Month: June 2017

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daymendou talks to Shoryuken about playing Slayer, thoughts on sponsorship, and handling tournaments

While the Guilty Gear scene has been growing in terms of the number of sponsored players, there are still many “undiscovered” — or unclaimed — talented warriors playing REV 2. One of those, named daymendou, has become notorious for his excellent Slayer, especially since triumphing at Anime Ascension earlier this year. daymendou continued to place high at many tournaments, including at Combo Breaker 2017, where SRK took the time to learn more about him.

We discuss why daymendou decided to play Slayer, what distinguishes him from many other competitors, and whether he ever thought about being sponsored by an esports team.

Luke “Woocash” Siuty: Could you briefly introduce yourself?

daymendou: My name is Peter, and my tag is “daymendou,” and I play Slayer in Guilty Gear Xrd. I live in Northern California, that’s my scene. We’re kind of the smaller and younger scenes compared to a lot of other GG ones maybe. I guess for the past six months or so, NorCal has been doing pretty well.

Woocash: What’s your fighting game resume?

daymendou: I actually haven’t played fighting games that much before. It was never really a thing that I would spend my free time on. I didn’t have a PlayStation or go to an arcade when I was younger. When Xrd -SIGN- came out, I got a PS4, so that’s when I started playing games competitively.

Woocash: What made you do that?

daymendou: I always liked watching fighting games, and Guilty Gear is one of my favorites for sure. When Xrd was announced, I just remembered the trailer, so cool. At the time, I had not really been watching or paying attention to Guilty Gear. But that trailer sort of just sparked something within me. I said: maybe this time, I’ll decide to start playing other people. I used to just play the computer.

Woocash: Why did you gravitate to Slayer?

daymendou: Since I was starting at fighting games, I wanted a character that was easy to play. Well, “supposedly,” he’s easy to play. He’s kind of easy execution, especially his combos in Xrd. So that was one major factor. Another major factor was the launch trailer for Xrd. When I started watching a bunch of Accent Core +R on Goldenrody. I really liked watching Slayer. Before, when I just played casually, I used Sol, but watching those videos I thought Slayer looked really cool to play.

Woocash: If Slayer wasn’t in the game, who do you think you would play in REV 2?

daymendou: It’s hard to say, really. I never thought about this. I do play a couple of characters on the side, but I wouldn’t say I would main them if Slayer wasn’t in. Our NorCal Slayer, the old-man Slayer, went to Sol in Xrd. Xrd Sol has more combo flexibility. For me, I wouldn’t play Sol. I can’t do DP inputs very well. So it had to be someone without a DP or without a heavy reliance on it. It could be Leo, to be honest.

Woocash: Tell us a little about your matches today.

daymendou: It was Kizzie Kay first, then dotNova. Lost to Bears, lost to Dogura. This morning, even though Kizzie Kay was first, I was preparing for dotNova in the room. Jack-O’ is a really underplayed character, for whatever reason. I haven’t played against her in so long. The day before, when I played dotNova in casuals, it was getting worse and worse the more we played. I felt like if I wanted to make it to Winners Finals, I really had to be able to beat dotNova. Kizzie Kay, we ended up playing on finals day. The other thing is, Sin is a new character. The way he plays the game, you don’t have to do too much to remember how to play against him, at least to me. I had beaten Kizzie Kay every time we met in tournament, so I wasn’t that worried. Me versus Kizzie Kay was my first match in the top 16.

Combo Breaker did everything up to top 16 on one day, then top 8. If you have such a long break between tournament games, you really need to spend your first tournament match wisely. Not just warming up for that game, but thinking about how to get ready to play in the tournament again. When I played Kizzie, I almost 2-0’d him, but I had some pretty bad input drops, and he managed to take a game back. I did end up beating him, so I kind of have to watch my inputs more.

Woocash: What about versus Xcel| BjornSonOfBear? You’ve beaten him before in Grand Finals.

daymendou: I’ve beaten him sometimes… It’s very strange how we do against each other. Even though we play each other at locals, there is kind of a thing where whether I play him before the tournament matters. If I get to play him before the tournament, I generally beat him really easily. If not, I lose to him. Today, I was thinking, well last week, we just had a local. I had to go home early, because I had to go home for finals, so we couldn’t play casuals after. I lost to him really badly in Grand Finals in that tournament. I think that I wasn’t surprised that I lost. If you watched it, I would get him very close to death, and then I would make a bad decision on pressure, and he would just start running things back and kill me. I wasn’t too surprised about that.

Woocash: Have you ever thought about whether you want to be sponsored? Would you like to?

daymendou: I’ve thought about the issue a lot of times before. I was actually given an offer after Anime Ascension, but I turned it down, because I didn’t feel ready for it, more or less. For Guilty Gear, it would be good to have more sponsored players. We are one of those fighting games where money is kind of small compared to all the others. Exposure is small too, so it would be good to have that outside support.

Woocash: Why weren’t you ready back then?

daymendou: I think even right now, I don’t feel ready. There is sort of a responsibility and a weight on your shoulders when you do carry that sponsor name. You are expected to perform well not only by your sponsor but the community and yourself. Personally, I didn’t actually start traveling to tournaments until this year. A lot of the times, it didn’t work out. I only went to Evo last year and NEC this past December. I don’t feel like I can travel that much, it’s just too tiring to me. For tournaments, you have to prepare as well. You’re not just traveling, preparing and playing the game is even more tiring. I don’t have the stamina to do it once a month or even once every two months, which is what I’ve been doing sort of recently.

