Japan and Beat Tribe report 2005

Japan is an amazing place and so much fun. So far i've only been playing VF but VF alone has made this trip very worthwhile. Here is what has been happening day by day.

Day 1

Rodney, Kazu and I arrived on Feb 9th and we immediately hit the arcades after checking in. We went to Sega Hi Tech in Shibuya and there were only a few players there so we decided to goto Shinjuku and we went to Nishispo Club Sega where we saw many famous players there, Chibita and a few other well known people were playing. We played only a little bit, Nishispo Club Sega is definately where all the strong players go.

Rodney hit 5th Dan, Shou was at 4th Dan, and I hit 6th Dan. Shou let us know that he beat Yoro the night before a few times in a row already.

Day 2

We went Dan hunting again at NIshispo. Rodney hit 6th Dan, I hit 7th Dan, Shou hit 7th Dan. We metup with Myke and Kim, who just arived in Japan, later on in the evening after we were done playing.

Day 3

We hit Nishispo again to go dan hunting. Friday is probably the busiest day at Nishispo and there were TONS of players there. Every famous player was basically there. Chibita, Nuki, Segaru, Homestay, Fudo, Shu, Itabashi, First Angel, Shinz, Morrigan, POS Akira, Dera Akira, Magnum, Inotchi, Ohsu etc.

Friday all of our our win % all dropped alot which is expected. Today Shou DM'ed Myke and was ranked down to 6th Dan and Myke went to 8th Dan with Myke winning 5 in a row. Shou says he was preoccupied talking with a girl all 5 matches. Rodney hit 7th Dan, I hit 9th Dan, Shou hit 6th Dan, Myke hit 9th Dan, Kim stayed at 10th Dan.

Ok thats it for now. I'll write more about the day before Beat Tribe and Beat Tribe day in my next post.

 

What about Adam and Kazu? /versus/images/graemlins/confused.gif

Glad to know you guys are doing well. C'ya when you get back. /versus/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

Is Nishispo located in the same place as several years ago? I.e. West Shinjuku at the basement of Shinjuku Sportsland? If that's where the competition and you guys will be, Danny and I will join you there 17th onwards.

 

yes.

 

Glad to hear you guys are having fun...

When Rich and I were in Tokyo at the beginning of the year, Shibuya High Tech never seemed to have many players there... Club Sega in Shinjuku seems to always have comp, so I'd say go there instead and don't even bother with Shibuya High Tech...

Club Sega in Akihabara also seemed to have a lot of comp too, if for some reason you want another place to play...

-Alex

 

Adam has a 3rd Dan Jeff his personal card and an 8th Dan Jeff the card from David or Mutsuku Shun. I think Adam has been having a hard time since he doesnt play too much during the day and by nightime you cant really find any lower dan players to fight against at Nishispo.

Kazu finished up really well. His lau is at 4 above 10th dan right now and he has a Jeff card that started at 8th Dan and he ranked the card upto Tsuwamono last night at Nishispo.

Continuing with the report.

Day 4

Today we split up into two groups one group went to play the Super Battle Opera 3on3 qualifiers and the other group went to the all akira tournament in Pasopiard in Yokohama. Kazu, Rodney and I went to Pasopiard and Adam, Myke, Nin, Atsushi, Shou went to the SBO qualifiers.

At Pasopiard the players there are really strong, especially because of the all akira tournament. Every major akira was there. Minami won the tournament and was given a special title for Akira. I also saw two kids playing Akira one must have ben 5 or 6 the other about 6 or 7. BOth of them were really strong Tsuwamono and higher players. They also had no problem nailing combos etc. The older player beat ohsu in the tournament. I dont think ohu was taking it seriously and lost to the 7 year old who did RBC to R.O. to ohsu and ST to R.O. a second time.

Rodney finished the day at 8th Dan, I stayed at 9th Dan, Myke finsihed at 8th Dan, Kim finished 8th Dan Shou finished at 7th Dan.

Day 5 - Beat Tribe

The day was insane, we slept the night before at like 4am since Kyasao, Daimond Lau and Berun Berun came and stayed the night since we were all going to BT the next day.

We all left for BT around 8am-9am and it took about an hour to get there. Officially the qualifiers start at 8am and run till 11am when the real tournament is supposed to start.

