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Do you guys know medicalat? More or less a year or two ago I 1CC’ed it on Normal difficulty (it’s an easy game). It gave me a password, which I’ve kept next to my keyboard ever since. The main reason it’s stayed there is, I have no fucking idea what it could possibly be used for. This is a shmup. Why is there a password? A password for winning… I simply have no idea. For anyone who’s curious, the secret password is AEMDPLBK. There. Now at least I can throw out the paper towel I have it written on.
It’s high time I got around to telling you about Mario Kart Wii gambling. It’s been probably over a year now since I last played it and I’d certainly like to document the rules before they are completely forgotten. I will present to you the rules as they are actually played as opposed to my ideal version of the ruleset (which differs slightly). I hope I can express them sufficiently because it’s been VERY difficult to explain verbally in the past.
Requirements:
1 Wii with internet connectivity
1 copy of Mario Kart Wii
2 willing participants
2 sets of controllers
1 sheet of paper
Introduction:
To understand WGA Mario Kart better, you must understand there are 3 sets of numbers kept at most times. They are Real Money/Debt, Chain Position, and The Stack. Real Money/Debt is the most simple number. It is simply the money that’s been won so far. At the beginning of the game it’s $0. As players win money from each other it would be something like “$15 bloocloud” if I was up $15 and used my online name in real life. At the beginning of the game, there is no Chain Position. ANY time there is no chain position, there is no Stack either. Chain Position(from here on out, just referred to as the Chain) and the stack go together hand and hand. You have a chain with an associated stack. As mentioned above, at the beginning of the game, there is no chain or stack. A stack is a dollar amount that is built up, but not won yet. Chain describes one player’s proximity to moving the money in the stack to their real money. The game can be ended by either player at any time that there is no current chain/stack or if the player with the current chain voluntarily chooses to forfeit his chain and end the game.
Main Rules:
Two players (together, locally on one wii) are to play an online game of Mario Kart Wii. That is, splitscreen and online with strangers. Whoever wins the first race begins a new chain and stack. All new stacks start off at $5 (without potential bonuses described later). The chain is a simple fraction 1/x, where x is the place the winning player (out of the two) came in the first online race. For instance, if Tim places 4th and Blobert places 7th, then Tim now has a stack of $5 and a chain of 1/4. This is what’s written on paper:
Real Money: $0
Tim 1/4 $5
There can only ever be one chain and one stack at a time. The current chain/stack is written down after each match. Now let’s say that Blobert places 3rd in the next race and Tim places 5th. Blobert has BROKEN Tim’s chain and simultaneously started his own chain. The $5 that Tim had in his stack is vanquished. The paper now looks like this:
Real Money: $0
Tim 1/4 $5
Blobert 1/3 $5
Again, the reason Blobert has $5 in his stack is because all new stacks start at $5. Now let’s say Blobert wins the next race, placing 4th. This advances him 1 position up the chain. It also adds $1 to his stack. The paper now looks like this:
Real Money: $0
Tim 1/4 $5
Blobert 1/3 $5
Blobert 2/3 $6
In the next race, Blolbert wins once again. This time placing 3rd. Again he advances 1 chain position and $1 on the stack. The paper now looks like this:
Real Money: $7 Blobert
Tim 1/4 $5
Blobert 1/3 $5
Blobert 2/3 $6
Blobert 3/3 $7(circled)
A few things happened here. Blobert has completed his chain (3/3). When a player completes a chain, the money in his stack is added to his real money (in other words, he won). At that point, the chain and the stack disappear (since they’ve been completed) and the game is at the same point that it was at the beginning, except of course for the fact that one player now owes the other player $7. Either player may choose to end the game at this point or continue. Although not required, it is polite to announce your intentions to quit the next time there’s no chain/stack ahead of time. This is the way the game is played. It’s a series of chains/stacks being built and destroyed until one player completes his chain, thus winning cash. This sequence is repeated as much as desired.
