Lovers Arcana Yamada Lvl99

MBAACC 1.07 impressions

2012-01-08T11:46:00.000-08:00

Akiha Tohno by NFB-ZMC

Current Code 1.07 came out on PC recently, and the game is pretty much as good as I had hoped from watching videos. I had already mentioned before in earlier posts about Melty that MBAA improved on MBAC in almost every single way, but there were still fundamental problems with the game, like how strong being in the air was. Most of those leftover issues were fixed in CC 1.05, and carried over to 1.07 so I'm pretty happy with the way the game turned out.

A CC 1.05 change that carried over to 1.07 was in airthrows, specifically raw airthrows. Airthrows are godlike now so you can really bring on the pain against people who just jump and frolick around all day. This is a really great change as it makes the air game less dominating, so there's a bigger emphasis on proper ground movement.

Somewhat related is the almost universal increase in character walkspeeds, which also makes the ground game stronger.

I also want to talk about the removal of anti-A armor, which was something a lot of people were divided over. It's pretty clear why it was added in the first place though, since A attacks in MBAC were so dumb. But the active frames on A attacks were already universally toned down in MBAA, so anti-A armor ended up being kind of overkill. It's been removed since vanilla MBAACC, and one of the results is that antiair 5a becomes viable again. This sounds bad, as 5a mash antiair was one of the most obnoxious things about MBAC, but I think it's been toned down appropriately in CC because of the counterhit change. So for the most part, if someone scores a trade from a mash 5a antiair, the extra counterhit stun will be just long enough so that they won't be able to combo afterwards.

The 1.07 port is almost perfect, as far as I've seen. Frenchbread is known for adding in last minute balance changes in the home ports, but PC CC 1.07 seems to be devoid of this. The training mode is an improvement over the PS2 version, especially in the amount of replays that can be saved and the maximum time allotted to dummy record. However, the training mode has actually lost some features like the status bar. I can never understand it when game developers actually remove features that were present in earlier versions of a game. Unless these certain features were problematic. But status bar was very useful for getting an indication of the cancel points of attacks.

In contrast, the 1.07 netcode is easily the worst I've ever seen in any fighting game. It doesn't handle packet loss well at all and the way it calculates delay is completely off. Now, delay based netplay in general is terrible. But Frenchbread isn't exactly a big company like Capcom who is rolling in money, so it's somewhat understandable that they'd go this route. What I don't understand is not allowing the players to manually choose what delay to set. The connections seem completely random too. Some people can't even get good connections with people that live less than an hour away from them, but can play people out of state just fine.

In terms of balance, it's a bit too early to say but every character seems viable at this point. All of the ridiculous characters in 1.05 were toned down, in particular PCiel and Ryougi. VSion and Mech, who were considered bottom of the barrel in 1.05, have also been improved by quite a bit. The game's only been out for a few months, so there are just 2 "credible" character rankings right now.

First off is top Miyako/Ries player Kanna's list, which he made within the first month of the game's release!
S Arc PCiel Kohaku Nero Satsuki Roa Seifuku Ryougi
A Warc Shiki Akiha Wara Hisui Nanaya Sion Ries Aoko WLen Ciel Kouma VAkiha Hime Len Miyako
B VSion Mech

Notice that HisuKoha, the Necos and the various team characters are missing. Supposedly he didn't include them because of the lack of exp vs them in 1.07.

Next up is top VAkiha player Hato's list, which was actually published in the most recent issue of Arcadia magazine.
S Nero Ryougi
A+ Arc Satsuki Wara Seifuku
A Sion Warc Akiha VAkiha Nanaya Kohaku HisuKoha Mech Len Kouma Ries Roa PCiel
B VSion Shiki Ciel Miyako Aoko WLen Hime
C NecoArc NecoArcChaos KohaMech Necomech

There's a great deal of disagreement here, so clearly it's a sign that it's much too early in the game's lifespan for a tier list. I should also mention that 1.07 came out in mid October, so the game is still pretty new. Some characters are still relatively unexplored, so there's a lot of potential for change! I still remember how different the final AA char rankings were compared to the ones made in the first year of that game's life.

As for characters I've been using, I have mostly been playing F Archetype Earth and my old AA character F Akiha. I streamed a quick F-Akiha tutorial the day the game came out, detailing her general gameplay, normals, combos, and her 1.07 changes. F-Akiha plays exactly the same as she did in AA; it's just that everything she does deals less damage now, so it's a bit harder to win. In particular, her fire webs(412) do way less damage and have a proration of 50%, so it's not even worth trying to work them into combos anymore. It also affects her web+arc drive unblockable setup, making it do about 1000 dmg less on average.

The recovery on the projectile version of her arc drive has also been increased, which at first doesn't seem like a big deal. But it actually weakens her corner unblockable, because in previous versions, whenever someone wanted to reduce damage on the F-Akiha unblockable, they would just jump guard. The projectile version of her arc drive would lock the opponent in blockstun, and since web is air unblockable, they would then get their guard broken and take a bit of damage. Her arc drive in the older versions of the game recovered very fast, so F Akiha could just combo off of this and score another knockdown. She can't do this anymore, so now the opponent gets to escape. The damage that the opponent takes is generally between 1.4K-2K, so it's a significant reduction over the 4K that the opponent would take if they had gotten grabbed.

In earlier versions, even if the opponent reduced damage on the unblockable by jumping, Akiha would still be in a favorable position because she could combo into knockdown. Now that she can't do this anymore, it's hard to say whether or not it's still worth it to go even go for the unblockable setup in this version. Guaranteed damage is nice, but the setup does require her to be in MAX or Heat, and the opponent can easily reset the match back to neutral by jumping. It seems like the Japanese F-Akiha players have decided that it's not worth it anymore, because I have never seen anyone go for it in 1.07 match videos.

The only thing she's gained is 623c having OTG relaunch properties. Since OTGs scale pretty severely in this game, it's not very good for adding extra damage to combos. However, it IS useful for extending midscreen combos to get that extra corner push, and it can also be used to confirm a really far 2c hit. Since 2c at its maximum range doesn't go into any combos normally, 623c is a good tool to make this more scary.

That's pretty much it for impressions. I'll probably talk about Archetype Earth in my next post.

MBAACC 1.05 and 1.07

2011-11-12T19:46:00.000-08:00

The last time I wrote about Melty here, it was in the early months of 1.05's release. Now 1.07 is out and the game is looking better and better.

1.05 was very short lived, and the response to it was very mixed. There were just as many people who loved the changes as those who thought they were terrible. The game was drastically different to the point where many people felt it didn't play like Melty anymore. There was still one thing that everyone agreed on though, and that was the game needed more time for playtesting before release. Specifically things like C-Kohaku's 5c giving easy OTG relaunches and Powerd Ciel in general made it really obvious that the game wasn't thorougly tested. The new OTG relaunch mechanic, which I felt gave the game some extra spice, was also kind of a mixed bag. The main problem was that some characters could abuse it to no end(C-Kohaku), while others literally gained nothing from it(Wara).

Surprisingly 1.05 ended up being a very balanced game. The top tier was very silly, but 1.05 gave a lot of improvements to characters who have been traditionally terrible in the series. C-Roa, C-Seifuku Akiha, and C and H-Arc were some characters who were completely garbage in the previous 2-3 revisions of Melty, and this version was able to give them some nice tools from both system changes and character specific changes to make them competitive.

The game didn't last long enough for there to be a tier list made by surveying top players, but there was one that the entire Japanese BBS basically agreed upon. It was:
S Kohaku PCiel HisuKoha Ryougi
A+ Shiki Arc Nanaya Warc Satsuki Miyako Len Aoko
A Everybody else
A- VSion Mech-Hisui

Top Nero player SAT also made his own list, which is almost exactly the same:
A+ Kohaku HisuKoha Ryougi PCiel
A Everyobdy else
A- (Nero) Mech-Hisui VSion

And top Miyako player Kanna made his own list as well:
A+ Leo's Ryougi, PCiel
A Everybody else
A- VSion
Leo best character in the game!

1.07 is out right now, and it's brought a few new things to the table. First off is a new character in the form of Archetype Earth, who was previously a broken boss in the PS2 version of AA. She's probably the most unique character in the game, having an omnidimensional flight mechanic that drains meter. OTG relaunches are still in the game, but they seem to have been toned down considerably. The damage in general seems to have been lowered a bit, compared to 1.05.

Archetype Earth, or Hime as the Japanese are calling her, is a really interesting character. I originally thought that her flight mode was balanced by it 1)draining meter and 2)disabling her ability to block. But from all the footage that's been released, it does seem like she can block during flight. Maybe the vulnerability only lasts for a few frames in the beginning of her flight? I'll have to actually play her to figure this out.

Hime seems pretty strong right now, as her flight gives her unparalleled movement options relative to the cast. Her normals and specials also have a ton of range and are easily hit confirmable into combos. Her damage seems to be on the low side, but I suspect this is because it's an early stage of the game where people haven't yet ironed out optimal combos. Her defense modifier seems pretty terrible: if I had to estimate she looks like she's between Warc and Wara.

If the main theme of 1.05 was buffing characters who were traditionally bad, I would say the theme of 1.07 is charged moves. Almost every single character in the game has gained new charged moves, which is a pretty funny way to add new moves into the game without drawing any new animations. It's hard to say how much these new moves add to the game from the footage we have, but some characters like C-Wara and C-Akiha get some nice new combos.

The overall reception to 1.07 right now has been overwhelmingly positive. Some people on the BBS think it's the best version by far. I'm really happy with the direction Melty has been going since 1.05, so I'm pretty hype for 1.07's PC release. Archetype Earth is a really cool character too, and as the sole character in the game with any kind of cleavage, I am obligated to play her!

Changing Seasons

2011-11-04T23:45:00.000-07:00

I haven't really mentioned this in my blog, but I spent the past 2 years at Mt. San Antonio College taking random classes there. My original plan after graduating was to go to Pharmacy school, and there were still some prerequisite classes that Pharm required so I ended up going to Mt. SAC community college to take care of that. Mt SAC is like 10 mins from my house so this was pretty convenient. One of the classes that I had to take was Anatomy, but I had the worst luck with registration dates so I had to wait a whole year before I finally got a good reg date to add in. During that year I was basically taking useless classes with the expectations that having some units under my belt would help me get a better registration date, but this was clearly not the case!

Anyway, I eventually got into Anatomy, but during that wasted year I was starting to consider other paths too like continuing Chemistry into a Masters program or just getting a Chemistry related job. I applied to a lot of places and even enlisted the help of a headhunter but it was impossible to get anything without experience. So the other thing I was thinking about was that my Chemistry knowledge was starting to fade at this time, so one option would be to keep it sharp through tutoring. I knew Mt. SAC had a Learning Assistance program so I applied to be a Chemistry tutor, and they actually accepted me! Except, that there was apparently no demand for Chemistry tutors so they made me a Math tutor instead.

So I then spent the next year taking more random classes + Anatomy, while working part time as a Math tutor. It was a good experience and I met a lot of cool people. And in the end, it was a good choice for me to consider other career options, because after taking Anatomy I knew I would not like the Pharmacy program. Don't get me wrong, I didn't do bad: I actually got one of the highest scores in the class. I just disliked the class, and I was like man... if I go into Pharmacy, it's just gonna be more and more of this same kind of stuff.

The main thing I disliked about Anatomy was the sheer amount of memorization. That's not to say that you can do good just by memorizing. It's just that, at the core of every subject and discipline is problem solving. In math(undergraduate, at least) you can learn the basic background and some formulas for a mathematical concept, and in almost no time at all you can start applying those formulas to solve problems. In anatomy, you have to memorize a million vocabulary words, functions, and locations before you can even begin to apply that knowledge. Maybe if I was a bit younger, back when my mind was sharp, I could handle this but this is not something that I can stomach anymore.

We're almost in present time now! During my time at Mt SAC when I was tutoring, I decided to continue my studies in Chemistry and go for a Masters degree. I got accepted into both schools I applied to, and chose Cal Poly Pomona since it's the closest one. Saving money is good.

In the acceptance letter, the Dean of the Chemistry department also said that there was a demand for new Chemistry teacher assistants. I had been tutoring math for a year by now, and this looked like a good opportunity to brush up on my General Chemistry skills while doing my Masters program, so I applied. That ended up being an extremely painful process in itself and it's a long story, so the gist of it is that the department was actually going through a bit of drama the past few years and was also in the process of moving. So it was hard to get in contact with people and get consistent answers.

So imagine my surprise when I found out that I got accepted! Initially I expected that the TA job would be pretty simple: I would grade papers, transport materials for the professor of the course, and hold a discussion section as a supplement to the main lecture. But it turned out to be much more than I expected. CSU Pomona doesn't even have discussion sections, for one. The classes that they made me TA were two Freshman Chemistry lab courses. At UCLA, the lab courses have a lecture that is handled by the professor, and actual labs that are supervised by the TAs. Well at Cal Poly the lab only meets once a week, so the lectures and the labs are handled by TAs. So in essence, I'm more of a lab instructor than a TA at this point. This also means that I have to hold office hours and check my school e-mail often for any questions asked by students. I really wanted to have both my math tutoring job at Mt SAC and Chemistry TA position at CSU Pomona at the same time, but you can see that the TA position had a lot more responsibilities than I expected. So I had to quit my tutoring job, and this made me sad because I really liked the people I worked with.

So as you can tell, my life has been going through some major changes recently. I'm still trying to adjust to this new lifestyle of being a Masters student and a Chemistry lab instructor at the same time. It's been going very well so far but I can get very tired during the week, which makes me appreciate weekends a lot more now.

