Famitsu published a three-part interview with Fuudo in their magazine over the course of a month. The interview discusses Fuudo's past and future with fighting games along with his road to EVO. All parts of the interview were translated and detailed by the blog Beast Note, and there is a sample of the interview below.
Famitsu: When did you start playing SF4?
Fuudo: Around three years ago.
Famitsu: Did you try out Ryu fully in Arcade Edition?
Fuudo: I only used him once and didn't discover any big changes, so I said "that's enough." I recently picked up an attitude of "winning is fun" so I picked up Yun. Yun didn't work out for me. Realizing that the popularity pace of Arcade Edition in Japan was picking up quickly, I went to Fei Long and worked him out.
Famitsu: How was the EVO atmosphere?
Fuudo: The hype of foreigners is incredible. Thankfully, it didn't affect what was happening on the game screen (Laughs).
Famitsu: With the number of players playing at EVO the prize money was rather high as well, correct?
Fuudo: Yes, the large amount of "donations" was very delicious (Editor's note: not a typo). But this time, the prize money was a little less than last year's. It came out to 10,000 dollars.
Famitsu: How strong was [BT|Latif] compared to Japanese Viper players?
Fuudo: If he came to Japan I have absolutely no doubt he would prove to be the strongest. There are almost no Japanese Viper players left.
Tip from Sephirosuy.
Winning is fun = Online Gamer's attitude
Instead of fun is fun
"He said a Yun player and a Fei Long player from Singapore are quite strong."
Most definitely Xian and Gackt. Gackt did manage to win Daigo even though he didn't get out of the stacked as hell pool.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqDiqA...
"Fuudo: If he came to Japan I have absolutely no doubt he would prove to be the strongest. There are almost no Japanese Viper players left."
hehe- i know it wasnt intention, but it comes across as a back-handed compliment.
I find it a bit ironic that a guy named 'gamepirate' is calling the winner of Evo an online gamer. Well if there's one thing I've learned about the FGC its that being a scrub doesnt stop you from giving your opinion. Though I guess I shouldn't lump in eventhubs commenters with the FGC.
Winning is enjoyable, but figuring out why you lost and making the change is rewarding.
@THE_GODDAMN_MASTER
"In the following thread, the winner of EVO 2011 tacitly admits AE is unbalanced and the community at large goes back to sticking their fingers in their ears and saying professional opinions don't matter until they agree with them."
Every game has it's imbalances, part of being a competitive gamer is identifying what those imbalances are and using them to your advantage. If you stick your fingers in your ears and ignore these imbalances and believe that you can best your opponent on skill alone, then you are neglecting to exercise one of the most important skills in competitive gaming.
@13 Inception:
Please, post the link that says the game favors the twins. I haven't read anywhere that the game was set to favor the twins. Saying the game has strong characters, doesn't meant the same thing as saying the game favors the twins.
It's kind of like saying the world has smart people in it. It definitely doesn't mean you are smart.
This interview had some cool stuff about Daigo. He gets a lot more respect in Japan than in the USA. Fuudo used to think he could be as good as Daigo - in 2009. Now, he says he doesn't even try. Pretty crazy, imo.
@15 NerfGuile
Here is your link.
http://www.eventhubs.com/news/2011/fe...
Your welcome.
Fuudo: "I only used him once and didn't discover any big changes, so I said "that's enough." I recently picked up an attitude of "winning is fun" so I picked up Yun. Yun didn't work out for me. Realizing that the popularity pace of Arcade Edition in Japan was picking up quickly, I went to Fei Long and worked him out."
Spoken like a true champion, some people like to delude themselves that there are other reasons why they play SF but when it comes down to it it's all about winning! Whether you're Daigo beasting, looking for new stratergies to win or you like to play with all your friends and beer all around you and lose to 50 x-box live scrubs in a row, it's all about. If you lost 50 matches in a row constantly everyday for 2 years in a row there is no doubt your love for the game would dwindle significantly and probably quit it alltogether. The level of success that everyone cuurently keeps them in the game and hence winning is important and hence makes the game fun.
