Ultra Street Fighter IV

Hello. What's up ladies & gentlemen? This is J.D.E. (or J.D.) bringing another blog entry. This one is me going into the Street Fighter (SF) community, preparing to play Ultra Street Fighter IV (USFIV) offline in tournaments, & enjoy the ride.

I also will make a quick mention of the Chattanooga Fightclub (CFC). I will represent them every now & then in tournaments. It's not a sponsorship. It is my local fighting game community scene as a whole that we have put together, travel, & compete in fighting games when we can. So expect CFC|J.D.E. to show up on the stream when playing.

I've been a fan of SF for a very long time. It is among my top 3 favorite fighting game franchises alongside of DOA & MK. This decision has been a long time coming. I just wanted to waiting until this version, USFIV came out in order to do it. This is also the 1st time that I'm using a fightpad instead of the regular pad. I had the other SFIV builds for a while, but wanted to start from scratch & "learn" it for real with other newcomers to the scene. I've played casuals in a lot of games to show the games love, but this one I decided to get into since it's one of my favorites. I will say that this is probably the most competitive fighting game that I have ever played to date.

There are tons a players that are much beyond my league & have a lot of work to do. I had some friends even tell me that I should just "stick to casuals because it's much to do", but this is what I like to do & honestly one of the things that I live for as a fighting game enthusiast. This is one of the main series that kept me off the street, in the house at night. Seeing this game played in person & on stream just gets me even more hyped to learn & play.

I've been doing numerous amount of video tutorial watching, even making out a playlist strictly for the game itself & the character (s) that I play. I even have a notebook full of notes, much like I did for DOA (yes, I write down a lot of notes studying the games). My main character decision came from 2 things: characters that I enjoy throughout SF & my style of play. The favorite characters are Ryu, Ken, Chun Li, Cammy, Sakura, C.Viper, & Ibuki. In general, I like the shotos a lot like how much I love ninjas (Ibuki) as a preferred fighter in a fighting game. My style of play emphasizes on offense for the most part so I chose Ken to focus on completely with Chun Li probably going to be my secondary once I feel I can venture off.

This is pretty much where I am now. I'm just practicing the basics, fundamentals, & learning about Ken's tools & where his strengths/weaknesses lie. Still lots of work to do, but it was great getting the feel for the game with some friends on Xbox Live. I'll come back with more thoughts as I progress & travel.