Where are they now? (Website Edition)

[Maj]

Ok, this is random: Endless Fight

That website released a pair of CvS2 strategy videos very early on. I think one focused on Rolento and the other had random clips featuring a large variety of characters. They also used to report video release news like VidOp, except they would link directly to videos which is still bad style. It was even worse back then cuz bandwidth was even more expensive.

Then they stopped updating for like 3 years. And i guess this guy roach thinks Forest Gump running back and forth across America makes a good analogy for all of that? I dunno, i thought his goodbye speech was pretty funny.

But i gotta admit, it was a pretty useful website back in the day. If there was a smiley pouring alcohol onto a sidwalk, i'd use it here.

[Maj]

Dunno how many of you will remember this, cuz it happened back when CvS2 first came out. Some of the OG players in NorCal put together a website and posted a few articles, but it didn't really go anywhere and after like a year the website disappeared. It was called Shin Akuma and they had their own domain name and everything. They also posted some tournament bracket diagrams that still pop up now and then.

Even though the website is dead now, i guess the Wolfe brothers mirrored it on their own server without telling anyone. It hasn't been updated since it went down.

There was one article that they are (in)famous for writing: Critical Damage Zone Theory. It was this elaborate theory about how each character in CvS2 reaches their CDZ at different ratios. In other words, some characters reach their "lethal" output level at lower ratios than other characters. Thus, you could build teams around this by choosing characters that reach their CDZ at low ratios and also by making sure that you don't asign extra ratio points to any character past their CDZ cuz that would be a waste.

It's actually not a bad way of looking at the game, but it sounds so damn ghetto. It's also a gross oversimplification. I mean, all those numbers change based on the opponent's choices of characters, ratios, and grooves. Even if Sagat does reach CDZ at ratio 2, that doesn't mean Sagat should always be your R2 character cuz sometimes you're dealing with opponents that play a lot of counter-characters. Or sometimes you can have a better team build to counter your opponent's main character. Or sometimes you know how to beat your opponent's Blanka and Bison, but you don't have a good answer for their Vega so you choose your best available anti-Vega character and make him R2 just to be sure.

Anyway i guess the fact that i'm still talking about CDZ constitutes proof that it was kind of a cool idea to throw out there.

[Maj]

Couple of years back, there was a brief period where a small group of players released a grip of SFEX3 combo, tutorial, and match videos. Most of them had helluva ghetto editing. Nonexistent editing. But it didn't really matter because the combos were good with lots of difficult links and a lot of them went on forever with lots of tagging between characters.

The group called themselves NeoAvalon and consisted of Infested Jester, Gen, EvilKairi, and maybe a few others? I'm unclear on the exact roster, but Gen and Jester were the main two making most of the videos. Their website doesn't really exist anymore, but then again it was never fully constructed in the first place. It was always "under construction" but they got their videos out so it did its job.

Anyway the front page has been mirrored here without any of the videos, unfortunately. Of course you can also look up neoavalon.com on [url=http://web.archive.org[/url]web.archive.org[/url] which is an excellent resource for digging up old internet artifacts.

I recently asked ShinjiGohan why Jester stopped making combo videos, and he told me that it was because, "Gen moved away to St. Lucia, wherever that is - so not only did Jesters number 1 competition move away, he also lost the hardware needed to do videos." Just thought i'd mention it in case anyone else was curious what happened to those guys. The one thing i don't like about SFEX3 is that the combo counter in training mode is so damn small that you can't make out any of the numbers in combo videos. But i always enjoyed watching those videos.

[Mike Z]

Didn't Jester fake his own death or something?

Mike Z

[Maj]

Man, i wanna hear that story. Maybe you're confusing him with someone else? Jester still posts on SRK fairly regularly, but not so much about combos.

[ShinjiGohan]

No, lol.

It was Evil Kairi that faked his own death. Why? Its a bit of a drama, but essentially he felt that he was the only one contributing to the scene, and if anyone else tried, all they did was copy his combos. As if he copywrited the "jumpin kick, low kick, special move" combo and anything similar to it, is a discredit to his combos and such.

So he wanted to a) see if he stopped doing videos if others would be making more then and b) if the other EX players would mourn his death.

However Jester was always skeptical about it, and called him on it at every turn. Eventually EK admitted it and Jester hasn't talked to him since.

Sensei and I occassionally talk to EK but he seems caught up in other games (FFXI for example), and has moved on in life.

The main people of the neoavalon scene pretty much consisted of

Doc
Gen
Jester
Sensei
Nekki
EK
EX3winter
myself

There were occassional input from others like
rbdracula
TheUltimiateOne
and a couple others that I don't remember.

