Angry Birds, Punks, and Japanese Gods?
Street Fighter 6 EVO 2023 Tournament
The Street Fighter 6 tournament had presenters for their presenters. I was laughing the whole time actually. We even got a Cat Jams performance, which I thought was a cool addition. Listening to the music outside of the game was very impacting as it was a lot better than I remember it from the game. They did talk about watching out for remixes. So maybe that’s what I was hearing.
They had SO MUCH time both yesterday and today. I hate when they shoehorn things in trying to play for the biggest viewer numbers and not giving themselves enough time. For instance, having the Mortal Kombat 1 announcement after Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 rather than actually doing it on the day of the Mortal Kombat 11 finals was really terrible. It showed that even EVO and NetherRealm had no faith in the viewer numbers for their own finals for Mortal Kombat 11. Although I guess 127,000 viewers for your announcement is probably better than 25,000.
Anyway, the announcements were that there are going to be Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles accessories and costumes for avatars on August 8th. While there is a certain amount of sense to this. I’m glad they are just doing crazy things with avatars and leaving everything else alone. They showed a short trailer for AKI and she looks amazing. It’s just too bad that they didn’t show any gameplay. They are saying she is coming out in Autumn, which could mean anything from September to November. Game publishers are weird about that stuff.
Yipes and Sajam did a great job of calling the match. Bearing in mind that everyone watching didn’t know as much about the game as the hardcore that watches tournaments all the time. But I would have really loved to see Justin Wong, Ultra David, or James Chen instead of Yipes. Yipes is fine for locals and for online tournaments but for this big stage, I would have really preferred some of the other historic commentators of Street Fighter. Especially considering they were all there.
The first few matches really set the tone for the entire event as the first match was a knockdown drag-out fight but the second was a 3–0. Even after a 7,000-person bracket, there was still such a difference in skill levels that one person could get overwhelmed that easily. Fortunately that 3–0 was confined to the beginning of the Top 6. Even with Hitani at the helm, Modern Controls still fell and didn’t win the tournament. There is nothing wrong with Modern controls, but people who say they are better than Classic; have just gotten lucky. Modern controls themselves don’t give anyone an advantage. Between the damage reduction and the reduction of available moves, their advantages are far outweighed by their disadvantages.
People might be wondering why Punk had so much trouble with Angry Bird. The reason for this is that most of what Ken is trying to do beats most of what Cammy is trying to do. So, all Cammy can do is whiff punish. That isn’t usually how Punk plays though, he usually plays a very rush-down game. The problem is that this is Ken’s game. Ken is designed to be a rush-down specialist. This is why Cammy is fundamentally less capable than Ken. Which was illustrated by Angry Birds and Punks Winner Finals matches.
This is a stark contrast to Ken (Tokido) versus Blanka (MenaRD). The reason is that Blanka is reliant on patience and finding those same whiffs. This means that MenaRD was already in the right mindset when facing Tokido versus Punk facing Angry Bird. This is a big part of why MenaRD won his match over Tokido; even if it was 3–2.
I was really excited to see AngryBird win this Tournament. He is so deserving of it. He and his brother have been working so hard to get to this point and it’s great to see all the work pay off.
Top 6:
AngryBird (Ken)
MenaRD (Luke/Blanka)
Punk (Cammy)
Kakeru (JP)
Tokido (Ken)
Haitani (Chun-Li)