Auxiliary Rules:
Any time a player places BETTER than their current chain position, the chain is adjusted for best results. For example, if a player had a chain/stack of 1/6 $6 and then won 4th place in the next round, their new chain/stack would be 1/4 $7 (NOT 2/6 $7, which would be disadvantageous). So, any time a player who currently has a chain wins with a better position on his next round, his position becomes 1/x where x is his latest/best position. Any time a player with the chain places equal to or lower than his denominator wins, his numerator increases by 1. For instance, if you have 1/4 $7 and then win with 6th place, you now have 2/4 $8. Note that the stack is completely unaffected by this change, it always begins at $5 and increments by $1 with each win (barring bonuses explained later).
As you may have noticed already, that means a first place win would always be 1/1 or a completed chain. This is correct, although it’s actually recorded as 2/1 (to denote the bonus and for vestigial reasons). So to clarify: any player who has a chain and then places first place, immediately completes their chain and wins their stack. Should the player who doesn’t have a chain place first in the next race, they immediately break their opponent’s chain(never to return again) while immediately completing their own chain and winning a new stack. Any time there is no chain, the player who places first automatically creates and completes a new chain and, of course, wins the new stack. In addition, there is an extra $2 bonus for placing first place. However, this bonus is blocked should the losing player place 2nd. In that case, the chain is still complete and the stack won, only the extra $2 is not added to the stack (and the chain is recorded as 1/1). Any time a player without a chain wins first place and their opponent does not counter with a second place victory, that player wins $7 immediately. Any time a player with a chain wins first place and is not countered, they will have $3 added to their stack ($1 for winning + $2 bonus) then immediately complete their chain and receive real money. Under all circumstances(except for low-player games described below), a first place victory immediately wins money. Like all completed chains, the money in the stack is won and the chain/stack is wiped clean.
Another existing bonus is that in any race with a minimum of 7 players, any player who places last and/or does not cross the finish line before being timed out has an extra $1 added to his opponent’s stack. If neither player crosses the finish line before timing out, the round is disregarded and not recorded.
Any round with 4 or less total players (including the 2 participating players) does NOT affect the chain. No bonuses are awarded in such low-player races. The only affect low-player races have is that $1 dollar is added or subtracted to the current player’s stack depending on who wins. Chains are not affected and so cannot be broken in low-player matches.
Low-player (4 or less total) example:
Real Money $10 Tim
Tim 1/3 $5
Should Tim win the low-player round, the paper now reads “Tim 1/3 $6″. Should Blobert win the low-player round, the paper would read “Tim 1/3 $4″.
This means that low-player races when there is no current chain/stack cannot possibly have any effect.
Stages are always kept Random, except for when a player opts to buy a choice. For $1 of real money (not stack), a player can buy 2 choices to be used any time during the current session. Choices can be bought at any time.
Conclusion:
I hope I’m not forgetting any minor caveats, I will certainly update this post should I remember anything else. I also hope I was clear in my explanation. I kept the examples sparse, but I think that it’s a lot easier to understand when read than heard. All characters/vehicles are legal; there are no non-monetary house rules applied. At times it is a bit of a grind, with stacks being built and destroyed, built and destroyed, and very infrequently any money is won. At other times, it can go fast and furious, especially with lots of first place wins. This has been played many, many times and seems to work pretty well as a system and, yes, sessions have hit triple digits a couple of times. So, that should do it. Please let me know if anything needs further explanation and please especially let me know should anyone decide to adopt this gambling system! Some day, not soon, I will explain Wii Golf Gambling which, believe it or not, is much more complicated.
Much more-so than my Ippatsuman play, my Saki gameplay still evolves a lot from month to month. This is because with Ippatsuman, the goal is clear: land those devastating combos. You find new ways to do so and get better on your execution and such, but the general gameplay stays similar. Saki is a zoning/keep-away character. With her, I have different goals at different times.
