Rykoshet
Smash Champion
Original link: http://allisbrawl.com/blogpost.aspx?id=11932
(Part One: )
Late January, 2008: Brawl is released in Japan and Nakayorz gets a copy, I set out to play at his house. Due to his unwillingness to play through SSE, for the first week or 2 we only had the default roster + marth. Due to this being a new game and all of my mains in melee either being changed or removed, I decided to try a character that was new to brawl. After playing both dedede and ike for a few days, I watch a number of matches between Griever and Drago, and some of Kirk's earlier matches and finally decide on ike (silly, huh?) because I figure I wasn't very good at melee anyway and I needed a slow character to ease into it. My reasoning was: if I can make a slow character fast, then I as a player would have also gotten faster.
February, 2008: No items, Ike Only, Final Destination. My intent was clear, I was going to get good at this game, and the first step was getting faster. The problem first though was where to start? I knew very well that I wasn't good at all, and I needed an idea of what to work on. Well who better to ask than the 2 people that inspired me to pick up Ike. First I tried Griever.
Short story shorter: I got no response. It's cool, as the title of the PM implied, I was sure he was bogged down with silly *** questions all the time. Luckily a friend of mine who lives in vegas that played ike informed me that you could act quickly out of quick draw's animation if you actually aim to not hit with it. Well that's handy. Fine, so I have quick draw down, what else should I work on? The next video I had seen was titled "moonwalking". All it really was was a video demonstrating reverse aerial rush back airs. After a day (yes, a day...) of practice I finally got down how to edgeguard with rar back airs. After that though, I again had no idea where to go. My last PM to griever didn't work, but another try couldn't hurt, however this time I sent one to Kirk.
Not expecting a reply, I was surprised to find a message in my inbox.
March, 2008: Getting in line at 3AM in front of best buy, I meet players from around the tri-state area that also wanted to make sure they had their chance at a crystal wii. It rained like 5 times that day, my shoes were soaked, my hands were cold, all in all it was more of an accomplishment to be there for the whole time than it was getting however far I was going to get. About mid-way through the afternoon though some people I hadn't seen all day just walk up to the front of the line with the reasoning that someone had been holding their spot, well that seemed a little unfair but who cares really, I'm still pretty much within the first 20 to get in. In my time on the line I got to speak to people and only later did I get their names. D1, Dire Vulcan, Hellfox, and Wes. They seemed nice enough, it was cool to talk to people who knew more about this game. We finally get into the tournament and my first round is against some Asian chick who played gold Ike. I beat her soundly and in round 2 I get put up against D1. Ike vs Dedede, we agree to not touch the items that spawned and just went at it. I took him to last stock but still lost pretty badly. All in all it was fun, I bought a wii and brawl that night and went home to practice on my own.
Funny tidbit: Speaking to Triforce that day, he said the clock in stock matches was stupid because what was to prevent people from taking a stock with someone like meta knight then just run/fly away for the rest of the match? That's right plank, you were pre-empted.
Some play on wifi with my friend andrew showed me that my ike still had nothing on his marth, this was frustrating. Was I really just that bad? Later that month naks and I went to boston to play with some of his friends and I was informed by a falco player that ike was just cheap, and that all the practice naks and I had up to this point made the game unfair. God I loved brawl during launch.
Even later that month A friend of naks's from rochester came down to play and I got to fight the first marth I'd had seen since my friend Andrew.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dru22SLZD14
The matches went well, so I knew I had come along somewhat since I first picked up the game. Kirk's second point of advice (that I had gotten from a conversation he had with naks) that we were so worried about getting hit that we were making ourselves predictable forced us to get more aggressive and cut our match times from 6-8 minutes down to 4-6, some actually being short enough to save as replays, fun.
April 2008: Discussion with Kirk, Dark Musician, and Silven tell me that Ike vs Zelda is a 65-35 in zelda's favor, a ratio that I viewed in my head as "unwinnable" (later I come to find out that the world:ike is a 65-35 matchup so it held much less weight eventually). That didn't seem right at all, maybe it felt that way because it was essentially the only matchup I knew like the back of my hand. Naks, not wanting to hear that jive talk, told me to go play hylian hellfire, a zelda clan on smashboards. After playing quite a number of their members I finally got to try a few games with Ryokoyaksa. I did horribly, rather pathetically against him the first few games we played. Annoyed with my performance I left and came back later, asking to play him again. Despite his being a waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better player than I could hope to be at the time, I fared much better than I had the first time, taking quite a number of games. Ryoko was the first established player to say something I didn't expect: "I don't see why anyone would even try this matchup as zelda, it's stupidly hard and ike outdoes her in every aspect that matters". Then he hit down B...
Long story short: Ike vs sheik is dumb stupid ******** crazy annoying downright ****ing insanely haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaard, especially when the sheik is way better than you.
