I'M not unpopular! The GAMES are!!

I've found something humorously interesting within my Colorado FGC: How I'm still relatively unknown, or not respected, by this community.

New Mexico seems to love me!  As person, not as a player.

Arizona seems to pretty much dislike me as both.  So we'll leave it at that!

Now you may be thinking "Really?  How is that even possible?"  "You rank high often in your games!"  "You've done well in an out-of-state national tournament" "Shut up you whining ass bitch."

All the above are valid thoughts to think.

It shows the power between the aspect of games and how they're seen, then how that respect does play off to other players involved in certain games.

So if you play Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, people will know and respect you more for playing at any tournament level

If you play BlueBallz: Cuntinuum Shift at a skilled level, people will call you a faggot, or shrug because they've never heard of the game.

Similar to above: there will be the stream monsters, competitive players, and people in general complaining about how boring a game like BlazBlue is to watch and/or play, when they get crazy stupid hype for a game like Marvel.  It doesn't matter if they know how to play one or the other.  Hell, I'm the same.  But just like sports, I enjoy a good match, even if I don't have full grasp of the game's concept.

I think a lot of it has to do with accessibility of the game's "pick-up-and-play" mechanics.  I've had I-don't-know-how-many people drop KoF and BlazBlue, claiming it was hard to learn or keep up.  I will be one to admit that in tandem with the learning-the-game aspect, they're not as fun of games to watch unless you know what exactly is going on.  When you break it down each game to it's basest high-level play, you will see a lot of the same things occur.

BlazBlue is the most extreme violator of this.  There are combos from every portion of the screen that you will want to land depending on distance from the corner.  Considering how far most combos carry, it'll take one or two of these combos to get into the corner, where then the corner combos begin.  There aren't a ton of mix-ups or variety one can throw into their game, IMO Platnium's floaty-animal thing being the most tricky in late Continuum Shift 2 time.  They're a lot of the same moves, and a lot of creativity, I feel, is punished and removed by the game's systems and revisions.

In Guilty Gear, if you opened up someone with your ridiculously retarded quick overhead, you got a full combo and you just held that shit!  If you open someone up with your ridiculously mediocre overheard in BlazBlue, if you have 50% of your super bar you can cancel into something decent (specific example, Litchi).  Otherwise you're just twiddling your thumbs.  The variety is limited in both rewards and attacks.

The variety of attacks that one can chain and link from one to another are becoming so painfully cut down that you cannot do nearly as much as you could before.  And they're so specific, you'll see a lot of the same ones done over and over and over with small deviations here and there.  Continuum Shift had a lot of options in characters, various special move cancels and tricks that made a lot of the game play more risky, and thus more fun.  This is one thing that Marvel feeds greatly off of.

Also, BlazBlue is pretty damned slow as a whole compared to other fighters.

Marvel has options everywhere.  It also helped that the game wasn't given to Japan for half a year where they force a lot of the, will be, future metagame out before the rest of the world gets the chance to.  People are coming in with all sorts of new teams, idea, technologies in Marvel.  The game opts for that random idea to be used, and in many cases abused.

With many options, of course, comes with a large random factor in the game, just like a game of Roulette.  There's so many options, and while there are better, and more commonly selected options that will more likely win, there's the high gamble factors like single numbers, 00, or green bets that will be FAR more exciting if someone wins on the table.

I would say BlazBlue is akin to 3-coin slots.  The best option is there: pulling the lever.  So you just do it.  A greater gamble comes every now and then with more coins added to the machine, making it a little more exciting.  In all seriousness, you don't watch someone play slots, I mean really...  What kind of idiot are you?

Seriously, what's so cool about Vs. and Street Fighter fans... Oh... it's the shades, isn't it?

Fuck.

So I feel the lack of love for a game that most people don't understand, or even know exists, is really what affects my "unknown" status.  The community's favorite two jokes with me are "Who the fuck are you?" and "Has Devastation paid you yet?" (Devastation = major tournament I got second in Blaz FYI.... No, I haven't gotten paid yet).  While I do talk about my unpopular status, even somewhat within the own community, it's fine that I'm not a part of a certain "group" and go solo.  Most people don't include with "Denver" when speaking about Denver vs Springs though I live in the same area as most of them.  Then they have their sub-sets of groups like The Embassy (group of people who play even MORE unknown games at a decent level), Strike First CO (the more want-to-be-like-Cali side of Extra Fresh League that runs many ranbats and tournaments), and others.

I'm just... me.  While it feels good to be included, acknowledged, and respected for what I do well: I'm not.


I'll just have to go vigilante!!

There can only be one!

Some people definitely look at me and respect what I've done and do, and I appreciate that more than they probably even care to know.  But I definitely respect it a lot.

In tournament news: Pedro has put up $100(!) dollars bonus for the next King of Fighters 13 tournament.  The money, while I want it, doesn't matter.  I just want to win.  Especially getting some decent KoF ability going before EVO in July.

(Fuck Pedro.)

I've been practicing a lot, and I believe the addition of Kim on my team is working out well, as he fits my wanted play style a lot more.  I've been playing with KoF's terrible online, but finding decent connection games to play.  I feel I've been getting better already.  A person I played a couple days ago which our matches went maybe 8-2 his favor was a lot closer to 6-4 his favor today.  If I can keep this practice up, hopefully I can translate it off line and TAKE THE CROWN.

I've practiced Skullgirls for a total of 10 minutes.  Every time I start that damn game, someone wants something and I have to stop.  Talk about a cock tease!