Spooky and Season's Beatings V incident

From the previous post, Spooky seemd to forget that his team actually ran the worst stream of 2010, and tried to downplay Level Up, that's why we need this post.

The incident took place in Season's Beatings V: Redemption (Ohio) on October 16, 2010. Umehara played in the worst environment as it had no stage and he was surrounded by the attendants who apparently cheered on his opponents. They didn't just stand near, they almost leaned him. Once he lost, Arturo Sanchez (or Sabin, a Dhalsim player) who, at the time, was a part of Team Spooky, ran (violently) from the commentator desk to congratulate the opponent and kicked Umehara's chair. (You could see this on the stream.) Umehara, who was invited to the tournament, was pushed out of the sight by the crowd, like he wasn't needed anymore.

Not only that, Sabin, who was a commentator, made an unclaimed remark on the microphone that Umehara didn't want to play on the stream because he's picky about the screen mornitor and was afraid to lose on the stream. (He later added that Umehara tried to have some privilege on a forum. At the time, Sabin had his own propaganda against Umehara.) Spooky, as the head of the team, didn't do anything about this, and even agreed with him. No apology so far.

(nycfurby = Arturo Sanchez)

Later, the guy who organized the event (Ghaleon) said no such thing. The quote is below.

My close friend is Daigo's personal translator this weekend, and Daigo didn't mention anything about the stream station being wack or the EC/WC being disrespectful or refusing to play there or whatever. All he actually cared about was hearing the TV which was hard for him even in the pools area and on the stream. So -- we have headphones for him that Madcatz gave us as prizes because Markman is gdlk (as is Hori!) So I guess he isn't butthurt about whatever you think you saw on the stream, don't worry about it. And yeah, he did look tired and was I think asleep for parts of the 5-on-5. You know what he did after I asked him if it was fun or boring, assuming he wasn't that into it and would want to go back to the hotel right away? Gave me a big, genuine smile and said "fun!" and asked us to bring him more money matches, which we did.

One question that Spooky should ask himself before going over Level Up is why is his (s)team always infected by this kind of people?

P.S. This incident is why Umehara started using a noise-canceling headphones.

Final Round 2011 Summary

Tokido went to Atlanta to compete in Final Round 2011 on March 11-13.

Friday
- He received a confirmation that his family is safe. (Earthquake related, Tokido lives in the same city as KSK, if I'm not mistaken.)
- He won Super Street Fighter IV 3 on 3. His team has Ricky Ortiz and Justin Wong. (But Wong didn't play for the most part.) Tokido beat Banana Ken, Sanford, Wolfkrone, Mike Ross, F. Champ. He's better than ever. Solid. No mistakes. Completely different from Evo 2010. He even pulled off a Tokido Copter combo on Wolfkrone's C. Viper, and she's the character he hates the most.
- His SSF4 team name is "Happy Set" which is also his alias in this tournament. I don't know the reason why he didn't use "Tokido"

Saturday
- He went through the third day on SSF4 in Winners, MvC3 in Losers, BlazBlue CS in top 8. He got 17th place on Tekken 6 and Arcana Heart 3, 25th place in Guilty Gear XX AC, 3rd place in SSF2HDR, 1st in SSF2 Turbo.
- His MvC3 team is the same with SSF4, but the team name "Jwongg Saves the Day" tells everything.

Sunday
- Tokido somehow lost to PR Balrog who came from Losers twice and got just 2nd place...
- PR Balrog eliminated him again in MvC3 top 8.


Tokido's results (finished)

• Arcana Heart 3 - 17th
• Guilty Gear XX AC - 25th
• Marvel versus Capcom 3 - 7th
• Marvel versus Capcom 3 (3 on 3) - 1st
• Super Street Fighter II HD Remix - 3rd
• Super Street Fighter II Turbo - 1st
• Super Street Fighter IV - 2nd
• Super Street Fighter IV (3 on 3) - 1st 
• Tekken 6 - 17th

Thoughts

The stream
Team Spooky moved to Justin.tv long time ago and does everything there since then. It's a big mistake because not only it has an inferior design, is slow, and has connection cap for small countries, I have a serious problem browsing it since 2009! Spooky always complains about stream mirror but this actually forces a mirror itself. (I saw someone asked Inaba-san (GG) to do a mirror on Ustream.) I guess Spooky gets money from doing it on Justin.tv.

I saw some people call for Spooky for Evo streaming, that'd be a bigger failure. Evo is now a world-class event, so what will you explain about having a connection cap? What even worse is Spooky reportedly said "My streams don't go down during grand finals." which aimed toward Level Up (Evo 2010 streamer). But let me get this straight, Spooky can't compete LU overall.

- Team Spooky is a one-man team and relies heavily on donation. If  there's a serious problem in software/hardware, they (or he) will not fix it faster than LU, since Spooky simply has less funds and staff than LU. Spooky is being lucky because the streams didn't slip yet, but once it happened then there'll be no argument.
- Level Up won't let a bum to commentate a stream. Who wants people who knows the games but have to use profanity every 15 seconds? (implying that they can actually commentate at all)


Final Round website
For the first time, an official website for a tournament displays the results quickly from the first day and in DETAILS. Not even Evo did this. I'm impressed. Everyone should do this.

Earthquake hits Gamer's Vision

A real deadly earthquake hit Japan today and KSK's Gamer's Vision is one of the victims. KSK posted some pictures that shows how destructive it was.

Picture 1
Picture 2
Picture 3
Picture 4

It was a good decision after all that KSK decided to give up on Vision before this. Otherwise, the scenes like those will be more heartbreaking.

Vision is in Yokohama, 27 kilometers south of Tokyo, and 350 kilometers from Sendai. Point A is Sendai and Point B is Yokohama.

2D Games: Fall and Rise

SRK pointed out a good article from Guardian. There's a part where developers from Arc System Works (Guilty Gear, BlazBlue) talk about how hard making a 2D fighting game. One character in BlazBlue took them around 5 months to produce.

KSK TV 2011.03.08

KSK is working at a bar in Yokohama now and the great news is they allow him to stream so the fans will be able to chat with him for 30-60 minutes on Monday and Tuesday night.

Ura Kao TV 2011.03.05

Just when you think there's no Kao TV, KSK made a surprise streaming again. KSK looked fine, strong even. He's in the process of finding a new house since he used Gamer's Vision as one which will be completely gone soon (to my understanding). He's now taking a part-time job.

The stream was 6 hour long and I couldn't watch all of it. There're more than 15,000 visitors last night with 37,800 comments.

KSK is gaining more fame from Game no Jikan show since the hosts and the show manager get along with him really well. They mention about him every episodes lately, even he's not there.

Evolution Japan dated, detailed

The information that we're waiting for is finally here. The official site of Evolution announced just now that Evolution Japan or Evolution vs GodsGarden will take place on May 6-7. There're 3 games so far: Super Street Fighter IV, Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Tekken 6. (Though GG's Facebook already revealed the info a couple days before.)

As expected, top placers will earn points used for Evolution 2011 seeding. The most exciting thing is the winner from each title will receive a round trip plane ticket to Las Vegas to compete in Evo 2011 on July 29-31!

As you know, the Japan - Las Vegas plane ticket isn't cheap at all. You can expect many top players in the tournaments.