Super Street Fighter IV tourney in Davis, parking citation and Scott Pilgrim!

So me and my friend Raphal Garcia aka "Sikwidit510" went to Drom's Comics & Cards in Davis, CA this past Saturday (I know it's hella far especially considering I live in Sunnyvale) for yet another Super Street Fighter IV tourney (SSFIV for the unitiated). I had never been to the tournies held at Drom's before and I always heard good things about it so Ralph and I decided to make the almost two hour road trip to Davis to compete. Besides, now that I've "graduated" from San Jose State (more on that in a later blog), I feel like I have a bit more freedom to travel to new places which I love doing.

We left early in the morning around 10:30 am and arrived at our destination a little bit after 12:00 pm. Once  we got in, me and Raph played a few casual matches with some of the people who got there before we did to warm oursleves up before the tourney got underway at 2:00 pm.

We stopped playing casuals at one point to chill out and relax. As more people started pouring in, I decided to grab something to eat at a nearby Subway to help maintain my focus. Trust me when I say having something to eat before competing in fighting game tourney goes a long way if competing at Evo for the first time this year taught me anything.

At this point, more and more familiar people I've seen in past tournies started to show up and started playing casual matches on the PS3s that were setup to get some practice in.Well known top Nor Cal players Larry S., lilsicx, Sean "200yen" Pak, Jack "Masarap" Waller, Allen "Youtube Cammy" Cheng, Hiro, "Pieguy" (don't know his real name yet), Parker "Slompo" Butynski, Leoncio Martin, Ryan "Filipino Champ" Ramirez, Tinh Ngo, Vance "Vangief" Wu, Chris "Crizzle" Scott and Ricky Ortiz were in the building to compete.

The tourney actually started after 3:00 pm since some players called in to say they were going to show up a little bit late. My first match was against a Rose player named Kevin. He got a round on me in the first match which I kind of sand-bagged just to see how he played. He did a good job of zoning me and getting me with some of Rose's improved normals in this game. The start of the second round began with him hitting me with a combo into a Super giving him a good lead. That's when I turned up the aggression since he didn't have any more meter to work which put him in a bad spot. I easily took the second and third round which netted me the first match (this is best two out three macthes by the way which standard tourney format).

When the second match began, I could already tell he was scared and didn't know what to do against my character which is Vega/Claw. I took advantage of that to take the second match easily, perfecting him in the second round.

My next match was against "Youtube Cammy" who I've beaten before in past tournies and this time it was no different. I think Allen only got one round on me in the first match with his Cammy, but that was about it. I beat him two matches straight to advance.

Third match was against top Nor Cal player "Filipino Champ" who is one of the best Dhalsim players in the country and whom I consider one of my rivals I have yet to beat in a tourney. In past tournies, I wasn't even able to get a round off him. This time the result was the same, but I did a much better job than in the past.

Ryan beat me two rounds straight to win the first match using his excellent zoning which he is both famous and infamous for with Sim. I had to dig deep down inside because I really didn't want to lose two matches straight to him again. I decided to play a little more agressive than I usually do against him and kept him guessing along the way which got me the first round on him. Ryan got me in the second round. The third and final round of the second match was intense and down to the wire, but I managed to actually win the second match by knockin him down in the corner and throwing him for the second match victory!

The third and final match of the set was intense as well, but Ryan ended up beating me yet again due to huge punishment opportunities I didn't capitalize on. I'll admit the tourney pressure against a top player on a live stream got to me. However, I wasn't disappointed with my performance at all since I actually got a match on him and I could tell he was shaken before and after he won. I'm not fucking free, Ryan!

So now I'm in the loser's bracket and my next match was against Hiro, who is considered by many to have one of the best Blankas in the country which I won't argue against since he places high in tournies with that character. Me and Hiro have played against each other multiple times in tournies with me usually coming out the victor since I know a lot about the Blanka matchup with Vega.

However, this time he didn't play Blanka for a change against me. To be honest, this isn't the first time he's done this in a tourney which some players find rather odd since Blanka is his main. This time he switched things up and picked Hakan against my Vega.

This was going to be interesting.

I took the first round from Hiro easily by outpoking and using EX wall dives to punish him whenever he put the oil on. He got me the second round with some gimmicks I hadn't seen before with Hakan so I was pleasantly surprised and impressed. However, the third round of the first match did not go his way and I took the last round and the match.

For the second match, he picked Abel which is supposed to be a bad matchup for Vega although it's not as bad as it was in Vanilla SFIV. We both took a round from each other, but Hiro took the second match from in the end.

The third match I decided to be more agressive since Abel doesn't have a lot of answers against Vega's superior poking game. I took the third match from Hiro and advanced into top eight which is always my goal in every tourney I compete in.