Sadly, of those people I'm really the only one that plays still. However with any luck I should be getting together with Jester and Nekki in a couple months, so perhaps we can release some more match vids or something.

On the horizon of new EX is Kyousuke, Messatsu and friends from Peru. While editting wise, they aren't much better than we were, but unlike the NeoAvalon crew, they still play against eachother regularly and have surpassed our level of play (though Jester denies this lol, mans got his pride).

Speaking of EX, Shinobi is another player that hasn't release anything in several years. He'd do combos for EX, and MvC2, and possible CvS2. But his mains were certainly EX and MvC2

[laugh]

I don't know if they had websties, but Nibor (I read it nee-bore) was a cool dude. He was good at one of the only marvel games I really really like, Marvel Super Heroes. Had fun at Texas Showdown 4. He used to make emulator vids this one other guy I forgot the name of and was pretty damn good at A3. I wonder what he's up to.

I just remembered another person that really should come out of the dark, Skye Thompson. That guy was likable and naturally talented at games, but ever since he moved back to his hometown, I haven't heard from/about him in ages.

[Maj]

Most CvS2 players are familiar with the legendary A-Groove Custom Combo catalogue that Gunter put together over on Namonaki, his general personal website. It's Japanese for "without a name" which is explained by the original welcome message on his front page: Welcome to my personal site. I have tried to put together all the things that make me who I am... But because my interests are so diverse, I couldn't decide on a name. So I gave it none.

Most of his old CC tutorial videos included the following text: Detailed Explanation of all Combos Available at http://www.namonaki.com/cvs2

Of course, that URL has been 404 for ages. The story is that he got fed up with some people on SRK repeatedly getting in arguments with him over tiers or strategy or something. Those people were also entirely ungrateful for all the hard work that Gunter had put into making videos and practical combo transcripts. Personally i think he might have overreacted just a little bit, because i would never take down something i had worked so hard on just because of a few aggrivating remarks. He was trying to prove a point i guess. Can't really blame him though, cuz i remember some of the remarks being rather insulting.

In any case, when Gunter took down the CvS2 portion of his website (leaving only the personal stuff like his bio/photos/links/etc), he changed his SRK sig to: Don't check http://www.namonaki.com to see CCs for every character because I took them the fuck down! Go to hell!

Yeah, safe to say he was annoyed. However, the truth is that he didn't take it down entirely. He simply changed the address to namonaki.com/fucktheworld without telling anyone publicly, though he did drop hints. This secret status lasted for something like two or three years, but at least Gunter's A-Groove Guide lived on.

Recently he's taken down the personal content of the website, so it doesn't even have a proper front page. Right now it's just a generic "under construction" page provided by his web host. However, the CvS2 section is back with a new URL and i guess it's no longer a secret. Ghetto custom combo fans rise up and rejoice!

[Xenozip.]

Nibor hasn't posted on SRK since 2005 but I believe he still lurks, so you could probably contact him via PM.

[Maj]

Looking through some old bookmarks, i remembered the legendary HAMEKO Uploader, which used to have tons of obscure Japanese combo videos. Basically it was an open file host where people would upload anything they wanted, and downloading stuff didn't require any kind of account registration.

It was probably crushed under the weight of its own catastrophic bandwidth costs, though i'm only guessing because we never heard any official reason for it dying. The www.hameko.net homepage still works, and it looks like he's still staying active by running a u2b channel, but it's mostly Tekken match vids.

[Xenozip.]

Okay so where is Thongboy (Mr.N) ?

I think about this often. Possibly an unreasonable amount.

[Maj]

No clue what happened to that kid. Haven't heard a word from him in ... a year? Nobody else knows where he's gone?

[Maj]

Aw, that Daigo fansite is gone? I think it used to be called The Beast Daigo and hosted a variety of his best matches. Maybe the guy running it felt betrayed, his hopes and dreams shattered, when Daigo retired for a year or two before SF4 came out.

Also i think some guy named Neopoke used to run a SvC:MotM webpage but the link doesn't work anymore and i honestly can't even remember what it used to look like. Doesn't show up on web.archive.org either.

And where did Persona World go?

[Xenozip.]

Well, there's this site: http://beastdaigo.jp/

[Maj]

That's the one!! The Daigo dream of legend lives on!

[Xenozip.]

You know, I think I recall an English version one that was hosted on a .jp site, so that's probably the one that went down.

[Thongboy Bebop]

Okay so where is Thongboy (Mr.N) ?

I think about this often. Possibly an unreasonable amount.

I missed you too.

N