Woocash: Any tips for people who are looking to start playing Guilty Gear?

daymendou: If you want to start playing Guilty Gear, the first thing I would do is, well, play the game of course. I think a lot of people worry about picking characters, and there is a lot of minute information you need to worry about in Guilty Gear. I wouldn’t worry about the big things, I would just worry about playing your character in the beginning. If you do want to be able to compete, you’re going to have to learn a lot of things, but if you’re just starting out, you should at least make sure you’re having fun with the game. As long as you keep playing and thinking about it, you should get better.

Woocash: Any other advice?

daymendou: If you’re plateauing and struggling to get better, I think it’s very important to learn to deal with the tournament setting. That’s extremely important. I think my main advantage is, I don’t feel that I’m actually that much better than other people, I keep things very well together in tournaments. I can stay focused, I don’t get tilted from single errors or mistakes that I think happened. You have to accept that you won’t always be right because it is a fighting game, there’s a lot of guessing on both sides. You can’t let one big error just ruin your thinking process. You have to stay sharp when you’re playing.

In case you missed them, check out our interviews with PG|SKD and Fable|KidViper from Combo Breaker 2017!

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LI Joe shares his E3 demo impressions of Dragon Ball FighterZ with Cross Counter TV

Rarely has a fighting game with as little build-up to E3 as Dragon Ball FighterZ wowed the the floor (and the world!) so thoroughly. The more cynical among us might think this is because of the nostalgia factor — Arc System Works has married Dragon Ball’s art style beautifully with their Guilty Gear Xrd cell shading. Visuals are all well and good, but we’re FGC. What about the game play?

That’s why I find Joe “LI Joe” Ciaramelli’s first impression of the game so interesting. Joe is a renowned Street Fighter tournament specialist who didn’t grow up with the anime adaptation of Drgaon Ball Z. He is exactly the sort of person most likely to shrug at a cut-scene of two Super Saiyans screaming at each other — and yet, here we are: like nearly everyone else that got to play the game, Joe walked away impressed with the gameplay. He has some concerns about the similarity of gameplay of the six currently-available characters, but also notes: “It’s a tech demo at E3 … If it fleshes out, I think it’ll be a damn good game.”

Source: Cross Counter TV

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Project Genom – Gradually Transitioning to a New Version

The weekly Project Genom letter has been published to inform players of a big milestone in the game’s development. Over the next weeks, the team will be gradually preparing to deploy a new version of the game, specifically v0.7.0.0. Many new features will be included in the update including better network architecture to address bugs, lag and game freezes; a new server transition system, updated character modes complete with new animations; character customization and more.

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Chinatown Fair documentary “The Lost Arcade” now available digitally

Before there was Next Level Arcade or NLBC, New York City’s fighting game community was harbored in the city’s arcades. Even as American arcades dwindled and Street Fighter II cabinets disappeared from stores, Manhattan’s Chinatown Fair remained a hub for the city’s gamers, and a landmark for the East Coast’s most impressive fighting game talent. In their film The Lost Arcade director Kurt Vincent and writer Irene Chin explore the elements that helped Chinatown Fair foster its unique community and the competitive spirit that led to the creation of Next Level.

Frequently referred to as “New York City’s last great arcade,” Chinatown Fair’s history predates video games altogether: it first opened in 1944, and eventually became a video arcade during the ’70s. The Lost Arcade focuses on how the arcade became an essential crossroads for New York City’s gamers under the ownership of Pakistani immigrant Sam Palmer, who purchased the business in 1982.

“I wanted to create a film that would capture the spirit that hit me the first time I walked through those doors,” Vincent said in a statement about the film. “There was a melting pot of a community that congregated there, where all walks of life came together and shared one common interest: video games. It was a microcosm of what New York was all about.”

Palmer began investing in fighting games at the advice of Henry Cen, his employee and business partner. In a time before “FGC” was a common term, Chinatown Fair gave many their first exposure to high-level fighting game play. The Lost Arcade captures the arcade’s weekend crowds for Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike — late night tournaments would keep the arcade open past 2:00 AM.

The arcade served as a proving ground for a generation of New York City fighting game players: Justin Wong, Chris G, Sanford Kelly and Arturo Sanchez were just some of the faces among the fierce competition. Cen even made sure console titles like Super Street Fighter IV and Marvel vs. Capcom 3 made their way to the arcade.

Chinatown Fair prior to its 2011 closing
Chinatown Fair prior to its 2011 closing

The Lost Arcade captures Chinatown Fair’s fall and rebirth, as rising costs pushed Palmer out of business in 2011. Cen opened Next Level shortly thereafter as a refuge for the city’s fighting game players. The film shows the Brooklyn venue flourish from an empty canvas to a vibrant competitive space while a new owner eventually re-opened Chinatown Fair, without fighting games, a year later. The Lost Arcade contrasts the rise of Next Level with the community’s attempts to adjust to a very different Chinatown Fair.

Through the eyes of Palmer, Cen and Akuma Hotaru, a Next Level and Chinatown Fair employee, The Lost Arcade relates of how the spirit of community can transform the simplest of spaces into something more.

“It had its own language, its own quirks, these vibes that attracted like-minded kids to a place that may have been a safe haven even from their own home,” Vincent said of the arcade. “You talk to these patrons, and they just want to share their stories and history of the Chinatown Fair to keep it alive. They’re detailing accounts of meeting a best friend, getting into fights, a first kiss and meeting the love of their life.”

The Lost Arcade is available on most digital platforms including iTunes, Google Play, Amazon, Steam, Vimeo, VHX, Vudu, Microsoft and Sony video services, Comcast Infinity and Direct TV. For more information visit arcademovie.com

Source: Kurt Vincent