The Purple Tux
With just enough education to perform.Friday, February 22, 2002
An amusing AIM conversation.
SlashRonin (10:53:58 AM): I'm polling my friends, who do you think would be more interesting for me to write a short story on: Sagat or Vega?
Ermf (10:54:10 AM): Sagat
SlashRonin (10:54:17 AM): Any reasons why?
Ermf (10:54:19 AM): vega is gay.
SlashRonin (10:54:28 AM): Any intelligent reasons why?
Ermf (10:54:58 AM): sagat has this whole thing against ryu and there's plenty of interesting stuff in thailand
Ermf (10:55:04 AM): nobody cares about spain except as a tourist spot
SlashRonin (10:55:19 AM): What's in Thailand?
Ermf (10:55:26 AM): thailand has whores
Wednesday, February 20, 2002
Study habits. Or perhaps lack thereof.
Just like different people fall under different arcade player archetypes, different people have their own unique study habits.
First off, there's The Nerds. These fools study hecka hard every free chance they get. And when they study, they study hardcore, man. They go to the library or to a study lounge or anywhere that's peaceful and quiet... anywhere except the dorms. Too many distractions, here, ya know? And Nerds don't like to be distracted by anything; after all, school comes absolutely first. Nerds don't enjoy going to the arcade or hanging out with their friends or doing anything that risks taking substantial blocks of time away from studying. Don't get me wrong, I have much respect for a person who studies so much, but... DUDE. A prime example of such a Nerd has got to be Kenton.
Next, there's The Semi-Studious People. These people aren't as hardcore as Nerds, but they still work hard. They do enjoy doing things outside of studying and school isn't a constant worry in their lives. I think it would be great if everyone had such balance as The Semi-Studios People. There isn't much else to say about these people.
The next category is The Lazy Freaks. I'm a Lazy Freak. I don't worry about school at all. I just do whatever. Too carefree, I guess. More interested in Street Fighter than in studying. In fact, the other night before my Psychology midterm, I was supposed to study like mad. Instead, I opened Internet Explorer. I checked my Favorites links under Education, and instead of going to the class homepage, I opened up a CvS2 Combo and Systems Guide (yes, I keep Street Fighter links under "Education") and read it for 40+ minutes... sad. Heck, I'll be listening to loud music when I study, too.
And then there's Danny, my roommate. His idea of studying is to sit in front of his PC and play Starcraft while he leaves his notes open in front of him. With this strategy, he can read one sentence of notes in between clicks and commands. Very effective, huh? He literally plays Starcraft all day long. He plays it more than I play Street Fighter. This entire time I have known him, I can only recall one day in which he abstained from Starcraft, and it was because Maudio Galaxy WHOOOOOOOOPED him the night before (that made Danny hecka depressed).
I can't really think of anything else to say about this stuff. I don't know, I guess talking about Street Fighter is a lot more interesting. Speaking of which, CvS2 beckons...
Sunday, February 10, 2002
Arcade player archetypes.
I'm so stoked that Davis is finally getting a CvS2 machine!!! That rocks so much! They already got rid of the Street Fighter III: New Generation machine, and should install the CvS2 machine by Friday. Dude. There go my time and my money.
Do you ever classify people you come across? I've sure classified the players at the arcade. Since I go there so much, it's only natural, I think, to be grouping players according to their skill or their style. So here's my arcade player archetypes.
First of all, there's the random people who don't really know much about the modern Street Fighter games, they just walk in for a fun time. These are the kind of people who actually put in two tokens to start MvC2 or A3 (there's a little sticker on those machines that says "2 tokens to start, 1 token to continue") because they don't know that those games are really only 1 token. These are the same guys who walk up to the CvS1 machine and put their token into the player one side (everyone knows that the player one token slot ALWAYS eats your token). In terms of skill, this type of player is very casual. He doesn't really know how to appreciate a strong cross-up rushdown game with Magneto or a relentless fly/unfly stomp tactice from Sentinel. However, he is in awe of every AHVB x 3. Heck, a simple Proton Cannon will make him impressed. I call this type of guy "The Nobody." The Nobodys (I don't change it to "The Nobodies") are basically, well, no one when it comes to Street Fighter, though I don't hold that against them.
Next, there's the guy on a level slightly above The Nobody. I call this guy "The Ego-Booster." You see, beating up on a Nobody isn't that satisfying. But an Ego-Booster DOES happen to have some small understanding of the game engine. Typically, Ego-Boosters are also a little bit cocky, which makes dominating them all the more satisfying. These are the guys who don't often go to the arcade during the weekday afternoons, and thus, they don't realize how many good players are in Davis. Either that, or the Ego-Booster is simply too lame to realize true skill when he sees it. An Ego-Booster is basically my term for a scrub. He walks up to a machine and then has this hecka cocky posture, like he's saying "I'm gonna whip your butt." And when he loses, he complains that it was "cheap" or "what the hell! I was BLOCKING!" or "not fair, you used Cable" etc. I have absolutely NO respect for a person like this. Sure, some Ego-Boosters have a little bit of skill, but that's what makes them Ego-Boosters; it doesn't feel like I've accomplished much after whooping a Nobody, but after whooping an annoying Ego-Booster, I just wanna smirk back at the punk sucka.
There's also a small subclass of guys I call the Decent Guys. They're around the skill level of Ego-Boosters, but Decent Guys have much better attitudes and know how to respect and appreciate the skilled players' mad skills.