Goal #1: Stay the f*$# away from me! This is the basis of 90%++ of Sakis’ game out there and is usually mine as well. She easily has the best projectiles in the game and you can very nicely chip away at someone’s life, while keeping them too far away to do anything about it. The main two ways I do this are: 1 Jump-forward, C-shot, cancel into grenade. This is an awesome maneuver because it owns pretty much the entire ground level horizontally. It’s very difficult for opponents to jump over the C-shot and attack you, because usually they’ll end up catching the grenade in the face. If the C-shot does connect, then the grenade will also. I’ll also throw Ippatsuman out there every once in a while, just to further own the entire ground level. 2 Super jump, C, grenade, double-jump, C, grenade, C. I usually don’t do this too often because it kinda pushes my faith in all’s fair, but it’s a great technique that a LOT of Sakis use. Unfortunately, almost all Saki vs Saki matches immediately degenerate into this, both sides jockeying for position. All that aside, this is a great method and switching up between 1 and 2 is enough to make players want to throw their controllers through the tv. The only downside is that (surprisingly to me), I often miss either the cancel into grenade or the double-jump(for method 2). This is usually not a huge problem, but it would be really nice to tighten it up.
Goal #2: Toss the opponent around like a ragdoll! By which I mean, load up her unblockable super armor piercing shell. Hit the opponent with it and combo into the positron storm. This is, of course, not always an option as it requires 2 hyper meters, plus at least enough time to load the ammo. Last, but not least, you need to land the hit, which isn’t always easy (opponents tend to take note of a glowing rifle the size of a large child). Landing the hit can be achieved in different ways, but there are mainly 2: 1 Combo into it. Ideal since you can hit-confirm before departing with your precious ammo. The downside is that Saki is not exactly known for her melee fighting and it’s not always easy to start that combo. 2 After one character dies, the second one is a freebie on entry. Or at least it should be. I miss the opportunity too often, but I still connect more often than not and 2 back-to-back hypers on the only living character is a fantastic way to gain/keep the momentum.
Goal #3: Rush down! This is something I’ve really just started doing lately. I think all Saki players would like to be able to rush down with her, if for no other reason than so no one can call them turtles. Being TvC, the backbone of a good rushdown is the combos you can achieve from it. In Saki’s case, she gets:
Without meter: 2A,2B,3C, jump, B,B, doublejump, B, B, grenade
With meter: 2A, 2B, 3C, Positron Storm
With loaded armor piercing: Same as w/o meter, but land the unblockable while opponent falls away from the grenade(RESET!), follow up with positron storm if the meter is there
All of these combos can be slightly modified/extended
Videos linked are approximations of what I’m doing
Without meter, this is pretty so-so. With unblockable loaded, this is incredible. With meter falls somewhere in the middle. Although, perhaps the largest benefit to a Saki rushdown is just for the opponent to know it’s there. You change the game from Saki wins if she keeps you out, loses if you get in to Saki wins if she keeps you out, maybe wins anyway. Suddenly, an opponent needs to be constantly on guard, she may just dash at you.
That’s mostly it. Not that that’s every single trick up my sleeve, but these are the major tenants of my Saki gameplay. For a long time I focused mainly on Ippatsuman, while I kept my Saki game as more autopilot zoning, but she really has a ton to offer and I’m excited about improving my rushdown game. The major things I need to do at this point are, as always, to improve execution. I need to be able to cancel C-shots into grenades more consistently and to stop missing double-jumps. I’m still far from good at her combos, but they’re coming along and they really expand her options. Also, I’d like to never miss hitting surviving characters on the jump-in. Switching off between Saki and Ippatsuman via variable air raids is an extremely interesting proposition from both directions, but honestly I’m not ready to dive into that yet.
Anyone who reads or skims over my posts probably realizes that I’ve been playing quite a bit of fighting games over the last few months. Although it bothers me on multiple levels, I must admit that my hand hurts and I need a break. I first noticed pain about a month ago, but it was very slight and not much of a concern. The truth is, I just didn’t want to stop playing. I took the entire past weekend off and figured that would do me a world of good, but on Tuesday, I hurt my right thumb and realized that not taking a break would be stupid. So I went through my list of alternatives.
