Subatomic Brainfreeze

Super SF4 Arcade Edition: HOW I DEAL WITH YUN (WITH JURI)

Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition has been out for a while now, and the one thing that everybody can agree on is that Yun is fucking bullshit. This guy is a character so overpowered that we can't chalk it up to anything but bad design: he's got an answer for every situation, a rush that can't be put down, and does huge combo damage for every jab he lands. In Guilty Gear he might be a normal character. In SF4 he is just bad news for competition. The scene's pretty unhappy: I had the pleasure of listening to Seth Killian play "Street Fighter Information Minister" on stream at a recent major tourney as Daigo's Yun effortlessly destroyed top players who usually give him some trouble.

Now you're seeing Yun (and his lesser brother Yang) a lot online, but the game's still new and the average guy who picks these characters doesn't really know how to use them. This will probably change as the game ages a little bit. As for myself, I tend to play Juri. Here's what I do against Yun when I see him, even though I've only fought four or five genuinely good Yuns online.

Generally speaking, you want to keep him out. Normally I try to be more aggressive with Juri, but if you get Yun in on you you're already in the process of losing. It's just like how you never want to be standing close to Zangief and blocking. You stand to lose much more than you stand to gain.

The first thing I do at the start of a round versus Yun is hop straight up into the air. This is, in my experience, the safest place to be against him. You'll avoid most of his go-to openers this way, and if he does his dash punch under you, you might be able to land with Hard Kick (which hits on both sides and continue with a combo. In fact, jumping straight up repeatedly at a safe distance is exactly how I deal with Yun's overpowered (get hit and it's a free combo, block it and Yun gets to rush you freely) EX dash punch.

And I hop, and I hop. If Yun does his palm attack-- he will: it's mostly safe, has a monster invisible hitbox, stays active for much longer than it appears to, charges meter fast, and does unreasonable damage-- you can time Juri's dive kicks to beat it. However, as I said before, the palm stays active much longer than you'd expect and the window to punish it is tiny. You'll have to work out the timing.

Once you've got Yun down he has an invincible and very safe wakeup (the jump kick special): best to bait it out.

Other than those openings, I just try to keep Yun out. Throwing fireballs at him is kind of a tough proposition, because of the way Juri's charge/release mechanic works. If you simply charge and throw a fireball, Yun has so much time to get in on you, and he will do so. The charge kick will actually beat Yun's dash punch if it intercepts Yun's dash, but it's not something you can do on reaction: if it happens you were just lucky and got out of a mistake. At mid-range I'll poke around with long-range hits like standing Medium Punch/Kick and try to stuff his advance, starting with those hop kicks.

I use Feng Shui Engine (Ultra 1) just so I can get in on him for free. This is a universal tip, but if you knock a guy down and use FSE, a fireball interrupted with FADC (focus attack dash cancel) will give you a free mixup as the opponent blocks the fireball. Yun can't use his invincible anti-air to get out of your string of attacks in FSE mode either, so you actually have a ten-second shot at the same damage opportunities that Yun has all the time. Good luck.

If Yun's in on you, just worry about escaping. An EX pinwheel kick will work as always, but considering it's your sole option there's nothing more obvious and telegraphed. If you have three bars at this point, EX pinwheel, FADC away if it's blocked, and count yourself lucky. It's very hard to pull yourself out of Yun's grasp. Just stay out, okay?

Mahjong Fight Scrub: WHAT IS THE POINT OF THIS GAME?

I dunno if readers of this blog have noticed (they have), but after learning Japanese mahjong I've made a legitimate attempt to get as good at it as I possibly can. As such, I think a lot about the game lately: the lessons I've learned, the weaknesses I still need to improve upon. It's to the point where I've really felt the need to write down my thoughts on the game, both as a possible help to others and as a step towards self-improvement. So, Mahjong Fight Scrub.

(I'm a second dan on my second Tenhou account, I only play in the dan lobby, and I'm about 1650R, if you want to know where I'm at skill-wise.)

The point of the game is to win, right? But it's a gambling game, heavily governed by chance. It is not a game of perfect skill, in which every loss is indisputably your own fault (see chess and other abstract board games, and of course most of my beloved fighting games). There are times when the tiles will be good to you, other times when they'll be indifferent, and other times when they'll act in completely bizarre and cruel ways which seem to deliberately taunt you. This is the nature of the random draw.

A lot of people will tell you that Tenhou is rigged. Those people are weak-minded.

