is really balanced, I truly believe any character can win well.

Anyways, thanks to all who came down! And for those of you that didn't (or are sitting at home playing online!You know who you are), I highly encourage you to come down to the tournaments or even just the arcades one of these days. Somehow, you learn alot from watching watching 'the pros' play in real life.

Watch this blog for upcoming videos, podcasts, tutorials and guides aimed at helping YOU become a better player! In the meantime, as always, remember that you can find past local tournament and casual games here.

A warm welcome to all console players

Greetings! I'm sure many of you, like me, have just received your bundles of joy from retailers across the country in the past few days. Either that, or you plan to get your copy really soon. Congrats!

Whether this is your first time playing a fighting game, or whether you're an arcade veteran that's been away from the scene until now,I would like to invite you and welcome you to the growing competitive and casual Street Fighter scene in Singapore. Do keep watching this blog for guides, interviews with top SG players and more videos of high-level play from our bi-weekly tournaments @ TKA Virtualand, Bugis Junction.

I'm hoping that, with all that's going on in the offline gaming scene, that this encourages you, the console Street Fighter, to come down to our friendly events and gatherings. As Sam "Aheda" would say, online is convenience, and offline is an experience. How true. Even though I'm absolutely LOVING my copy of SF4 for the PS3, online play pales in comparison to offline play. Here are some reasons why.

- Even with a full-strength connection, there is still a fraction of lag. Whenever I pull off a devastating move or combo, it doesn't feel half as satisfying knowing that you did it to the person sitting next to you.
- When you just got beat by a tactic or combo you've never encountered before, you can't ask or comment to the person that just did it to you how he/she (yes, girls do play at the arcades) did it.
- It's much easier to make friends if you can see them while you play. =) It's also a good idea to be outside of the house on a weekend, rather than sitting at home playing online.
- I can say this with confidence: once you've got a basic grasp of the game, the fastest way to improve is to play in the arcades and in tournaments. I've posted this before, but here's why.

http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/advanced-players-guide.html

- As for the console only characters, I'm confident that the arcade will receive an update soon. If I were Capcom, I wouldn't want to release the arcade patch too near the release of the console version, as having the console characters 'exclusive' for now is a big selling point. However, once they've moved enough copies I'm pretty sure an arcade update will be made available, as has been done with other games like Guilty Gear and Virtua Fighter. Arcade gaming is still a good industry and Capcom wouldn't want to piss their buyers from Japan, Korea, Singapore and Australia off by shafting them with no updates.

-Now that you have the game at home, you can practice those links and combos. SF4 is very accessible, and once you get the basics down you'll be playing at a decent level with many people in no time. For me and many others, the ultimate joy of playing Street Fighter is fighting a human opponent on a level where you're both concentrating on reading each other's minds on an advanced level. Once you get the basics out of the way by practicing at home, it is my hope that you can experience this for yourself at our events in the future.

- If you've been to Bugis or other arcades with top competition and feel you can't get games in or the level is too high for you, fret not. I'm looking to organize some casual CASUAL events at less 'hardcore' arcades.

Our community is growing fast and it's really an exciting time to be playing fighting games in Singapore. Big, international-scale events and tournaments are on the horizon, and me, together with other prominent members of the community, are working hard to bring the entire Singapore fighting game community together. Watch this space for the official announcement on our very own forums and SG fighting game portal!

Oh, and remember to check out local videos @ http://www.youtube.com/user/atatashai.

Also, G3 @ Funan lvl5 will be having a copy of SF4 running outside of their outlet free to play all day (11amto8pm) today and tomorrow. This is your chance to show off your skills if you think you're good (still come for the tourney @Bugis, 8pm tho!) and also to check out the console version if you haven't already.

Full Details on this Friday's 2v2

Most of this info is a re-post of details from the last tournament. However, do pay attention to the RULES, FORMAT and FAQ portions which provides details on how this 2v2 will be run.

Time: Tournament starts at 8pm sharp. Registration opens at 7pm. Look for the microphone/laptop booth near the SF4 machines. Come down after work and dinner!

Place: Virtualand, B1 Bugis Junction. (Right on top of Bugis MRT)Website: http://www.tkaworld.com/

Entry Fee and Prizes: $2, pay for your own games. All entry fees will be converted into TKA Virtualand tokens that will make up the 'pot'. This must be done because prizes cannot be in cash, as doing such would violate the anti-gambling laws of the land.

1st Place wins 50% of the total token pot.
2nd Place wins 30% of the total token pot.
3rd Place wins 20% of the total token pot.