Playing ryoko though set me along a new path: Recognizing my defensive habits and attempting to fix them. Every time I took a stock from him, he'd come back and do the exact same thing to me because I would roll straight into one of his killshots. Sliq pretty much mutilated me for the same reason and told me as much, that I should work on less predictable ways of defending myself.
From that day forward I cut rolling from my gameplay for about 7 months.
May, 2008: I head over to web2zone to see what the smash tournament scene is like. I see people I hadn't seen since march, the only one who actually remembered me was D1, which was cool. I sit trying to get next with Silven to see what the difference was in our gameplay. What I learned from those matches is that I didn't know how to approach effectively (I later come to find out that it's brawl and no one does) and that I do reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally stupid **** when I'm nervous. My first tournament match was against Emmy's lucario, I win barely on the neutral and my counterpick. My next set was against Vanz's dedede, I get 3 stocked so hard that he goes pokemon trainer on me for match 2 and still 3 stocks me. He had absolutely no idea it was even a tournament set, that's how bad it was. Not to be completely discouraged i try to go through loser's and I meet blackanese. He goes ice climbers on me match one and I win somehow, then match 2 he goes game and watch and beats the dog crap out of me for matches 2 and three. My first tournament experience ends succinctly, at least I got to meet some cool people.
2 weeks later I go back to web2zone and my first round is against blackanese again, he beats the crap out of me with the 2-D wonder yet again.
Since then, nothing's changed, I still can't beat him when he's game and watch.
Discouraged by my first few tournaments, I go back to playing naks and my friends for a while. Despite my poor performance, meeting and talking with players like Zro (who was extremely welcoming the few times I'd drop by for just friendlies) D1, Ninjalink and Blackanese actually had a visible effect on my gameplay, though I had no idea until I played my friend Andrew again and finally got to the point where I went even with him in matches, my first competitive brawl goal was accomplished.
I changed my Ike color to red (sorry silven) and I set on learning how to approach and be more aggressive.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADYCON0TnSY
(To be continued.)
(Part One: )
Late January, 2008: Brawl is released in Japan and Nakayorz gets a copy, I set out to play at his house. Due to his unwillingness to play through SSE, for the first week or 2 we only had the default roster + marth. Due to this being a new game and all of my mains in melee either being changed or removed, I decided to try a character that was new to brawl. After playing both dedede and ike for a few days, I watch a number of matches between Griever and Drago, and some of Kirk's earlier matches and finally decide on ike (silly, huh?) because I figure I wasn't very good at melee anyway and I needed a slow character to ease into it. My reasoning was: if I can make a slow character fast, then I as a player would have also gotten faster.
February, 2008: No items, Ike Only, Final Destination. My intent was clear, I was going to get good at this game, and the first step was getting faster. The problem first though was where to start? I knew very well that I wasn't good at all, and I needed an idea of what to work on. Well who better to ask than the 2 people that inspired me to pick up Ike. First I tried Griever.
That's right, I didn't know how quick draw worked, which was a shame because I whored the hell out of that move like nobody's business, thinking that as the name implied, it would make me quicker.
Short story shorter: I got no response. It's cool, as the title of the PM implied, I was sure he was bogged down with silly *** questions all the time. Luckily a friend of mine who lives in vegas that played ike informed me that you could act quickly out of quick draw's animation if you actually aim to not hit with it. Well that's handy. Fine, so I have quick draw down, what else should I work on? The next video I had seen was titled "moonwalking". All it really was was a video demonstrating reverse aerial rush back airs. After a day (yes, a day...) of practice I finally got down how to edgeguard with rar back airs. After that though, I again had no idea where to go. My last PM to griever didn't work, but another try couldn't hurt, however this time I sent one to Kirk.
If you want to save yourself 9 minutes: A summary of the videos was that I knew how to RAR Bair but I didn't know how to use fair, nair, or jab, lol. An alternative summary is that I rolled too much and for all intents and purposes, sucked pretty badly.
Not expecting a reply, I was surprised to find a message in my inbox.
Well alright! Not only did I get a response, I got a pointed and detalied one at that, exactly the type of response I needed to get started. Day one I worked on learning how to use fair. Day 2 I did the same thing with nair, and on day 3 I worked on trying to learn how to use jab correctly as a poke/setup instead of just mashing A 3 times. With only a week to the NA launch tournament at best buy, I went over to naks's house pretty much every day to practice. The weekend before the tournament I play a friend of mine (Andrew) who regularly trounced my *** with marth in melee, I figured with a month+ of practice and him jumping in cold I'd finally have a chance against him. He 2 stocked me about 8 times in a row, I was dejected. Oh well, back to practicing.
