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Street Fighter IV: Great retro 2D mechanics with a 3D look.

This was the game I bought a right handed 360 joystick for. I was trying to explain instructions on how to make it ambidextrous and compatible with multiple systems. However, the first person I got got it wrong. I could swap in and and out different systems, but I would have to plug in indivdidual cords into quick connects, but quick connects are not sturdy enough for frequent unplugs and replugs. And I'd have a spaghetti mess where if the labels fell off, I would have NO idea what plugs into what, and if the Ground and Signal are a part of it, and I mixed them up, I don't know if I could ruin the joystick or Xbox 360.so after a while, I tired to get it fixed again, this time to fix the spaghetti mess, and this person disassembled it and didn't reaffix the labels; he left it more disorganized than before, so I missed out on my right handed action and I settled for a left =handed joystick I found for cheap on Ebay.

Does right handed make a difference? If you don't think so read my post on Capcom-Unity or I had one on Shoryuken.com but it got erased, because my good friend said I lied that not only me but all our friends beat him in the Genesis days when he was on a standard Sega 6-button pad, and I and everyone else was on an unergonomic, ambidextrous joystick that got broken in 2 weeks. But during those 2 weeks, I was able to beat everyone, and everyone else was able to beat my good friend, Jamal "Zophar321" Nickens in SF2NC.

I'm not saying this to disrespect him. The fact that would tell the story of how Bryan beat Jamal in every possible head-to-head matchup of characters in Mortal Kombat Trilogy said enbarassed. But for some reason he doesn't want to say that about me. I'm even handing him the lesson and the excuse of why it won't happen again. He was using a 6 button pad, everyone else playing against each other alos used a 6-buton pad, but I used my ambidextrous joystick. It wasn't even contoured right and I was able to not only beat everyone in my group using a variety of characters, but Jamal said there was no way a Joystick could help someone that much. I said I made my point beating everyone with my joystick, but Jamal aid no one else can beat him with a right handed joystick. Since I was tired of winning and wanted to shut Jamal up, I let all my other friends, 2 of them are Gavin Drapp and James Prhne and challenge Jamal at Street Fighter New Challengers, James Prhne sucks at Street Fighter IV when we played it on a Jack of All Games demo show, and EVERYOINE THERE, even James, beat him with a right handed joystick. As a control we played with a left handed Joystick where Jamal won a majority of matches against the others, but every match Jamal played against right handed opponents, both me and everyone else, he lost.

I'm not saying a right handed joystick would help everyone, your mileage may vary, and it would help in New Challengers more than in something like Marvel Vs Capcom 3, where key button sequences are more important, and combos make a bigger part of the game, whereas in New challengers, if you can execute a special at will, real fast, and with so little effort that you can concentrate more on defense and reacting to opponents, your game gets upped, especially if your opponent mis-fires specials even 25% of the time, mainly because specials are overpowered compared to straight moves at a higher ratio than in more modern games where other aspects dilute the specials' dominance, and combos weren't engineered, they were natural and part of the game engine. Most of the changes since reflect the balancing of the over-dominant special.

I even gave him an excuse: He learned the right tool for the job can overcome many handicaps. I'm not saying I'll beat Jamal than dominantly, especially if he buys a Sega Genesis 6-button Joystick. He did beat me most of the time in more modern fighters, where, as I said before special moves are less powerful compared to other tactics, the biggest one being memorized combos. I just wish that Jamal will admit that, at that time, before he bought a home joystick for the Xbox 360 when he was challenging people online in Street Fighter IV, that the right handed joystick was the right tool for the job, and I had the advantage that day It was just a perfect storm. I bet you Jamal hasd this day in mind when he bought a Joystick for the Xbox 360. He didn't want another series of embarrassing performances online.

As for Street Fighter V, it was a blast from the past, playing all the old favorites, 4 new characters, and it just being a 3D-presentation of a basically 2D game in mechanics. It was fun. It added new things like Focus Attack, where you charge your middle attacks to absorb one attack and attack and get a free hit on the opponent, which I didn't utilize much because the really big combos in the tutorial mode didn't adequately show how to pull off complex combos well, so I was basically playing it lie Street Fighter 2, but with specials, enhanced specials, like on my guy E Honda, his *ap-Slap was mobile, able to move forward or backward while delivering it, but it was a consumable, along with supers for saving 4 enhanced specials at once, and hypers which you got by giving and taking damage, and had either 1 or 2, depending on how you time them.

