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Ricky racked up lots of wins in MvC2 during the night vs. team Japan members. We all took turns playing and at the end of the night, we felt pretty confident in MvC2. At one point when Ricky had like 20 wins, one frustrated player did the Gambit glitch to end the streak. He later apologized to Ricky. I guess that cheap game can make even the humble Japanese frustrated. =) Everyone from team USA and some members of team Japan met for a formal dinner the next night. It was at a really expensive traditional Japanese restaurant that cost about $100 a person. There were about 20 people present so dinner came out to at least $2000. Thank god JSF picked up the bill. The food was really good although some members of the team got scared when a dish came out and it looked like something was crawling around on the plate. Turns out it was just thin fish flakes on a hot food item which made it move around. It almost looked live. =) No matter how crazy it looked, I ate it out of respect for everyone there. Tony had a good time cause he loves sushi. Ricky on the other hand survived on McDonalds the whole week cause he doesn't like Japanese food. It was entertaining to see the look on his face as plate after plate of crazy Japanese food came out. J Anyway, through Kuni, both sides were able to exchange words with each other. Lots of points were brought up including our predictions on the outcomes of the games on Sunday. They said they were very confident in 3S but conceded MvC2 to us right there. Last few words were that Super Turbo would be a decisive game in the tourney. And we would soon find that to be true… Shin-Ya Ohnuki was one of the players present. Ohnuki is one of the top Japanese players along with Daigo. Ohnuki actually defeated Daigo in the Alpha 3 Japan regional tournament to take first place but lost to Daigo in the finals of the national tournament to decide who would come to the US. Ohnuki commented that he along with many other players were amazed when they saw the match between Alex and Daigo. He said that they saw techniques with Ryu that they have never seen before and were actually moved by the way Alex played. They thought Daigo's V Akuma was unbeatable and couldn't believe it when they saw Alex beating Daigo. Alex was 1 round away from winning the whole thing when Daigo was able to come back and win. Although Daigo won the match, lasting impressions were made on countless players. Ohnuki said that he was so impressed by Alex's play that if he had defeated Daigo and came to the US to play against Alex, he would have lost. Many more compliments followed back and forth. Kuni then explained that Daigo saw the game in a whole new light after the match and that is the main reason he switched to V Ryu as his main character shortly after that. Kuni said Daigo played V Ryu to show respect to Alex. Also, the Ryu midscreen confusion VC that Alex used during the match (VC2, low short, low RH, jab FB, hop kick, jumping forward kick to crossup, etc) was labeled by the Japanese as "Alex Combo." We saw several VCs in Japan that were variations of that combo. It's sort of funny since some of the VCs we learned from the Japanese actually had roots from the US. And that Daigo switched to V Ryu after playing vs. Alex while Alex switched to V Akuma. (For a while anyway) The words exchanged at the dinner table that night left me thinking for a long time. The next night was a trip out to TZW's arcade. It was an honor finally meeting the combo god. I got to play against him several games in Super Turbo and managed to win all of them. =) Naturally, he tried to cross me up a lot into a big combo. Good thing he didn't land a crossup or I would have been a victim of big combo exhibition. >_< He treated us to a live combo exhibition later on that night. He had a special setup with a machine equipped with turbo on all the buttons! No wonder his jabs look so fast. He still has amazing timing though since he was landing the most ridiculous combos in less than 10 tries. He also did the following Ryu combo on his 2nd try. Cross up Roundhouse vs. crouching Zangief, rushing fierce punch, low strong, low fierce, super fireball. He also gave us a copy of his combo tape, which was very generous of him. So the tourney day finally arrives and everyone is very excited. Going out on stage in front of 300 audience members was very exciting. They even had smoke machines on stage. It reminded me of a dual meet in wrestling. The organizers catered to our needs well and even drilled new holes in the cabinets to match US configuration. The Japanese cabinets have the buttons really close to the stick and in an arc that fits ergonomically with your fingers. They tried their best to get the straight US configuration. Although it wasn't perfect US setup, it was 95% close. Much thanks goes out to all the staff that made it possible. After a brief introduction, all of team US lined up to face team Japan and everybody bowed. I looked over my team and counted 7 people total. 4 of which were playing in most of the games and not able to focus on just 1 game. Then I looked over at team Japan and saw 25 players, which included the likes of Daigo Umehara (Alpha 3 and CvS champ) and Shinya-Ohnuki (A2 and 3S champ). All of them were there for just 1 game and I knew they have been focusing on their specialty. Needless to say, we were in for a fight. |