Myke, Nin and Atushi were missing two players to fill out their team of 5 so David found 2 extra players for them to fill in the spots. The matches were really close and Myke, Nin and Atsushi all took the matches to the 5th round but unfortunately lost. The other two guys lost 3 rounds straight.

Once the tournament started we placed in the 6th pool and were fighting team Shadowloo and Team Pasopiard. We went up against Team Shadowloo first and we had to do rock paper scissors to decide who gets to pick the side or know who goes first. We lost the rock paper scissors so team shadowloo decided to ask us who we would play first so we chose Shou to go first. This was a bad idea since the fiirst player they chose to go first was a lau player. We were all super nervous and played pretty badly the first time around. Shou lost 0-3. Then I went next and took the first round before losing the next 3 straght. Then Kazu went up and beat the lau player 3-1 before losing to another lau player right after him 2-3. The rodney went up and lost 1-3. Adam came last and won 1 3-2 before losing the next one to an Akira player 1-3. So we lost this one 3-5 to team Shadowloo.

The next team we went up against was team Pasopiard. This team was much much stronger than the first team but we managed to get the nervousness out of our system. We lost the rock paper scissors again and team pasopiard decided to pick 1p side.

This time around the team asked me to go first so I was playing a jacky player to start off. I won the match 3-2. Next I was playing a Jeff player that I took to the 5th round I nailed a 270 back throw and the jeff player had like 20 points of life left I decided to go for ground throw but missed and then was thrown to lose the match 2-3. The crowd started getting in an uproar and the annoucer directed attention to our match since we were the big underdogs in this matchup. Next up came rodney and he beats the Jeff player 3-1 and faced an Aoi player right after him and he lost to the Ai player 2-3. Then Kazu played and was able to beat the Aoi player 3-2 and he beat the next player who was a Lau play also 3-2. He lost to the final person an Akira 2-3. Then came adam our 4th guy who beat the akira in a 5 round match 3-2. We went nuts, the annoucer went nuts, the crowd went nuts, we actually beat a team and some of the well known players came up to congratulate us but it wasn't over yet.

In order to advance to the next round you need to beat 2 teams in a row but since we won 1 and lost 1 those teams would have to pick 1 person to represent them in single play to determine who would move forward. Our team chose adam since we found out we would be playing a Lau player and an Akira player. We have most of our experience against those two players. Adam first fought the lau player and won 3-2 then faced the Akira player and took the match down to 1 hit in the 5th round, Adam knocks the guy down and rushes up and does ff+p mid attack which was evaded and he losses the match. Adam debated using low kick but decided to do mid instead of low. After that he replayed the match in his head a million times since he knew he should have won. We were all really dissapointed since we felt we were all starting to play so well and we should have advanced to the next round. We should have beat Team Shadowloo but failed to do so because of tournament jitters. We definately were happy to just beat 1 team though and it was a really fun experience for all of us. Shou unfortunatey needed more lau experience since Sarah and Lau he says is a hard matchup for Sarah to win.

We spent the rest of the time watching and in awe of some of the super strong teams. Hideo and Fudo in particular were really impressive players at BT.

We ended this day at the same ranks as the day before.

I'll finish up the report with the rest of the trip once I get back from Japan. I'll be back this weekend.

 

My eyes My eyes!!

 

Good Times!

This is my fav: http://media.virtuafighter.com/media/japan/IMG_0395.jpg
Is Rodney using his special chopstick attack to distract the other opponet? Glad to see the communities of the U.S. and Japan are growing tightly knit. Good pics myke and thanks for sharing.

Laters

 

Thanks for posting those pics Myke. Looks like you guys had a lot of fun. /versus/images/graemlins/cool.gif

Keep the pics coming. Can't wait to see some vids.

 

Nice pictures. I fixed one just for Shou.

 

[ QUOTE ]
Nice pictures. I fixed one just for Shou.

[/ QUOTE ]

That was genuinely Laugh Out Loud. I needed that, thanks.

GE

 

Day 1 of Japan for Danny and I are a blast. We arrived at noon Nishispo and played until 11 pm!!! 10-11 hours of straight VF (with maybe 20 min. of eating)...my back was hurting by the end of the night and my eyes were blurring. Other guys started arriving at around 6 pm and onwards.