And interesting Side effect online.

Even at 500 k in 100 k out, I managed to do well, assuming no one else was using the network, and the network was fine. I only dropped out 5% of the time where the game just quit, and 10% of the time the predictive algorithms were way off causing teleportations.

Well according to my Xbox live review, I had a lot of complaints about unsportsmanlike play and rage quitting, even though there are times when I was way ahead and supposedly rage quit. I had enough inbound bandwidth, so probably as bad as it was for me, my opponents had it even worse. They couldn't react to me. I asked a couple people if they had any problems, sometime explaining my situation to people saying 500/100 is the fastest I could do at the time it came out, no one was willing to talk to me. When I beat Jamal sometimes, he'd yell "LAG!". I thought that was Jamal being Jamal, but with about 50 percent of the people avoided me, he may have had a point. Plus considering the fact that I beat Jamal more times online compared to locally kind of confirms that.

But I figured if you use 4 directions and 8 buttons at 60 times per second, you have 12 x 60 or 720 bits/second outbound minimally, not even 1k. I don't think anything is randomized, so it doesn't have to store any "die roll results" like in Bomberman of what items appear where. So I though if any game would fit under the 100 k out limit, Street Fighter would be it. The thing that would kill it more would be ping time more than low bandwidth, and my Sprint PCS ping time from Cleveland to Kansas City was 87 ms consistently. But that was using a pure Sprint network pipethrough. I couldn't guarantee where or how much I travel on the cellular and how much on the traditional network. I may be going west to go east which kills ping time. But ping time is bi-driectional, so I don't see the advantage I'd have over my opponents if ping time was ruined, since ping is a relationship between 2 players.

Also there was something I saw which, I don't know how common it is but I had 2 or 3 experiences where this happened. There were double hypers, where both me and my opponent go for the hyper. I pull mine off, and then the next free frame after the hyper animation, my opponent hypered. I has E Honda doing the flying headbutt into the 100-hand slap, and my opponent the first time was Sagat doing his trio of tiger uppercuts. I don't know what would take precedence, but as soon as I knew he was falling down either after his first or second Tiger Uppercut, and I hit him before he touched ground, mine took precedence. I don't know what would happen if he was rising and we made contact. My guess is his Tiger Uppercut would win. One time we missed each other. I'm assuming according to my opponent's perspective, my opponent hypered first, and then on the first free frame, saw me hyper.
Has these bad experiences with low speed ruined my social dance card? I guess it's part of the same psychology where if you like your dinner, you shut up and eat, and no one hears of the good, but if something is bad, you demand to see the manager and ask for your money back. If you're a waitress, if someone leaves a card saying "Your tip is: Find a job you can do right!" then you know it was so bad that there was no pity tip of 5% at a bargain place or 10% at a more exclusive one, but the only indicator of good service is more 15-20% tips compared to 5-10%. I'm thinking it's a percentage of people who report you. I believe most people report you when something goes wrong, but you accept as un-newsworthy the fact that the game went well. Usually if people especially like you, they friend you. I've made a couple of friends on Xbox live. otherwise they shut up and move on.

My Xbox star rep is still 5 stars, so a lot of people are intentionally ticking people off with cheating far worse than my 50% complaint rating for having low bandwidth and I'm in the top 20% of Xbox Gamers rep wise. One time I was called for language,. Was I in a 4 player room, so I may have been falsely accused, and even the D-word can kick that rating up, even in an M rated game? Was I playing a T rated game and was talking about how one of the gemale characters look cute in more-revealing-than-concealing clothes, and a feminist I didn't know think that was a sexist comment? The offended have a lot more power, but there were only 7 reports, so that was 6 bad reports, and one good report from a friend. Probably the sheer lack of quantity of complaints compared to games I played total let me keep a 5 star rating. So considering the fact that I got decent matches from most people who didn't complain, and based on that, I give this game on a 500k/100k internet a 56OK, and probably even better with a 1600/400.