The game is not about overcoming luck, bending the heart of the tiles to your will as though this were Yu-Gi-Oh or Saki or even Akagi. Sometimes at the table, you won't even have a say. The game is about managing your luck. You have to make the best of the choices that you are given, and when these times come you have to make sure you don't blow it. More than winning, mahjong is about making sure you don't lose. And you're going to have many more opportunities to lose than you will to win.

Unless you have a thousand dollars riding on the match you're playing right now, or somebody's going to cut off your fingers if you don't place first, you are playing mahjong to see positive long-term results. Are you on Tenhou? Good. Tenhou puts a simple, immediate goal in front of you-- rise in the ranks-- and it shows you stats that give you an idea of how well you're doing.

(This is the point at which I look at my recent stats and feel sad because I'm playing so badly)

Your stats window is pretty simple: the first column is percentages of how you're placing, 1st to 4th. The final one shows how often you bust. The second column is number of games played, average score, and average place at the table. Average score very simply answers the question "am I up?" If it's positive, you're winning, and if you're in the negatives you're losing. Average place should obviously be as high as you can get it, but an average player is going to even out between 2nd and 3rd.

Note how Tenhou's rankings work. You gain a lot of ranking points for first place and a negligible amount for second. After all, at second place you're a winner too: you just won a lot less. You're still up, usually. As for third place, you get no reward (of course, your average score still goes down), and a fourth place finish loses you as many ranking points as first place earns you. Let me put it this way: as far as Tenhou's rankings are concerned, losing cancels your win. To advance, you're just going to have to win more than you lose.

A really strict rank system like this is good because it forces you to put something on the line. On Janryumon I don't usually put everything I have into the game, both because the competition is much weaker and because it just doesn't matter too much if I lose. I lose a little fake videogame money, I lose a negligible amount of rank points, hell, who cares? Not so on Tenhou. Tenhou is serious.

So think consistent, think long-run and do whatever you've got to do to stay out of fourth place. Keep that as your goal no matter where you're playing the game, and dammit, you will improve.

The next one of these I do, I'll actually talk some tactics.

So WHY HAVEN'T I MADE A POST ABOUT HOW KAIJI IS BACK?

Yeah, I've been lazy lately. And writer's blocked when I'm not feeling lazy! Astro Toy comes out of me like clockwork, on the other hand, cause if you pay me I get workin'! (EMPLOYERS!)

Anyway, you can tell I've been lazy because there have been big things going on. Things I care about. Things like Kaiji coming back.Did you know? Kaiji came back. Like, two months ago. The first arc is already over, and here I am telling you to watch it.

Depending on how you think about it, it's kind of a mercy that I'm telling you to watch Kaiji only now that a story arc with a definite ending has come to a close, because this show is viciously suspenseful. Nobuyuki Fukumoto's original manga is mean enough, but Madhouse's TV adaptations actually amplify the suspense. It doesn't reallly matter that I've read the entire second Kaiji manga fan-translated: I am on the edge of my seat for every single anime episode even though I know exactly what is going to happen. This stuff just has a pull.

Kaiji is a story of one young man's endless battle on the front lines of a bizarre class war: in this world the evil Teiai corporation spends most of its time hatching countless schemes in which to ensnare the favorite prey of the crazy old men who run the place: poor guys who have nothing to lose. Kaiji Itou is our relatable hero: a sloth and a loser so long as he isn't teetering directly on the line between life and death, at which point he becomes a genius trickster. So smart and yet so, so stupid, Kaiji works himself out of every predicament just in time to screw up royally, plunging himself into the next one. Last season Kaiji got himself in a deadly rock-paper-scissors tournament, a deadly game of cards, a deadly... basically if you can bet on it and if you can be killed for losing, Kaiji will play it.

This season he's in an underground prison camp playing dice for a ticket to the outside world, and just like the last time he did something this mundane, the show makes it gripping. It's the tension, the zawazawa, that booming narrator who absolutely shoves it all into your face. This isn't subtle stuff. If "he hates it," that narrator will tell you five or six times in a row that "HE HATES IT!" The dice battle takes about nine episodes, and by the end it's the closest you could actually get to murdering someone with dice.

The next arc is about pachinko, and it's even crazier. I'll leave it to you to find out, because you'll never guess the progressively more insane secrets behind the legendary "bog", a pachinko machine with a minimum investment of a couple hundred grand. In the manga it's ten books long, so I have to assume that this season of Kaiji will be 26 episodes long. If you haven't seen Kaiji at all, you could jump in on this season, but you'd be missing so much good stuff. Don't do that. Just watch it from the beginning. You won't want to stop, anyway.