zircon

Blanka's roll does not go through projectiles, only the EX version does... and most characters have EX attacks that go through projectiles. It doesn't make their matchups vs. Sagat much easier. Sagat has high stamina, does tons of damage, has a great anti-air (standing roundhouse), powerful combos, and one of the best projectiles in the game, not to mention Tiger Knee is brutal and has basically no recovery. Oh yeah, and he can chain his ultra really easily. The characters that have the best matches against Sagat, all other things being equal (according to tier listings), are Ryu, Dhalsim, and Akuma.

360. Right now, seems like a good Akuma gives me a pretty hard time. His multihit fireball can't be focused or EXed through, which removes two of my main tools for fighting projectile chars. Sagat can be hard too, but then again, he's hard for everyone.

CSmith, what's your handle? I'm zirconst - add me anytime.

Yep, good games F4W. I felt like I wasn't quite on my A-game so I definitely want some rematches

I dunno, I actually liked Fairy Fountain the best.

THANK YOU MUSTIN! That's it, 100%. See, if you were just listening to this once, and trying to recall a few days later, my description is pretty much all you'd remember But man, the performance I saw of this was absolutely amazing. The vocalist was a friggin' 20 year old sophomore majoring in ECONOMICS and her voice brought down the house. I'd say it was even better than that recording!! The improvisation of the performer I saw was absolutely nuts, world-class stuff... I want to see that again

Try to film some matches... maybe we can help improve your game. The most common mistakes people make: 1. Throwing out long-recovery moves too often (Shoryuken, Shienkyaku, Flash Kick). Use these if you have a guaranteed reversal window or if you're chaining them from something else. Otherwise, if you just throw them out, they leave you open to massive damage. 2. Not blocking high enough. Don't crouch block all the time. Whenever ANYONE is jumping in on you, that's an overhead that has to be blocked "high" (ie. standing). 99% of the time, someone that jumps in on you will switch into a low hit, so crouch once you block that one overhead attack. This takes some practice for special moves since you have to learn which moves hit overhead and which don't. 3. Doing reversals too often. Don't throw a reversal out every time you're knocked down. Most people expect it and will just block, then hit you hard. It's also sometimes preferable to do jab/lk reversals if you're not sure whether the reversal would be safe, that way you have a shorter recovery. 4. Throwing out ultras too often. Ultras are flashy and do lots of damage, but a lot of people use them out of desperation or because they hope someone won't block. This usually doesn't work. Use an ultra when you KNOW it's going to hit - ie. Ryu's ultra when someone is falling out of the air, after you hit someone with a focus attack, during a stun, chained from a combo. Otherwise, you're just gonna do chip damage at best, and probably take a hell of a lot more (ie. someone else's ultra).

I attended a performance yesterday of the amazing Spelman College Jazz Orchestra, which featured four fantastic female singers. The concert focused on jazz, big band, and swing music, but one piece really caught my ear. Unfortunately, there was no program and they didn't announce the name of it! It had a solo female vocal on it with some heavy improvisation towards the end (very soulful) and I believe the primary lyric ended in "...and I feel good", or "...and I feel fine." The improvisation was done on the last word, be it "good" or "fine". Here's a really simple reduction of what the music of the chorus sounded like, except imagine this played by a full jazz group. http://www.zirconstudios.com/whatsthis.mp3 If it helps, the piano ostinato WAS in the full arrangement.

Really? I knew he could combo into one or both from a Flash Kick, but not super to ultra... that's interesting. Still, I'd say his ultra is worse overall than Sagat's.

Awesome! It's like another CT mixtape.

Balrog is awesome because he just hits with SO much force. It seems like in just a handful of hits he can deal massive damage. Half of his moves break armor, meaning focus attacks or armored EX attacks are not much of a defense against him. His rushdown is brutal, especially considering he now has a rushing overhead. I think now that he has EX moves that go through fireballs, he's definitely a real force to be reckoned with... not that he wasn't before, but in ST, he was a pain largely because of that stupid headbutt grab.

I think it's not great balance that some are "simply better" than others. Look at Sagat. He's SUCH a powerful character, and he has an extremely powerful ultra that is easy to combo into. Meanwhile, Guile's is bad. Guile is also not a very strong character. I just think that if you're going to have the ultras be so varied in power and usefulness (ie. Zangief's ultra is much more situational than, say, Ryu's) then at least have the courtesy to give the best ultras to the worst chars, not the other way around. Sagat doesn't need more power!

Actually Sagat can combo them too.

What I don't like about Ultras is how their damage seems to vary from character to character, and their ability to be chained. Ken, Sagat, and Ryu? Awesome ultras. Fei Long? His ultra can't be comboed or chained to from ANYTHING except a focus attack, and even then you won't get the full attack. Guile's ultra is hard to pull off, difficult to position, and seems to do minimal damage. Meanwhile, Ken's is massive.

Analog stick!