I think the best thing that I've taken from both my math tutoring job and this new TA position is that it's made me a much better student. I remember from math tutoring when I would get students who were clearly not going to class and just going to tutoring for homework help. Initially I was really annoyed at them, and then I realized, "That was me when I was in undergrad." So being able to experience education on the other side has really helped me out.

One last random thing I wanted to mention is that Wednesday Night Fights has moved to Super Arcade, which is right across from Mt. SAC. They have Skullgirls there on a somewhat frequent basis, and I've really wanted to go but my Wednesdays this quarter are super busy to the point where I'm too tired to do anything after school that day. This makes me sad, but I'll find some way to play Skullgirls!

My life summed up in 4 seconds

2011-10-09T09:59:00.001-07:00

Real updates coming soon, I guess.

Cynthia the Mission

2011-09-27T01:42:00.000-07:00

is a terrible, terrible manga. I remember exactly what compelled me to read it. I saw this image:

Kinda reminds me of Ichi the Killer.

I had to know what events in the plot would lead up to this, so that was my hook. If I had to describe Cynthia the Mission, it's like a really silly version of Kill Bill, where a girl is trying to escape her assassin heritage. Except that in this case, this girl is just starting high school and is bald. This girl, who is named Cynthia, is a master martial artist and has several friends in her school... who are also amazing martial artists. The manga is really violent and there are a lot of different fighting styles displayed.

Anywho, Cynthia the Mission has that shonen manga problem where characters have constant flashbacks of their past when fighting. Along with flashbacks, there's also long explanations of their fighting styles: if a character hits his opponent with a new move, he must spend the next 10 pages explaining the origin of the attack and how it works! Characters frequently break the fourth wall and make really silly facial expressions when fighting. There's also a HILARIOUS set of chapters about a girl with hypnotic power attempting to assassinate George W. Bush. So I'm guessing the author wanted to let the readers know that it wasn't intended to be read seriously but that doesn't make it any less terrible.

However! Even though this manga is so awful I read it in ernest and ended up finishing the whole thing this weekend because there is a really great character in this mess of a story. It's Cybele Rou, who is Cynthia's older sister. As you might guess, she's a master martial artist and assassin. She's the main antagonist of the story, as she is the one who wants Cynthia to be a master assassin.

Anyway, Cybele is amazing. She's easily one of my favorite manga characters, as she's pretty much everything I want in a strong female character. She also likes cosplaying while fighting: off the top of my head, I remember her wearing a maid outfit, a teacher's uniform, lingerie, cheongsam, and a bunnygirl outfit. It's most likely fanservice, but I like to think of it as being so confident that she just wears whatever she wants, haha.

Cynthia the Mission is pretty obscure, but I guess Cybele was popular enough to get her own figure!

On the left, Cybele in bunnygirl costume during the Tournament arc. On the right, Akiha lookalike Araya Kuga.

It kind of threw me off to see her with green hair. I kept thinking of her as a blonde in the manga, especially since Cynthia is a blonde too.

EFZ Akane

2011-08-29T12:15:00.000-07:00

Eternal Fighter Zero's Akane is easily the strongest character I've ever played in a fighting game. She has (almost) everything: good, quick normals, multiple projectiles, excellent movement options, and amazing mixups. Her defensive options are kind of lacking though, and her damage is a bit on the average side, but the sheer amount of options she has more than makes up for these. Even though I am absolutely horrible at EFZ, I never feel like I'm in a hopeless situation when playing because Akane has so many options.

However, Akane is also the hardest character I've ever played. Her combos and setups require pixel perfect spacing and impeccable timing. To add insult to injury, everything is character specific and situational too. Characters in EFZ have widely varying hitboxes, weights, and wakeup times. This is a character that absolutely requires training mode. I've spent a lot of time on and off the past few years trying to learn her and even now I can only do about 15% of what she's capable of.

If I had to describe Akane in one sentence, it would be that she's a mutant lovechild of Millia and Gouki/Akuma. She has many of their signature moves, and is a lot like Millia in that she fights with her shapeshifting hair and her mixups and movement options are so good. She has Akuma's demonflip, and it's also a major part of her gameplay.

I guess I'll start by describing her most notable normals. She has great A normals, as they're very fast and have good utility in combos and pressure. 5a is a good antiair to use after RGing an opponent's air attack. Her 2b is a forward moving slide that recovers quickly, and her 2c sweep has a lot of range so everything she does on the ground combos into it easily.

66c is one of her most important normals. As the input suggests, she can only do it while dashing. It looks a lot like her ground throw, in that she pushes the opponent away with both hands outstretched. 66c is integral to Akane's corner combos, because when she hits an airborne opponent with this, the opponent goes flying and if they were near a wall, then the opponent will then bounce upward off the wall and slowly float back down. The wallbounce is untechable for a VERY long time so Akane can almost always do a followup combo into a big setup. In this clip, Akane does a very difficult and optimized combo off of an overhead starter involving three 66c wallbounces into a mixup.

j.c is another very important normal. Akane takes her hair, forms it into a big hammer, and strikes downward with it. What makes this move so good is that it has crossup hitboxes and also knocks down opponents if they were hit in the air. I mentioned in the earlier EFZ post that the game does not have crossup protection, so everybody in the game that has an air normal that hits crossup can abuse this to no end. Akane is no different, and here's a good example of her using it. In this clip, she gets a knockdown on UNKNOWN with an EX move. She then does a dash momentum forward jump to make it appear as if her j.c is going to hit crossup. But it's a fake, and it ends up hitting from the left. She then combos into a simple knockdown into another series of mixups.

I mentioned earlier that Akane has Akuma's demonflip. She does, but hers are actually better than Akuma's for several reasons. One of which is that she actually has two of them. First off, 214x. It's called Assault Leap, but this is the classic Akuma demonflip. The button strength determines how far it goes. If Akane doesn't press anything during the descent, then she'll land and do a slide which is highly punishable on block, just like Akuma. But if it hits, it allows her to do a followup combo(in the corner). Like Akuma, she has many followups for the descent portion of the flip:
-If she presses C, then she'll do the classic Akuma divekick followup. It doesn't hit high, though.
-If she inputs 4C, then she'll do an upgraded version of the Akuma demonflip throw followup. It's upgraded in that it 1)throws both ground and airborne opponents 2)allows Akane to combo afterwards.
-If she presses 236x, then she'll throw out a hairpin just like Millia's Silent Force. It's not as good as Millia's though, because she doesn't get free movement after. Akane doesn't need to pick up the pin, however: she can throw as many as she wants. 236c makes her do an EX version of the pin, which is actually a lot like Anji's butterfly: if the opponent blocks the EX pin, it will bounce up and then fall back down for another hit.

The other "demonflip" she has is done with 412x, and it's called Trick Leap. This is quite a bit different than the classic one with the parabolic arc. Instead, Akane ascends almost instantly, and then falls straight down for the descent. As usual, button strength determines the distance travelled, and she has all of the same followups for the descent from Assaut Leap. However, Trick Leap has an additional followup which is done by pressing 2c. This makes Akane form a hair drill on her feet, while she descends straight down. It's very reminiscent of Morrigan's Pursuit attack.

One thing I failed to mention about the demonflips is that they can both be done in the air. This is ridiculous, and it basically gives Akane a third jump. So along with the universal movement options, Akane has two demonflips which can be done both on the ground and in air, and they have tons of followups including a projectile and a divekick. The demon flips are integral to Akane's gameplay. They aid her movement so much to the point where Akane should never get antiaired if played right. The dive kick and drill hair followups are also really important in combos and left/right mixups too.

Akane has Millia's Bad Moon, and it's the exact same input in j.236x. Except it's called Bad Waffle, as Akane encloses herself in two huge hair waffles and crashes down towards the ground. In some ways, it's better and worse than Millia's. It's worse in the sense that it isn't as fast: TK Bad Waffle is pretty easy to react to in EFZ, while TK Bad Moon is really difficult. But it's better in that there are multiple versions of it. First off, j.236c(EX Bad Waffle) is pretty useless, so I won't bother talking about that. j.236a does the classic Bad Moon attack, and it's very useful to tack on at the end of air-to-ground strings for a surprise overhead. Is your opponent getting used to blocking high twice against your IAD j.ab airstrings? Do IAD j.ab j.236a instead for that surprise high hit. The E force meter charges fairly quickly in this game, so Akane will usually have enough to do an IC to cancel the Bad Waffle recovery and go into a combo. Bad Waffle floats the opponent, so ICing the recovery is one of the most common combo starters. j.236b is interesting in that it makes Akane float back in the air a bit before she attacks. This sounds kind of useless at first, since it's slower than the A version, but it's amazing for faking a crossup. For example, say you just knocked down your opponent and you are now airdashing to the left over them on okizeme. It seems like you are going to cross them up(and land on their left), but before you land you press j.236b. j.236b makes Akane float back in the other direction a bit, so it makes her cross up yet again, resulting in her doing her Bad Moon attack from the right side. Very very evil.

Akane's 236 specials are pretty unique in that she calls forth her friend Shiko to help her out. The A version is a lot like MvC2 Commando's Captain Strike, where Shiko flies across the screen. It's a very nice antiair, and it has some uses in corner combos too. The B version makes Shiko dash up from your side to the opponent and punch them. It has quite a bit of delay on it, so it can be used for throw setups. You can knock your opponent down in the corner, summon Shiko with 236b, and then throw the opponent right before Shiko hits them. The C version is an EX move, and it makes Shiko ride across the screen on her scooter... from the other side of the screen. This is an amazing move, as it makes Akane impossible to zone out. Characters can't keep her away using fireballs because EX Shiko can easily be summoned on reaction. It knocks down too, so Akane can go straight into okizeme for it. EX Shiko is also needed for Akane's general midscreen BNB.

Akane has 3 supers, and they're all pretty useful. 641236 is the Shiko super, and each button does a different thing. The A version is the Lvl1, and it's not really that great... The B version is the Lvl2, and it's actually very good as there's a fair amount of startup invincibility. This is pretty much the only move that Akane can reversal with. The C version is the Lvl3, and it makes Shiko do a frog uppercut after a bit of delay. This is actually unblockable, so there's some good uses for it. More on this later.

214214 makes Akane set up her Absolute Rejection Barrier, but it's really just Urien's Aegis Reflector. It's not quite as good though, because it only hits once. It's also unique in that all three versions of her Reflector are Lvl1 supers, unlike the others where the super gets progressively stronger depending on which button is pressed. A Reflector sets one up very close to her, the B reflector sets one up far away, and the C reflector sets it up in the air(lol). As you might guess, the C version isn't very useful.

236236 makes Akane shoot up a bunch of hair swords in the sky, which come crashing down after some delay. It's very reminiscent of War Machine's War Destroyer super. Not much to say here... the button strength determines what Lvl the super will be and thus how much damage it will do. This super has some great utility in corner mixups.

Akane's Final Memory, which is called Unpleasant Hell Murder, is pretty awesome. It's Akuma's Raging Demon, and it even has the exact same input! Unfortunately it's not very useful because EFZ has so much more movement options than Street Fighter. It's also an FM, so it can't be used very often, since it requires Akane to 1)have Lvl3 meter and 2)be in critical, flashing red life. It has some good utility in RG exchanges, though.

Akane's mixups are amazing, and she has a good number of them. I already mentioned the utility of j.c earlier, and it's usually a good choice for mixup if she doesn't have any meter available. Here's a mixup she can use from a double overhead starter. In this clip, Akane ICs the second overhead into a nice double 66c combo. She jump-cancels the second 66c into a backwards jump and then an airdash to push Unknown into the corner. This maneuver is interesting because it pushes the opponent into the corner with a tiny bit of space behind them. Which means that they can be crossed up. And this is exactly what happens afterwards: Akane jumps towards Unknown and makes it very difficult to tell whether j.c will hit crossup or not. It crosses up Unknown in the corner, and she then hitconfirms into a simple knockdown. I should also note that instead of j.c, she could have used Trick Leap into the drill hair attack for a similar effect(ambiguous left/right).

The earlier mixup employed the 66c wallbounce and required no meter. If Akane has meter, she can use her 236236 hair sword super for another evil mixup. The idea is to get use 66c to get a close to corner knockdown, and send out the hair sword super. There's a bit of delay on the super, so the swords will come down and hit meaty on the opponent's wakeup. Since EFZ has no crossup protection, Akane can then use her jumps and demonflips for an easy left/right mixup. If Akane does this perfectly, she can make it so that there's a 1f difference between left/right. So the opponent must guess this mixup as it's unreactable. In this clip, Akane lands a throw and cancels it with a Blue IC. She then goes into a big double 66c corner combo. She starts the mixup after 66c, summoning Shiko A and backdashing into the corner followed by a Lvl2 hair sword super. You might notice Sayuri's juggle bar vanished right before the super activated, which means that she could have air teched. Well teching is dangerous in this game because there's actually a fair amount of time you are completely defenseless after teching. If Sayuri had air teched there, she would have been unable to guard the hair sword super and would have eaten the entirety of it. So Sayuri opts not to tech, and falls to the ground. The swords hit meaty, and Akane jumps over Sayuri. I can't even tell if this was a crossup or not, but Sayuri gets hit, and Akane does a combo and the mixup resets into itself. So so dirty.

The other big mixup that Akane gets involves her Aegis Reflector. The idea is to get a midscreen knockdown and set up the B version of the reflector. Usually the distance will be just perfect so that the reflector will be placed right on top of the opponent. Meaning that the opponent will wake up into it. Akane can then use her jumps, airdashes, and demon flips for a left/right mixup. If done perfectly this is also a 1f left/right, so opponent has to guess. This mixup resets into itself, and it can also go into the mixups she gets from 66c too if she was close to the corner. In this clip, Akane does a simple knockdown combo into B reflector on Shiori. She then dashes forward, making it seem like whatever demon flip she uses will cross up the opponent. But instead, she stops her dash short with 6a, and goes into the B version of Trick Leap, which almost crosses up Shiori, but doesn't. Shiori guesses wrong, and Akane does the drill hair followup into a combo, resetting back into the same mixup. In this clip, Akane does a simple knockdown combo on Ayu into B reflector. She then does a dash momentum IAD, which makes her sail over Ayu's head for a crossup. Ayu guesses wrong, and Akane is able to combo Ayu into a corner hair sword mixup.

