Dodging:

I should have mentioned this technique found only in SNK games plus the Capcom VS. SNK games (CvS). This was in the early KOF games from KOF 94-96 I imagine. Basically what it was is that you pressed A and B together (WP + WK) and you would dodge to the "side". You actually went into the background avoiding all attacks. Much like the roll, it had it's drawbacks. The main one is recovery time. However you could "counter" attack which is a regular attack you do which only happens as you are going back "into" the foreground, back into play. This had been replaced by the roll I mentioned earlier. Perhaps it was the fact that the dodge kinda slows down gameplay, not to mention it was not as effective as some people may think. The fact that you stay stationary leaves much to be desired, especially as using the "dodge" as a form of avoidance of multi hitting attacks (Ralph's Vulcan Arm or just someone pressing jab repeatedly) what results is that you're still stuck in the same place and eventually coming back into the opponents attack whose job was made easier by you dodging.

This technique is still present in KOF 98 called "Extra" mode and CvS1/2 because you could choose what type of "groove" you want (Groove is a mode of fighting you pick which I'll explain later).

Parrying and Just Defense:

These are relativly newly popularized conventions of video-gaming. It presents a really large jump in trying to speed up gameplay and making characters more offensive and defensive oriented. Parrying was first introduced in SS series (Samurai Shodown). Since it was a weapon based combat game there were some neat features that SNK innovated (even pioneered). Such as Super attacks (if they hit the person) would destroy the opponent's weapon, or the ability to actually lose your weapon on the field. One of the more interesting concepts, fully derived from kool ass ninjas, is when you are weaonless. The ability to do a command and then at the right moment "catch" your oppoent's weapon during an attack and counter with your own attack. This was one of the first versions of parrying to appear since it created two concepts related to parrying:

1. Doing a command other than "blocking" as a form of defense and *not* sustain damage in anyway.
2. Being able to immediatly attack after your opponents attack that you've stopped.

What differs parrying from rolls or dodges is specifically point #2. The indirect point number 3 is that there is a more element of risk when performing parrying or just defense (JD). In somecases to consistently parry/JD properly, you have risk more and anticipate more. You're parry/JD command has to be almost exactly when the attack comes, not something that lasts for a few seconds or forever such as rolling or blocking respectivly. You could see how this can greatly sped up gameplay due to how there are great rewards to take an intiative and anticipate your opponent's moves. But to explore in more depth I'll describe Capcom's "Parrying" and SNK's Just defense".

Parrying:

Parrying is Capcom's latest feature in their latest SF series SF3. Basically how it works is that you tap forward (for high/standing attacks or even in the air) or down (for low attacks) just at the moment an attack will hit you and you will 'parry' a single attack. This means that the attack would be nullified. Usually your character would flash and be in their parry animation when you sucessfully parried. The good thing about parrying is that effectively makes all attacks useless short of throws (you cannot parry throws), you gain super meter power, *and* you stand in the same place in where you parried (you usually get pushed back when just blocking). The better thing is that you can attack right after you parry, unlike blocking which you get pushed back and get locked into blocking animation.

This opens up an entirely new world of hurt since you parry once and unleash a combo from hell. Fireballs effectively have become null as far distance attacks since they can be seen a mile away and parried with the greatest of ease. People who relied on simple combos over and over again must adapt to different techniques in order to mix up which combos to use. It's great to use especailly when you are down to a sliver of energy, a single blocked fireball can do you in (specials and supers cause block damage, small damage you incur regardless of you blocking), and you parry in order to keep your life from draining to a KO.

But as you can see, this also becomes the problem as well as solution. Often at high levels of play, this results in players doing *nothing* greater than a Jab or Short because they are usually very hard to parry let alone anticipate. Mind games are more prevalent where someone would jump, and the other opponent is expected to parry, but instead the jumping character just does nothing also expecting to parry. What happens is the domination of who is able to thorw the best or the first person to make a mistake and pay dearly for it. As you can see, these matches could get quite boring, but the good thing is, we all aren't experts so we won't be getting to that high of level.

The downside to parrying pratically speaking is that it's quite hard to do. For quick multiple attacks (such as Chun-Li's lightning kick special) it's often hard to parry let alone worth it to parry. You have to parry every single attack! Fireballs take some pratice to learn how to parry, and the very big element of risk. Granted you have somewhat of lee-way on when to exactly parry, but the fact remains that you are performing a joystick movement that is counter-productive to the regular defensive habit of holding back or down-back for blocking. Afterall you are pressing "towards" or "down" in order to prevent an attack. Failure would result in damage or a big ass combo. I have managed to parry well, but it's because of the endless lines of Ryus, Kens and Akumas that gave me the ability to parry most of those characters basic attacks at a rookie level.