TKA has decided to chip in and effectively DOUBLE the pot prize. This means that for every dollar collected from entry fees, TKA will be topping up an additional dollar to that.

*****UPDATED: 2v2 Rules*****
- Each team consists of 2 members, and they can both pick any character they want. So a team can have 2 Ryu's if ever.
- If you've been in the top 4 of the past 2 tournaments so far, you cannot team with someone else who's also been in the top 4. This is to prevent 'super teams' from forming.
- Each team will look to beat the other team in the current round by eliminating both of their players. Lets say team 1 has players A and B, and team 2 has players C and D. A fights C first and beats him. Then if A beats D, team 1 wins that round. If A loses, then its the final match between B and D to determine which team wins the round.
- Each team must nominate a team captain. The role of the team captain is to notify the tournament judges (recognizable by the tags around their necks. These judges may be entrants of the tournament themselves.)about their choice of which player in their team goes first, each round. This notification is whispered to the judge so as to not give any matchup advantages to the team that picks second.
- Team order may be changed after/before every round.


Other rules
- No characters are banned.
- Each match will be best of 3.
- All players must indicate the character they wish to use upon registration. No switching mid-tournament allowed, Japanese style.
- No forms of physical and/or verbal intimidation outside of the game shall be used whatsoever. This is a friendly tournament people.
- Due to legal issues, winners may NOT sell their tokens for cash within the TKA Virtualand premises.

**UPDATE!!**
Format: Group stage matches. This allows every player to get at least 3-4 games in. Best 2 of each group advance to the knockout stages.

***UPDATED: Frequently asked questions!!***

Q: What's the deal with 2v2 this time around?
A: 1) Because it adds a new dimension to the tournaments so far, and I think it's more fun. =)
2)This balances certain very bad matchups that some characters have against each other. Wile it's the most balanced fighter in YEARS, SF4 is still a very matchup dependent game: some characters are great against some, and really bad against others. Having a 2v2 format allows players to 'balance' their teams by covering their character's bad matchup with their teammate's character selection. For example, C.Viper's worst matchup in the game is E.Honda. The player using C.Viper can cover this up by getting a Guile player as a partner to eliminate this bad matchup.

I hope that this mention of matchups helps newer players to get started on adding the element of matchups in their thinking of game strategy.

Oh, and this year's SBO/Tougeki, the largest arcade gaming tournament in the world, is having a 2v2 format for SF4 as well. I hope that someday, we'll be able to send our top players to Japan for this competition and it would be good to give them some experience in this format.

Q: Why should I join this tournament? Won't all the 'pros' be there?! I won't have a chance of winning!
A: Because of this.

http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/advanced-players-guide.html

The above link is a must-read in my opinion.

And also because I hope we'll all have a good time knowing the rest of the people in the Singapore SF4 scene. Let's all have fun playing this game that we all love together!

For those that think they're really good, come down and prove it.

Q: Why are you hosting this tournament? What do you have to gain from it?
A: I don't receive any money whatsoever from this. There are two big reasons why I'm doing this.
1) To get the whole SF4 Singapore community together. Currently, it's pretty fragmented.
2) To increase the level of SF4 play in Singapore. From what I hear, there's a good chance that top Japanese players will be invited to compete at the next TKA SF4 tournament here. The possibility of that, and I want to put Singapore's SF4 scene on the world map with match videos and hopefully see some Singaporeans at international tournaments soon!

With the imminent release of SF4 on the PS3 and XBOX 360, I hope these tournaments give everyone who's planning on playing the game solely at home a great reason to keep coming back to the arcades.

Nothing beats face to face human competition. =)

Remember to check out past tournament and casual videos @ http://www.youtube.com/user/atatashai . Also, if you have trouble finding a partner for this Friday's tournament, please refer to the post immediately below.

If you have any questions you can email me at tien_lang@hotmail.com. See you this Friday!

~Lang

Special thanks to Bernard from TKA Virtualand for giving this event the green light and full support.

Need a partner for the next tourney? SF4 Singapore matchmaking service is here!

Yes, with valentines day around the corner, love is in the air. Now, if you don't happen to have a partner for the next 2v2 tournament, don't fret! Just post your need here in the comments section of THIS post, and I'll match you guys up for you randomly.

Format should be like this: 22/m/s looking for 18/f/s. asl???