For my next match, I went up against Tinh Ngo who used to play Sagat in Vanilla, but is now playing Rufus. I used to hate this matchup a lot, but I've fought so many Rufus players that I know it pretty well by now. Tinh even admitted before the match that he didn't know how to beat a good Vega since good Vega players are a rarity in Nor Cal. With that in mind, I basically felt like I could whatever I wanted to do and I beat Tinh two games straight. He almost had me in the first round of the first match, but he whiffed Ultra 1 on me and I punished accordingly with Ultra 2. After that, things went my way smoothly and I advanced in loser's once again.

My next macth was up against "200yen," a top Sagat player from Davis. We've had a tournament history as well. The first time we went at it was at a Munchie's tourney in Suisun in grand finals back in Vanilla where he beat me even though I gave him a run for his money. Sean barely beat me in another one after that a few months later when Super came out and then I finally beat him a month later in loser's in a subsequent tourney.

At this point, I'm feeling comfortable going up against his Sagat, especially since the character was nerfed and Vega got buffed. I also know that he still doesn't know the Vega matchup that well adn I know the Sagat matchup like the back of my hand. I beat Sean two games straight, perfecting him in the last round with two high damage EX walldive combos, a jump-back firece instant overhead and a jump-in Scarlett Terror combo. That made me very happy. The icing on the cake was that it was all streamed!

So my next match was none other than Ricky Ortiz who surprisingly got sent to loser's by Pieguy who in my opinion has the best E. Honda in Nor Cal. I won't go into the details of this match other than I lost real bad to Ricky's Chun-Li. I felt like I couldn't do anything against him. This was my second time facing him in a tourney and I got bodied once again. It was no surprise, really.

So I ended up getting fourth place out of 32 players which I was happy with and Ricky, to no one's surprise, took first place defeating Ryan's Sim and Seth in grand finals with Chun-Li and Rufus. After the tourney, me and Raph went to Jack in the Box to grab a quick bite and head back to my car.

What the fuck?! A parking citation on my window?! Fucking bullshit! To be fair, I didn't check around for any signs that had a limit for how long I can park my car. I just saw a sign for "Public Parking" and that was it. It wasn't until I got back and saw a small sign for "2 Hour Parking" on a wall in the parking lot. The damage? Only $40 so it wasn't too bad.

After I dropped off Raph in San Lorenzo, I went straight to AMC Mercado to watch "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" with my friend Jennifer, her sister Natalie and her boyfriend Eric.

I love this movie! I never read the comics, but I thoroughly enjoyed it from beginning to end with all the video game references being thrown  and with great acting all around. Yes, even Michael Cera does a superb job as the title character despite always being criticized for playing the same roles in every movie he's in. Elizabeth Mary Winstead also stands out for her role as Scott Pilgrim's love interest Ramona Flowers as well as Ellen Wong as the clingy and stalkerish, yet lovebable Knives Chau.

If you're a video game aficionado such as myself, your geek meter will go through the roof with all the video game references throughout the film. Everything from Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda and even Final Fantasy is mentioned in one form or another. Heck, even the Universal Pictures theme at the beginning was done with 8-bit music! I just want to and see this film again just to see if I can spot any references I missed alone.

How's the action? Fresh and entertaining would be the two best words to describe action scenes between Scott Pilgrim and the seven evil exes he must participate in epic battles with to win Ramona's heart. The way the action plays out seems like it would come straight out of a "Mega Man" game which was awesome to say the least.

"Scott Pligrim vs. The World" is one of the better action/comedy/romance films I've seen in a long time. I was never bored during the viewing of this film. My friends, even though they're not big video game fans, had a blast wathing this movie as well. So, whether you have read the comics or not or have, I highly recommend this to anyone who is looking for a good action/comedy (the romance is thin actually). You won't be disappointed.

Well, that was my weekend. I can only hope for better things to come. My next blog will be up sooner than this one. Sorry it was hella late. Catch you all very soon!

So here goes nothing!

Hi, everyone. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Marcos Blanco and this will be my first post to start off my blog. I'll try to keep it updated reguarly since I've been wanting to do this for a long time now. I figured I might as well put wrting skills to good use and improve upon them in the process. Aslo, I like to create interesting discussions with people so this will be a good outlet for me to talk about various topics and to keep myself informed about many things going on around me.

Fuck! This sounds so boring. More to come later. I'm off to watch a couple of Disney movies with the sis and play some 360. Catch you all later (well no followers yet).

I know this wasn't very informative for my first post, but stay tuned. I promise I'll keep it interesting. Distractions tend to pop up from time to time for me.