Just Defense

SNk's version of the parry. First appeared in Garou: Mark of the Wolves (herein referred as MOTW), a future set sequel of the Fatal Fury series (only a few years 2008 or soemthing). It's waaaay more convinient and somewhat less abusive than Capcom's since you could really only do specials and S/DM's after the JD, not every attack under the sun (I think). What makes it much more convinient is how it's actually set up. As opposed to promoting offensive tatics, MOTW has the exact opposite tactics of Capcom's parry. Instead of pressing toward to JD an attack, you instead tap back (or back-down I think for low attacks) at the exact moment the attack hits and then JD'd it. The added safety to this is that you actually gain both super bar power *and* health back for JDing!! Not to mention that even if you fuck up, you still end up in block animation anyways! Although if you do screw up for multiple attacks, then your joystick movement back to neutral would probably result in you getting hit. So this somewhat promotes a very defensive type of tatics since in someways you could recover your entire health bar with just JDing. Problems associated with this is also outlined above with Capcom's parrying.

Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck....Duo of EVIL?

Apparently these guys think so...a greatly funny article, even if it's ranting they do make a point. Yay for having too much time on your hands!

The only good thing to come out of me not getting a job for the year. yay, fuck I have fucking easy taxes.

Well removed myself from war catapult. I really don't have much else to say other than:


Nintendo fucking ROCKS!


Holy shit! Let the games commence!


But who the fuck is this? She's not mentioned in the roster below.

Taken from the MagicBox

Nintendo has released some new images of their GameCube kart racing game Mario Kart Double Dash!!

The Mushroom Kingdom just got a whole lot more hectic as Mario & Co. double up for furious kart racing! The latest in the acclaimed Mario Kart series is here, and this time, you won't be racing alone! Each kart holds two racers, so choose from Mario, Luigi, Peach, Baby Mario, Baby Luigi, Yoshi, Birdo, Wario, Waluigi, Donkey Kong, Diddy Kong, Bowser, Bowser Jr., Koopa, and Paratroopa and pair them up any way you see fit. The character in front handles the driving duties, while the character in the rear doles out damage with six normal items and eight special items that only specific characters can use. Racers can swap places at any time, so switch it up on the fly to make the best use of your items as you tear around curves and over huge elevation changes.

Well this time I have a more ample attempt to quit the internet. I have effectively announced my resignation from one of the message boards I frequent. I don't know why I did it. I always thought of it, but had plenty of other reasons against it. Mostly to use two more avatars to show other people on the board. However the result that came was that I didn't get anything from my stay there. Granted it's nothing great to be an actual presence on the internet, a person that you know, but to tell the truth, I have been feeling kinda lonely recently, despite all my friends communication with me and their wonderful support. I'm just feeling that I need to be more self reliant, and more free. I find myself spending a bit too much time checking if anyone responded to my messages, like some obsessive compulsive freak who thinks someone does give a shit about my opinions. Here on my blog, at least I know I'm with better company. Out there, I don't give a rats ass.

But to add a more of a "step" to it, I have effectively removed MSN messenger off my computer as well. I know it's drastic, but I hardly use it anymore it seems. Plus I'll check on the internet at school anyways. It's just that with me actually finishing a work of anything related to art, I feel more confident that art is part of my life, not as a hobby or some shit like that. I feel more free to enjoy reality.

besides it gives me more time to find web-junk.

Rolling

This is the bread and butter in KOF. It's unique to KOF in a way that it replaces the two plane system created by SNK which first appeared in Fatal Fury 1. The two plane system in the Fatal Fury actually had fighting on two planes. You could knock the opponent into the next plain, therefore making the game sort of more exciting. Later SNK added the ability to actually enter the other plane without having your ass just kicked into it. (in FF1 only opponents seem to freely go back and forth into the planes). The thing is, going to the other plain was pretty neat since you can avoid some harsh attacks, say Krauser's (final boss from Fatal Fury 2) Kaiser Wave, which traveled fairly quick and was 3/4s of the screen tall.

Another thing is that if you were quick enough, you could enter the other plain, dash to the other side and slide back down to the original plane to fool your opponent and kick their ass. Rolling was kind of a variation of it.

Rolling is basically accomplished from pressing A and B together (WK and WP). What happens is your character would roll (usually) and become invincible for the duration of the roll. This was extremely good considering that it was a great tactical thing. It was a good way to avoid "fireball wars" (people just tossing fireballs all day) since the jumping element of risk was easily overcome by just pressing those two wonderful buttons. Rolling was also an effective way to get on the other side of the character. Of course rolling had it's drawbacks such as a small bit of recovery time and I think being able to thrown out of it.

You could roll back and forth. Yes.

Small jump/hop

The 'hop' has been prevalent in most KOF games. A lot of people say that with the inclusion of three types of jumps (six if you include dashing jumps), it adds much variety to the gameplay. But basically what the hop is, is a good way to perform an overhead which I already explained before. This is a really good thing because it really prevents people from turtling (people who block all day). The result would be a more active fight. As you can see, doing this greatly improves your odds of not getting hit out of a jump because it's short and fast. The thing with KOF's jumps, they all serve a purpose of positioning, instead of like most of Capcom's games where they have one generic jump, these three types of jumps: long, regular and hop, aid in giving the person more options to play the game.