Just kidding la!! Just post the nick and character you'll be using during the tournament stating you need a 2v2 partner haha. =)

Announcement for next tourney

Just a quick announcement that, as usual, next Friday's tournament is ON. Whats gonna be different this time around is the format: its 2v2 action time! Thats right, find a friend, have some tag battle fun. I'll post up the full ruleset for the 2v2 format soon as I finalize some details, but as for now the only rule is that if you've placed in the top 4 of any of the tournaments before, you cannot pair up with another person who placed top 4 before. I hope this balances things out a little.=)

Oh, and in the meantime do think of a funky name for your team! pre-tournament team horn-blowing is highly encouraged in the comments section hahaha.

Anyways as usual, same time, same place. Venue is TKA virtualand and registration starts at 7:30. Tournament proper will start at 8pm. Do scan the blog archives for now for my past tourney announcements for more details on prizes etc. Only the format has changed.

SF4 @ TKA outlets now only 1 token (50cents) per play!

That's right folks. Today, TKA Virtualand revised their pricing plan for SF4 to a much more price of 1 token (50cents) per game. While it is now only best of 3 instead of 5, this is still a discount if you do the math.

What I'm more pleased about with regards to this new price scheme is that it's now much cheaper for new players to get their feet wet in beginner/trail mode as fighting the computer was always best of 3 anyways.

As for vs sessions this is also great because for less money, we can now experiment with different characters. This also means that, if you're good, you rack up wins faster haha. ;p

What all this means is that there's less excuse now to get a few games in at the arcade. See you there!

2nd Tournament roundup + my favourite matches

From left: Me, Leslie C.(4th), Peihoon(1st), Alan(3rd), Simon/Leslie(2nd), Bernard from TKA



More pics of the champs.


And here's Peihoon with the champion smile. =)

The second SF4Singapore+Bugis TKA Virtualand tournament was an even bigger success than the first with 32 participants. What I really liked about this tournament was the number of new faces, people from different parts of the country, that came down this time. Some came down because they had something to prove. Some came down to savor the atmosphere. And then there were those that came down knowing they had no shot at winning anything but knew they would level their game up if they did. I'd like to personally thank you guys for the support and I wish I could have had a chat with everyone of you.

This scene is rapidly growing and I'm really excited for what the future holds. I can't reveal much now but with the console release around the corner and big (and I mean BIG) events around the corner the scene is set to explode. As its growing now and when it explodes, I'd like to encourage everyone to be as nice as they can to new players who are just right now picking the game up. Don't extinguish that spark they have because they suck right now by snickering at scrubby tactics or whatnot. All it takes is some coaching and you'll see many of the new players turn into real competition in no time. That's what I love about SF4: you don't have to spend too much time on the game to get to a decent level.

Anyways without further adieu here are the results of the tournament!

1st. Peihoon (Balrog)
2nd. Simon/Leslie (Ryu)
3rd. Alan (Zangief)
4th. Leslie C. (Abel)

5th to 8th (in no particular order)
- Rchan (Rufus)
- Chwan (Blanka)
- Weijie (Ryu)
- Yagami (El Fuerte)

Look at the character diversity above!!! SF4 is looking REALLY balanced right now. As some of you may know, Iyo won the recent Japan nationals with Dhalsim last week. Every character can compete. Yes, even Vega. Just youtube search "SF4 Makoto Vega" and be amazed.

And I'm really glad an Abel made it to the top 4, which is why I'd like to highlight Leslie C.'s matches at this time. The finals were amazingly tactical as usual featuring Ryu vs Balrog, but I'll post that another time.

Do note that while Leslie loses the series, the Zangief-Abel matchup heavily favors Zangief, as Abel needs to get close to do damage, but Zangief is just a more of a monster up close. Not taking anything away from Alan's Gief. I really like his vocabulary of Zangief pokes and his command of distance.



and part 2



I would also like to take this time to make a public apology to Axel(and everyone)! Due to disorganization on our part, we failed to notice that in the 3 way group E tie-breaker, Axel won 2 matches as did Johnny. Somehow, I don't know how, we thought it was 1-1 between Axel and Alan which is why we called for a deciding match between them, whereas in fact Axel should have gone through to the knockout stages.

What I really hate about this situation is that this affects not only Axel, but also Alan's legitimacy. Rest assured measures will be taken to prevent this from happening again, one of which is during the next tournament, all brackets will be displayed on a projector screen for increased transparency. Once again, apologies to everyone.

While we're talking about Axel and Alan, their match happened to be one of the best in the tournament. Good Chun Li's are hard to find which is why I'm featuring this video here.



As always you can access past tournament+casual videos on my youtube channel at

http://www.youtube.com/user/atatashai

I want to thank David, Mark C, Cody, Kenny, Joseph, Rchan, Sky and Bernard from TKA, for helping run the tournament! Thanks guys!

Have a good week and God bless. =)