So you might think that it ends here with all these amazing mixups. But this is EFZ: the bullshit doesn't stop in this game. And indeed, Akane has something even better than a mixup: an unblockable setup. She can't go for this very often, since it requires a Lvl3 super, but it's pretty ridiculous nonetheless. The idea is to set up the Lvl3 Shiko super after a corner 66c, and then use the knockdown property on j.c to send the opponent into the ground, so that they will wake up into a meaty unblockable. However, j.c is interesting in that while it sends the opponent towards the ground, it's air techable if the opponent's juggle bar is small enough. In this clip, this is exactly what happens. Akane gets a double 66c combo on Mishio, and cancels the 66c into the Lvl3 Shiko frog uppercut super. Akane then jumps to j.c Mishio into the ground. However, the combo count is at 23 hits, and the power indicator is fairly low too(at 66.4), so j.c becomes techable. Mishio techs, but Akane anticipates this and airdash cancels her j.c into j.ab. Mishio is totally vulnerable when teching, so she is forced to eat the j.ab and take almost 3k damage. If Mishio had decided not to tech, she would have been hit meaty by the frog uppercut unblockable, and taken upwards of 5k damage.

I'll end this post with another clip. This extremely one-sided match shows what is pretty much a perfect Akane game: mixups after mixups with the opponent guessing wrong every time. The real fun is in the 1st round though, and it begins at around 18 seconds. Akane gets a knockdown combo into Aegis Reflector. She does an unseeable left/right by simply jumping over Ikumi. Ikumi guesses wrong, and Akane combos her into the corner ending with a j.c knockdown. The j.c is done at the just the right distance so that there's space behind Ikumi in the corner. Akane then does Trick Leap into the drill hair attack. It seems like it will crossup, but it doesn't and Ikumi gets hit again. Akane combos off of this into a corner hair sword mixup. This is unseeable, so Ikumi guesses wrong again and Akane wins the round. So basically, this was 3 completely different mixups back-to-back. There's a strange beauty in seeing these mixups reset into each other.

But I think the most amazing part of Akane is that even though she has all this broken stuff, she isn't even considered S tier. It really shows what EFZ is all about in that nothing is too broken in this game.

Chiaki Takahashi

2011-08-26T08:46:00.000-07:00

...is so slutty. I love it
【ニコニコ動画】今夜はチュパ♡リコ 2011.10.5 Release!! / たかはし智秋

Eternal Fighter Zero

2011-08-10T19:00:00.000-07:00

Anime Expo 2011 happened a while back and I ended up not going because there were no guests there that I was interested in. However, there was one thing that I wanted to join, which was the EFZ tourney and meetup organized by the SoCal scene. They were able to get a good amount of players from all around, so I'm pretty sad for missing this, but that weekend ended up being really busy for me.

Ice beam!

Speaking of EFZ, I randomly decided to search up some vids on nico for it recently to see how the Japanese scene was doing, and I remembered just how good this game was. EFZ kind of flew under the radar in the American scene, but it had a good run in Japan. It was released in 2001 by Tasofro as a doujin title, and it has stayed that way the entire time. One of the reasons I think it stayed a doujin title is because EFZ takes so much from other fighting games. It's usually very easy to see how older fighting games influenced newer games today, but the stuff you see in EFZ borders on plagiarism. For example, the character Misuzu has several moves that are pretty much ripped from GG's Testament, and my character Akane has some of Gouki's and Millia's signature moves. I have a feeling that if EFZ became a major fighting game it would have raised up a lot of intellectual property red flags.

The characters in EFZ all come from KEY, a company that is known for making visual novels. I haven't played any of their VNs, so I have no knowledge of the backstory of any of the characters. There are 22 characters in total(23 if you count the boss), which is a pretty big cast for doujin fighting game standards. The cast is quite diverse too, as there's a good variety of fighting styles present: there's a good amount of rushdown chars, there's a boxer(Kaori), a character with an assist like Carl(Minagi), 5 characters with Morrigan style triangle dashes(Akiko, Ayu, Makoto, Misuzu, Sayuri), and a good deal of defensive/zoning/trap characters as well. There are no grapplers, though. There are also a lot of characters that have different "modes" and whose standard play involves switching between them. For example, the character Mio has a long-range and short-range mode which both have a very different set of normals and specials. Nanase has a bamboo sword which can actually be tossed away if she does a DP, so her moves change when she's bare-handed. Another example is the spear girl Mishio, who has very different combos and specials in her Fire and Lightning modes.

Mother vs daughter

The mechanics in EFZ are what would be considered pretty standard for airdasher, or "anime" games in today's context. Every character has a double jump and an airdash. You can do a dj and then airdash, but not vice versa. Airdashes are interesting in that their length can be controlled by how long the forward input is held. For example, with some characters you can make your airdash drop to the ground quickly by letting go of forward early, and you can make the airdash go on really long by holding forward. Many normals are jump cancellable on hit and block, and chain combos are the main method of dealing damage. Chain combos follow the usual weak->medium->strong sequence, while specials can be thrown in anywhere you want in between. There are throws and airthrows(but no throwbreaks!), ground normals are air unblockable, and most air normals are airdash cancellable. There is no guard bar, and thus there are no guardcrushes and death by chip damage. There are two meters: an E force meter(used for ICs and EX moves) that constantly increases, only stopping when that character is getting hit, and an SP gauge(used for supers) that goes from 1-3. And typical of doujin games, there is no timer.

One of the mechanics in EFZ that really makes it unique among all other fighters is Recoil Guard. I mentioned earlier that there is no guard bar nor death by chip damage, so at first glance this makes blocking seem really strong. And in some ways it is, since you can't die if you just block forever. But you won't, because mixups in this game are ridiculous. People nowadays talk about "vortexes" and how GG has really strong okizeme; these people haven't played EFZ. Many characters in this game get 4-way mixups that reset into themselves off of knockdowns. There's also a lot of characters that get GG style projectile assisted okizeme, where a multi-hit projectile or some fireball with huge blockstun is set up on a character's wakeup, giving the player on offense a lot of time to mix up the opponent. So how does this relate to Recoil Guard(RG)? RG is basically just like instant blocking or just defending in other fighting games. It reduces the blockstun on a guarded attack, and it's also the only way for someone to airguard a ground normal. In EFZ, the RG window is actually really big and the difference of blockstun is quite significant as well: many safe attack strings become unsafe when RGed. So RGing is quite strong, and it might seem problematic like it is in Garou MoTW. But it's not, and it's actually needed: one look at the EFZ frame data will make it very clear as to why. Everybody in EFZ has Vampire Savior like normals: almost everything is +f on hit and block. If RG wasn't in the game, some characters would literally have infinite pressure.

Another interesting thing about RG is that when one player does it, the other player can actually counter RG. This leads to some funny moments in matches where two players get into a big RG war and all you see is the game pausing and characters flashing white. But it's a nice mechanic because it makes it so that the attacker who got his attack RGed still has options.

One of my favorite parts of the EFZ system is in its juggle meter. This is a bar that shows up underneath a character whenever they are getting comboed. It basically shows how much untechable time a move has. So a move with a lot of stun will have a big bar that drains slowly, while a move with little stun will have a smaller bar that drains fast. Most fighting game players are probably already used to just feeling out untechable times, but it's nice for the game to show you exactly how much there is for every move.

Another thing I like a lot is that once the bar drains completely, the player that was getting hit is completely invincible during their reeling animation. One effect of this is that there are no invalid combos in EFZ. So there's no need to be mashing air tech during combos to prevent invalids, and it also eliminates dumb netplay combos that you might see in other games(ex. Slayer 5k6h on an air opponent). Air teching is actually really risky in EFZ because you are vulnerable for a short period of time after the tech, so it's very common for people to just let themselves fall to the ground after getting hit by an air combo. I like this mechanic a lot because it actually helps both players: it forces the player doing the combo to put in the time to get their execution down because of the lack of invalid combos, and the player getting comboed doesn't need to be mashing tech to get out of invalids.

Like many airdash games, EFZ has a Roman Cancel mechanic in it called Instant Charge(IC). It uses the E force meter which constantly increases. Pretty much everything can be ICed: normals(hit and block only), specials and supers(hit, block, and whiff), and throws. What makes the EFZ version of the roman cancel unique is that there are actually two ICs. There's a red IC, which is basically the normal roman cancel. It happens whenever an IC is done during the first half of the E force meter, when it's colored red. The other IC is the blue one, and it happens when an IC is done during the 2nd half of the E force meter, when it's colored light blue. The blue IC is unique in that it 1)increases the untechable time/juggle meter on all moves, allowing for longer combos and combos that aren't normally possible and 2)decreases the scaling so that every attack does more damage. In EFZ, the combo counter is actually quite informative, as it also gives information on the scaling of moves through a "Power" indicator. In the beginning of a combo, the Power will probably be somewhere from 80-100, and at the end it could be at 20-40 power. Blue IC can really jack up the scaling and make it so that you start combos at 130 power, so most blue IC combos do huge damage.

Going back to what I mentioned earlier about okizeme in EFZ, another reason why it's so good in this game is because there is no crossup protection. Some characters, like the one I use, can really abuse this and create left/right mixups that have a 1f difference between crossup and non-crossup. Which basically means that the person on defense has to guess in those situations. And indeed, it's not uncommon to see huge momentum swings in this game. Knockdowns aren't guaranteed death though: even though EFZ has fewer defensive options than other games, the defensive options that it does have(RG) are really strong.

Another aspect of the game that I like a lot is that it's very ground based. Many airdash games nowadays have a very diluted version of footsies: very little walking at all, lots of dashing, and most of the game time being spent in the air because of the strength of chicken guarding. You see this a lot in games like Melty Blood and BlazBlue, which have so many air options that being on the ground is almost disadvantageous. I could talk about this more, but Xenozip has beaten me to the punch and has written a series of very informative posts about this subject. EFZ manages to avoid turning into a big jump fest of a game by doing two things. 1st is that the blockstun from chicken guarding is HUGE. In most games that have a chicken guard mechanic, blockstun is greatly reduced compared to that of ground guarding. In games like MB and BB, the air blockstun is so minimal that you can double jump almost immediately after so that you can stay in the air even longer. Not in EFZ, though. When you chicken guard in EFZ, you are basically going to get dragged down to the ground. The 2nd thing that EFZ does to avoid making the game too air-based is in airthrow strength. Airthrows are quite good in EFZ as they have a lot more range than ground throws, and the damage they do is good too.

I don't think there's ever been an official tier list made for EFZ, but from my experience and from all the videos I've watched, the game is pretty balanced. There are no unplayable characters, and the weaker characters like Doppel and Awake Nayuki all get a good amount of play and have won major tournies. There are definitely some really strong characters that get played a lot more than others though, like Mishio, Misaki, Mayu, and Shiori.

I've been talking mostly about the positive aspects of EFZ, but there are some things that I really don't like about it too. The first, and biggest thing being its command interpreter. This is actually the reason why I don't play the game that much nowadays. I really can't stand the command interpreter in this game at all, as it remembers inputs for way too long. This might have to do with the fact that it's a PC doujin game, so the developers probably intended for the game to be played with a gamepad or keyboard.

The other crappy part of EFZ is its training mode. The training mode in EFZ doesn't even have a UI: it's controlled by the F# keys on the keyboard. I'm used to amazing training modes like the ones used in the console ports of GGXX Slash and Accent Core, so it's distressing to me to see a training mode that doesn't even have a dummy record function.

If a new EFZ came out, or even if the game got remade on a next-gen console with good training mode and better command interpreter, I would definitely be hype to play it. I would like for it to have good netplay though, because the current netplay for EFZ is total garbage.

ComiPo! English Tutorial

2011-07-30T12:45:00.000-07:00

This is a manga creation software that was shown in one of the earlier OVZ episodes, and apparently it's now being brought over to America! I don't really have any interest in getting this, but Asakawa english narration is always welcome <3

Summer begins

2011-07-26T12:11:00.000-07:00

So summer has started, and so far the most noteworthy thing that's happened is that I've gotten accepted into my Masters program at Cal Poly Pomona. I'm pretty excited about this as the school is pretty close to home and a lot of my friends go there as well.

However... dealing with this school has been nothing but a pain so far, as there's been all sorts of complications. In my acceptance letter I was asked to contact the department advisor so I could get an idea of what classes to take my 1st quarter, and the letter only provided me with his e-mail address. So I e-mailed him, and didn't get a response. I looked up his contact info on the department website and got his office # so I would periodically try to call him. 3 weeks later, I finally get ahold of him by phone so I set up the appointment. It turns out that the reason he didn't respond to my e-mail is because for whatever reason, it got sent to his spam box. I also found out that I wasn't even allowed to register for classes before meeting with an advisor so this effectively delayed my registration for 3 weeks. There's also other stuff like not getting a straight answer from anyone about registration fees and their deadlines, and having a time conflict with the classes that the advisor suggested that I take. So it's been a huge headache.