Crossup

Ever played SF2 and had Ryu do a J.RH on your blocking character, but still Ryu still managed to hit you? Yes you were in standing/high block. Yes you were pressing the right way. But ever notice something different? How it wasn't the foot that Ryu hit you with, but almost looked like he sat on your head with his butt.

Well that my friends is called a Crossup. A crossup is the term used for an method of a jumping attack in which you hit your blocking oppoent on the "other side" of their body. In the case of Ryu still kicking your head with his ass, the point is that what happened is that he actually hit you on your "other side" as he jumped over you.

Let's just say your character was facing towards the left. By the time the attack Ryu dished out on your head actually hit, he was so far on the other side that you holding "Back" to block was actually switched to pressing "Towards" and walking towards the right. Ryu and Ken's RH crossup is very famous because it's basically one of the first attacks to be associated with crossups. Now overall, not all attacks have the potential to be crossups so be careful. There are some that are more useful than others. The most famous crossup attack ever though, (and actually was an attack made for exactly crossup purposes) is KOF's Iori's J. Back.WK. What this attack does is have one of his legs extend behind him (if he were facing right, his kick would come out to the left) during his jump and hit the opponent. Very useful because it doesn't require the character to be pratically be sitting on the opponent's head to perform a crossup, Iori could do a jump or SJ even closer to his opponent, sail way past him and still be able to hit the character, potentially less risky.

So why would you want to do a cross up? Combo potential. What basically kills a combo is the fact that each attack (whether hit or blocked) results in the opponent being pushed back. The stronger the attack, the further the push. Often the term Jump deep comes into constructing combos. (Jumping deep means to basically jump and attack as close and far as you can go without landing on the ground in order to lengthen the time the character is stunned so as to continue on with a combo. Anything earlier might cause the stun to run it's course before you recover to perform the rest of the combo). Jumping deep helps in constructing combos in the way that when you jump you jump so deep that you end up right beside the character (not within an attacks length range away) and have potential to throw more attacks because you are closer, therefore less "push" space would occur.

The cross over acts like the extreme part of jumping deep. Despite how deep we might jump into an opponent, we always end up with the small amount of "push back" space that shortens our combo. With a crossover, the thing is, even though you sill hit the opponent on the "other side", your oppenent still get's "pushed back" as if they were hit in the direction they were facing. This means the "push back" goes "towards" you as you land. You can see how great this is because essentially you had eliminated any form of push back and resulted in your oppoent being right beside you, opening up to potential of using more attacks in the combo, or even using more powerful attacks because of the more "push back" space you have to work with.

Air blocking

Blocking in the air, as simple as that. It basically makes jumping all the more easier and less risky. KOF however had made it (such as in KOF 98) where it was more defensive oriented, by making air blocking only availble when you jump backwards, not forwards. Generally nowadays, save for 'spazz games' (GG, VS. series) there is little air blocking since the whole point of jumping has to have an element of risk behind it anyways. In the ends, it differs between which games have and don't have air blocking, but generally the Alpha series, GG and VS series have full on air blocking.

Dashing/Running

It's obviously how dashing and running are performed, just two taps towards (hold towards if running). This really helps out considering that it greatly speeds up gameplay and is often crucial to winning a game (as in the VS. series.). The thing is, there must be a different made between dashing and running. Dashing is really short, about a few feet sometimes at most, half of the screen. Running is all out sprint and will always keep on going so long as the runner does so (and not get hit). Often you can back dash and forward dash, but never perform back running.

Advanced tactics in dashing and running

In KOF, Iori has a great back dash. The thing is, when he dashes back, he actually rises in the air a bit, thus accessing his basic air attacks. The thing is his cross up mentioned before, flattens him out pretty well. So if you dash back with him and press B.WK while doing so, you make his body flatter, therefore he spends more time horizontally moving since he has more vertical time as well. In effect, he can dash back half way the screen becasue of this party trick, very handy to get away from opponents.

In the VS series, there's a recent term that has been coined called "wave dashing". The thing is, with some characters, dashing ends rather messily. When you dash, some characters go to their limit, slide (or stop) and there's like a "dash recover" in the process of the dash. Wave dashing had came about from the fact that you could cancel the dash at any time by ducking (thus letting go of any commitment to a complete dash with dash recovery). This resulted in a thing where you dash, duck and dash and duck (repeat) at regular intervals (depending if the character needs wave dashing or not). Hence it looks like a "wave" of dashing where dashing goes up and down. This helps out greatly because most characters go across the screen faster because of this method (especially for those characters with short dash distances) and even make people with short dashs, have a long dash. The thing is, not all characters need this because characters like Magneto, or Sentinal in MvC2, are fast enough and have far enough dashes that are better off *not* wave dashing.

Oh yeah, really pissed today.

Well no. It's fucking immature of me to think so because hey...I'm basically *forcing* someone to take my place in attending the opening night of a grad show. A grad show which I would be a part in making if I were still taking art, my final art year....a grad show I would attend irregardless if I was still studying art for the sole fact my friends would be there, a grad show that I would most likely brave to a SARs infested city to attend it. If cost and ludicrousness (in excess of $1000 flight return trip for a fucking art show) was not a factor, along with family.