The first thought was to return to the game I was playing before becoming obsessed with TvC; New Super Mario Bros. I played a bit on Tuesday and absolutely loved it (beat the game before playing TvC, but still have outstanding star coins). But I realized that NSMB really isn’t the path to recovery as I always really mash that run button in Mario games. It did, however, remind me how much I love the game and I think when I’m back in health, I’d like to mix up my fighting a bit with some NSMB. But what to play in the meantime?
My next choice was a triumphant return to The Secret of Monkey Island. Always standing out as one of my favorite series, I was never able to beat the second one. I figured I would give it another go and, since it’s been ~10 years since I last played, I figured I’d start out by playing the remake of the first one to refresh myself on the inside jokes. But alas, it was not to be. I installed the game, but it’s complaining about missing .dll’s cause it wants me to install the (old) version of directx that it comes with. I remember these types of situations back in the days of like directx 2 and 3, but I had naturally assumed this type of garbage was long in the past now. Nope. I run a very tight ship when it comes to my PC and, as much as I wanted to play this, I’m not going to overwrite the latest version of directx with some random older version that MI wants. It’s just not worth it. But what to play in the meantime?
Last night, browsing through my games, I found the perfect solution: Punch-Out!! Wii. Similar to NSMB, I completed this game, but left most of the challenges unfinished before moving on. Since I play this with motion controls, it is the perfect solution for my situation. Warning: The rest of this post is personal and bizarre. Those who prefer the kind of detailed, technical posts I usually write may want to skip the remainder. I have always LOVED the Punch Out series in all its iterations and have often quoted Mike Tyson’s Punch Out to be my favorite game of all time. But I have a special connection in particular with the Wii version. I remember back when the game was new and I was showing it to a friend. “Oh, you make your own character?” he asked. “No, the main character just happens to look exactly like me,” I replied. Obviously, Little Mac is a lot more muscular than me, but aside from that, the resemblance is uncanny. I’m sorry to bother you with such trivial, soft news, but I can’t shake the feeling every time I play that I’m playing as myself. Let’s consider the facts. We are within 1 inch and 10 lbs of each other. We have the exact same hair. We have extremely similar facial structure. We even have the same basic body type; if I were a boxer and was in the kind of shape that a boxer would be in, I’d look identical. Now let’s get ridiculous. When I was a little kid, I took karate for several years. But what if I had taken boxing instead? Well, there happens to be an excellent (and free!?!) kid/teen’s boxing gym in my city. With Punch Out characters painted on the building. Did I just blow your mind? It is now blindingly obvious that I was destined to become a boxer and just narrowly missed my fate. On the other hand, I’m currently injured from playing too much Street Fighter, so perhaps I’m not really cut out for that kind of work. But still… I coulda been a contender.
I really try to not use this journal for posting interesting links around, but I’m making an exception here. I love Tatsunoko vs Capcom and I wish it got more attention. If anyone feels like checking it out, Devastation 2019 is going to be streaming TvC games momentarily.
Just wanted to give you guys a quick update on my recent post complaining about stuff. While fishing around for hyperlinks yesterday, I stumbled across an older article opining about the original SF4. I felt very good to see David Sirlin(highly respected author, tournament player, and game designer in the fighting community) echo a lot of my complaints. Although I don’t agree with everything he said (I thought I would hate 2-button throws, ended up loving them. Also, other stuff), but I particularly liked these excerpts:
Linking is the name of the game, which actually makes the game closer to CvS2 than to 3s or ST. The effect of all these links is to hide the actual game behind an impenetrable wall of execution. If you practice (ie, develop 1p skills unrelated to strategy and unrelated to interaction with the opponent) then you gain access to the real game, a game of high damage off small hits, but only for the dexterous.
I’m not sure what qcf x 2 + PPP is doing in a “casual friendly game” in the first place.