I've been playing the fan translation of Persona 2 Innocent Sin on PS1 recently and I'm pleasantly surprised with how good the game is. It also has the most badass main character in an SMT game, helped by Takehito Koyasu providing his voice. I thought the battle system was really clunky at first, but in retrospect it really fits well with the game because of how big team order and fusion spells are. I also initially thought that I wouldn't like the game as much as P3/P4 because of the lack of social links, but it turned out to be just as engaging. In true SMT fashion the game is also quite difficult, and in some ways more of a grind than P3/P4 because of the lack of persona fusion. In P2 new personas are obtained by collecting tarot cards from demon negotiation, and you have to level them up the traditional way so you can't have your Lvl10 social link do the work for you. I guess my only complaint with the game would be the lack of a minimap, as some of the dungeons are pretty confusing. I don't think the hardware at the game was capable of supporting it, though.

I suppose I should talk about a tournament I went to about a month ago called Revelations. I was only able to go for 1 day because it ended up falling on the weekend right before my finals. I really wanted to join the AH3 tournament but it was scheduled to be on Friday so I couldn't work that out. I ended up going on Saturday only with Jeff, Brett, and tenkai. This was probably one of the best tournaments that I've been to solely because there was so much space for casuals. The venue, which was actually a restaurant near LAX, was also really big so I didn't feel cramped like I normally do at tournaments.

Anyway, by Saturday AH3 was already at top8, so the only tournament I could join was the GG side tournament. I didn't get to play any AH3 casuals because I couldn't find anyone with a spare PS3 pad, so that made me kind of sad. I got to play a bunch of GG casuals, and I did pretty well in the tournament too: got 3rd, only losing to Latif twice. I was also surprised that I was able to beat Purrin, since I generally never do well against him. Latif's Eddie really threw me off, as I'm not used to his style of Eddie play. I'm generally used to a more conservative and safe style, but he had a balls to the wall approach that I don't see very often. He would also literally do panic bursts whenever his momentum was thrown off which I wasn't expecting. Anywho, I had to play Latif twice, as he sent me to losers and also eliminated me in losers finals(3/5), so we played a total of 5 matches. Each of them basically played out the same, going down to the 3rd round, but I could never clutch it out to win the match. Japanese player Satoshi, who is known for playing Potemkin in Guilty Gear and Makoto in Blazblue was also in attendance, but sadly I wasn't able to play him in GG. We were on total opposite sides of the bracket. He ended up playing a bunch of characters in this tourney: Pot, Faust, Venom and Slayer. I had heard that his main is actually Faust now, and it seemed like he mainly went with that character unless someone requested he pick Pot. Anyway, it was a good tournament, and probably the best I've ever placed in my GG career. Too bad it had to happen after the game's prime!

Catching up

2011-06-02T01:40:00.000-07:00

Recently I've been interested in Arcana Heart 3, a fighting game made by Examu that was ported to PS3 and XBox 360 by Arc System Works. Previously I had 0 interest in the game other than Parace, the boss character to the second game, but 3 is a different story because it actually got a good port. In the case of the first game, the PS2 port was actually ok but the game itself was just awful so I didn't really care about it. Arcana Heart 2 was actually very good but the PS2 port was complete garbage, suffering from slowdown and not even being the most up-to-date version(most recent ver of AH2 was 2.6 while PS2 port was something else). AH3 gets a next gen port that is pretty much arcade perfect, and it even has online play.

Now, even though I mention AH3 getting a good port, it doesn't actually affect me because I don't have any next gen systems! However, someone went and ripped the arcade version of AH3 onto PC, allowing cheapskates like me to play it. So I've been trying to learn the game, using the PC rip's training mode, which actually shows hitboxes. Unfortunately I can't play my 2 favorite characters in the game, Parace(who is a boss) and Mildred(who is an arcana), so I have to settle for 3rd best with Scharlachrot. After learning some of the intricacies of the game, I have to say it's pretty fascinating. I used to think Arcana Heart was really boring from watching random videos, but now that I kind of understand what's going on it's much better. Sadly I haven't gotten the chance to play against people in this game that much though. There are several elements in the game that remind me of GG, and I really like the variety that the characters + arcana combinations give.

In GG related news, recently there have been a lot of compilation vids of the best moments in Guilty Gear on nico. There is a user on nico who is basically compiling the best moments from Mikado GG vids, and also compiling the best casual matches from the Mikado stream. There's also a few other compilation vids that people have made from Gamechariot and other arcades. I've been thinking of making a big GG compilation video from all of the games for a while now, so those videos inspired me a bit in actually getting up and making my video. Anyway, I ended up making two of them. You can read a longer explanation at Norematch.

Best moments in Guilty Gear
Best moments in Guilty Gear - Volume 2

The world of Melty has been pretty interesting recently. Current Code was surprisingly short lived, as 1.05 has come out, bringing with it new balance changes, new system additions, and a new character in the form of Powerd Ciel. I'm pretty surprised CC was updated so quickly, since I felt that the game was positively received by the community. The tier list for CC was:

新宿勢の一部でランクを作成したので貼りにきました。

各自Ｓ～Ｃの４段階にに分けてランクを作ってもらい、Ｓ４点、Ａ３点、Ｂ２点、Ｃ１点で加算したのが以下の結果になりました。参考までに。

参加者
キリヤ、ジン、SAT、新屋、じゃむ、かんな、丸やん、芳乃

Ｓ：赤主(32)、シオン(31)
Ａ：さつき(26)、秋葉(25)、ワラキア(25)、シエル(24)、志貴(24)
Ｂ＋：琥珀(20)、リーズ(20)、七夜(20)、キシマ(20)、ヒスコハ(19)、式(19)
Ｂ：都古(18)、アルク(17)、青子(17)、翡翠(16)、ネロ(16)
Ｂ－：Ｖ(15)、白レン(15)、ワルク(14)、ロア(14)
Ｃ：レン(12)、メカ(11)、制服(9)

点数以外の段階分けは適当に書きました。
Ｂが分かれてるのは、ＡやＣに変えるほどの差はないけど、多すぎて見づらいからです。

Basically this was made by 8 top players, where they were asked to rank the characters from S(4 pts) to C(1 pt). Points were then totaled and a list was made from them. The players that participated are Kiriya, Jin, SAT, Niiya, Jamu, Kanna, Maruyan, and Yoshino.

S VAkiha(32) Sion(31)
A Satsuki(26) Akiha(25) Wara(25) Ciel(24) Shiki Tohno(24)
B+ Kohaku(20) Ries(20) Nanaya(20) Kouma(20) Maids(19) Ryougi(19)
B Miyako(18) Arc(17) Aoko(17) Hisui(16) Nero(16)
B- VSion(15) White Len(15) Warc(14) Roa(14)
C Len(12) Mech Hisui(11) Seifuku Akiha(9)

One thing I found pretty interesting was that Kiriya only really had to ask 8 players. The previous "top player survey" tier lists made for earlier games always had 20 players because of disagreement about character placement, but it seems that in CC everybody pretty much agreed on all the rankings. I think the main point of disagreement I saw on the BBS was Ryougi's placement, as some people rank her really high.

Anywho, CC 1.05 is out, and it's going to get updated again soon! 1.07 is set to be released sometime during the summer, and it will have yet another new character in the form of Archetype Earth, who was a silly boss character introduced in the PS2 port of MBAA. I don't know how the Japanese community is reacting to 1.05, but it seems like many people in the American community don't like the changes. 1.05 brought about some pretty drastic changes, bringing back OTG relaunches from the doujin game days of MB, and allowing every character to do followup combos off of raw airthrows. In addition, the new character Powerd Ciel seems really strong in a Melty context, as the Crescent version has amazing normals, an air special that gives a hard knockdown, a ridiculous DP, and a projectile that she can throw out after knockdowns that is massive +f on hit and block. She seems almost like a GG character brought into the Melty system.

I think I'm one of the few players in the American scene that actually likes the new changes in 1.05. Melty's game being too air based and the obnoxious jumping were always my biggest gripes with the game, and I've always felt that the game didn't reward players enough for getting off neutral airthrows, so I love that 1.05 makes airthrows stronger as it takes care of both of these problems. Another somewhat minor change is that all walkspeeds are much faster, which I like as well because it makes the ground game more important. I'm pretty indifferent towards the OTG relaunches; they were extremely broken in the earlier versions of Melty, but AA has gravity and hitstun decay so it should help balance out the craziness. So far, nothing broken has been discovered with OTGs so I think it'll turn out ok.

I find it pretty sad nowadays how out of touch I am with popular music. I just follow amateur singers on nico now haha. A lot of the singers I follow have actually gone and released albums recently: Wotamin, MARiA and Choucho got solo album releases under doujin circles, Yamai got two albums out on her major label, and MARiA ended up doing the opening theme for the Freezing anime.

I've also discovered the magic of timeshifting on nico, so now I can watch all those lives that get put on at horrible hours in my timezone(lol 5am). For the nico singers, it's pretty interesting to hear them perform during the namahousous without the help of mixing and post-production. [TEST] from the nico band [Mint] recently did an all acoustic live with Choucho and Sariya-jin that I enjoyed a lot, so I ended up restreaming it so that I could archive it(since nico only archives stuff for a week). It's kind of like a Macross Frontier appreciation themed performance.

http://www.justin.tv/psyblade/b/285367944

OVZ(Otaku-Verse Zero) is this Youtube show I've been following for a while. It has Yuu Asakawa in it speaking English, which is pretty awesome in itself. The show got off to a rough start but it's pretty good now in its 2nd season. This is easily my favorite episode so far, since it details a live show that Yuu Asakawa produced for herself sometime in January. It's pretty surreal to hear Megurine Luka's original voice actress singing some of her signature songs.

Ao Oni again

2011-05-29T00:43:00.000-07:00

So a lot has happened in the world of Ao Oni since the last time I posted. Ao Oni is now at version 6.22, so the game is completely different again, with a new mansion layout, new puzzles, and new ending. It requires RPG Maker XP RTP, and to set your non-unicode language setting to Japanese. In addition, the 6.xx series of the game lets you name the main character.

Most importantly, there is an official English and Italian version of the game, which shows just how popular Ao Oni has gotten. I think the creator of the game owes Gami and Fuhiki a lot, as I doubt this game would have gotten anywhere near as popular without their legendary jikkyou play.

I've actually played through 6.22 already, and I think it's pretty good. Compared to the earlier versions of the game, the difficulty level of 6.xx is relatively easier and the mansion is a bit smaller as well. There are some cool new things added in 6.xx, but there's also some things that I wish were preserved from older versions, especially 5.xx.

Something I mentioned earlier was the new option in version 6 to name the main character. There are actually some cool easter eggs with this. Everytime you beat the game Hiroshi tells you a different name to input that can change the game in some way. One particular name is SOUTHPARK which leads to this...

I've also found a really funny English Let's Play of Ao Oni 6.22 by MikeNnemonic on Youtube. Unfortunately he's not actually playing the game for the first time in the videos, but he brings a very unique interpretation to the game that I think is worth watching through haha.

Finally, since the game has gotten so big, someone has gotten around to archiving all of the previous versions of the game. Pretty nostalgic, if you want to go back and play the version that Borzoi Project did or want to see how different(and ghetto) ver 1.0 is compared to what we have now.

Ao Oni

2011-02-12T20:48:00.000-08:00

Another hilarious jikkyou play on nico, this time it's a poverty horror game made in RPGMaker called Ao Oni, or blue demon. The premise of the game is pretty similar to Clock Tower: you and your friends get lost in a big mansion and you have to solve some puzzles and find the way out, all the while getting stalked by a monster.

The guys doing the commentary on their playthrough are がみ(Gami) and ふひきー(Fuhiki), who are part of a group called Borzoi Project. They do a lot of jikkyous, but this is undeniably their most popular one by a large margin. They also have a fairly popular jikkyou of another RPGMaker game called Doraemon Nobita no Biohazard, which as its name suggests, is a crossover of Doraemon and Resident Evil.

The demon in this game is a big blue man who kind of looks like Obama if he was part of Blue Man Group. Sounds silly, but the game is surprisingly scary and the Ao Oni has quite a bit of personality. Gami and Fuhiki's reactions are priceless and their screams of terror transcend linguistic boundaries.

【ニコニコ動画】

It's also been mirrored on Youtube
Playlist

FadedLily on Youtube is also doing an English translation of the Borzoi Project jikkyou, but so far he's only gotten the first 3 parts up.
FadedLily

Ao Oni has actually gone through several revisions. The version of the game that Gami and Fuhiki are playing is 2.xx, while the newest version of the game right now is 5.2. Every version of the game is extremely different from the others, too: different characters die, the endings change, and even the layout and size of the mansion changes. I remember in Ao Oni v1.0, three characters actually survive in the end, and there's a really scary segment where the main character look down a well and sees the Ao Oni frantically climbing up the rope with all its teeth out.

Ao Oni has apparently gotten so popular among English speakers that there's now a full English version of the game! It's for version 5.2, and requires RPGMaker to run properly.

Midori no Akuma

2011-02-10T17:27:00.000-08:00

This is one of the funniest video series I have ever seen on Nico. They started in the end of 2008, but many English speakers discovered these videos in the middle of 2010.

To begin, it's a jikkyou play, which is kind of like the "Let's Play" series of videos that you see all the time on Youtube, where people commentate while playing through games. Two Japanese dudes commentate themselves playing through Super Mario 64. Except that they are playing the roles of 2 samurai from the Bakumatsu period, 坂本龍馬(Sakamoto Ryoma) and 西郷隆盛(Saigo Takamori). They speak in an odd dialect of 19th century Japanese, and talk of Mario-samurai's quest to defeat the Midori no Akuma(aka green demon).

Basically they invent a game within Super Mario 64 where throughout certain levels, they activate a 1UP mushroom and attempt to clear the level by gathering all 8 red coins and the star, while being chased down by the "green demon". Except that I remember the 1up mushrooms would actually run away from Mario when I played, so maybe this is something exclusive to the Japanese version of the game. In any case, it's quite a spectacle and it's amazing what that little 1up mushroom is really capable of.

