Subject: So what did happen at ECC4? A report (LONG). Date: 1999/06/02 Author: wes truelson Posting History I haven't seen anything posted about ecc4 yet so I figured I'd write a little something myself on what happened this weekend and give people who weren't there an idea of what happened. First of all beofre I write anything about the tournaments, I'd like to give huge props to Todd, Gina and everyone else who organized, ran and deprived themselves of sleep all weekend to make ecc4 highly successful, great job everyone! The a3 tournament was hella long with 114 people entering it. Towards the beginning you had to wait at least an hour if not more between matches so it was a little hard to get into a groove. There was all the expected characters people play: v vega, any dhalsim, akuma. The most notable exceptions that I saw was cole's v dhalsim, eddie's v sodom, thao's a charlie, ec gief's v akuma, choi's v sakura, and alex's v zangief and v akuma. I'm surprised that cole didn't go a lot further with his devastating v dhalsim. He used the low slide fireball vc very effectively and demonstration the power that this vc does in block damage, guard crushing, and straight up damage if it connects (usually about 70% if done in the corner). Unfortunately cole fell victim to eddie late in the tournament. Eddie was using the vega guard crush roll vc and some confusion vc's that got a couple of hits then usually spent most of the round running away. I can't remember how many rounds I saw him win by him running and neither one of the opponents making contact with each other for 40+ seconds of the round. Wee! Lots of fun to watch as you can imagine. What was really notable about eddie was his sodom. He had the earth sodom custom down and it does hella damage. Eddie did very well but in the end fell to valle and (I think) thao. The ec gief of course had a great gief but I was most impressed by him when I saw him play choi and hit him with this custom: jab/short vc thru a fireball from half screen away, demon flip grab, standing fierce, demon flip kick pounce, standing firece demon flip kick pounce, repeat. This did about 75 - 80% and in the end choi won but this kid definitely has some serious skills. He also had a great variation of the sagat uppercut custom I saw him do with ease: jab/short vc, jab uppercut, roundhouse tigerknee, back+fierce, roundhouse tigerknee, double hitting roundhouse, then he would keep alternating between the back fierce and double hitting roundhouse between knees until the vc was finished. Choi mostly played v sakura throughout the tournament. He seemed to use a lot of his old school a2 sakura skills when fighting. Standing fierce takes off a hell of a lot of guard damage so any time his opponent block a low short, he folllowed it up with a standing fierce fireball. He also had a lot of grat vc's, he had the classic fierce, whiff fireball, midscreen uppercut custom. I don't exactly what they were off hand if you are more curious I suggest you ask him yourself or ask scott bradburn, he was doing great v sakura vc's as well. Thao played a great x dhalsim, boring character choice yes but watching him was entertaining he has ols school skills, I don't know what it is about Thao he just wins. Thao lost to amir late in the tournament but came back to face him in the semifinals. A few matches went back and forth between amir's strange x rolento and thao's x dhalsim then thao did something VERY strange for a match so late in the tournament, he picked A Charlie. Yes A Charlie. He hardly ever threw sonic booms he just slowly chipped away life and guard meter with low jab, low short, the jumping sobat and the roundhouse step kick. I don't know how he did it but he managed to beat amir's x rolento and v karin with constant pressure from A Charlie. Finally, In his final matches Alex Valle played V akuma, v zangief and even v chun for one match. The finals against Thao started out very lopsided with alex taking the first 3 matches with v zangief against thao's A Charlie and X dhalsim. Alex made it look easy to get in on dhalsim with zangief by constantly hitting hit outstretched limbs with low and standing lab and jumping in with the superman fierce. Then, when the opportunuity presented itself, Alex would jump and vc thru one of thao's moves and do splash, jab, short, piledriver. Thao finally managed to avoid defeat in the forth match. Alex picked v chun?? To counter, lost, then picked v akuma to win the set and the tournament. Let me say that although v akuma is a powerhouse, he is not an almighty unstoppable god. He is still a shoto and from the right ranges has trouble getting in on dhalsim to be effective with his vc's and dhalsim can even telpoer out between the fireball and uppercut in the uppercut, fireball, demonflip vc. This was a great tournament I don't know all of the places exactly but I know who finished high: 1)alex 2)thao 3)amir 4)eddie 5 - 10 