Saturday 8:45am
Woke up after a good night's rest and figured it'd be a great idea to open up with a nice hot shower right? WRONG! I turned on that shower water and waited for at least 10min for that thing to warm up and no dice. So I figured "blah whatever" and took the most shittiest shower I've had the entire year, needless to say the water was effin' cold haha. After the shower of death I figured I gotta do well now, I just had a crap shower so something has to go right after all this right?
Headed down to the lobby to catch the shuttle to the venue and met up with some of the Seattle crew. Jumped on the shuttle when it arrived and the driver and pretty much everyone on the shuttle was a gamer so the conversation to the venue was good. The driver mentioned him being good at the old Street Fighter games and competed at one point in time. He said he wants to get back into it because the exposure the new fighting games are getting and well all pretty much agreed that he should, so let's see where that takes him.
10am
Got into tournament mode and was waiting patiently on brackets to see who was in my pool for what games. The games I played were Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition, King of Fighters XIII, and Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3. After getting some hassle from some people on where to look at the brackets I finally got some wifi on my phone to check it out since it was all online. Great idea to do online bracketing, bad idea for the players since the wifi where we were was pretty weak and drained my battery which was no bueno at all.
In UMvC3 turns out I had Marn(California) and Ruin(Vegas) in my pool. I was on the shocked side of things to find out that Marn of all players was in my pool haha. I guess they wanted to see a Guilty Gear reunion with me Ruin and Marn or rather a Texas reunion because Marn is indeed from Texas, despite what people believe lol.
In KoF I had no idea who was who but I knew most of the top SoCal guys were in this and I'd have an uphill battle the whole way. The competition in KoF in Houston is pretty small while the guys in SoCal have a larger number by far in comparison. Up hill struggle indeed.
Now this one was a kicker, yet ANOTHER Guilty Gear reunion with Latif in my pool lol. Oh brother and to top it off I had FloE as well. Scared? Nervous? Nah not at all, but it was quite the surprise when I found out. I figure I'd just do my best and see where it takes me~!
10:30am
While waiting around for my pool in UMvC to start I checked out the Namco booth where they had Soul Calibur 5 and Tekken Tag 2 for play. I've got to say Soul Calibur 5 and Tag 2 are the prettiest non cartoony 3d fighters to date. Met up with Rich from Namco Bandai and had small talk and what not, he's a cool cat most definitely.
When pretty much everything tournament-wise began for me and I was just waiting to play my matches to get my flow started. First match was in KoF in which I took and that got me started up which after I had to play Marn on the stream setup for UMvC. In which you can see here and it starts around 1:04:00
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Unfortunately after that match I lost 2 straight immediately...I wasn't upset due to the randomness of UMvC not to mention I'm still fairly new to the game. I took it as a learning lesson and I intend to improve my skills in that game.
After going out in Marvel I was doing really well in KoF but got sent to losers 3rd round by Yoshi from SoCal. Dude was really good and I'd never seen half the tricks he was doing since well...I have no real comp in the game lol.*HOPEFULLY THAT WILL CHANGE SOON HOUSTON~* Unfazed by the lost I eagerly waited my next match all the while knowing that I now have a gauntlet to run in this game being in losers side. Halfway through KoF, SF4 started running pools and I was in pool 6 so I figured I had plenty of time to keep playing KoF. I plowed through match after match after match climbing my way to top 32 to eventually end up 1 match away from being top 16.
I kept my mental game up and stayed unfazed by any trick or gimmick I hadn't seen before. This tends to be a problem with some players that get mind blown by something they've never seen before and let it effect the following matches. I just said "bring it, I'll figure it out as I go!" and that mentality harbored my success. The match I played to get into top 16 was pretty tough. I was doing my normal "rush down" and kept getting stopped dead in my tracks. Losing the first game due to my impatience I said "ok, not going to rush it down right out the gate, slowly advance then proceed with the kill, pressure and watch'em panick". This worked out in my favor really well and I advanced into the top 16 in KoF!
4pm
Took a break from everything and made sure to double check my pool's start time in SF4 and pool 3 was going on so I figured its definitely the perfect time to just re-cooperate and collect myself. Pool 3 still going on so I had to get ready to play in the top 16 in KoF. Ready as I'll ever be I had to play the same guy that put me in losers Yoshi. I was recalling our match earlier so I'd be ready for the run back. Turns out he didn't play the same team against me in top 16 in which you can check out here at 1:17:00
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Didn't win it but I did hold my own and collected myself to do better. Maybe next time~haha good games to Yoshi he's a really strong player in that game. Afterwards I had a phone convo with a friend for about a good 15 min, hit the bathroom and I was on my way back in to check my pool for SF4. Turns out my pool started while I was playing KoF and I got disqualified from my winners match! Upset? No. Dissapointed? Yes, but I just accepted it and moved on, any further frustrations would throw off my mental game. After being put into losers I ran through my next 5-6 matches till I came across a Fei player. I forget his name but he came with Air(Canada's top Ryu) and he was coaching him the entire way. Kinda lame but *shrug* its bound to happen right? Sadly this is where my story for SF4 ends as I lost this match.
I wasn't adjusted to Fei's new changes and it messed with me during the match. No excuse though, I have a Fei player in my hometown so ultimately it was my fault for not getting games with him before leaving much less sitting in training mode learning on my own.
Wasn't upset at my performance across the board. I was totally content with it and learned a great deal from the guys I did play and talk to on all fronts. I did reflect on how I could improve those aspects and I'm in the process of fixing it all.
Sunday mainly consisted of me simply enjoying the rest of the tournament finals and making even more connections with other players. All in all a good time~!
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