Introduction and playthrough of Bob-omb Battlefield
【ニコニコ動画】【マリオ64実況】　奴が来る　壱【幕末志士】
【ニコニコ動画】【マリオ64実況】　奴が来る　弐【幕末志士】

Cool, Cool Mountain
【ニコニコ動画】【マリオ64実況】　奴が来る　参【幕末志士】
【ニコニコ動画】【マリオ64実況】　奴が来る　四【幕末志士】

Whomp's Fortress
【ニコニコ動画】【マリオ64実況】　奴が来る　伍【幕末志士】

Shifting Sand Land
【ニコニコ動画】【マリオ64実況】　奴が来る　六【幕末志士】

Someone also uploaded them on Youtube as well
Playlist

Random

2010-11-28T18:46:00.000-08:00

Recently I've been playing EFZ again, after watching some of the new videos that the Kaori player Nagisa put up on his mylist. I forgot how hype this game was. Sadly, playing the game is a pretty mixed bag for me, probably because 1)I hate the command interpreter and 2)My character Akane is really really hard. Especially since nobody plays this game in SoCal anymore, I pretty much have to netplay it, so it just makes the experience really not enjoyable. The EFZ netcode was considered pretty good way back when it was first made, but it's pretty dated nowadays with stuff like GGPO and Caster available. I wonder if the game would get a revival if there was an EFZCaster.

bell has recently been doing a lot of work on Mizuumi, nearly tripling the amount of wikis that were originally there, upgrading Wordpress and getting a really nice theme, and restructuring the forums. It kind of inspires me to go work on my own sites more, since I've been neglecting them recently.

And some nice covers that I've found since the last update

Calc.
Vocaloid: Hatsune Miku
Music and Lyrics by: ジミーサムＰ(JimmyThumb)

うさ(Usa) cover
【ニコニコ動画】(｡･ｘ･)つ【Calc.】を歌ってみた＠うさ

Calc. is a really cool song, but I haven't really found any covers of it that really stand out significantly over the others. Usa's cover is really popular, though.

Sing my Love
Vocaloid: Hatsune Miku
Music and Lyrics by: 40mP

【蓮】(Ren) cover
【ニコニコ動画】【 Sing my Love 】を歌ってみた【蓮】

Sing my Love is a somewhat obscure song, though I never really understood the reason why. There aren't many covers of it, and even though it's originally written for a female(Miku), Ren does a really nice job with the song.

SPiCa -HPT ReACT-
Vocaloid: Hatsune Miku
Music and Lyrics by: Headphone Tokyo

MARiA cover
【ニコニコ動画】【歌ってもらった】SPiCa -HPT ReACT-【リアレンジ】

MARiA is pretty amazing, and she's supposedly a professional singer under the name Mizuhashi Mai. I actually don't like the original SPiCa that much, but this rearrangement is great.

ローリンガール (Rollin' Girl)
Vocaloid: Hatsune Miku
Music and Lyrics by: wowaka

yonji cover, Guitar Rock arrange
【ニコニコ動画】ローリンガールをギターロックにアレンジしてみた

I have no idea what this song is about, but it's very popular and there are a lot of good covers for it. This is probably my favorite one, and the rock arrangement is a really nice touch.

さよならメモリーズ (Sayonara Memories)
Original Artist: supercell

irony cover
【ニコニコ動画】★「さよならメモリーズ」歌ってみました Ver-irony

irony is a pretty obscure nico singer. Her most popular cover is for the opening theme of the Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai anime, which shares the same name as her alias. Her voice has a really eerie resemblance to Gazelle/nagi's, and if it wasn't obvious in her other covers it's definitely obvious in this one. I couldn't even tell the difference from the original song from the first few seconds.

More utattemita

2010-09-10T00:52:00.000-07:00

Some cool covers that have come out in the last few months

トリノコシティ (Torinoko City)
Vocaloid: Hatsune Miku
Music and Lyrics by: 40mP

ENE cover
【ニコニコ動画】「トリノコシティ」を歌ってみました by ENE

I haven't done any research as to what this song is about, but it sounds wonderful and ENE easily has the best cover of it. ENE is a somewhat obscure nico artist, as she usually covers some of the less popular songs. She also has a Youtube account under the name enedayo, and she actually responds to comments in English!

お断りします (Okotowari Shimasu)
Vocaloid: Hatsune Miku
Music and Lyrics by: あたたたP (AtatataP)

ろん(Lon) cover
【ニコニコ動画】お断りします　歌った

Really cute PV, this song is hilarious. It's basically FML the song. I'm actually not a big fan of Lon but this song was basically made for her type of voice.

輪舞-revolution (Rinbu Revolution)
Original Artist: Masami Okui

花たん (Hanatan) cover
【ニコニコ動画】【少女革命ウテナOP】輪舞revolution　歌ってみた【90年代アニソンツアー】

Revolutionary Girl Utena was one of the few shoujo anime that I actually liked, and the great opening theme was probably one of the reasons why. Can't think of anything else to say, Hanatan is a great singer and she does this song justice.

メランコリック (Melancholic)
Vocaloid: Kagamine Rin
Music and Lyrics by: Junky

ENE cover
【ニコニコ動画】「メランコリック」を歌ってみました by ENE

My favorite Rin song, I'm not a big fan of the twins, but this song is pretty awesome. For whatever reason, most nico artists use a vocoder when covering this song, and I can't stand vocoders, so ENE's cover is one of those rare non-vocoder ones that happens to be really good. I think Usa's cover of this song is the most popular, but I actually don't like it that much.

MBAA Full Moon

2010-08-09T22:27:00.000-07:00

The moon phase styles in MBAA are easily what makes the game interesting and distinguishes it from other fighting games. However, I don't think the moons are completely equal, and I do feel that my favorite moon style, Full, is actually the weakest in game.

Full Moon as a style kind of makes characters play in a more traditional fighting game setting. Melty is mostly known for its extremely freeform chaining system, where everything chains into everything up and down. Full Moon turns that back into the traditional weak->medium->strong chain sequence. Most Melty chars don't have +f on block and hit normals, since their chain options are so numerous, but since Full Moon chars are more restricted, they do have lots of +f on block normals and specials. This actually worked out pretty well and it did a nice job of making up for Full Moon's limited chain options, but Full Moon has a bunch of other weird restrictions that make it the weakest groove.

1)Limited meter. Crescent Moon has the most control over its meter, since c moon chars can heat activate anytime they have over 100%. Heat moon technically has the least control over their meter, but h moon chars make up for it because most of them have 6aa combos, which are longer than combos in other grooves. These combos generate more meter and thus it's very easy for h moon chars to get to Auto Heat more than once per round. For Full Moon, getting to MAX is a once a round thing, as circuit charging isn't really all that useful and practical. F Moon combos are also shorter in general so meter generation is limited.

2)Dodging. F moon is the only groove that cannot ground and air dodge. For ground dodging, it's not really that big of a deal because they're pretty limited in use except for chars that have roll dodges, like Kohaku and Mech. However, not having air dodge is a huge weakness. Air dodges actually aren't used to "dodge" things: they're more used as another jump in the air, as they delay a character's falling momentum. Also important is that they turn your character in the right direction in the air if you were facing the wrong direction. Some characters can even use air dodge as a left/right mixup. F moon chars not having air dodges basically means they all have less mobility compared to other moons.

3)Air dash cancelling. C and H moon can airdash cancel all air normals on block and hit, with a few exceptions. F moon characters can only airdash cancel j.a's. F moon can still do a similar technique for j.b and j.c attacks by doing an IAD cancel, which is cancelling the air normal into a double jump, and then immediately cancelling the double jump into an airdash. However, this requires the F moon character to have a double jump available, so it's more limited compared to C and H.

4)Empty cancelling a attacks. Throughout Melty's history, using EX moves as reversals was always bad because of the ability to cancel the recovery frames of whiffed a attacks into anything. Most notably, you could even cancel a whiffed a attack into a shield. So it was extremely easy to go for a meaty 2a/5a, and just react to superflash and cancel to a shield if opponent did a wakeup super. However, F moon for whatever reason can't cancel whiffed a attacks into shields. So they're more vulnerable to wakeup EX moves than the other grooves.

There are definitely some strong Full Moon characters, like Nero, the Maids, Miyako, and Akiha, but in general the groove is significantly weaker than Crescent and Full.

Evolution 2010

2010-07-16T16:26:00.000-07:00

Really cool EVO this year, unfortunately I couldn't go because the family has a vacation planned for Taiwan during November so money is really tight. Had to watch everything on stream pretty much. Historic event for Melty players, as it was the first time MB was a major event at Evolution.

Melty had 146 entrants, so it was divided into 4 pools. Unfortunately Pool 1 and 4 were extremely stacked, so many good players weren't able to make it to Top 8. Sadly Melty got no stream time at all pre-Top 8, which was expected, but EVO also did not let the community set up their own personal streams because of G4 or something like that... pretty dumb if you ask me.

Garu and Chelsea from Japan were able to make it over for this event, which is pretty amazing. On Thursday night, Tempered set up a casuals stream and Garu basically ran a train on everyone, only losing once to Brandino during a 4-5 hour period. Before coming over, Garu stated on IRC that he was starting to play H-Kohaku more than his main(H-VSion), but I was expecting him to play HVS over here since he would be more familiar with the character. H-VSion is also considerably easier to play, and I thought that Garu would get frustrated over the PS2 input buffer and not play H-Kohaku. But he proved me wrong and stuck to his guns, and also played a bit of H-Shiki as well.

Chelsea is Garu's friend, and is nowhere near as well known but he has appeared in a couple of videos. He plays F-Arc in videos, but he was able to run a bunch of characters at EVO like C-Shiki, C-Arc, and C-Sion. I was expecting him to be a bit stronger, but he ended up being about mid-level by US standards. Chelsea however was hilarious and provided some amazing commentary, and it seemed like everybody really enjoyed hanging out with him.

The final top 8 for Melty was pretty much what I expected, although I was expecting bell and sp00ky to get farther in their pools. Top 8 for Melty was unfortunately streamed first on Sunday at 10AM in the morning, but people were able to get up for it and I think it peaked at around 14K viewers. Stream was handled very well, though apparently the player camera was broken so we couldn't get shots of player reactions and the commentator's table like all the other games. bell did a great job commentating and keeping it clean for the EVO stream, but Sp00ky was obviously very tired from streaming SSFIV the previous night so he was pretty quiet. Some people captured some of the matches of the stream and put them on Youtube, but the vids are mostly 1)incomplete and/or 2)bad quality. Luckily someone saved it on JustinTV.

http://www.justin.tv/unowner/b/266597281
http://www.justin.tv/unowner/b/266603408

Very exciting Top 8, as almost every match was amazing. Unfortunately the Grand finals between LordKnight and Garu was terrible as not only was it an H-Kohaku mirror, both players' execution just went down the drain so it was dropped combos everywhere. Very ugly finals, and sadly it gave the impression to many non-MBAA players that the game was very broken. I feel that LK should have chosen a different character, like C-Warc, after he lost the first set, since Garu plays regularly with the best Japanese H-Kohaku, Hagi. It would have also made the grand finals a lot more interesting as well.

Melty getting into this year's EVO was kind of a miracle, and I don't see Melty getting back in ever again, but it seems like the game was able to make an overall good impression. From what I heard, Garu and Chelsea seemed to have a very good time so maybe they can encourage more Japanese players to travel over here in the future.

BlazBlue

2010-07-07T22:06:00.000-07:00

BB is Arc Systems Works' newest fighting game series. From the very beginning, it looked to be very Guilty Gear inspired, from the artstyle down to the character designs, Ragna and Jin being the most obvious. Many people thought it was going to be Guilty Gear's successor, but it turned out to be a very different game.

My opinion of BlazBlue is of intense disappointment. I really wanted to like the game, and I had a lot of faith that it was going to be great since the creators of Guilty Gear were making it. Anyway, I guess I'll start with what Blazblue did right.

The presentation and graphics. The game looks gorgeous, the sprites are really detailed, and like Guilty Gear there's an all-star voice acting cast to support the characters. All of the winscreens are voiced, and Rachel, Litchi, Ragna, and Taokaka in particular have great performances.

The amount of support that ArcSys and its American counterpart AkSys are pouring into promoting the game is amazing. I really wish that all fighting games had the same advertising campaign as BB. To mention only a few things, BB has a semi-frequent radio show called Bururaji, it has an official comic that is also translated, the BB website has 4komas and also has special images everytime a character's birthday comes up, and the limited edition American release of the game came with a tutorial DVD created by the top US Blazblue players.

BB also has, without a doubt, the best console port of a fighting game I have ever seen. The netplay is good(for console fighting game standards, at least), the training mode is great and has tons of options, and lastly I should mention the story mode. While BB's story isn't exactly a very deep one, it avoids the story that 99% of all other fighting games have, where someone organizes a big tournament to see who's the strongest warrior or whatnot. The story mode in BB is perfectly executed, as a somewhat complex plot like BB's is best told in the visual novel style. The Teach Me Miss Litchi tutorial segments are also golden.

Unfortunately, the good stuff ends here. BB fails in the most important department, which is its merit as a fighting game. As a fighting game, BB is terrible: it is not fun to play or watch, the gameplay is clunky, and characters spend way too much time in the air as opposed to the ground. The game honestly reminds me much more of Melty Blood than it does Guilty Gear. It's really clear that Mori wanted to make BB a very different game than GG; however, I get the impression that some of his design decisions were made just for the sake of being different, without really thinking them through. One prime example is being able to throw during hit and blockstun, which is pretty much unheard of in fighting games. While this doesn't seem like a big deal at first because of the much wider throw break window for these type of throws, it led to things like Carl's clap-loop infinite in Calamity Trigger. The burst system was horribly handled in CT, and the new bursts are just as bad in CS.