March, 2008: Getting in line at 3AM in front of best buy, I meet players from around the tri-state area that also wanted to make sure they had their chance at a crystal wii. It rained like 5 times that day, my shoes were soaked, my hands were cold, all in all it was more of an accomplishment to be there for the whole time than it was getting however far I was going to get. About mid-way through the afternoon though some people I hadn't seen all day just walk up to the front of the line with the reasoning that someone had been holding their spot, well that seemed a little unfair but who cares really, I'm still pretty much within the first 20 to get in. In my time on the line I got to speak to people and only later did I get their names. D1, Dire Vulcan, Hellfox, and Wes. They seemed nice enough, it was cool to talk to people who knew more about this game. We finally get into the tournament and my first round is against some Asian chick who played gold Ike. I beat her soundly and in round 2 I get put up against D1. Ike vs Dedede, we agree to not touch the items that spawned and just went at it. I took him to last stock but still lost pretty badly. All in all it was fun, I bought a wii and brawl that night and went home to practice on my own.
Funny tidbit: Speaking to Triforce that day, he said the clock in stock matches was stupid because what was to prevent people from taking a stock with someone like meta knight then just run/fly away for the rest of the match? That's right plank, you were pre-empted.
Some play on wifi with my friend andrew showed me that my ike still had nothing on his marth, this was frustrating. Was I really just that bad? Later that month naks and I went to boston to play with some of his friends and I was informed by a falco player that ike was just cheap, and that all the practice naks and I had up to this point made the game unfair. God I loved brawl during launch.
Even later that month A friend of naks's from rochester came down to play and I got to fight the first marth I'd had seen since my friend Andrew.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dru22SLZD14
The matches went well, so I knew I had come along somewhat since I first picked up the game. Kirk's second point of advice (that I had gotten from a conversation he had with naks) that we were so worried about getting hit that we were making ourselves predictable forced us to get more aggressive and cut our match times from 6-8 minutes down to 4-6, some actually being short enough to save as replays, fun.
April 2008: Discussion with Kirk, Dark Musician, and Silven tell me that Ike vs Zelda is a 65-35 in zelda's favor, a ratio that I viewed in my head as "unwinnable" (later I come to find out that the world:ike is a 65-35 matchup so it held much less weight eventually). That didn't seem right at all, maybe it felt that way because it was essentially the only matchup I knew like the back of my hand. Naks, not wanting to hear that jive talk, told me to go play hylian hellfire, a zelda clan on smashboards. After playing quite a number of their members I finally got to try a few games with Ryokoyaksa. I did horribly, rather pathetically against him the first few games we played. Annoyed with my performance I left and came back later, asking to play him again. Despite his being a waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better player than I could hope to be at the time, I fared much better than I had the first time, taking quite a number of games. Ryoko was the first established player to say something I didn't expect: "I don't see why anyone would even try this matchup as zelda, it's stupidly hard and ike outdoes her in every aspect that matters". Then he hit down B...
Long story short: Ike vs sheik is dumb stupid ******** crazy annoying downright ****ing insanely haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaard, especially when the sheik is way better than you.
Playing ryoko though set me along a new path: Recognizing my defensive habits and attempting to fix them. Every time I took a stock from him, he'd come back and do the exact same thing to me because I would roll straight into one of his killshots. Sliq pretty much mutilated me for the same reason and told me as much, that I should work on less predictable ways of defending myself.
From that day forward I cut rolling from my gameplay for about 7 months.
May, 2008: I head over to web2zone to see what the smash tournament scene is like. I see people I hadn't seen since march, the only one who actually remembered me was D1, which was cool. I sit trying to get next with Silven to see what the difference was in our gameplay. What I learned from those matches is that I didn't know how to approach effectively (I later come to find out that it's brawl and no one does) and that I do reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally stupid **** when I'm nervous. My first tournament match was against Emmy's lucario, I win barely on the neutral and my counterpick. My next set was against Vanz's dedede, I get 3 stocked so hard that he goes pokemon trainer on me for match 2 and still 3 stocks me. He had absolutely no idea it was even a tournament set, that's how bad it was. Not to be completely discouraged i try to go through loser's and I meet blackanese. He goes ice climbers on me match one and I win somehow, then match 2 he goes game and watch and beats the dog crap out of me for matches 2 and three. My first tournament experience ends succinctly, at least I got to meet some cool people.
2 weeks later I go back to web2zone and my first round is against blackanese again, he beats the crap out of me with the 2-D wonder yet again.
Since then, nothing's changed, I still can't beat him when he's game and watch.
Discouraged by my first few tournaments, I go back to playing naks and my friends for a while. Despite my poor performance, meeting and talking with players like Zro (who was extremely welcoming the few times I'd drop by for just friendlies) D1, Ninjalink and Blackanese actually had a visible effect on my gameplay, though I had no idea until I played my friend Andrew again and finally got to the point where I went even with him in matches, my first competitive brawl goal was accomplished.
I changed my Ike color to red (sorry silven) and I set on learning how to approach and be more aggressive.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADYCON0TnSY
(To be continued.)
It's cool, I lost to the better player.