@22
That link you gave didnt say anything about the twins, just AE has strong characters, you need to read carefully.
Shoutouts to Chibita - VF Lion Player. Chibita is also what got me in VF seriously (though I've been playing it since VF2 as Lion).
@13 and @22
Both of you need to read carefully. In the link, they didn´t say anything about the game favour the twins in purpose, what was said is:
"Arcade Edition, on the other hand, has some characters who were purposely made strong. The reason this was done is because Ono feels that having such a character helps to build community and competitive spirit."
Which means that what was said is open to interpretation, sakura, makoto (and many other became very strong)
To me, that Ono quote always meant "We know the twins are a bit ridiculous, but they're supposed to be - we think that can make the game more fun." And honestly, I agree. But the worldwide SF4 community failed the test and whined, so now we all have to relearn a bunch of stuff again with another round of stupid tweaks when we could still be discovering new stuff about vanilla or Super given the chance :/
A former Virtua Fighter player who won the SSF4 AE Top 32 for EVO months ago... That must be pretty rare. But props to Fuudo for pulling it off btw.
@13, 22: That link says what? Nothing about the twins. So you want me to thank you for you being an idiot? Thanks. You need to learn to read.
Poe2222: Smart thinking, lmao. So you agree with yourself? Isn't that convenient. And exactly who are you quoting there? You're quoting yourself on what you think Ono meant?
There are strong characters in AE. So what. I still haven't encountered this so-called "Yun Army" that so many people were complaining about. Actually i hardly encounter any Yun players if i go online at all.
I thought every tournament was going to be all Yun and Yang. Show some results in the USA where this is true?
Like when people talk about EVO having so many Yuns. Do you list without foreign players. Since that is too hard for the majority here - There is only 1 non-asian Yun player. Hsien. That's right. ONE. If he was so easy and overpowered, I'm sure this wouldn't be the case.
In the US everyone loves to combine Yun and Fei in tournament results because if you don't there will be no local Yun players doing anything except for hsien.
Overpowered? Only in the right hands.
Look at Yang? How many wins in tournaments? ZERO.
How many Yangs in EVO top 32? ZERO.
If there were no replays of Japanese players, Yang would be bottom tier. Not rock bottom but definitely at the bottom.
Yun would be mid. It's easy to say this because almost everyone here whines about things that aren't even accurate. How many times do you hear on stream or in these forums that every single Yun move is safe? Btw, not true.
Statistically, 99.9% of the crybabies in the US are totally full of asss. The twins aren't winning all of the tournaments they show up in.
man, US needs to stop the "donations" to Japan.
"Fuudo: If he [Latif] came to Japan I have absolutely no doubt he would prove to be the strongest."
My reaction: whooooaaa
"There are almost no Japanese Viper players left"
My reaction: aaawwe wtf? hahaha
Pardon me everybody, but I'm going to just copy and paste what I've written on Shoryuken a little over two months ago:
http://shoryuken.com/forum/index.php?...
I'm going to copy and paste what I've already written in the past because the mods closed my thread for no good reason. Other than the fact that they may be biased in opinion.
Now my take on Yun is this. On one hand, I do agree that he’s one of the three S-Tier characters alongside Fei and Yang when it comes to the professional level of gameplay; but what I don’t agree with are all the people who claim that he’s “broken.” Nor Do I agree with the folks who say that he’s so vastly over-powered that he renders more than half of the cast as “unplayable.” Both of those assertions are complete exaggerations where reality is blown far out of proportions.
Contrary to what these random novice-players are saying on the internet, Yun is not a character made for noobs. Yun is not like Vanilla-Sagat or SSF4-Guile, two characters which any random noob could just pick up and then start playing beastly with. Matter of fact, if a random novice-players tries to jump the gun and use Yun, then he’ll most likely get BODIED HARD. Why? Answer: Because it actually takes a fair level of skill to win with Yun. Yun does have his advantages over other characters, but it does take a fair amount of execution skills to fully put those advantages to use. A lot of Yun’s offensive options entail more risk and exposure than people may think. Not only that but Yun’s health is fairly low which means he loses quickly. On top of that, Yun’s defense game and wake-up game aren’t good at all.