I also have to mention the ukemi system. There are no true knockdowns in BlazBlue, as every knockdown that can't be comboed after is ground techable and rollable, like Vampire Savior. While this doesn't seem like a problem at first, it is indeed one because BB is a very slow paced game. Many characters can't punish tech rolls, and the slow nature of the game makes it very difficult to maintain offense after an opponent rolling, in contrast to Vampire Savior where the attacker can still maintain pressure after a roll because of the frantic pacing. This pretty much makes BB have very little in the way of okizeme, with some exceptions. In an interview with Mori before the first iteration of BB came out, he stated that he did not want the game to center around okizeme and knockdowns, so it seems this was intentional. He probably wanted the game to not be as momentum based as Guilty Gear, and have the focus be in the neutral game. However, it doesn't work out because the neutral game is extremely shallow and sluggish, as jumping is way too strong and throws are terrible.

The balance in BB is also really terrible. In both Calamity Trigger and Continuum Shift, it's the case of the top tier characters being really good and braindead, while the bottom tier characters are horrible. The gaps between the tiers are huge and the tournament results are a good reflection of this.

BB is also pretty notorious for being an extremely easy game, lowering the execution requirements a la Street Fighter IV. While I don't exactly have a problem with making games easier, I do feel that BB went too far in lowering the execution barrier. Not every game has to be as hard as Hokuto no Ken or Eternal Fighter Zero, but being able to hold a button for 5 frames to get a repeat input is silly, and the easy barrier/throw option select on defense makes blocking way too strong in this already slow paced game.

I should also mention the sound in this game.. to be more specific, the voice looping. BB has the worst voice looping I have ever heard in any fighting game. Characters talk way too much, as they have voice clips every time they attack, move, and block. They even say stuff when they're idle. Voice clips repeat and cut each other off. For example, a character that has the clip "Muda yo" when blocking... if you made them block a multi hit blockstring, you would then hear something like m-m-m-mu-mu-muda yo. Rachel is easily the biggest offender, since there's basically three people talking everytime she does something.

So yes, disappointment. Or rather, wasted potential. There are so many good things about BlazBlue(like Litchi!), but unfortunately BB fails when it comes to the most important things about fighting games: the gameplay. I remember when people were just discovering the little details of the plot and the game presentation(like all the character specific quotes and the intricate story mode), calling BB a fighting game with visual novel elements. However, the way the game is now, it's really the other way around.

Utattemita (Part 2)

2010-07-01T01:05:00.000-07:00

Some of my favorite covers and originals are:
メルト (Melt)
Vocaloid: Hatsune Miku
Music and Lyrics by: ryo of supercell

ガゼル (Gazelle) cover, 3M mix
【ニコニコ動画】【メルト3M MIX】＋プロモーション

ちょうちょ (Choucho) cover, 3M mix
【ニコニコ動画】「メルト　3M MIX」を歌ってみた（ちょうちょｖｅｒ.）

rockleetist cover, 3M mix and English translated lyrics

Gazelle's version is the classic one and easily the most well known cover of Melt. Melt is a ridiculously difficult song, and it's amazing how she can hit all the high notes during the chorus without destroying her voice. Choucho's cover is also amazing, though her voice does falter a bit during some of the high parts. I also included rockleetist's english cover because she does a good job singing it and the english translation is really good.

Just Be Friends
Vocaloid: Megurine Luka
Music and Lyrics by: Dixie Flatline

ちょうちょ (Choucho) cover
【ニコニコ動画】「Just Be Friends」を歌ってみた（ちょうちょｖｅｒ.）

うさ (Usa) cover, Band Edition
【ニコニコ動画】【うささんに】Just be Friends-Band Edition-【歌ってもらった】

rockleetist cover, English translated lyrics

Legendary Luka song, the song is about breakup if you can't tell from the title. Choucho's cover is my personal favorite, but Usa's is also really good as I love the Band edition. Also posted rockleetist's cover to see just how depressing the lyrics are! I could never have guessed how sad the song was before I read those lyrics, since the song is so upbeat. However, rockleetist did take a few liberties with the translation, since JBF is originally written from the guy's point of view, but she rewrote the lyrics from the girl's POV. Some people have a big problem with this, but I don't mind it since sometimes it has to be done to keep rhyme and meter.

ルカルカ★ナイトフィーバー (Luka Luka Night Fever)
Vocaloid: Megurine Luka
Music and Lyrics by: samfree

実谷なな (Mitani Nana) cover
【ニコニコ動画】『ルカルカ★ナイトフィーバー』を歌ってみた★実谷なな

Luka Luka Night Fever is a eurobeat song describing her nightlife. I'm not a big fan of eurobeat(I can't stand it, actually), but this song is pretty well written and it fits Luka rather well. This song got so popular that the people on nico actually went and created an elaborate dance routine for it. There's also a vid of Nana Mitani herself trying to dance to herself singing it(by recording, of course).

初めての恋が終わる時 (Hajimete no Koi ga Owaru Toki, or Hatsukoi)
Vocaloid: Hatsune Miku
Music and Lyrics by: ryo of supercell

ちょうちょ (Choucho) cover
【ニコニコ動画】「初めての恋が終わる時」歌ってみた＋mp3（ちょうちょｖｅｒ.）

IMO the best cover that Choucho has done and the best cover of this particular song. Not much to say, it's a beautiful song and Choucho's performance is spotless as always. I'm not really sure what the song is about that, since the lyrics are kind of vague.

MEGANE
Vocaloid: Megurine Luka
Music and Lyrics by: ultra-noob

ゆず茶 (Yuzucha) cover
【ニコニコ動画】【アーン…】MEGANEを歌ってみた【ゆず茶】

Megane is a fairly obscure Luka song. If you think girls with glasses are hot, this is the song for you. I actually don't like Yuzucha very much, but her cover of Megane is pretty much perfect.

ブラック★ロックシューター (Black Rock Shooter)
Vocaloid: Hatsune Miku
Music and Lyrics by: ryo of supercell

ちょうちょ (Choucho) cover, Band Edition
【ニコニコ動画】「ブラック★ロックシューター -B. E-」歌ってみた（ちょうちょｖｅｒ.）

Another legendary Vocaloid song from ryo, this song got so popular that there's going to be an anime about it.

ggrks-ググれカス- (Gugure Kasu)
Vocaloid: Megurine Luka and Kamui Gakupo
Music and Lyrics by: Aamin-P

ヲタみん (Wotamin) and clear cover
【ニコニコ動画】【clewota-ｸﾘｦﾀ-】『ggrks-ググれカス-』歌ってしまった／(^O^)＼

This is a really cute song about a guy hitting on a girl on the Internet, asking her silly and personal questions, while the girl responds everytime with Gugure Kasu(Just google it, you moron). Tsundere Luka is delicious, and so is Wotamin's performance.

ワールドイズマイン (World Is Mine)
Vocaloid: Hatsune Miku
Music and Lyrics by: ryo of supercell

うさ (Usa) cover
【ニコニコ動画】 (｡･ｘ･)つ【ワールドイズマイン】を歌ってみた＠うさ【mp3もあるよ】

Quintessential tsundere Miku song portraying her as a princess falling in love.

恋は戦争 (Koi wa Sensou)
Vocaloid: Hatsune Miku
Music and Lyrics by: ryo of supercell

Fye cover

This is an intense song about Miku declaring that one must fight for love. The most popular cover of this song by a Japanese nico artist is Yamai's, but I actually don't like it all that much. I think the best cover is done by Fye, who is actually Russian. Her pronunciation is really good, though not perfect, but it's her performance that blows the other covers out of the water imo.

ニコニコ観測(ββ) (Nico Nico Kansoku)
Based on the song 天体観測 (Tentai Kansoku) by BUMP OF CHICKEN
recog
【ニコニコ動画】【天体観測】ニコニコ観測(ββ) / recog 【替え歌】

This is a hilarious song about the life of a nico addict. I can totally relate to it since I spend way too much time on nico myself.

Super Mario RPG Rawest Forest
Based on the song "Rawest Forest" by Martin Hagwell, video by Kirbopher15
"Rawest Forest" an arranged version of 森のキノコにご用心 (Beware the Forest's Mushrooms) on the Super Mario RPG OST
僕太 (Bokuta) cover
【ニコニコ動画】【Hui】森のキノコにご用心　日本語訳で歌ってみた　【僕太】

One of the coolest things ever. Rawest Forest was a song based on the Forest Maze music from SMRPG about the joys of playing the game. Kirbopher15 made a flash video of it that can still be viewed on Newgrounds, and this video apparently got so popular on Nico that people started covering it.

組曲『ウメハラ動画』 (Kumikyoku Umehara Douga)
Based on the song 組曲『ニコニコ動画』 (Kumikyoku Niconico Douga)
僕太 (Bokuta) cover
【ニコニコ動画】組曲『ウメハラ動画』歌ってみた/僕太

This is a hilarious song about the greatness of Daigo Umehara and his dominance in the fighting game scene. The song is based on the that big nico medley that was popular a few years ago. The modified lyrics were written by somebody else; Bokuta supplied the vocals.

Utattemita (Part 1)

2010-06-29T00:49:00.000-07:00

歌ってみた, or utattemita, was something I discovered last year. It roughly translates to "to try singing", and it's the category on ニコニコ動画(nico nico douga) where people record themselves singing popular songs. So it's like karaoke, basically. Supposedly in the old days, most people on utattemita did anime song covers, but nowadays it's mostly Vocaloid songs.

I'm actually not a fan of Vocaloid at all. Well, I really like Megurine Luka, but I can't stand hearing any of the vocaloids sing because well... they're computer programs. No matter how good the songs are, it sounds terrible to me whenever that robotic voice is singing. However, Vocaloid is remarkable because it allows people with a lot of talent to create songs and share their works with other people when they normally wouldn't have been able to, either because of the composer's own inability to sing or the difficulty in finding a person willing to sing. Similarly utattemita is great because it allows amateur singers a chance to shine with some really professional sounding works(it's not hard at all to record yourself singing and then layer it over an off-vocal track).

So I first discovered utattemita last year when I watched a really good Toradora Ami MAD, which can be viewed here. The song used in this video is "World Is Mine" sung by Usa. I was really interested as to who sung the song, so I did some research and the rest, as they say, is history.

Some of my favorite female singers in utattemita are:
ちょうちょ (Choucho)
【ニコニコ動画】
Easily my favorite nico singer, she has a really pretty voice, amazing range, and she's quite cute to boot. Her most famous cover is Miku Hatsune's Last Night, Good Night, but I think the best cover that she's done is Hatsukoi.

うさ (Usa)
【ニコニコ動画】
Another fairly famous singer, her range isn't on the same level as Choucho's, but she's a great singer and has some really good material. Her singing voice(which is somewhat high and cutesy) is actually really different from her normal voice(which is really deep), but there are some songs where she sings in that deep voice. She does doujin music work under the name Hana, and also has a band with Yamai, Tolie, and other singers called Usa Colony. Her most famous covers are of World Is Mine and Dear.

ヤマイ (Yamai)
【ニコニコ動画】

Yamai is another very famous singer. She has a nice deep voice, but her range is pretty good and the image I get from hearing her voice is that of the beautiful older sister. She's done a lot of Meiko covers in the past, which might be the reason why some people call her the real-life version of Meiko. She and Usa do radio shows together pretty often, and they act pretty yuri together. Whether it's real or if it's just teasing the fans will never be known, but it's definitely delicious~ Yamai's blog is also really cool because she puts up lots of WIP pieces of her songs, so you can hear how much they change in the final product.

ガゼル (Gazelle)
Gazelle is a legendary nico singer that unfortunately doesn't upload any more covers because of some drama. She has a clear, beautiful voice, and has covered some great material. Her most famous cover is Melt, both the original and the 3M mix. Even though she's quit nico, she still does work as a doujin artist under the name Yanagi Nagi. But most notably, she's actually somewhat broken into the mainstream, being the vocalist for the group supercell. Bakemonogatari's legendary ending theme is sung by her.

ヲタみん (Wotamin)
【ニコニコ動画】
Not much to say... she's a great singer, has covered A LOT of material and releases new covers pretty frequently. She seems to like singing Luka material. Her most famous song is actually a duet with clear on the song ggrks.

As for male singers
I don't actually listen to male singers, for whatever reason... it might be because I don't like any of the songs that were composed for the male vocaloids, and it feels weird to hear a male sing a song that was composed for a female vocaloid. So basically, all of the male singers I like are ones that do parodies or come up with original songs.

ヒャダイン (Hyadain)

Linked his user profile because there's no mylist that contains all of his songs. Hyadain is hilarious and mostly creates songs based on existing videogame pieces. Most of his works have become wildly popular everywhere, evidenced by the sheer amount of Youtube vids of his works with foreign language subs in them. He's a very good singer, and is also really good at singing as a female as well. His most famous song is his original composition about Street Fighter II, which incorporates various sound effects from the game and has him singing as every character in the game.

recog
【ニコニコ動画】
recog is another great singer that mainly does parody songs. My favorite recog piece is Nico Nico Kansoku, a song about the life of a nico addict, parodying Bump of Chicken's Tentai Kansoku.

History of Melty Tiers

2010-06-28T00:02:00.000-07:00

I'm mainly making this post because there's no page on the Internet out there that documents all of the "official" or accepted tier lists of the game, so hopefully the search engines will pick this up so that more misinformation doesn't get spread. But it's also interesting because it shows which characters have historically been favored by the designers.

