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I really wish the best of luck to Wolmar… I’d rather say he’s got some guts to come here and play to be honest haha!
I’ll do my best. I’ll just give all I got.
Everything, like just everything can happen.
If Ryu, Chun-Li, or Blanka sound familiar, if you ever did a quarter circle motion on your snes d-pad
then you should know about Street Fighter II.
You sure know it’s a game that created the basis of a specific kind of games,
as we won’t talk about fighting games today if SFII didn’t exist, 20 years ago.
But did you know that game has been played all over the years still,
including at a competitive and high level?
With dedicated people, gathering all around the world into communities of players,
in order to practice and play against each other?
During 20 years, they sharpened up their techniques and strategies, they shared, taught each other…
These guys are a bit more than just “players”; here, we call them legends.
Here we are, in Las Vegas, Nevada.
In this city will take place a huge event in the small world of fighting games: EVO.
An all time classic is back in the business, finally : Super Street Fighter II Turbo.
We will follow Wolmar, only european player in the tournament, facing the best US and Japanese players.
Tournament of Legends starts today! But just before, an epic money match battle will occur,
with Damdai (for E.C) and Afro (W.C) fighting for glory and quite a lot of money.
A lot of people is also betting money on the result, but let's hear what Afro thinks about it.
The atmosphere gets more and more tensed : but here in Vegas,
betting money is pretty much like breathing air...
At last, the epic battle begins!
Picking the right character is a crucial step in ST,
guessing what character and strategy your opponent will go for,
allows you to start the challenge with a notable advantage.
As Afro just guessed, Old Hawk is the first character Damdai picks.
In ST you can pick the regular characters (called "new" or "X" versions) and, thanks to a code,
you can also pick their old counterparts.
These characters are the ones featuring in the previous version of SFII : SSFII the new challengers.
Slight differences for old versions : no super bar, can't tech throws, better normal moves in general.
And Old hawk is an overall better character than his new counterpart mainly for some better normal moves.
But, Deejay has a tremendous edge over T.Hawk no matter his version is,
and in all logic Damdai loses his first match.
Damdai changes his strategy at once, picking now Ryu, Old version again.
Despite a balanced to advantageous matchup this time, Damdai still fails;
he switches character again, selecting Old Ken.
After some failed attempts, Damdai's techniques seem now efficient.
Score is Afro 3, Damdai 1, but there seems to remain some hope on Damdai's side.
Damdai is sort of an underdog in that challenge, mainly because of the characters that he uses.
I think Afro got a slight edge from that point of view, so I decided to kind of support Damdai.
Damdai manages to win barely with Ken, but nothing's over yet.
You can feel his stress, and the gap between him and Afro gets bigger and bigger, as score reaches now 5/2.
Damdai picks again another character.
That matchup is close to be 5/5 in my opinion, with maybe even a slight edge in Deejay's favor.
O.Ryu has an invincible dragon punch, recovers fireballs fast, so he can annoy Deejay's fireball game.
The O.Ryu pick is clever.
You have to be patient and defensive though, trying to push Deejay far in the screen,
but that's not an easy thing to do.
That matchup looks like the Guile / Ryu matchup, which is the definition of a balanced matchup.
Two characters, two game styles but an even matchup.
Deejay / Old Ryu is pretty much the same : you gotta rely on patience, reflexes and guts.
One more for Damdai, maybe he's found how to beat that scary Deejay.
Just at that time, Afro switches to another character.
Boxer won't make it. Back to fundamentals : Afro picks Deejay again.
Damdai might lacked some guts in that one. He was really solid overall,
but it wasn't enough against a Deejay of that quality.
Now is the end of it. Afro Legends reaches 10 wins,
and you can see some disappointed faces in the crowd. Damdai just lost 600 dollars.
Atmosphere is morose and wiry. Afro doesn't cheer up with his crew, even though he did a great performance.
He played only Deejay except that one time he failed with Boxer.
Was a scary Deejay, Damdai seemed helpless at times.
I think Damdai would even agree he has been dominated in that challenge.
Wolmar doesn't like games involving money.
Him and Nico, his old friend, sound engineer of the report, both agree.
The atmopshere was ***, plain and simple. Damdai seemed so scared,
so nervous you could even see it as he was playing.
He was quivering as *** and stuff...
Definitely a crappy atmosphere, people weren't even that hype.
Was quite silent, dunno...
I just don't change my opinion about it; money matches suck ambience wise.
It's not the way to create hype, because there simply wasn't at all,
to create emotions, fun, everything the game is supposed to bring...
Money just doesn't bring anything.
Well he just got *** hard! Afro looked more relax, even if he was not entirely calm,
you could see it just watching the hands haha.
I dunno, Damdai looked... perturbed, it sucked.
Money just plainly sucks, I can just follow Wolmar on that one.
Money just represents something else in the US. It's quite a vast topic.
It's way beyond fighting games, more related to a culture.
In Japan, you don't bet money, as paying your credit is already sort of a bet.
Bets are rare in France, better ask a sociologist why!
But even among the US players, opinions are diverse.
Even if some pointed out the nervous atmosphere, the audience was still quite hype.
Positive result for the organization staff, but remember, the main thing here remains the tournament.
Once the brackets are done randomly, players at last know who they will have to face.
