Sunday, February 1, 2009

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. =)

4 comments:

  1. sup tien lang,

    i'm ken, a mvc2 regular (and recreational guilty gear and xvsf player) who like everyone else has hopped on the sf4 bandwagon. Just wanna say congrats on the successes of the tournies so far and it's awesome what you're doing for the local fg scene man, more than what I could dream for marvel, but ah well.

    so yeah just thought to let you know that i'm available if you need any help with whatever you're doing. also i wanna get to know more top players so i can step my game up a bit(transiting from mvc2's a bitch). and yeah ya got msn or sth? wouldnt mind to discuss sf4 and whatnot.

    so yeah hit me up and continue to do what you're doin man.

    ken

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  2. Saw the posters being put up at the Century Square arcade earlier today, was surprised (in a good way) to know we have our own community going on.

    Would it be good to put a tagboard up too?

    -Fabian (Rufus)

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  3. Hey Fabian,

    Good to know that the banners are finally up elsewhere.

    A forum is in the works and I'll post up details on the main page when it is, which is quite soon actually.

    Ken: Welcome to the best game in the Arcade haha jke. Thanks for the grats, I'm really proud of what's happenin with SF4 right now. Will definitely hit you up if I need help with anything, and I'm more than happy to help you with the game in any way.

    My msn is the same as the email I put up on my profile, but I'm hardly on/busy most of the time tho. Still, do drop me a mail if you're heading down to Bugis on a Friday/Sunday and/or Plaza Sing during the week. =)

    BTW what's your MvC2 team?

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  4. Tien Lang,

    Thanks for the welcome man. haha but it's true though, SF4's gotta be one of the most accessible yet competitive fighting games in a long time imo.

    And mmm i'm working on my ground game, spacing and distance judgment. Still getting the hang of not having 8 way air dashes and flight, amongst other things, heh.

    Oh I'm at PS thursday nights coz i've got music classes there, and im at bugis every sat. i'll probably be at bugis on fris/suns to get in as much sf4 practice as possible. haha i'll let you know if i'm heading down though. when are you usually there?

    and oh i mainly use MSP and Row or the occasional Cable/Sent/AA. I'll use storm/sent teams if i have to though but i usually avoid them like the plague, haha.

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