I don't think there were any tiers in the very early versions of Melty Blood, because the game was full of so much broken stuff that no one really bothered. The earlist semblance of tiers I remember were in ReACT, a bit before Final Tuned 2.501b. Akiha was undisputed #1, as her high damage output, clash frames on 2c, high/low mixup, and best defense modifier made her easily the most complete character in the game. I remember watching tournament replays during this time and seeing that half of all vids were Akiha mirrors. Warc, Shiki Tohno, and the maid part were also considered pretty good during this time.

Now comes the main games, where MB was no longer a doujin game anywhere and became an arcade game.

Melty Blood Act Cadenza Version A
The only tier list made during this time was from Arcadia... forgot which issue it was from.
S: Warc Shiki
A: Sion Satsuki VAkiha
B: Arc Wara Nero Akiha Maids Nanaya
C: Aoko Kouma Mech Len Ciel VSion Miyako Kohaku Hisui
D: Neco

Pretty similar to the ReACT list... the main difference is Akiha moving down to B. Warc was S because of ease of use, very high damage, and unbeatable normals. Her j.b throughout the entire MB series is arguably the best, or one of the best air normals in the game, and it was at its peak in this version, with the fastest startup and containing clash frames. Shiki was also rated high because of high damage, ease of use, good normals, good defensive options(easily the best backdash in the game), and good defense modifier. Sion was interesting because she wasn't considered S tier, but was the only character in the game to have a reliable infinite. Satsuki was really silly in this version, as her normals had very little proration, so her damage potential was through the roof. She got minimum 4K damage from her antiair 5a mash into EX Tornado Grab. Finally, there's VAkiha, who had unparalleled rushdown, movement, and damage/lifeleech potential with her EX pits and throw.

Melty Blood Act Cadenza Version B
There were no official tierlists done for this version of this game as it was rather short lived. However, Sion and Kouma were undisputedly top tier because of an oversight by the game developers in superarmor properties. Specifically Sion 2c and Kouma 236 specials had superarmor that pretty much lasted the entire duration and started up immediately.

Melty Blood Act Cadenza Version B2
This version has several tierlists done for it, as the game lasted a long time and is the final game in the Act Cadenza series. Earliest list comes from Tougeki Damashii Volume 5.
A: Sion Akiha VAkiha Kouma Ciel Len
B: Hisui Mech
C: Everybody else
D: Necos

Main interesting thing to note here is Ciel and Len rising to top tier. Ciel in this version was pretty much the most well rounded character: she had an answer to everything. Len was a different case, as she gained some very strong tools in VerB2 and her gameplay was getting a lot of development(she was one of the more underused chars in previous versions).

The Japanese MBAC BBS eventually agreed upon another tier list some time later, which is:
S: Sion Len Ciel Warc Miyako Akiha
A: Hisui Kouma VSion Mech
B: VAkiha Arc Aoko Nanaya Shiki Nero Satsuki Maids
C: Kohaku Wara WLen
D: Necos

Main thing to note is Miyako rising to S. She gained some very good tools in VerB2, and people were finally beginning to understand how to play her.

Later on, around January of 2008 Tougeki Damashii published a matchup chart created by 46 top Japanese players. It can be viewed here.

The final official tier list for this game was made around May of 2008. Since I actually have the original text I thought I'd post it:
参加者　20人

かんな、すずめ、にく、ぶぶ、はぎ、ぼぶ、ゆとり、芳乃、SAT、スシ、ひでぶ、かいまーと、洋、レオ、はと、千神、あげは、丸やん、ねむとら、レイ

方式は前と同じで適当にS、A、B、Cで分けて貰ってSが4点、Aが3点、Bが2点、Cが1点といった感じでランク分けは四捨五入で

Ｓ:シエル(79)、レン(77)、シオン(74)、ワルク(73)
Ａ:都古(66)、秋葉 (64)、メカ翡翠(63)、軋間(57)、翡翠(55)、ネロ(51)
Ｂ:Vシオン(45)、七夜(42)、アルク(42)、さつき(39)、青子(37)、赤主(34)
Ｃ:ヒスコハ(25)、志貴(25)、ワラキア(23)、白レン(22)、琥珀(22)

Basically what happened is that top Japanese Miyako player Kanna asked 20 top japanese players to rank every character, and he averaged those results to make a tier list. Characters were rated from S(4 points) to C(1 point). The top JP players that participated were:
Kanna, Surume, Niku, Bubu, Hagi, Bobu, Yutori, Yoshino, SAT, Sushi, Hidebu, Kaimaato, You, Leo, Hato, Chikami, Ageha, Maruyan, Nemutora, Rei

S: Ciel(79) Len(77) Sion(74) Warc(73)
A: Miyako(66) Akiha(64) Mech(63) Kouma(57) Hisui(55) Nero(51)
B: VSion(45) Nanaya(42) Arc(42) Satsuki(39) Aoko(37) VAkiha(34)
C: Maids(25) Shiki(25) Wara(23) WLen(22) Kohaku(22)

Main point of interest is that throughout most of VerB2's lifespan, Sion was undisputed #1 for her unrivalled damage, strong pressure, good normals, and defensive options. Only in the final year of the game(when this list was released) was she considered lower than Ciel and Len.

Moving on to Actress Again...

Melty Blood Actress Again
Only one tier list for this game as it was incredibly broken and very much an incomplete game. This list made by Yukinose, and published in either Arcadia or Tougeki Damashii, I don't remember which.
S: H-Akiha H-Shiki H-Nero H-Wara H-Ries H-Aoko
A: C-Ciel C-Mech C-WLen F-Kouma H-Roa H-Sion H-VSion C-Arc H-Nanaya C-Warc H-VAkiha C-Kohaku
B: H-Hisui C-Maids C-Miyako H-Len C-Satsuki

It's very obvious that Half Moon is broken in vanilla MBAA. Instant life regen on autoheat and ridiculous meter gain on all 6aa combos made them way too strong.

Melty Blood Actress Again Version A
There are numerous official and accepted tier lists for this game, as it's been out for a while. The first one was made in February of 2009, and the process was very similar to the final tier list of MBAC. I also have the original text, so here goes:
キャラランク（そのキャラの1番強いと思うスタイルでのランク）
猫アルクは強い弱い関係なしに欄外
A、B、Cで分ける（個人的にVER.Bよりも差がないと感じるので）
Aを3点、Bを2点、Cを1点として加算。

A:Vシオン（59）、メカ翡翠（58）、志貴（54）、ネロ（54）、七夜（53）、琥珀（53）
B:都古（49）、ワルク（41）、ヒスコハ（40）、アルク（40）、白レン（38）、翡翠（38）、シエル（37）、軋間（36）、青子（36）、リーズ（35）、さつき（35）、赤主（34）、シオン（32）、ロア（31）、秋葉（30）、ワラキア（30）
C:レン（23）

参加者（敬称略）:かんな、レイ、かいまーと、うどんげ、丸やん、SAT、芳乃、がる、シュウ、めっしい、ジン、キリト、ぶぶ、平田、ぼぶ、するめ、にく、新屋、深空、洋

聞いてない人に会った際にランクを聞いてまた更新する可能性もありますが、おそらく更新はしないと思われます。

Compiled by 20 top jp players, characters were rated from A(3 points) to C(1 point)
Players: Kanna, Rei, Kaimaato, Udonge, Maruyan, SAT, Yoshino, Garu, Shuu, Messhii, Jin, Kirito, Bubu, Hirata, Bobu, Surume, Niku, Niiya, Misora, You

A: VSion(59) Mech(58) Shiki(54) Nero(54) Nanaya(53) Kohaku(53)
B: Miyako(49) Warc(41) Maids(40) Arc(40) White Ren(38) Hisui(38) Ciel(37) Kouma(36) Aoko(36) Ries(35) Satsuki(35) VAkiha(34) Sion(32) Roa(31) Akiha(30) Wara(30)
C: Ren(23)

Those characters in the top 7-8 would remain very consistent throughout the game's lifespan, the main exception being Nanaya who would eventually start moving down about a year later. Also notable is Akiha's extremely low ranking.

A month later, the first tier list that actually separated all the moon phase versions of the characters was made. I forgot who actually wrote it, though.
S: H-VSion C-Mech H/C-Shiki F-Nero H-Kohaku F-Miyako
A+: C-Nanaya C-Warc
A: F/C-Kouma C/H-Nero C/F-Kohaku F-Mech
A-: F-Maids C/H-Miyako F-Warc F-WLen H-Nanaya C-Ciel C-Aoko F-Arc F-VAkiha H-Roa C-Satsuki F-Shiki H/F-Sion C-Hisui
B+: Akiha C/H-Maids H/F-Ries F/C-VSion H-VAkiha F-Nanaya
B: H-Warc H-Hisui C/F-Wara H/C-Arc F/H-Ciel H-Mech C-Sion H-Kouma C/H-WLen F-Aoko
B-: H-Wara H/F-Ren C-Ries F-Roa H-Satsuki F-Hisui H-Aoko C-VAkiha
C+: F-Satsuki C-Ren C-Roa

Later on, Arcadia published a tier list made by MBAC top VAkiha/MBAA top Shiki player Hato in their August issue.
God: H-VSion
S: C-Mech
A: F/H-Nero H/C-Shiki C/H-Kohaku C/F-Miyako C-Nanaya C/F-Maids
B: F/H-Aoko C-Warc F-VAkiha H-Hisui F-WLen C-Satsuki C-Sion F-Arc
C: C-Ciel F-Kouma F-Ries C-Wara C/H-Akiha H/F-Roa H-Len C-Neco

There hasn't been an official tier list made after this, but the metagame has changed considerably. Most notably, H-VSion isn't undisputed #1 anymore, as there's a bit of debate as to whether H-Kohaku and H-Shiki should be ranked higher than her. The top 7 chars(VSion, Shiki, Mech, Kohaku, Miyako, Nero, Warc) are pretty much agreed upon by everyone, they just get shuffled around a bit sometimes. Akiha's ranking has also changed pretty dramatically: in the first few months of the game's release, she was often ranked as one of the worst characters or pretty low on the lists, but nowadays she's always considered mid-high at worst. Finally, there's also VAkiha, who was generally considered very good at first with her full moon style, but then went down. However, she is rising back up again as more people are playing her half moon style.

One thing to note from all these tier lists is that it becomes very obvious as to which character is consistently strong in every version. And that character is Warc. In nearly every single version of the game, she is either top or high tier. Whether this is because the developers like her or the nature of the game can be debated. However, Warc being consistently strong isn't a surprise considering MB's core gameplay. Probably about 85% of MB's game takes place in the air, and Warc is a character with nearly unmatched air mobility, with a good projectile and air projectile, good defensive options, the best air normals, and high damage. A character like Warc was pretty much made for this game.

Melty Blood Actress Again (Part 2)

2010-06-24T20:17:00.000-07:00

So MBAA came out in arcades sometime in the middle of 2008, after a very short period of location tests. And not surprisingly, the game was very broken. Many characters had infinites, and C-Ciel in particular had a handcuffs infinite involving looping her charged black keys. Meaning that doing this infinite would actually freeze the opponent in place and prevent him/her from doing anything, even sparking. It was ugly, and a revision called Version A was quickly released in the beginning of 2009.

How is it?
It's pretty much better than MBAC in almost every way. It's very obvious that the developers knew what the flaws of MBAC were and they probably listened to fan complaints as well, as they took multiple measures to fix everything they could. Let's run through the good and bad:

The Good
The screen is bigger
Bigger screen means there is finally a real midrange game, and that there are actually real zoning characters.

Nerf to A mashing
This was addressed in several ways. The most direct way was a new armor system, where if a b or c attack hit an a attack at the same time, the b or c attack would then win outright, instead of trading like it normally would in other games. The other way this was fixed was a universal nerf to j.a's across the board: they no longer have the ridiculous active frames that they had in MBAC. Meaning that in the neutral game there is now a reason to use air attacks other than j.a

Nerf to clash frames
Unfortunately, clash frames weren't completely removed, but most of them have been taken away, save for a few characters like F-Nero.

Guardbar
You still can't die by chip, but now there's a guardbar which means that people cannot simply block all day without consequence. Getting guard crushed is also really painful as the GCed character is stunned for a really long time, allowing all day for the opponent to get a full combo off.

Nerf to shielding
Shields no longer freeze the opponent in place so safe jumps are back in the game. In addition, a character whiffing a shield will be put in counterhit state and will also have his/her guardbar quality reduced, which discourages reckless shielding.

Airthrow whiff animation
They finally added these, so the old airthrow/shield option select is gone.

Varied combos/rewarding execution
Most characters now have new, varied combos that aren't just j.bc j.bc. In addition, they look pretty cool and require a good amount of execution. The old easy combos from MBAC can still be done, but they do very little damage. I think this was handled perfectly, as the game doesn't require the players to have ridiculous execution to even play the game on a basic level, since the easy mode combos can still be done. However, it rewards the players who do put the time into improving their execution with much more interesting and damaging combos.

Variety in characters
It becomes obvious very quickly when playing that the developers made sure to make the characters more unique from each other, compared to MBAC. The addition of the three moon styles also helps this.

The Bad
Neutral game
Unfortunately, what I feel was the biggest problem in MBAC wasn't really fixed in MBAA, although it's at least a little bit better. The neutral game is now more than just a j.a mash fest; however, jumping and chicken blocking are still way too strong. It's still overwhelmingly advantageous to be in the air than on the ground, and the across-the-board nerf to airthrows also means that getting "punished" for being in the air too much isn't that big of a deal.

Bigger screen
Yes, it's both a good and bad thing. Kind of related to the previous point, but the bigger screen size means that being in the air is even stronger than it was in MBAC.

