OK, it's about time I post my final thoughts on SS2K11.

Although it was a 2 day weekend event, I arrived on an early morning flight Sunday morning since the VF5 exhibition was scheduled for that day. Fact is, I had been up since 4 AM that day (the "price" you pay for cheap early morning airline tickets), so by the time the exhibition event rolled around (11 hours later!) I was really feeling tired. If I remember correctly, Berzerk came and woke me up as it was starting because I had apparently fallen asleep on one of the lounges while waiting to play and posting the delay notices to VFDC!

So, just some random thoughts about the day:

MOV, the reputable Japanese SF4 player, challenged me at a single game of VF5 during the casual sessions. He chose Eileen against my Kage. I'm not sure what I expected from him at first, so I approached our match rather cautiously, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that he was actually pretty good! I could tell he was a little rusty, probably from not playing recently, but it was obvious to me that he understood the system and mind games behind VF. If we played more than just a single game, I felt that he probably would have improved with each game. Alex filmed our casual match which you can watch here:

MOV (EI) vs Myke (KA)


Gamerbee, it was great to finally meet and play many games with him! While he no longer plays currently, his understanding of the game is still very solid and he had no trouble putting up a strong fight every time. As Alex noted, Gamerbee has quite the abare play style which can always prove problematic if you don't know how to deal with it. What I found funny was that Gamerbee had a habit of performing a down attack post-KO. In some circles this would offend or upset an opponent, but for me I couldn't care less. Anyway, I was curious as to why he would do this, but never got a chance to ask. Is this a Taiwanese thing? Was he intentionally trying to rile up the opponent? Or is it just something he does just because? Again, it didn't bother me and I'll be the first to admit that some of my celebratory post-KO antics might annoy some people too . For anyone intersted, Zerokage happened to film some of our casual matches here:

Gamerbee (BR) vs Myke (KA)


Itazan, the player I was probably most interested in seeing at this event for a number of reasons. Firstly, he's a great friend and it's always nice to catch up with him! Secondly, he's a great player and I always enjoy the challenge he puts up, and the inevitable beatings I take! Thirdly, I really wanted to see how he'd cope with playing Vanilla again after a good couple of years of R then FS under this belt. Well, as it turned out he seemed really rusty. I was surprised at the number of throws that went unescaped, which I attributed to simplified TE system of FS. He also seemed to have forgotten many combos as well. But, despite all of this, he still put up a hell of a fight which is a testament to his all round skill level as a fighting gamer. Overall, I think our exhibition matches were pretty intense, fast paced and were lots of fun! More importantly, I think I'm just relieved I didn't get absolutely smacked down!

Now for some shoutouts!



Berzerk, good job on the commentary , and your Pai is always fun to play against! I enjoyed our long chats about the fighting game community at large, e-sports (with Tony), the failings of WCG, and VF in general. Thanks for repping VF's cause at SS2K11, it was much appreciated by myself, the local players, and I'm sure by all of VFDC. To see VF share the stage/stream at a prestigious international fighting game event sends a positive and powerful message. Hopefully some people see that, despite being behind in versions, vanilla VF5 is still relevant today, still provides exciting and intense matches, and is still shitloads of fun to play! When I watched the stream recording, your analogy of "the beautiful game" brought a smile to my face and a tear to my eye! Keep up the great work with Couch Warriors down in Melbourne and I look forward to my next trip down!

AlexMD, after all the pre-event talk about you favouring Pai over Vanessa, I don't think I saw your Pai at all when we played? Equally baffling was your ability to utterly obliterate the foot long sub faster than I could recover from a stagger. Then, with your seemingly bottomless pit for an appetite you nagged me all afternoon asking if I was hungry for dinner yet, and when we finally went you ate barely anything!? Crazy! Anyway, thanks as always for the great matches! And even though it feels like we didn't get enough offline games in, I know I can always catch you online now for some quality sessions! BTW, thanks for keeping to your word with that lunch you owed me! You're alright in my books, despite what anyone else says!

Mooseking, good job on the commentary as well, and shame you didn't have the time (or inclination?) to play a few casual games with the crew, if not for shits and giggles!? I won't forget my first impression of seeing you when I arrived -- nice and early in the morning with a beer in your hand. I guess that's how you roll! I have no doubt that I'll catch you at the next big aussie event!

zerokage, seems like this event was a real eye-opening, and learning experience for you, and that's great! Hopefully you picked up some useful things about Aoi from Alex! If you really want to get more games in, then I strongly suggest you try to get onto XBL! (hint hint)

El_Twelve, great catching up with you again! If we had more time then I would have liked to chat more with you (and the other guys) away from all the noise and excitement of the event! Nice to see you still repping Blaze, and that second exhibition match between you and Alex, which you came back to win, was really exciting! I also found your commentary while I was playing to be hilarious, especially with the line that went something like "guess this, ooh, guess this, ooh, guess this, ..."

When it was all said and done, this was a fantastic event that will be long remembered! I encourage anyone on Facebook, who wishes to do so, to leave a message of thanks on The Shadowloo's wall, although I think you'll have to "like" the page first. In any case, a sign of appreciation doesn't cost you much but can go a really long way. I've started the ball rolling.

My final message to the rest of VFDC is that I hope this can inspire you to get VF5 more involved with other fighting game events. Whether it be a tournament, or just an exhibition, grudge match, whatever, it'll be great to see VF5 getting more exposure again. Trust me when I say that the atmosphere, excitement, and natural high one feels when playing a VF5 match under pressure from both a strong opponent and with an audience watching is second to none!

Once again, I'm really glad the event executed so well and hope you all enjoyed watching it!

Finally, thanks to Shidosha for extracting the VF5 Exhibition from the stream and uploading it to Youtube: SS2k11 VF5 Exhibition Feat: Itabashi Zangief, Myke, Gamerbee & More!

Regarding why Gamerbee refused to fight Itazan, I never got to ask him why, but I can only guess that he probably felt like he wasn't up for the challenge. Whatever the case, it's unfortunate because I, and many others, would have liked to have seen them fight!

Just some other random musings:

For a brief moment on the stream, my name appeared as "I am mike", instead of Iron Mike. This reminded me of one of my favourite commercials!

Mooseking: "me word use good!"