Yun is only S-Tier when you consider the professional level of SF4 play, where everyone has pristine executions and are able to pull off what moves they want to pull off plus where and when they want to pull’em off. But when it comes to the casual level of gameplay, most casual players just do not have the pristine execution skills of pros. And Yun is definitely not S-Tier if we are considering a crowd full of casual players. When you look at people with on-point execution, on-ppoint spacing, etc... the tier-list are going to change when comparing people who execution, spacing, etc... are not so good.
Something that many people don’t understand is that the Tiers do change when considering different levels of gameplay. The tiers made up by pro-SF4 players are not a good representation of what the tier chart should look like when considering a crowd full of average gamers. Like I’ve said before, Yun is only rightfully S-Tier when it comes to the professional level. But if were only considering casual gamers, such as the average Xbox-Live and PSN users, then Yun is B-Tier at the highest. It’s not like I don’t play Xbox live or PSN, matter of fact I play both networks nearly daily and I know the skill level of the average online SF4 player. I’m quite familiar with what the average online SF4 players are capable off. And judging from that experience, I have to say that Yun is B-Tier at the highest when it comes to the tier list for casual/online SF4 players. Now I’m basing this assertion off of this tier-list posted around a month back:
http://www.eventhubs.com/news/2011/ma...
Considering the limited skills and capabilities possessed by the average online gamer, it's note likely that Yun is of a higher tier than the AE versions of Ken, Dictator, Boxer, and Chun-Li.
Now what do I mean when I say that Yun is more like B-Tier when it comes to the level of the average casual/online gamer? Answer: What I’m saying is that most of the casual and online gamers just do not have the same level of skills and capabilities as the professional players do. And players with a limited set of skills and capabilities will actually find it easier to pull of victories online using one of the B-Tier characters than winning with Yun due to the fact that winning with Yun does take a fair level of executional prowess, and Yun has low health plus poor defense and wake-up games. Matter of fact, there have even been players who say that they have an easier time racking up victories with C-Tier characters than racking up victories with Yun.
Yun is not like Vanilla Sagat, where you can win by spamming those Tiger-shots and mashing-DPs. Vanilla Sagat had a much better turtling game than AE Yun does. Plus it was safer to mash DPs with Sagat because Sagat can FADC his DP, which means that if the opponent blocks then you can FADC to safety. Yun cannot FADC his Dragon-Kicks to safty, and we’ve all seen footages of Yun being punished hard after having his Dragon-Kicks blocked by the other player. Not only that, but I remember playing with and against Vanilla-Sagat, and how Sagat was able to live through MUCH more mistakes and errors than Yun is in AE because of the fct that Vanilla-Sagat had A TON OF HEALTH while AE-Yun has fairly low health.
Yun is not as bad as SSF4-Guile either. SSF4-Guile was actually worse than Vanilla-Sagat. Yes, I did just say that SSF4-Guile was WORSE than Vanilla-Sagat. People have said that playing with Yun is “easy-mode” and that random novice-players can “auto-pilot” their way while using Yun. People who say such things were obviously high on crack when writing and they must of confused AE-Yun with SSF4-Guile. SSF4-Guile was WAYYY MORRE of an “easy-mode” character than AE-Yun. Racking up cheap and “auto-piloted” victories was much easier to do with SSF4-Guile than it is with AE-version of Yun.
Now do I think that SSF4-AE is perfectly balanced? Absolutely NOT!!! But, I do feel that SSF4-AE is in fact the most balanced game of the SF4 series.