Unbalance
It's the result of there being way more characters(23 chars x 3 styles = 69 characters, and that's not even counting the console chars), but the game is less balanced than MBAC. I feel that the unbalance in MBAA is not the result of the top tier being too powerful. Rather, it's that there are a good number of blatantly terrible characters. It's obvious that some characters had much less time put into them(like H-Wara) than the others.

In Closing
MBAA is a great update, and I'm very happy with the direction the series is taking. Sadly, the biggest problem with MBAC wasn't fixed in MBAA, but they fixed 6 out of the 7 problems I mentioned in the previous post, which is really impressive.

Melty Blood Actress Again (Part 1)

2010-06-22T19:25:00.000-07:00

So MBAA(the console version, at least) has been out for almost a year now, and I thought I'd post my thoughts on it. However, most of what I think about the game is a comparison of the game to MBAC, so this will also sort of be a retrospective of my experience with the series in general.

Anyway, I believe my first exposure to Melty Blood was in either 2006 or 2007. At this time, the latest version was MBAC Ver.A, but there was no console version yet so the only way for us non-Japanese people to play the game was to play an outdated version of it, Melty Blood ReACT Final Tuned. I stumbled upon the game when trying to google search a method to play Guilty Gear XX #Reload online, and I remember finding a random forum where someone said that #Reload had no netplay(on PC, at least), but there was a similar game called Melty Blood that did have netplay.

So I played it, and had a lot of fun learning the game at first. At one point I was actually considered a top player during MBAC's time, but I think this had nothing to do with me actually being good; it was more like the scene was just very weak. Nowadays the scene is much stronger and I can't quite keep up anymore. Anyway, after about a year and a half of playing the game, I got really bored of playing my character Akiha, so I started playing a lot more secondary characters, but it didn't matter and I just got really bored of the game. I had a lot of fun with the game in the beginning, but it was like the better I got at the game and the more I learned, the less I enjoyed it. Besides the game actually being pretty boring, the reasons which can be read in the previous post, MBAC had a number of problems which I will list here:

1. The biggest problem of the game was the extremely shallow neutral game. There was basically no footsies, as being in the air was much more advantageous than being on the ground. Chicken blocking was extremely strong, and there was very little blockstun off an air block. Most characters had ridiculous j.a's, as they were active for a very long time(Len's j.a had 12 active frames), so the spacing game for the most part was reduced to everybody just flying around mashing j.a.

2. The screen was too small. Because of this, there was basically no midrange game: it was only you and your opponent up close, or flying around mashing buttons. It also didn't help that most characters could traverse the entire screen very quickly with a single superjump. Naturally, zoning was almost nonexistant too.

3. Mashing. Mashing a was extremely strong in MBAC because a's were the fastest attacks, had good active frames, and unlike other fighting games starting a combo from multiple jabs didn't significantly decrease the amount of damage done. In some cases it actually increased it. Hitting a multiple times was very strong in neutral because of active frames, was strong in pressure because of how easy it was to create frame traps by simply delaying the a's, and was strong on defense because of how fast a's were and because full combo damage could be done from a multiple jab starter.

4. Clash frames. These were a weird mechanic where if a clash happened, then both characters could immediately regain all their chain options. The problem with clash frames is that they were everywhere: most characers had clash frames on their b and c attacks. In addition, clash frames mostly occured during the startup of moves. This basically encouraged mashing buttons on defense even more. MBAC is the only fighting game I've seen where the defender can actually get away with trying to attack at frame disadvantage because of clash frames saving them.

5. The strength of blocking. Retaining its doujin roots, MBAC did not have chip death in it. In addition, there was no guard bar like in many other fighting games, or a negative penalty system. Also, the way reverse beat worked in the game was that the more someone rebeat, the less damage their next combo would do. Basically there was no penalty for guarding all day, and the attacker was actually penalized because of how central reverse beat was to the game. I should also mention that mixup in MBAC was very weak, as overheads were mostly very slow and throws did very little damage.

6. Shielding. Admittedly MBAC's parry mechanic was much better than 3rd Strike's, but it had a number of problems. Shielding was too strong because it had very little recovery and it actually froze the attacker in place for a certain amount of time. This basically meant that in MBAC there was no such thing as "true" safe jumps: a safe jump would be safe to everything the defender did on wakeup except for a reversal shield. In addition, there was a built-in option select on airthrows: since throws were input with a+d, a whiffed airthrow would result in a shield. This basically disrupted the entire basic fighting game offensive triangle. Throwing is supposed to beat blocking and lose to attacking, but a whiffed airthrow results in shield which beats attacking.

7. Boring combos(and characters). It might have been intentional, but MBAC was a very low execution game. Most characters' combos were simply hitconfirm multiple jabs into a sweep, then a launcher, and then j.bc j.bc airthrow. There were of course more difficult and flashy combos that could be done, but for the most part, they either a)didn't do significantly more damage or b)did less damage.

The last problem is a really subjective one, so it's not numbered:

-Heat. I really hate the way heat was managed in MB. Letting people have a way to regenerate their health in fighting games is usually a bad idea. However, there are some games where I think life regeneration was handled very well, like IaMP for example. In MBAC regenerating life is a very easy thing to do as heat activation can be done anytime someone has 100 meter or more. I think heat activation is obnoxious and way too strong in MBAC because a)it has invincible startup and b)it's unblockable. I would be totally fine with it if activation was invincible OR unblockable, but not both. A defender spazzing on heat while getting pressured is also pretty strong because heats can't be baited like bursts in Guilty Gear where you just stop attacking and block: you have to actually get out of the way and then move in and attack.

Wow this post turned out way too long, so I'll continue in the next post, where I'll talk about how MBAA fixed (most!) of these problems.

Two balancing philosophies

2010-06-17T23:44:00.000-07:00

The inspiration for this post comes from the GGXX Slash vs Accent Core debate, and to a lesser extent, the MBAC vs MBAA one. For those that don't know, about a year ago the Maryland GG scene decided to stop playing GGXX Accent Core, which was the most recent version. Instead, they used the GG Generations mode available in Accent Core Plus, which allows you to play the old #Reload and Slash versions of characters. Their reasons for doing so were that AC was not fun and very broken, while the previous two versions, especially Slash, were much more balanced. This sparked a bit of a debate on the Dustloop and SRK forums, getting people from outside Maryland involved too. Naturally this leads into the discussion of whether GGXX Slash or Accent Core is more balanced, and the different design philosophies that went into those games.

Slash was a pretty big departure from the older games, as a lot of the brokenness was either removed or toned down. The basic idea was that almost every character got nerfed, as nobody could reliably do 50%+ life combos. The harder characters in the game were also really bad, while the easier characters were extremely good. Accent Core on the other hand, is a very high damage game, and pretty much every character has something very broken about them.

So this leads into the 2 different balancing philosophies. The Slash method of balancing is to basically nerf every character, keep the game as modest as possible, and take out as much as of the silliness as possible. The Accent Core way of balancing is to make every character really strong and broken, and have tons of silly stuff. There's probably another name for these two balancing philosophies, but it's the name that I like to use, and it's also special since these two philosophies were used in two consecutive versions of the GG series. These balancing methods are also reflected in Melty Blood Act Cadenza and Actress Again, with MBAC being like Slash and MBAA being like Accent Core.

Personally, I prefer the Accent Core way of balancing, as even if it leads to games being less balanced it makes them more fun and last longer. A perfect example of this is what happened to the GG and MB scenes when Slash and MB Act Cadenza were the most recent versions. While Slash was definitely a much better game than #Reload, it became stale in the US scene very quickly, and many people around the world stopped playing GG during this time. For MBAC, the US scene stagnated a year after its release. There's still a bit of debate over what caused this, the most popular opinions being that netplay destroyed the scene and the game being on PC made it too big of a hassle to run tournaments. However, I believe the reason was just that MBAC was a bad and very boring game, and it just took about a year for most people to get tired of it.

There are actually still a couple of people in the US that prefer MBAC to MBAA, and for some reason many people in Europe still play MBAC as well. The main reason I hear for this is that MBAC is more balanced and they prefer the much lower execution requirements of that game. I actually agree that MBAC is more balanced than MBAA, as the gaps in tiers are smaller and almost every character is viable. However, the game is just really boring after a while. I remember how sad I was during 2007, the year that Tougeki was getting streamed. When watching the Tougeki 2007 MBAC stream and the DVDs later on, it became readily apparent during the top4 live segments that the audience was just not hype at all. Arturo Sanchez was actually at this event and he recounted that the audience for MBAC was really silent and they basically had to be pushed by the Tougeki announcer to cheer during the games.

As for whether GG Slash or Accent Core is more balanced, I believe Accent Core is more balanced(and more fun!) for a number of reasons. The gaps in the tiers in Slash were pretty big, as the bottom tier in Slash was reaaaaaaally bad. Slash Dizzy, Robo, and Order Sol were pretty much considered unplayable. In AC the gaps in the tiers are small, as pretty much every character is viable. However, one very noticeable difference is that the top tier in Accent Core can all do very silly things, like multiple high-damage unblockable setups or 70%+ life combos from one hit or counterhit, while the top tier in Slash can't do anything like that. Some people would probably say that Slash is more balanced purely based on that, but I think it's important to make a distinction between silliness and balance. While the top tier in Slash didn't have anything silly, they were still overwhelmingly stronger than the rest of the cast in that game. The top tier in Accent Core has tons of silly stuff, but most of the cast does too so it balances out. And indeed, the best testament to the balance of AC is last year's Tougeki results, as a bottom tier team of Satou Johnny, Mugen Bridget, and Chonari Zappa made it to finals. Although they didn't win, it went down to the final players of both teams with Chonari Zappa vs N-O Venom.

This silliness that I talked about is also very much absent in MBAC, but very much present in MBAA. And not surprisingly, MBAA is a much more fun game(in my opinion, at least), evidenced by how much louder the crowds are in both US and Japanese tournament videos.

In the end, while balance is definitely a very important thing in fighting games, the most important thing is still for the game to be fun, and if balance has to be sacrificed for it, then so be it.

Introductory Post

2010-06-16T14:50:00.000-07:00

Obligatory first post!

Anyway, this will be my blog where I talk about stuff not related to my real life. Aka video games, anime, random stuff about the Internet, and music. I actually do have a super sekrit blog where I talk about real life(not really, but it hasn't been updated in a few years).

Anyway, for those who don't know me, I go by the name Psylocke on fighting game forums. I graduated from UCLA in Spring 2009 with a Bachelors degree in Chemistry and am trying to find a job, because I have too much time on my hands! Hopefully that will change soon. In the meantime, I am just taking classes at a nearby community college hoping to retake classes that I didn't get a good grade in undergrad, or taking other classes that would be relevant to my career, but it's hard because I have the worst luck with registration dates.

About the name and the URL of this blog, it pertains to an anime series that is airing this season called B型H系(B Gata H Kei). This show is hilarious and I highly recommend everyone to watch it. The main character Yamada in this show is like a female version of myself, and one random night when I was talking to my friends about this, one of them mentioned that Yamada would be my persona. If you're not familiar with the Shin Megami Tensei: Persona series, a Persona is basically someone's true inner self, usually manifested in the form of a demon, angel, or mythological creature, and they're all associated with the various arcanas in a tarot card deck. There's a cool little explanation of them in the game which you can watch here. Anyway, if Yamada was my Persona, she would have to be in the Lovers arcana; thus, the name of this blog!

In my free time I like watching videos on Youtube and Nicovideo, listening to all sorts of music, and playing video games. I do watch anime or read manga occasionally but not really that often. I did have a phase during high school and the 1st year of college where I probably spent more than 3 hours every day watching anime episodes but that time has passed and I don't think I could ever do that anymore.

Videogames are not something new to me, as I basically grew up on platformers like the Megaman and Super Mario series. I still have my old NES in my house somewhere too. I also played a lot of RPGs later on, and still do today. Fighting games are actually pretty new to me, as I didn't grow up on Street Fighter II like most other people in the fighting game community did. I did go to the arcade a bit as a kid, but I wasn't allowed to play since I didn't have money so I just watched people. However, just watching people play was pretty fun in itself to see the different personalities of the players and the styles. The first game that I actually played competitively was Super Smash Bros. Melee for the Nintendo Gamecube. This was during my 1st and 2nd year of college, and it was also before the Youtube era so match videos were extremely hard to find. I think the only reliable website that had Melee match vids at the time was the Japanese Sheik/DK player Captain Jack's webpage. The only other way to get match vids was through DC++, so I spent a lot of time idling there and watching everything I could.

The first real fighting game I played was Guilty Gear XX, and I have to thank the UCLA arcade for that in giving me the first real exposure to the game. I remember my first visit there, and how amazed I was with how the game looked. At the time, GGXX wasn't even the most recent version of the game, as #Reload was already out, and it had a PC port, which was good for me since I didn't have any consoles. So I had a way to practice, unlike Smash where I didn't have a GameCube. This was during my 2nd year of college, making it around 2006, so I've been playing fighting games for about 4 years now. From there I branched into other fighting games.

Nowadays, I mainly play GGXX Accent Core. It's still my all-time favorite fighting game and I don't think I could ever get tired of playing it. I also play Melty Blood Actress Again on the side and a bit of Eternal Fighter Zero, which is an old but very underrated game.

Immaterial and Missing Power is a game that I tried to play for a while. I think the game is brilliant and it's very fun to watch, but it's much too difficult for me and I actually don't like the command interpreter in that game(and all other Tasofro games for that matter). Vampire Savior is another game that I tried to play for a while: it's very fun and fast paced, but there's nobody around me that plays it and the balance issues in that game really annoy me. Finally, there's Super Turbo, which is a hilarious game and really fun to watch. I don't think I will ever play it though.

Anywho, this was probably too long for an introductory post, so more later.