Also, I’ve been meaning to mention that I did get CPS3 games working in mame after croikle set me straight on that. Although I haven’t actually played them yet.
A few years ago I read The Art of War. I thought it might be interesting to reread it, then summarize it here and discuss how it applies to my street fighting. A line-by-line translation would be very cute, but I’m going to keep it a little more simple without such a rigid format. So let’s get started.
I. Laying Plans
- If competent street fighting is of importance to you, no factor may be neglected.
- There are 5 factors which must be taken into consideration.
- These are (1) Devotion; (2) Battle conditions; (3) Space; (4) Attitude; (5) Technical ability.
- Devotion is needed to continually improve through learning and practice.
- Battle conditions include life, super, and ultra meters.
- Space stands for the distance between characters as well as the proximity of corners.
- Attitude is similar to devotion, but focuses more on the emotion level. You must be attitude for gains. You must continually improve, despite crushing defeats. (Satori mind)
- Technical ability is the ability to consistently execute intended commands.
- These five heads should be familiar to every street fighter: he who knows them will be victorious; he who knows them not will fail.
- Victory or defeat depends entirely on each players’ mastery of each of these 5 tenants.
- Take advantage of any additional situations. There’s no such thing as cheap.
- All street fighting is based on deception.
- Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him.
- If he is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him.
- If your opponent is of choleric temper, taunt him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant.
- Now the player who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought. The player who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat: how much more no calculation at all! It is by attention to this point that I can foresee who is likely to win or lose.
At the end of each summary, I’ll add a few notes on how this applies to myself personally. In this chapter, I will address the 5 main factors. (1) Devotion: I think anyone who reads this site would agree I’m devoted. (2) Battle conditions: This is something I am becoming more and more aware of as time goes on. It was the same with TvC, at first there’s too much going on to notice your opponents’ meters, but as you can focus on a smaller amount of likely attacks, you are free to be more aware of these important factors. (3) Space: Fairly simplistic in concept. This includes long-range vs close-range characters, poke ranges, and corners. I tend to be pretty aware of these things. (4) Attitude: Again, I think readers will agree I’ve been pretty on task. (5) Technical ability: My greatest weakness at the moment. I’m a bit hard on myself, the truth is I’m still not accustomed to the TE stick. Double-quarter circles are still quite iffy and that cannot stand in serious competition.
P.S. The last 5 points are almost completely unchanged from the original text.
I’d like to begin by saying that I will not be discussing combos much in the near future as the detail has become excruciating. No, this has nothing to do with Dan’s comment, I was thinking the exact same thing right after my last post. For now on I will forgo the minutiae and only bring up the subject when there is something substantial to talk about.
To talk about combos on a higher level for a second, I don’t particularly enjoy learning them. In fact, I kind of view combos as the bullshit you must wade through in order to enjoy the more meaningful parts of the game. Now, don’t get me wrong, there is some enjoyment in pulling out a combo in a match. It’s like an extremely small minigame in which your movements and timing dictate your success. I know that there are people who LOVE these microchallenges and thoroughly enjoy practicing the secret handshakes you must do with the controller to pull off some impressive moves. But I don’t much. I mostly view it as something that, somewhat artificially, makes one player a lot better than another based not on reactions or strategy, but skills that are less interesting to me. But the good news is that they are not strictly necessary at intermediate levels of play and they are something that can be slowly worked into your game plan as you progress.
Since my last post, I’ve played quite a bit of Fei Long. And I’m just about ready to stop doing that. As much as I like him as a character (which is to say, I like Bruce Lee) and his flame kick just looks so damn awesome, he really sucks badly. It’s like Capcom went out of their way to make him as awkward and difficult as possible. As I mentioned earlier, one of his basic specials is 3 consecutive QC’s. Why 3? It’s not like it’s such a great move when correctly inputted, why make it so difficult to pull of his plain special moves? Then there’s the chicken wing. You do a half circle forward. Plus up-forward. As far as I know, there’s not another character in the history of video games that has the same input for a special move. Again, it just makes it more difficult to pull off basic specials. Charge characters usually receive benefits for their complexity. For instance, it’s easier to pull off a hadoken than a sonic boom, but SB’s have godlike recovery times in exchange. Fei Long has difficult moves with no apparent benefits. Even if I did put in tons of practice with him and got him to be a really good Fei Long, he’s still low tier and would lose out to decent players playing decent characters. So, it’s reached a point where I have to ask myself, what’s the point? It’s much more enjoyable to use a character that’s responsive to your controls and usually does what you want him to do.