When going from SSF4 --> AE, most of the characters that received more nerfs than buffs were characters at the upper-end of the tier list. Practically all of the lower-end of the tier list received more buffs than nerfs. Characters such as Guy, Gen, Deejay, Cody, T.Hawk, Hakan, Makoto, Juri, and Dan were very hard to pull off victories with in SSF4. But now in AE, those characters are now actually on a more even playing field with the rest of the cast. All those characters you've just mentioned (Guy, Gen, Deejay, Cody, T.Hawk, Hakan, Makoto, Juri, and Dan) have a much easier time taking on the Twins in AE than they did taking on SSF4-Guile in SSF4. I've actually played Dee-Jay and Cody for quite a while in SSF4. And trying to beat a lame-defensive SSF4-Guile with those two characters in SSF4 was like hitting a brick wall. I don't have a hard time against the twins at all when using those two in AE.
Not to mention, most of the characters listed did not have a real way to answer to Cammy abusing the broken TKCS. But all these characters do have legitimate ways to answer to the twins' dive-kicks. When I played with Dee-Jay and Cody in SSF4, I had a much harder time countering against Cammy’s TKCS than I have with Yun’s divekicks in AE.
People who still think that AE is less balanced than SSF4 should try playing Dan in AE. I’ve been playing AE-Dan these past few days and I fund that beating Fei Long and the Twins with Dan in AE is much easier than beating the S-tiers of SSF4 (Honda, Guile, and Bison) while using SSF4-Dan. Now Dan has always been the worst character in all three games of the SF4 series. Now if the worst character has an easier time beating the S-Tier characters in AE than he did in SSF4, then does that not signify better balance? Does the fact that Dan now has a MUCH better chance of beating the S-tier characters mean anything at all? I think it does.
People say that the biggest gap difference between the higher-tier and lower-tier characters was with AE-Yun and the rest of the cast, something which I don't agree with. Matter of fact, the biggest gap-difference between the lower-tier characters and the higher-tier characters was actually in SSF4 not in AE. In SSF4, Guile dominated most of the cast. Not only did Guile dominate most of the rest of the cast, but Guile also dominated the other S-Tiers in SSF4. Now Guile had favorable match-ups against all of the other two S-Tiers of SSF4. AE-Yun, on the other hand, does not have favorable match-ups against the other two S-Tier characters of AE.
Some people have claimed that SSF4, did not have any S-Tiers. Again such claims aren’t even true as even the eventhubs chart shows that SSF4 clearly had its S-tier characters:
http://www.eventhubs.com/guides/2008/...
The tiers are color coded with S-tier = Gray, A+ tier = Green, A-tier = Red, and B-tier = purple, etc….
If you look at all the tiers for Vanilla-SF4, you’ll see the same color scheme with Sagat being the only character of S-tier which is also color-coded in gray on the Vanilla-SF4 tiers list. S-Tier is basically just a generic term for the characters at the highest level of the tiers chart. And in SSF4, there were characters who were placed into the highest category of the tier charts, and on eventhubs, they used color-coding to show it with S-tier being Gray.
Now the tier lists of eventhubs does list the Guile-Dictator match-up to be 7-3 in Guile's favor, but many people have came forwards and stated that they feel that the Guile-Dictator match-up is more like 8-2 in Guile's favor. Also, many folks have stated that the Guile-Honda match-up is more like 7-3 in Guile's favor or even 8-2 in Guile's favor. A lot of people have said that the Guile-Honda being only 6-4 is an understatement on how much advantages Guile has in that match.
Again, I know this thread is bound to encounter folks who are not in agreement with my perspective on these topics at hand. But you're welcome to comment on and point out things that you agree with, disagree with, flaws in my argument, etc...
We don't lose reaction time has we get older. It's a myth.
This is actually an idea made out of prejudice.
There's many variable . Daigo don't seem to have any problem. Actually he's much faster.
Fuudo talk a lot of crap because of exposure but that does not make him bio scientist.
If i remember it's actually the opposite if the specimen remain in good health condition. Has you get older you get faster if you keep yourself invigorated.
In the following thread, the winner of EVO 2011 tacitly admits AE is unbalanced and the community at large goes back to sticking their fingers in their ears and saying professional opinions don't matter until they agree with them.