The thing is I think it might be a lot of things. Most importantly that it would be a somewhat of a throw-back to my old art collective (of still the same said art friends) Propaganda Art Collective. My shining moment of art thus far was back then. In some ways this grad show was almost like it. Instead that it has proper funding and is in an actual art facility, not a house. So it'd be more of a throw forward. Although lacking in the Bohemian style, it would be art instead. And who the fuck am I to force a friend to go to an art show where he had no interaction with the world of friends that I have there. He just doesn't have the same connection (and un-worldly fixation) on it.

The really thing that irks me is that I'm actually kinda angry at him at the time he told me. Playfully angry, as much as the internet would warrent, but I did in fact set this meeting up with a lot of my art friends, even my profs in order to watch out for him. Treat him as if he were me. But it's not that I'm angry at that as well, I'm angry at the fact that I'm somewhat fucking angry at the intervention GF. Not *at* his GF mind you, but the sole count that task they had to do, had to be done on this night.

This has been the first time I've been really pissed off that a GF of any of my friends has interfered with plans. I usually really dont' fucking fucking fucking care, really because hey, I respect that, they have to spend time with them.

It's so weird since it's not really *my* plans such as I was physically in Vancouver ready to take my friend out on the town of grad art and he just bailed. I think it's more deep rooted in my zero experience with true love and the fucking fact that I treasure art waaaaaaaaay more than what any other human being could offer me in terms of love. In some way I guess art is the *only* thing I have as sorts of emotional love or something like it. It was like "A girl OVER ART? WTF?"

Not to mention the fact that I know what this grad show means to my friends (even if they suffer from 'art burn out' at this time), and I kind of know the whole process of putting on a show. I know how much shit they had to do to prepare for this show, basically planning since the beginning of their fourth year. An *entire year* to plan this event. In some ways I feel that I let my friends down if I don't do some attempt to send someone in my place. Even if they don't give a fuck about me, I give a fuck about them.

ARGH...I'm so immature! But such is weird association and logic.

Well since my really long abcense (and lack of motivation) of coninuing my fighting 101, I might just skip SNK supers for now and just head into some more hardcore aspects of fighting games.

Super Jumping: There's two types really. "Real world" super jumping and "VS. series" super jumping.

I'll start with VS. series jumping since it'll be easier to explain real world jumping later. From herin super jump would be shortened to SJ. The key with the VS. series SJ is to think like Chinese kung fu flicks, or more westernly the Matrix. Yes people these are jumps that defy nature (and even video game nature) and jump approximately 2-2.5 screens high. Now SJ such as this hasn't been popularized since the VS series, more accurately X-MEN: COTA. The key is, flash. Really flash jumps and shit like that. Keeping up with the magnified pace and the super hero aspect of Marvel characters, you can see how SJ really fits in. Guilty Gear (GG) and Rival Schools (RS) has done some of this to a degree. Basically how this super jump is accomplished is either:

*Usually: tapping Down and quickly pressing Up/Up T./ Up B.

OR

pressing all (3) kick buttons (only from XvSF-MvC...not MvC2).

To tell the truth, all SJ accomplishes is adding to the flash. Not only as a defensive way to avoid all matters of shit happening on the ground (fireballs, beams, flying rocks, pink shit) but also it's the key in performing an air combo after you hit someone with a launcher attack. Note that launcher attacks, (usually D.FP or D.RH) are attacks that send you opponent in the air when it connects, setting up all matters of bodily harm, (usually an air combo is followed up with it). Air combos usually extend only to the peak of your jump, or when you decide to finish off the combo. (With either a finisher such as FP or RH; throw; special; or Super.)

The real world super jumping applies to games such as SNK and SF3 series. The basis behind this is that this real world jumping that it seems more "real" in the fact that it doesn't jump up 2 screens high. Usually it hits the "top" of the screen for that kind of SJ. Once again this is very useful and often it offers more "horizontal" advancement than the VS series SJ. for the sheer fact that it's not going as high. This adds more tactical advantages since it's more realistically used as a way to position yourself, NOT as a way to continue or make an air combo.

Usually games that aren't as spazzy as the VS series don't have air combos. At most, it would be a "juggle". Juggles first appeared in Mortal Kombat. Basically what it meant that you could hit an opponent as they fell from an attack in the air. Juggles have been included cause it's become a natural convention. Usually there are a limits to how many juggles can happen to the sole fact that to perform a juggle would usually result in one extra hit.

bah I'm selfish anyways....my friends are much more in need and giving than I. I just feel I annoy the shit out of them.

Feeling distant lately. I don't know whether or not it's the pure fact that I sent my work of lit(erature) out at exam time (especially to those people involved in a grad show) or the fact that my friends have nothing of note to discuss about the story. No I won't post the story, because what little audience I have could also ready fucking ask me. The fact remains that usually after I make art or some type of shit like that, I feel lonely as fuck. It's nothing truly horrible, I mean I like making art. But lately I've beginning to notice a pattern that my friends don't know what the hell to disscuss about my artwork. I live for critiques and to have a critique kinda go...bleh I get frustrated. It's really hard to continue doing any art when it suddenly becomes more self reliant on one's happiness than actually getting feedback on whether or not you are doing shit or not.