Input windows UNFORGIVING? Are you serious? Aside from link combos, the input windows for SF4 are unbelievably easy... half the time I get shoryukens when I do a hadouken, and I actually have to restrain myself from doing 3x rekka chains, whereas in Super Turbo that was very hard to do. Not to mention ALL the wrestlers have much much easier motions, along with Fei and Cammy (compared to original ST), and reversals are so easy now that it's almost a joke. You have like one second of time to input the motion as compared to a handful of frames. I actually think SF4 toned down inputs too much - not that I like execution barriers, but try doing Bison's ultra and not teleporting.

I'm zirconst on 360. So, after playing this game a fair deal... * I just broke 1k BP. * I'm WAY better at canceling moves. Before, I couldn't do even basic Fei Long combos. Now, I can do them most any given time. * The game itself just "feels" really nice to me now. Playing HDR is a bit weird! * Fei Long is not quite as bad as I had thought. He's just different. I still wish his CW hit overhead and had better priority, though. * Chun-Li is really good, at least vs. Fei. A good Chun player can easily set up some 25-30% combos that are difficult to block. * Sagat is ridiculous.

MMX already got a 3D remake, and MM1 got one also... I doubt they'd do HD versions. The sheer amount of characters in MvC2 seems like it wouldn't be worth the trouble, but Darkstalkers would be cool.

You're voicing your opinion as confidently as I am... I think everyone in this thread is pretty confident about what they're saying. Not much point in participating in a debate otherwise Nothing is not logical about that. What's not logical is making that transition, then making classes in a certain design discipline, but then allowing more people to take the class then there is room in the labs. It would be like if you opened a school to teach people how to drive, but only had one car. That wouldn't make much sense either. As I said in response to Slygen, if someone were to pirate a piece of software that would be available to them in a school lab, and did not use that software for any non-education purposes, AND deleted it when their lab access ended, that to me would be as ethical as simply using the lab computers. I'm pretty capable of using my imagination

Hmm, you might not be able to access spotify.com, but does that mean the embedded player wouldn't work for you either? Do we know any other sites that use the embedded Spotify player?

Slygen, that's a pretty good argument. In that case, IF you were to delete the software as soon as your access to the labs would be terminated, and IF you did not use the software at home for commercial purposes, then I would say that is, at least, not unethical.

There is no legal way to get your credit SCORE for free, if by credit score you mean FICO score. On the other hand, U.S. law entitles everyone to get one free credit *report* (which does not include FICO score, but is still very useful to see your status) per year, from each of the major credit bureaus - Equifax, Experian, and Transunion. You do this by going to http://www.annualcreditreport.com/ and ANY other site claiming to give you your "free report" is a scam. This includes freecreditreport.com. Amex and Discover are not any better than Visa or MC. Visa is better than MC because Visa is the most widely-accepted card on Earth and tends to have the best terms. Amex cards tend to have annual fees but better bonuses or rewards programs. Again this is definitely not true. More open credit lines hurts your credit score no matter how quickly you pay them off. This information comes directly from the people who make the scores, it's not speculation. You can still have a very good score with multiple lines, but, especially if you're young, stick to two credit cards, tops. Remember that "credit line" can refer to other things besides credit cards, such as a relationship with your utility company.

I agree... it's not a big issue. Like I said I don't think any individual cases of piracy as as big deal, as long as we admit that it isn't ethical and that we should try to find ways to avoid it where possible. In the case of learning institutions, this means either providing necessary software to students, providing heavy discounts (bringing their price down to something similar to a textbook), or making labs accessible.

I love this question because I talk to so many people that say they'll never be any good, and all I have to do is link them to MY first remixes... I started out in late 2002, but my first remix didn't get accepted on the site until July 2004 (Calamitous Judgment). If you compare that to my 2007 and 2008 remixes, like Monstrous Turtles or Nuclear Flash, it's like night and day. But the period between late 2002 and mid-2005 was where most of my growth took place, and that's after a TON of practice. I made at least a dozen remixes, four of which I submitted (and which were rejected) before I even got *one* posted...

This debate has been quite civil so far - even us "OCR moderators" have disagreed with each other (Anso, BGC, djp, Palpable, myself...) so how about we keep it that way. Why are you taking this so personally? I'm not attacking you or saying your school is "bad", I'm just saying that it doesn't seem logical to offer courses in a design discipline and then not provide students the resources to do their work. That's like teaching advanced chemistry but not having enough chem labs for all the students. Now, according to you, your school does have labs that provide everything a student needs to do their work. But there are too many students. The simple solution is just to limit class sizes. I don't think it's a really controversial point to say a learning institution should probably not be putting its students in the position of having to take ethically questionable actions just to do their homework. Coop, most people I know here hold jobs while they attend school. I have a job as well. AND I commute. And I still find time to do my work in school labs, when I need to, BEFORE 10pm. Again, all I'm saying here is that a learning institution shouldn't be putting its students in the position of relying on piracy to do basic homework. If the institution DOES do that, it still doesn't justify the actions of the students. I don't know who you think is "getting [their] panties in a twist over", because early in this thread, I specifically said that I don't really care if people pirate things. I said it was slightly unethical, but really, hardly at all. So many people do it that's it's not a big deal. My ONLY beef is with people that try to say it's NOT unethical. It sounds like you and I are in perfect agreement