in no particular order) jason cole, john choi, henry cen, ec gief The super turbo tournament didn't really start until sunday because the a3 tournament ran SOOO long. The first round was held then it was to continue when the break opened the next day. The tournament was loaded with talent: choi, seth, jesse howard, jesse cardenas, omar, kris, cole, sam, joel, lavar, david spence etc, etc. There were some early upsets with choi losing (I think) to Lavar Watson and Jason Cole losing to omar (kind of an upset). There were dhalsims, balrogs, vegas and guiles a plenty thinning out the competition. Seth went almost all the way to the top of the winners bracket with his aggresive chun and a smige of balrog mixed in for good measure. Gary won the winners bracket playing what seemed mostly bison and og ken. None of this mattered though why? Because choi turned it on, you could tell he wanted to win watching him play his last few matches. He was using mostly balrog from what I saw earlier in the tournament but when he fought seth's balrog, he picked ryu. I can't even really explain what he did, he was playing like a man possessed. Always usuing the rushing fierce to get into position and pelting his opponent with a barrage of fireballs. Choi beat Seth and had to play Gary in the finals Choi beat gary's bison and og ken 3 in a row with ryu to start the first set. John HANDS DOWN is THE best footsie player a have ever seen. He pushed gary into the corner with his crazy footsie game and kept him there to stay. Eventually gary did manage a win (I think) with og ken and Choi countered with og sagat. The same thing happened more or less the second set as well, Choi started with ryu won a few games then picked og sagat, choi had a fairly decisive win. The rankings were something like: 1)John 2)Gary 3)seth 4 - 10 in no particular order) thao, jesse c, jesse h, sam kim, joel f? The a2 tournament was okay but nothing really exciting, a lot of the big 4 whom I refused to play during the tournament. I got to see omar do some of his tzw jr. stuff in a real match. Alex lost to david and I think thao, john was up there somewhere as well but I didn't see because there was so much going on at the time. Thao played chun and more or less badgered all of his opponents with low forard fireball and ac's, I didn't see him do a lot of cc's he was really good at using the low forward to nail gound moves and leave himself fairly safe at almost all times. David played ryu and rose and did many of that classic things with ruy that make him such a powerhouse. The low roundhouse super fireball ac reversal, constantly standing at the right range and pelting you with fireballs so you can't jump or stick out a move to stuff him. In the finals thao was chun (of course) and sirlin was rose. It was pretty much a low forard low strong fight but sirlin did a few interesting things with rose. Wnehever he ac'ed a cc he would always try to cc an opponent as they were getting up becaues it's hard to block because of the reverse block trick. Thao always manged to block this but when it hit it did huge damage. Turbo was kind of a joke because it was only single elimination due to the fact that it was so late. They weren't going to have it but with help from the cannons they made it possible. More or less a lot of the poeple that entered it didn't play in it but the winners still got their money. John pretty much played ryu with a little guile and jesse played ryu as well. After john won the first match of the finals, jesse picked dhalsim. Close but no cigar, then played balrog where he preceded to forget one of balrogs most powerful techniques againsty ryu, turn punch thru fireballs (what a scrub ha!). It's been way to long since anyof us have played turbo but it was still a lot of fun getting matches against all of the old schoolers. This is getting hella long so I'm going to cut it here and let someone else talk about the MvC tournament and 2nd impact tournament because I hardly saw any of those tournaments, nor do I really understand what is happeneing in them. I'd like to give huge thanks to: seth, derek, kris for picking up us scrubs at 2 in the morning (that's 2 I owe ya), spyderdan for the great conversions and insight, tin, The Cannon bros. for EVERYTHING THEY DID (you don't even know), Todd for putting the entire event, John for getting all the rooms and keeping cool when everything went to shit for a bit there, alex k for the ride to jfk, jesse and mike zavar and the rest of the texas crew, and alex and thao the rest of the cali crew. It was a lot of fun, I to see you guys again and play. Hopefully next time I'll sleep more then 7 hours over the entire weekend, there's just too much to do, too many people to talk to. Thanks to anyone I forgot, thanks everyone for coming because without you ecc couldn't happen. We are all more alike then we are different, keep practicing, until next year. Take it easy- -wes