Just that I had this whole problem all the way through the studio art classes. Every single project I felt that I was either too fucking stupid or abstract for people to even attempt to discuss it. I hated it cause there was this all this dedication towards exploring ideas, and I contributed, but in the end I felt I didn't get any return on what I invested critically. Granted I get "good", "great", "swell", "fun", (__insert some damned throwaway comment__). But what really irks the shit out of me, is that even my ARTIST friends can't discuss it with me. It could be the fact that I'm cryptic as hell before I un-veil my artwork or that people might hate me, but that's no excuse. I don't care if people don't understand me, I don't give a shit. What I do give a shit about is actually doing some form of art that I get a decent discussion out of it.

But then again it could be the fucking fact that my art isn't 'radical' or 'thought provoking' enough for anyone to 'get'. Fuck.

Well I e-mailed that story at the wrong time anyways. Everyone is busy.

Donald...someone beat you to it dude!

I have yet to sign up to test it out...but am very tempted to upstage this upstart with a link to Donald's 8-Bit chat.

Me: "Why Donald, whatever do you mean? I merely just posted a link to my blog and I'm not responsible for 10,000 rabid FF1 fans logging in 8-Bit chat (which I *might* have noted in my post) and bursting your computer into flames. Tee hee. *innocence*."

Of course I wouldn't do that...yet.

Chicago Soundtrack Review

And the bad side to it.....well I picked this up at Wal-Mart and it was pretty good to some degree. I mean the one I actually got was the "Chicago Special Edition" soundtrack complete with a small DVD ranging for about 27 minutes of extras which would probably appear on the DVD release of Chicago the movie anyways. But what the fuck, it was marked down from $24 to $19, and only $1 more than the regular edition, so essentially I'm getting a DVD for the price of a dollar plus added taxes. Damn Wal-Mart and their cost cutting capitalism.

Now I've been listening to this soundtrack constantly for about 4-5 days here, it's my addiction phase of my earlier explanation of my music tastes. Plus I have been only really listening to a good half of the soundtrack really.

To tell the truth, as a whole, this soundtrack is semi-good. As some composer or tech said on the DVD, "Chicago is the most fun you will have listening to a soundtrack" which is obviously bullshit. If anything it tries to cater to everyone (and I even think to Queen Latifah) by adding "rap" versions of a song. Granted I don't mind it, but still not my cup o tea. The other thing is how Chicago is a musical, hence sights and sounds. Things really fall flat when it hit Zeta-Jones I Can't Do It Alone when she is explaining the parts of her double act, which in fact without the movie seems really pointless. However to tell the truth, even without the vertible shine of the visuals, it was good enough to constantly listen to since it let's the people focus more on the music, than be bombarded with special effects. Hearing John C. Riley belt that great voice is a favorite of mine.


A solid 3.5/5.0 stars, but glaring shortcomings brought it down.

Chicago Review



SPOILERS

Let me put it this way:

Rob is to Moulin Rouge as Stephen is to Chicago.

That's how much I love Chicago.

Now it might not be the same fervor that Rob has, but for me it was more on a bizarrly personal nature that I have yet to explore. To tell the truth, I liked Moulin Rouge, but only for what it stood for. Not as the film's content itself. When discussing this to a associate of mine on one of the message boards that I so lovely placed on the left to you, I think what really re-sounded with me (and actually twisted my thought Moulin Rouge) was how Moulin Rouge seemed a bit too main-"streamed" with all music that were easily recognized. That comment really stook in my mind and I was kinda in denile, saying that Moulin Rouge was the first therefore will be the best ever of modern musicals. Just like even though I hate boy bands I would still rather see the BSB's beat out N'Sync since they came out first.

There's really so much to say on why I love this movie. I would probably have to first attribute it to my, albeit limited, experience with dance and theatre. Not that I seen much ( of most shows I could probably count them with one hand ), but it's just that it really touched me because of the emotion shown in the human body. Secondly I would have to heavily attribute it to Bob Fosse, since he's a god in Broadway chereography. Not to mention that I actually liked most of the music, music that was *made* for the show, and not "mixed" such as in Moulin Rouge.

To start off I would highlight the low points and high points of each of the main characters.

Roxie Hart: She was great, although it was kinda interesting on how Chicago was more advertised to seem like a Catherine Zeta-Jones flick than a rene Zellweger. However it was really refreshing since she is what I consider on the B-List on Hollywoods greats. Kinda flopping around with these neat indie, art-house flicks, but she really shined in this film. She wasn't as burning hot as Catherine, (not in sexiness, I mean dancing) but she did have center stage which she really needed, otherwise Zeta-Jones would have stolen the entire movie. I think it was also a good thing because her character was so un-like most her other roles, so that *really* helped in me beliebing her singing and her being a character.

