The Last Dan?

Here’s what could very well be a final round up off my epic Dan USFIV trollish online adventures…

First here’s a few battles from a long time ago (July 2015!) when I was in quite a slump playing wise as you can see by my pretty awful PP, vs a British Dudley player who seems to take SFIV a lot more seriously than I do.

I have no idea why he fell for the Wake Up Ultra in round 2, but in the 3rd round, the Ultra was pure yomi, I was certain he’d try to counter-hit me off the blocked crouching hard kick. Sadly I went with a bit too much yomi and one too many psychic koryukens!

But not long after… he was back for more saikyo times:

A tight game with some pretty dubious play from me, but hey! Got the W this time 🙂

From around the same time, I’d started to play a bit better, and here’s a replay especially for Navan, as I’m up against his SFIV main Adon.

You might remember this guy from match #5 in my last Dan adventures.

He’s at a pretty decent rank, and as usual with my opponents, he’s got FAR better combo ability than me. Also he’s got crossups, he’s even got a nice throw & mix up game…

…But what he doesn’t have is SAIKYO POWER!… Or an answer to air Dan-Kyakus mainly. His footsies and defense were probably the main reason why I was able to get a win though, despite me milking the air Dan-Kyaku in round 3.

Ok that’s the older vids out of the way. Onto some fresh material…

As it’s nearing the end of my SFIV playing time, strangely, for a game I never took seriously, as it always played second fiddle to the far superior Street Fighter II HD Remix, I actually started to want to see a bit more what my potential was with Dan – as this was my original goal with playing him. So, after rarely playing SFIV for a long period, I decided to get back on the Dan Wagon.

Here’s a replay especially for my friend Carl (aka “Mr Happy” when trolling), as it features his main, Juri, in an actually really lovely alternative DLC costume:

Sadly despite my best efforts, this is what happens when I haven’t played for over a month and I’m very rusty and cold (literally; it was freezing that night and I couldn’t keep my hands warm, even bashing joystick buttons). Note the incredible use of ‘wake-up’ Dan super at 2.02… as always, this came out completely by accident as I hadn’t noticed I’d accidentally got to full meter, and the command overlaps too closely with Dragon Punch for me, so I often intend to do a Koryuken, but instead get this 😦 I actually try to keep my meter from ever getting full on purpose for this reason (it’s crappy game design to have close overlapping commands, and HDR fixed this already, but hey, this is SFIV, I’m working within it’s rather dumb boundaries here). But here he hilariously walks into the backend of Dan’s useless Super move too!
Still despite this defeat you can spot a few signs I’m playing a little bit better – there’s a ‘crispy link’ from c.MP -> c.MP at 0:27 which I don’t normally get – I actually drop it at 0:44 as I try it again, but he gets hit anyway, as for some reason he’s mashing throw as you can see from the command display, and I’d like to think I do some pretty solid footsies for most of round 1 really, and even most of round 3 before I start messing up and blow the match.

Carl’s comments on this match were:

Not a classic!! Not sure how he beat you. The first round he was abysmal. Whenever he stored a fireball you knew exactly what he was about to do too. Same every time.

Next up is one vs a pretty low ranked Ryu… so of course, vs a shoto like this I immediately start bringing the taunts to show them that I am The Saikyo-Ryu!

I’m actually managing to use the dumb SFIV mechanics a bit again here too, using focus attack dash cancel (albiet not in combos still) a lot and of course the Ultra through his Ultra was as hilarious as ever – and it’s fun to watch me mash it out constantly during his Ultra start-up animation, I was feeling pretty good that he was actually the one about to get hit 😀 I also managed to remember to do a wake-up back dash at 2:06.

Another one I’m uploading as much for the costume as anything… Here’s Dan vs, uh, a foxy Cammy in a top hat.

As usual, you’ll see his combos and links are immediately way better than I can do, and he can FADC in combos…

… yet for some reason I win with some pretty basic stuff like a full lv3 focus attack into Ultra & whiff baiting at the end. In round 2 I remember to use more jump backs and neutral jumps vs Cammy, and at 1:42 I finally land what I think is Dan’s max damage non-Ultra / FADC combo on a real opponent in a real fight – and lose anyway! heh.

Another crazy costume… we all know that Bison is not a cat…

But did you know that Chun Li IS a bird ?

I was pleased I recognised the crumple-counter FA at 0:56 that won me round 1.

More amazement watching my opponent walk into my accidental useless Super move at 2:08 THREE times over. That was again supposed to be a standard Koryuken. Looking at my command entry shows that I wasn’t doing anything close to the super motion either, which is yet another reason this game annoys me so much at times. And of course the win is sealed by Dan’s UNBEATABLE Ultra 1. I do also wonder why on earth he was throwing out a Kikosho at that range too though.

And he was back for more quite a few times, I was gaining quite a bit of PP and he was losing quite a bit… Here’s our final battle that night, on the volcano stage for maximum drama!

No idea why he walked right into my desperation Ultra in round 1.

In round 2 at 2:15 he finally realises he can just block my Ultra… but the punish is pathetic when he should’ve won the round!

And again at 2:34, no decent whiff punish and our hero comes out with a completely undeserved round 2 victory! DAN DAN SUPRIYA! .. and then Round 3 he just seems to crumble under the OFFICIAL DAN PRESSURE.

Along my match journey a B rank 1100 PP-ish Ryu narrowly beat me, and then immediately challenged me again, and, fancying his chances clearly to prove something, switches to Dan! Yes! I think this is the first and only time I’ve ever had someone try to fight me Dan Vs Dan… Naturally this fight should take place in the Bison Brewery:

Well..

But seriously, this guy was cool and sent me a Steam Friend Request and there was none of the anticipated salty abusive chat or anything, and I really only won due to my use of going air-to-air to beat his jumping attacks.

Note there was another crispy link at 1:40 in our Dan battle 🙂

And finally…! With my PP now rising higher than usual, I was facing better players pretty much constantly now. I’d switched to the full black gi now to signify my rising skills 😉 However this guy had beaten me a few times with Blanka as it’s yet another matchup where honestly, in theory fighter, I don’t think Dan can actually do much of anything. But I’d noticed he was pretty much using a gameplan of “noise” and waiting for a mistake and punishing it, which is something I do quite a bit of with Dan myself, so I resolved, particularly by round 3, to just sit back and let him come to me and not walk into anything…

Round 2 shows what a struggle it was to beat a Blanka playing like this 😦 … But with beautiful win with an “air catch” Ultra, I reached my highest ever PP ranking with Dan: 1280 PP and 3877 BP

EXTRA FINAL ROUND

This was maybe the last USFIV match at one of my Friday Fight Night with Team Sh!tty Hitty, at least for a while 🙂

This is: EndlessKill! (Chun) vs Ups55 (Guile)

Hopefully I’ll soon have a way to upload Street Fighter V matches, although that’s likely to be a more ‘serious’ affair than the USFIV silliness here 🙂 See you next time!