More Final Roundbats Action

Friday night, I drank in Numata with Emmet, Bloodbath, Phil, and some teachers from one of Emmet's schools. We started off at an izakaya, ended up going to a snack bar, and then went to a few other bars. I crashed at Emmet's cuz he lives in Numata.

I woke up the next day after only like 6 hours of sleep. I had to leave to catch the train to Tokyo to make it in time for today's Final Roundbats 2 tournament. I slept on the train most of the way.

Once again, the event was held at the Soundstone bar. This time, they had a lower turnout than last time. I think it might have been due to a Tokyo SBO qual for SSFIVAE going on at the same time. Lots of the regulars showed up as well as Abegen, Kusoru, and a few other Japanese players. The even was once again being streamed by GodsGarden.

I showed up pretty late and figured I would have already missed MK9 and Tekken 6, but since I dont play those games I didnt care. However, it turned out that due to the lower turnout, they hadn't even started the tournaments yet. I entered all 4 just for the hell of it since the general admission fee covers all entry fees.

I played casuals for a bit. I was feeling kind of out of it so I ducked out to the conbini to get some redbull and some red wine. I slammed both of those and chased it with a salad and then went back inside. I felt much more refreshed after that. Soon after, they started MK9. Due to the low turnout, every single match was streamed this time. This was literally the very first time I had ever played MK9 at all. I had to ask Bull410 how to do special moves and throw right before my match lol. I picked Scorpion just cuz I used to use him in MK Trilogy. Obviously I lost my match, though I didn't care in the slightest.

The next game was Tekken 6. Last time at Final Roundbats was my first time playing that game, so this was only my 2nd. I picked Jack-6 again and fought against that one robot chick character who shoots the missles. She kept spamming them from full screen and I tried to block it and kept getting hit and realized it was unblockable. So I tried jumping over them and then someone told me "yknow... you can just crouch under those" LOL! So once I did that, he stopped spamming the missles. I ended up actually winning a round but in the end I still got bodied of course. Once again, I didn't care at all. I bet the people watching the stream had a good laugh at that though.

For my first match of the MvC3 tournament, I fought someone who doesn't really even play the game at all and won pretty easily. I went with the same team I used last time of Ammy / Hsien-ko / Sent. Recently I started learning Doom like a few days before the tournament but Im not good enough with him yet so I just decided to stick with the team I was familiar with. For my 2nd match in Marvel, I had to fight Abegen. He used his signiture She-Hulk / Thor / Tron team. I actually played well and most of my stuff came out as intended during the first match and I won. Funny thing was that Hsien-ko on point actually ended up doing most of the work after Ammy died. The 2nd match was pretty close but I dropped some opportunities that could have won me the match. The 3rd match I just got raped cuz I failed at blocking and ate death combos. Abegen is really good at Marvel so I did better than I was expecting to I guess.

For the SSFIVAE tournament, my first match was against a Japanese Zangief player. I played pretty well and managed to beat him 3 rounds in a row. For my 2nd match, I had to play a guy who was just learning and sorta just came to hang out and watch. He used Guy. I won that one as well. For my 3rd match, I was now already in the top 4. My opponent was Abelity's Abel. He's always tough and we always have some pretty close fights. I won the first round but he won the next 3. I just wasn't doing a good job of getting out of his pressure. I now had to fight Jude's Claw for 4th place. Jude actually had a great first match of this tournament where he beat the guy's Viper who was in the finals last time. It was a really clutch fight. Things didn't go so well for me vs Jude. He beat me and took 3rd, so I ended up with a 4th place finish.

I stuck around and played casuals for a bit longer. They delayed all of the finals until the very end of the tournament this time so that everyone would watch. The offical results list will be posted here eventually and you can see the entire stream here on the GodsGarden ustream site. I dont remember who won all the tournaments but Abelity pulled out a first place victory in SSFIVAE. Good shit.

After the finals were over, Scott told me that the next Final Roundbats will be at a new venue which is actually in Tokyo and in a more convenient location. It will have lots of microbrews on tap and also they make pizza there so hopefully the new venue will be a bit better and the turnout will be bigger next time. I wont be able to go to the next one though because I will be visiting Chicago during that time. I will go to the 4th one though which should be at that place again.

I stuck around and played casuals for a bit with Jude's Claw in SSFIVAE. This time, I was doing much better and actually won more games against him than I lost. I wish I played better against him in the tournament. Oh well.

Jude decided to come drinking with me so we left together to get on the train. Another guy named Niko, who was in charge of filming and photography at the event, walked with us and rode the train with us as well. He was the one who made the recent mini documentary video about Final Roundbats, which can be seen on their blog site where the results will be posted. It was very well made.

Pachi wanted to originally drink with me in Shibuya and Emmet was just there but decided to head to Shinjuku because he picked up some girls at an international party and wanted to bring them to Current. I told Pachi to meet us at Current and said we would maybe go somewhere else from there.

When we got to Current, Pachi was already there. Emmet had no girls with him and didnt look so pleased. He said that when he was at the train station in Shibuya, he ran off to buy a ticket without telling the girls (and the random Japanese guy that was with them as well), and when he came back, he couldnt find them anymore. It was really crowded so they probably lost him. Emmet said that one of the girls was really into him, too so he was really kicking himself. He said that the Japanese guy was trying to cockblock him all night and kept telling the girls he was a play boy (which Emmet is lol) so that dude might have played a hand in it.

Current wasnt super great but a few people I knew were there. We stayed for a bit and talked to Pachi, but Pachi decided he was really tired so he went back to drink near his place. So, Emmet really wanted to go to Roppongi. Jude and I didnt mind so we ended up taking a cab out there. As soon as our cab pulled up, we got rushed down by 2 massage girls and 3 Nigerians at the same time and this was before we could EVEN LEAVE OUR CAB! WTF!!! We tried going to this one place called first bar that I can tolerate but it was being renovated. Then we tried going to 911 but they changed the name and now didnt allow people in with shorts which I was wearing... so I ended up getting dragged to Gas Panic which I really hate. I slammed a bunch of wine on the way there and before going in, so at least I was pretty wasted. As soon as we got inside, Emmet dissapeared into the sea of people and Jude and I hung out and talked for a while. I eventually went and danced a bit. It was pretty lame overall but oh well... Current was sorta dead anyway.

After Gas Panic closed, I took the train back to Shinjuku and slept at the manga kissa.

I spent all day on Sunday just playing GG casuals at Mikado. Kunihiro showed up and I played him a bit. A few more good regulars were there, too. It wasnt super packed up there were enough people to get some good practice in.

So thats about it. Next weekend is a 3 day weekend as well as the Johnny-o Cup tournament, and I will be playing on the Tokyo team for the 23 on 23. Should be good times.