Wolmar now knows Marsgattai, best US Guile, will be his first opponent.
Pressure gets higher and higher, even for Nico, our sound engineer.
I have to say, watching a long time friend playing like Wolmar is stressful.
You know his cheap dirty playstyle, you just gotta play him to get it haha.
He likes to annoy you the hell out with the noogie throw,
and you hear that hell of a sound : yoga yoga!
So you gotta mash like crazy, it's so irritating,
and he does it like 3 times in a row just for you to die.
Playing Dhalsim sure is an advantage for Wolmar in that specific matchup.
The match begins, the gameplan used by the french player seems really on point.
Indeed, Guile is not a good character against Dhalsim.
Mars has to play one of his most difficult matchup, if not the worst of them all.
And Wolmar doesn't show any weakness here.
As every player here, he worked hard to know every matchup strategies,
so even the best Guile in the US can fear his gameplan accuracy.
Well that match was fine for me. I won 3/0 without too much problems.
I'm already happy to be in the top 16 haha, because I could have lost at first round!
3/0 for Wolmar, strong beginning! Marsgatti seems to be very disappointed;
he's not out though, he still can go through loser's bracket.
Chances are good to see him still play some more tournament rounds.
Wolmar seems really in shape, he shows a level as high as the tournament demands.
Wolmar was one of the first player to make tutorial vids on the web.
Guile's a charge character as Sim is a hadoken motion char
Then I started to read some forums and stuff,
and I realized he was one of the best french players at that time.
I was interested in knowing how the french ST scene evolved
And yeah, there is a french ST scene for sure.
SF2 is incredibly popular in Europe. One of the few genuine arcade games still alive.
People who played on cabinets at the time are still playing nowadays.
SF2 is composed by those old school players, and by new school players,
curious to discover the fundamentals of fighting games.
But when you try ST, well that's kinda addictive.
That variety of players is pretty unique in the fighting game scene.
I like the mature mentality of the scene, due to an older average players's age.
There is some solidarity in the ST scene,
because we all know it's the #1 condition for the game to still live.
You always get nice advices from players, the community is nice,
even for someone who doesn't play that much.
If you just like the game then you're a part of it.
Wolmar is here to represent that consolidated french ST scene,
in a place where the East Coast/West Coast rivalry is fierce.
But Internet and gathering like ToL may in the end calm down the good ol' rivalry.
Someone told you you were too friendly?
Ah yeah, Ultracombo told me so!
Told me he'd like the scene to have more hate, tension, for people to have even more that desire to win.
That's his point of view to make the game more hype, to get players to give their very best etc.
I think we can reach that result without it.
For instance, you don't always play casuals exactly like you play tourneys, that's true.
But that game, you just always want to win. No need to *** on your opponent's face for it.
When you grab the stick you just go 100% for the win anyways,
and you're salty when you lose, that's all.
Plus, I'm not sure you really give your best when you hate the guy your playing against.
In Japan, they don't have this mentality, and they are the best in the world.
It's just like an american point of view.
Next opponent for Wolmar : Alex Valle, one of the most famous US player.
Valle in the US is pretty much like Daigo in Japan : an absolute legend.
He's an O.G. from west coast.
He's not as young as he was though, I'm not sure if that affects his reflexes...
ST sure demands reflexes, especially when you're a Ryu player and you're facing Dhalsim.
Once again Wolmar is pretty lucky : on paper, Dhalsim has a clear edge.
But playing such a Ryu expert, he's gotta do things properly,
and not let the pressure grows as he's playing a SF2 true legend.
Just seeing his face was weird. I watched hundreds of vids of him...
At first I was analysing his gameplan. Would he throw randoms DP's?
Or was he that O.G player? Well he was that O.G for sure haha.
He was playing so cleanly, trying some safe wake up strategies, solid fireball game...
I was quite able to play my game.
That perfomance, beating such a player,
will remain as the thing I'll be the most proud about, in that tournament.
I managed to play my own gamestyle, which I'm happy about as well.
Wolmar's proud for a reason : he plays ST competitively since only 3 years,
and began practicing online before he tries the actual arcade cabinet.
Well if you ask me, I couldn't play music as much as I used to,
because not surrounded by musicians anymore...
Music is like the most important thing to me, so I had to find somewhere to express myself.
I was like, what else do I enjoy? Being a video games fan, I started to discover online gaming,
playing at first Champion Edition or whatever SF2 version would come down.
Later, I specialized in ST as I saw it was a competitive game still,
even if I was not too fond of the game...
I prefered Hyper Fighting, closer to the snes version I played.
So I just started to play a lot, then I enjoyed it and that's about it.
We'll talk about those techniques again later : for the moment, competition's still going on,
and next opponent for Wolmar is the infamous Mao.
Remember, the one who beasted just everyone in freeplay with a nasty Claw.
This time, the matchup is not in Dhalsim's favor,
and Wolmar will have to fight for the first time in this tourney a japanese player,
i.e most probably the best player of his character in the world.
Though, Wolmar won the two previous rounds 3/0 each time,
so he can be quite confident : and remember, in ST, everything can happen.
The utlimate goal for Wolmar is to reach top 8 : only way to play on the main stage,
and that next match would allow him to.
Will our french champion be able to defeat the great Mao?
To be continued!
See you next week!