Highs: Two of them really stood out, Roxie song and the final number. I would have to be more towards Roxie since it was the one that featured more of her singing, although Nowadays (Final dance number) is where her voice was extremely great. Nowadays loses points because of how little of the singing there was compared to the amount of dance in Hot Honey Rag

Lows: Should be pretty damned obvious, Funny Honey her first song. It was pretty horrible, and not that even flattering. It kinda irked me since it almost set me up expecting that it would total crapola, but thankfully it picked up fast. The Nowadays/Hot Honey Dance was also kinda off for me since it took a completely different pace of being more dance than song. Not to mention more Vaudville that Chicago.

Velma Kelly: Delciously great. It was a serious supporting character. Very interesting, since her acting had the hallmarks of a supporting character but it was the singing & dancing that had the hallmarks of a lead character. Would have obviously stolen the show if Roxie didn't have the screen time allotted for her. I think she had the best voice overall for the spirit of the movie.

Highs: Mostly everything. I didn't catch "All that Jazz" but I got enough of it anyways from previews. I think the best part would be when she did I Can't Do It Alone. It combined the best of Fosse (and showed the most of), vaudville and modern dance making it uber cool.

Lows: Nowadays/Hot Honey Rag. With all the work put into making Velma Kelly as this dancer of dark caberets, it seemed really odd to see her in a white dress, as well with with a really bright room. Like I said it kinda put the final say of saying that this was a story about Roxie, whom really fit into the final dance.

Billy Flynn: It was really bizarre to see Richard Gere sing considering that his acting voice was so seperated from his singing scenes. It was weird because I associated with his singing voice with sleaze, however during the reality scenes, he *acted* out his sleaze. Farily good, but also not great. Compared to the women he's barely keeping up, and the weakest link of dancing.

Highs: It's a toss up between We Both Reached for the Gun and Razzle Dazzle. The former was more entertaining, however the latter was more in tune of the spirit and stretched Flynn's range for emotion.

Lows: All I Care About. Bad not a good start off for Flynn.

I didn't really like When You're Good To Mama. Sexy, but still it didn't do justice for me. A tad more geared towards traditional jazz. However I loved Mister Cellophane, it was beautiful. It seemed so good and like Rob Marshall said, John C. Riley was the heart of the film and I would have to somewhat agree. His voice was beautiful and his high point is when he hit that high note on the song. Perfect. My only qualm was that it was too short.

There wasn't anything really bad since it was seriously a film adaption of theatre, which meant a lot of close-ups. Although I wanted basically more wide shots because to see all the good dance shots, but sadly the faces of the stars must be seen. It started very slow but picked up fast, in fact much like an opposite version of Baz Luhrman's Moulin Rouge.

But what I really liked about this film is that the music basically carried the movie. The story was simple, hell for me it bordered on likening it to see a film with Superman just kicking ass for 90 minutes straight without any problems. It's just that these people are one sided, but it's the music that's the true star and those who sing them. These are people you hate but want to see them suceed (such as Superman).

It's just that even with the sad parts such as the hanging of Hunyak, it still was put in such a way with the "un-reality" part with black comedy. This brings up a good point that it really just emphasized the point that Billy Flynn was the *only* lawyer that was good enough for these ladies, considering that absolutely no other lawyers were present in the film. Without him, they're dead.

I also like how the end of the court case showed Amos Hart and Billy Flynn leaving, thus ending the interaction with Roxie. The court had drawn all of them together and everything interacted within the crime, nothing else nothing more. Sure Amos was married to Roxie, but we can see there was no interaction before the crime.

A great film, but full of glaring flaws. But for bringing me on such a good trip I give it.

4.5 stars/5 stars.

It's good.
Isn't it? Grand.
Isn't it? Great.
Isn't it? Swell.
Isn't it? Fun.
Isn't it?

Capcom Supers: Capcom usually experiements with other types of fighters before attempting to go ahead and apply it to their flagship game SF. In X-Men: Children of the Atom (and basis for the VS. series), they had supers as well, one entire bar. But Instead of merely one super bar associated to only one super move, they instead incorporated many different types of supers in that one bar. At certain points of the bar, characters could use a part of that bar to perform a super attack or an enhancement of ability such as speed or power (Usually those ability enhancements were those moves that used up less of the super bar).

Wolverine had one super move where he tore the shit out of people when the bar was full, but also had a super move that required about 2/3s of the bar in order to heal/regain his lifebar. This translated into Street Fighter Alpha (SFA), a series where the timeline is set between SF2 and SF1.

Street Fighter Alpha (SFA)

In the SFA series, the super bar had three levels. At each level you can pull off a super of either lvl. 1, lvl 2, or a lvl. 3 super. Naturally the higher the bar went, the more powerful or more hits the super did. Also it is good to note, that always using a lvl. 3 super just to try to kill someone isn't always good because tactically it might prove stupid.