Random comments:

- Myke was the most impressive of the night. Not only is he the only 1st Green of our group at the end of the night, he managed to defend it successfully throughout the night in a cutthroat environment like Nishispo. Mad props to Myke!!!!

- Adam is making a furious rally to rank up, and is now currently 10th dan. I'm betting he'll make green by the end of today. Supah pawahful!

- David had the most impressive streak of the night, beating Jin, Mukki, and then Chacky in a row. For all you kids at home, that's pretty darn good.

- In a bit of bummer news, Danny tried to transfer his Kage data and...of course, lost all of it. He was cautious about transferring any more and so started a new Akira kid and waited for the others to arrive before transferring his Akira card.

- I met my goals for the first day, hitting 9th dan with Jeffry and 8th dan with Kage. Both were 6th dan when I started, with my Kage actually one loss away from demotion to 5th dan. My Kage winning percentage went down like a boulder rolling off a cliff, but amazingly, my Jeffry winning percentage inched up.

- Competition Friday night is really, really tough. Most in the group ranked down several levels last night, and a few went to Spot 21, a neighboring arcade, now and then to catch a breather (and much needed win).

- Off to the AOU show today. Here's to hoping Sega sneak previews VF5!

 

Good reports guys. I need some FT console news and some VF5 too!

 

A few of us were at the AOU show yesterday. Sorry, no VF5 or VF4FT console news to be found. /versus/images/graemlins/smile.gif

<font color="yellow">.cheers.</font>

 

More random comments:

- Adam did hit 1st Green, but I think got too nervous and subsequently ranked down all the way to 8th dan before returning to 9th dan. David got to 1st Green by the end of the night, but I don't think anybody else did. From what I can remember, Myke finished his Brad at 9th dan, Nin at 10th dan, Atsushi at 10th dan, Shou at 9th dan, Andy's Aoi at 8th dan.

- Danny's Akira and my Kage hit 10th dan yesterday. I was one win away from getting my Jeffry to 10th dan, but alas, these blasted nerves took over and I prompty lost 3 in a row. That's the kind of competition one gets here... it's just too easy to rank down.

- My Jeffry card was almost wiped out!!! I had asked a random Japanese player to help transfer my Jeffry card, but something went wrong and it said that it wasn't working. We started to panick, and a few other Japanese players came round and started talking. Atsushi saved my ass when he suggested transferring the data back to my original card--thank God I had one match left on it.

- Mask de Hijetetsu is an amazing player. Myke had him cornered 2-0 rounds and almost had him in the 3rd round, but Mask, ice blood in his veins, proceeded to destroy Myke. I lost to Mask 9 rounds straight. This guy is hot good. One thing he loves to do is to start the round with or BCD ...a simple but very powerful tactic.

 

Oh, nice writing. Can't wait for the vids Myke ^o^

 

Nothing much from yesterday:

- David and Danny fell to 9th dan...that's how tough the competition is.

- My Jeffry finally got over the hump and reached 10th dan. David told me that unregistered cards cannot get promoted to tsuwamono, that only losses are counted and wins ignored! My Kage is anywhere from +1 to +3 from yesterday--hard won battles--so that really sucks.

- I decided to take up Goh since both my Jeffry and Kage are 10th dan and unregistered. I had an old Goh card at 3rd dan. Got him up to 8th dan by the end of the day.

 

A while back David told me Fudou's story. Apparently back in the VF4 days he declared to all the top players that as soon as the home console comes out, he'll practice and eventually beat all of them. Well, as legend has it, he trains like nuts on the PS2, does all the research, memorizes the statistics, tests all the situations...and bam, by the end of Evolution, he's considered one of the best, if not THE best players in Japan.

Most people know that his 3rd Black Lion had ranked down Chibita's Lion...but did you know his 2nd Black Kage also recently ranked down Chibita's now 1st Black Lion and Mukki's Akira?

In Team VFDC news, Danny's Akira is back to 10th dan. My Goh is 9th dan, and my Wolf is 8th dan. It's a dogfight here, but I'm having more fun in VF then I can remember. Hopefully I can get my cards registered today.