Since this has turned out to be a pretty whiny post, I’ll add one more thing: I still don’t like ultras. It’s not enough that they take 1/3 of your life bar away, they also usually have invincibility on startup or other such special properties. Supers are much more reasonable I find. They take a while to build up, they come at the expense of EX moves and they’re only super, not ultra. I’d say I eat wakeup ultras about once per round. No doubt I have to get used to watching my opponents’ meters and expecting those wakeups whenever the meter exists.
Writing entries always really motivates me to go do what I am talking about. Case in point: after my last post, I went into training mode and really pounded out some of those headbutt -> ultra juggles. I’ve gotten pretty good at it. I also realized it’s easier than I thought because I was practicing against an opponent in the corner and it seems the window of opportunity for the ultra is about twice as large when you’re not in the corner (and you’re usually not). Even in the corner, I can get it pretty good now. The main thing I learned is to arch my fingers so as not to put the slightest pressure against the kick buttons. Preferably I don’t want the shadow of my fingers to hit the kick buttons cause the TE stick is that sensitive. I’ve extended my practice to doing c.mp xx headbutt then ultra. The c.mp xx headbutt is quite easy, but adding another step does increase the overall difficulty a bit as it’s a few more things to keep in mind (start with punch, cancel it into headbutt, maintain backcharge the entire time). Still, not bad though, and makes for a pretty hurtful combo.
I also worked on my links a bit for the hell of it. Balrog’s are practically impossible for me. I gave up fairly quickly and discovered Guile’s are quite a bit easier (at least the ones I was attempting). And by quite a bit easier I mean very difficult, but not soul-crushingly so. So now my training consists of the 3-step Balrog combo I mentioned above and I will start doing lp > mp and c.lp > c.mp links with Guile. Impressive, I know. I can get Guile’s links down a decent amount of the time, like maybe 33% or so, but the timing on links is so strict that I still feel very far away from any kind of reliability. And, unlike Balrog’s juggle, this is really just a building block as opposed to a useful combo.
It also occurred to me after my last post that I do actually do a few more combos that I never talk about. When I play Ryu on occasion, I can do some of his simple stuff. And I very often attempt Balrog’s c.lp, c.lp > c.lp xx headbutt in real matches. It works sometimes. I only try it because otherwise I’d just be doing c.lp, c.lp, c.lp at these times and I figure I might as well try to add the headbutt in (which might even connect if it doesn’t combo. Or it might get blocked and punished).
Quarter circles are getting a lot easier on the TE stick, even though I am rarely playing QC characters. Even double-QC’s are coming along ok although I’m still not comfortable with them.
I like Fei Long a lot as a character. I never cared for his gameplay much in SSF2 and still he’s not at all my type of character. He’s a rushdown guy, where I’m more of a zoning type of dude. Still, he’s pretty badass and I think I’ll start playing him a bit on the side. I think the main stumbling block to getting just the basics down with him is that one of his main attacks is a QC, which can (and should) be followed up by 2 more immediate QC’s. This is not exactly the same as a double-QC, as it’s a full QC with attack, followed by another 1 or 2 full QC’s with attack. I almost never get the second one out. I think I got the third out once. Perhaps he’s the perfect way to learn QC’s. Or to drive myself over the edge of sanity.
Dan Haigh
Ghegs
[DRZ] OTL-TIW
sikraiken
Alice
victoly
plasm0
Aquas
Raydere
szycag
BDA
bloocloud
Kollision