Next, there's the Good Guys. I consider myself to be in this class. We have decent skills, we aren't the best, but when the Ego-Boosters come we can rack up some double-digit win streak, and sometimes we can even beat the really skilled dudes. Also, we don't have this hecka arrogant irritating attitude (at least not so much that people get offended). We know how to appreciate the various styles of playing, and we respect each other. What can I say, we're Good Guys.
And then, the Crazy Guys. I call them Crazy Guys because these dudes are at the arcade every freakin' day for hecka more hours than I spend there!! That's i-N-s-A-n-E! These are the HECKA skilled players, the type of guy I wouldn't be surprised to see in like exhibition footage or whatever. They can do just about anything, infinites, resets, etc. They hardly ever mess up in a combo, and once they land the first hit they go on autopilot. You can't even do anything to stop them, except pray they mess up (which almost never happens). However, it does depend which game they play. Most Crazy Guys hecka play MvC2 and just own the machine. But a lot of them ONLY are Crazy at MvC2, they don't (or can't) play CvS1 or SFA3. One or two Crazy Guys are only Crazy at CvS1, but weak at MvC2. I don't think I've seen any Crazy Guy who's ONLY crazy at SFA3, though. There are a couple of dudes who are Crazy at CvS1, MvC2, and SFA3... Those are the Craziest of The Crazy. They're hecka awesome just to watch.
Lastly, there's a unique guy. There's this one little annoying punk high school kid (he's 15, I asked him before) who is just SUUUUUUUUUPER immature. This boy is ALWAYS sitting on one of the chairs from the pool table room. I don't think I've ever seen him play without him sitting on the chair. He has a HECKA cocky attitude. I'll admit he has some skills, to a certain degree, but his attitude causes almost everyone to hate him. Like, for example, he'll smirk at you when he wins. Or if he uses Zangief in CvS1 and lands a Spinning Pile Driver or whatever, he'll be all like, "OWWWW!! That hurt!!!" Dude, this little kid is so immature that if he wins with Cable in MvC2, he'll look at you and then pretend he's twirling a handgun and say, "I'm ready." He'll imitate the taunts the characters do and perform them in front of you!! I can understand joking and having a fun time with friends, but I think it's disrespectful to display this type of behavior in front of complete strangers. One day I just wanna pick Dhalsim, whoop this kid, and perform The Dhalsim Dance in front of everyone. This past Friday, my friends and I gave this punk kid a name. We call him Satan's Child. He is pure evil. He causes us to get so angry. Anger leads to hate, hate leads to fear, fear leads to aggresion. (Or something like that.) This boy is the path to the Dark Side. You should see how pissed Ma gets when he plays Satan's Child. Ma be gettin' all physical and stuff, dude, I'm afraid one day there's gonna be this rumble in the arcade.
Why does Satan's Child act the way he does? Is he normal? Sometimes people think he has a mental handicap ('cause he'll be yelling a lotta random stuff), but at times he's displayed to me a decent understanding of the game engine. I respect his Street Fighter abilities to some extent, but I can't say I have respect for him as a person. Pity, maybe. He's weird.
Friday, February 08, 2002
I don't really know why I haven't written anything here for quite some time. Maybe it was the 12 page short story I had to write, which was due yesterday. (If you want to read it, ask me, I might let you have a copy if you promise to behave.)
Check this out, I'm trying out a creative team for MvC2. I've noticed that not too many people here at Davis play Cyclops, so I'm trying him out. I'm also using War Machine. Literally no one ever uses War Machine in MvC2 at Davis. It's always about Iron Man. But I think War Machine is very strong. His main weakness compared to Iron Man is that War Machine can't combo a Proton Cannon from any move, since it has a slower start up time. War Machine's specials seem to come out slightly slower than Iron Man's, but WM's Smart Bombs fall faster, which makes for varied strategy. WM has a faster air dash and faster normal attacks. For some reason, I find it MUCH easier to use WM's infinite in a real fight. Don't know why, the timing is a little bit different from IM's but I can do WM's a lot more in fights. I'm still trying to figure out a good third guy though. I was thinking of using some middle-tier characters, but I don't really know who I should use. I tried out Captain America and Juggernaut, they were alright. Maybe I'll forget about the middle tier and just use Doctor Doom or Magneto or something. I donno. Got any ideas?
So I was talking to my buddy E. Honda today (named changed to protect his privacy), and he was telling me how he almost got schooled in basketball today. Funny thing was, he was almost whooped by a girl. A short, fat, ugly girl. Something about the girl playing too rough for him or something. Said the girl was using her elbows on him. He doesn't think girls should be allowed to play basketball with guys. That might not be such a bad idea. Here at Davis, we've got a coed intramural basketball league (which I am not a part of). It is really watered down, since guys aren't allowed in the key and stuff. That's basically saying that girls are too weak to stop us. Which is true, but I imagine feminists would have a problem with that rule. But if you think about it, if that rule didn't exist, and guys just dunked on girls, posted up, and basically ran girls over, feminists would STILL have a problem. It's like guys are taking advantage of weak girl skills. But if the rule WERE there, then it'd be saying that girls can't compete with guys unless there's a handicap. So stupid. Come on, why do feminists think that women are equal to men? We're made differently. Just watch the WNBA and compare it to the NBA. Dude, the WNBA all star team couldn't keep up with the Chicago Bulls, I guarantee. Maybe Marcus or someone who's taking a Feminist Class, I mean Women's Studies class, can explain this stuff to me.