A lvl. 1 or lvl. 2 might be quicker. It really all depends on when to actually use it, because sometimes, even a lvl. 3 super might not be worth the effort in order to get more damage in when comparativly to what a lvl. 2 does. The waste of another potential lvl of super is just too great. Another thing to consider is regarding back to priority, since some lvl.s might have different priority than others. Not to mention the fact that even different levels result in different types of supers (not all the time but in some cases). So it really is up to the person to study whether or not it's good to use what lvl. of super in the fight.

As for the commands, most often for Capcom it's a double joystick motion of the move, with the appropriate button press. For example, Ryu's Super Fireball is:

QCF, QCF + P

It's kind hard to learn at first since using all the special move commands it just's hard to learn not to press a button right after the first QCF. But on a joystick it's fairly easy since it doesn't need to be totally anal and you can just rub the joystick QCF up back down and up again, and it should register. On a direcitonal pad and you if you have a big enough thumb, merely flex your thumb twice, for it to roll over the motion twice, easily. For ever super of a certain special, it would always try to mimic the movement properties of said special.

HOWEVER this technique used to do a super such as described above does not translate into SNK fighting games such as KOF. Their joystick system is a bit different where what is written has a totally different way of performing it which I'll explain later.

Another trick to learn is the "charge" chracters and their supers, such as Guile or Blanka from SF2. Usually it's:

Charge B, F, B, F + P

That is for their own respective moves. Pretty easy but probably the most difficult super motion that I have problem performing is the dreaded "Flash Kick" super, usually for Guile and his clone Charlie:

Charge D, DF, DB, U + K

This super is usualy used as primarily an "anti air" super, usually which involves a hefty amount of rising. This is usually a super that requires your opponent to be in the air as you pull it off for optimal effectiveness. As you can see how difficult it would be to pull this off since the whole ordeal of it would have you ending up sucking dropkick if you aren't fast enough. Yet people still can pull this off.

One last thing to touch upon is Level 3 only supers. These are super attacks that only be performed when your character has built up the super bar to level 3. Usually these moves are very elaborate, often flash, and very hard to actually land. Hell in SF:EX2 (Capcom's venture into 3D gaming, but it was more like 3D characters on a 2D plane) everyone had a lvl. 3 super and most of them seemed useless as well with KOF 2002 which had Hyper SDMs (HSDMs) which were essentially the Capcom equilavent of a lvl 3. (possibly a lvl. 4 since most of them were pretty outrageous).

The thing is, for such a super to actually *require* a super bar at lvl. 3 to perform, usually equates ultimate move with precise execution. Often the move would have the character very vulnerable when they set up their move, and hell, even very vulnerable when they miss the move. Which leads me to two points, the "Raging Demon".

Command supersThis was basically the first command in SF history. The owner of the Raging Demon technique is Akuma, ultimate bad-ass of the SF series. Actually it was called the "Bison Killer" since in SSF2T, if you managed to get a certain amount of super finishes, perfects and not lose a round; your final fight with M. Bison would be interupted by Akuma jumping in and laying the smackdown on M. Bison in one attack, thereby challenging you.

Basically what the Raging Demon is, is a move that hits 15 vital points on the character, essentially killing the. There's some fucked up more geeky stuff behind it, but I feel filthy enough so I'll end it there. First: 'Why it's called a command super'. The reason is simple, because it's all in the excution:

Raging Demon = Jab, Jab, (press towards), Short Kick, Fierce Punch.

As you can see it's very much like typing the thing out, hence the term command super. Your seemingly inputting 'commands' into the game in order to do it. However often in fighters, they called it merely the "Raging Demon Super", regardless of what which buttons are pressed in which order.

What results for the super is Akuma floating towards his opponent and if he connects with the opponent (it's actually un-blockable) 15 hits later, at least 50% of their life is gone. Now note, that I said "float" towards his opponent. As you can see he's *very* vulnerable at this point of time. Hell a Jab could knock him out of it. Most of the time, lvl.-3-only supers are this hard to land, because of the amount of payoff involved in landing it. Whether it's imposed "limits" would be Akuma's vulnerable 'gliding', to having to be right beside the person in order to perform the super, to even having to exactly pin-point where the super hits to maintain maximum painage. And most of the time, lvl.-3-only supers are totally not worth it. You really need to do your research in order to find out what is good or not.

Next time SNK supers

Before I continue on babbling, I think I should stop and take a break with all this verbal diarrhea. So I decided to put up popular “gaming terms” that have been produced as a result of fighting games:

Button Masher: This is quite obvious. A kind of relation to the screamer in gyms (people who shout like they’re passing a kidney stone every rep). Kinda sad really, since it’s merely the problem that they don’t know how to play so they randomly just press buttons…AKA Mash. Now a relative term to this is Masher Friendly Game. Usually this is an insult to games since it says

“Anyone can be successful at this game by just mashing the shit out of the buttons.”

Also meaning this is a skill-less game. And to some degree that is true, there are plenty of games out there that are *very* masher friendly especially 3D fighters and Capcom’s VS. series (X-Men VS. SF [XvSF], Marvel VS. SF [MvSF], Marvel VS. Capcom [MvC], and Marvel VS. Capcom 2 [MvC2]) mainly because of how many things are simplified, or else a lot of stuff has been put onto the buttons, that about any combination of “mashes” would result in some elaborate combo (I hate when mashers beat me actually. They make me cry).

Infinite: Ah, the bane of all fighting games. There’s still continued debate on how “cheap” this is, but I’m not here to explore the geeky philosophy of fighting games. Infinities are basically a combination of attacks that will hit your character forever, so long as the person continues the combination of attacks. The VS. series is seriously bad for this since even XvSF, almost everyone had an infinite.

Relatively are “semi infinities” that are more related on the KOF side (only when in KOF 2000, characters had “assistants”/strikers which they called out a character to perform an attack or action). They were limited because at one point, the allowed “use” of your assistant would deplete, leaving someone people with no way to continue on the infinite, hence “semi-infinite”.

Rush that shit down!!! This is a term spawned by the VS series. Why this is the case is because the VS series actually sped the speed of fights, therefore making some characters really fast. Hence these fast nimble characters (Like Wolverine, Stirder, Chun-Li and recently Magneto) were labeled Rushdown Characters. These were characters that super fast, in your face and comboed the shit out of you. They’re speed alone could keep you pinned down for an entire match, forcing you to block, until you made one mistake.

Hence when someone is doing some weird shit, like just throwing fireballs, or jumping around, once a Rushdown Character came out it was time to “Rush that shit down!”. Of course this could apply to anything IMHO. Like exams would be “Exam that shit down” or like C++ programming “C++/Program that shit down!”. It’s a barrel of geeky fun, but still it’s basically as cool (if not less) than 1337 speak and we all know how 1@m3 +Ha+ !$ LOLLY!

Tiers

Can be related to sports. Basically what tiers mean in fighting games is the grouping of characters in their relation to rank in the game. The oft used top tier means that these characters basically are the best to use the entire game. Bottom tier means the worse possible characters. Of course I have to mention that the difference between tiers, (say top and second tiers) is whether or not characters in the second tier can face off and have a fair chance of beating a character in the top tier. Note that these tiers are often established at tournaments or the top players of each respective game. In relation to this is the idea of balance. A balanced game is usually a game who has relatively few tiers or the tiers are fairly close. As seen in CvS2, it is somewhat unbalanced due to the fact that Sagat and Blanka are the *only* characters in top tier out of a few dozen characters, and dominate the game very easily.

Granted there is some sort of “joy” in having such a small tier. It’s very much how scientists or artisans suddenly spend a bulk of their lifetime analysing this one insignificant thing, which really holds a lot of information on it. But in the long run, it’s kinda bad since a worth of a game is how much stuff with other characters you can do, not how well you could continually do it with the same characters over and over again.

Supers

Ah, the infamous super. Somehow magically get’s mashed the fuck out, surprising newbies and children alike. This part would be different in descrbing the “specials” since in a sense, the supers nature is relatively the same. However what is important is the some of the execution of supers and some other neats things that had popped up recently related to supers. But first:

Super bar: To tell the truth, SNK invented the super with Fatal Fury 2 (FF2), of Art of Fighting (AOF). A super is basically a souped up attack of the character's regular special moves (but nowadays a lot of characters have supers that are original upon themselves). However it wasn’t in such a way where you have to “build up” a super bar in order to gather enough to pull off a super attack.

What FF2 did is when near death, your lifebar starts to blink red and yellow. It was both as an indicator that you’re near getting skooled and telling you can do a super move. It was usually around 80% life gone before it starts blinking. However in relation to your character’s dire circumstances, they coined the super the term Desperation Move (DM for short) (and the suped up version, Super Desperation Move [SDM]). These terms are usually related to SNK games, where as the general term ‘supers’ are related to Capcom games.

It was actually quite fitting since these moves could greatly change the entire course of the match. A character would be near death, barely taking 20% off their opponent, but when the super blasts out in FF2, pfft…anywhere from 45%-60% of your life…GONE. Of course, having this power was kinda unbalanced since there were no actual limits to how many times you could pull off a DM. So then you have another chance to quickly end the match by just pulling off another DM killing you opponent easily. This has been toned down of course to some degree, but I’ll explain later.

Then came Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo (SSF2T) with the inclusion of the “super bar” an actual gauge that builds up with each sucessful attack or special pulled off. Like SNK, these supers were devastating, taking off 50% off easily. However it did prove to be a limit to how many times a character could pull off a super. In my experience though, it seemed like futile since every round, the super bar resetted to nothing and it would almost take an entire rounds’ worth of fighting to build up one super, usually a one point where my opponent was almost dead anways.

I’d like to also touch onto the “rage meter” that belongs to the Samurai Shodown/Spirits (SS) series. This is also another form of super but it was made in such a way that only built up when you got hit. Therefore as it grew, so did your “rage” which when topped off would result in increased abilities (higher power, and viltality) but also the ability to use up all your rage bar to pull off one super (usually breaking the opponents weapon in the process if it hit).

So the evolution of the super bar continued, and still continues (primarily on SNKs side) but I would explain the general idea behind these two companies super bars.