The Nipah Hut

This Evo was the most time I’ve spent in Vegas, and the first Evo I’ve actually judged. I arrived in Vegas on Wednesday evening and met up with my room mate for the week I spent, the legendary “angry FGD mod,” Saotome Kaneda. He was already there with StridaJin talking about Tekken and setting up the two “Evo Monitors” for casuals. After trying to set up my wireless router for the room and failing DS shows up with PR Rog and starts up some inevitable SSF4 casuals. I play a bit with DS with Guile since he wanted a bit of practice versus him. I get a call from some Melty Blood players to come by the other hotel (the name escapes my mind) and meet up with Rei, Razya, and other people from their area and find an awesome dollar fifty hotdogs, but it wasn’t as godlike when they wouldnt give us free water (Isn’t that illegal? I know it is in California.) We got up to their hotel room for a bit to wait for our ride, Dipstick, to the other hotel for casuals. Rei falls victim to a massive nosebleed and was in the bathroom for quite some time and decided to stay behind and recuperate. We finally get to the hotel and get to play some Melty Blood and see familiar faces, and new faces. Later on in the night when people are winding down from the massive amount of casuals we start bringing out the other games. I pull up King of Fighters ’98 on my laptop to teach my friend Ehrik, and play casuals. Bellreisa comments that I really do play mostly all grapplers, and I start to build up a streak against the players in the room. I eventually pull out Super Turbo, my main game, and let it run for the night, and dusting off some rust from the lack of playing for months (my GGPO broke when I got a new router.) Finally I end the night with a long set of casuals versus Ehrik in Melty Blood and sleep.

I wake up quite early to find out if there was a shuttle back to the hotel so I could shower and sleep on a “real” bed (note: my bed in my room was a sheet on the floor with 2 pillows and a blanket.) To no avail, there was no shuttle, so I had to wait until noon for checkout and everyone else to drive to the hotel. When packing things in Dipstick’s car to go to Caeser’s Palace, I got my right thumb smashed (I’ll save the details, you really don’t want to know, and I don’t want to describe it in detail) by his trunk, hindering me for the whole weekend. We had to make an emergency stop to a drug store, at this point I was near the bring of blacking out (I hate seeing blood, especially my own blood, and I hate massive amount of pain.) I was watched by H-F Blade so I didn’t pass out, but was saved by Dipstick and Tempered. We get back to the hotel all safe and sound and head to my room and see more SSF4, but then the eventual “poverty” games broke out, no thanks to Saotome Kaneda and his “Book of Poverty.” Trust me, you do not want to know. I take a nap until the Judge’s session starts and head down with Saotome and Dipstick and meet up with fellow Melty Blood judges Silent Shinobi, and Arlieth. Things happen and we all head to the Judge’s party where they serve some delicious and free food. I snag some Jack and Coke to drink with my meal, and asked if we could take a drink back to the room, but was denied. A worker came by after over hearing us and told us, “It’s Vegas, do what you want, no one will care”, hinting at us that it was alright to bring a drink back with the glass. I decided to bring back a shot of Scotch to the Melty Room and finally get to see the Japanese players, Garu and Chelsea. I drink away the night and play some games, and head back because of the overwhelming body heat.

The next day, I wake up late because Melty Blood started in the evening and I gather up all my energy for the task at hand. I meet up with the fellow Melty Blood judges and get our assigned pools and brackets. I call out names for player check in, and slowly, but surely we commence the tournament after some small hitches. We finish the brackets early, and all head for dinner. Arlieth gathers some people, including myself and says that he will pay for our dinner of Steak and Eggs at that one place I can not recall. We have discussion about current gossip, and the future of Melty Blood, and what we could do to make Ecole acknowledge the game has a following in the United States. Afterwards we meet up with the Japanese players again, following this is quite possibly the best Evo moment ever. A handful of the players asked Chelsea if he liked “poverty” fighting games, and had to describe what it meant to him, to where he responded “Oh, I love kusoge!” (kusoge meaning “bad games” in Japanese) and we drag him to the Melty Room for some poverty games where he started to object saying he didn’t like kusoge that much. He took a glance at Saotome’s binder and slowly degenerated and eventually cussing out in English about a certain game company and hid in the corner to play Eternal Fighter Zero in the corner. I head back after the ordeal and witnessing Street Fighter the Movie PSX version being played and slept, drained from running brackets and the alcohol.

Saturday comes by filled with random games and casuals at the Evo floor, and head back to the room when Rithli had to meet up with Maj. This was a chance to meet someone who I totally looked up to, reading sonichurricane.com and watching his videos since around 2004. I finally meet him and have some great discussion about games, Street Fighter 4, and other things, eventually showing him the wacky Street Fighter 4 pc remixes. I catch up with Lord BBH, and his friend to play our fated Goal Goal Goal matches and some Fighter’s History Dynamite and got to record some matches. Everyone visiting the room eventually leaves, and I go back to see how the Melty Blood teams side tournament is running, and play some ST casuals on Ghaelon’s cab. I meet up with Shoo down there and other ST players I’ve met at previous Evos.

Sunday, finals day I wake up early for Judge’s breakfast, and gather up all the top 8 players for Melty Blood. The finals were hype and exciting, even the crowd was getting into it. Afterward I head back to the room and meet up with Maj again to pick up the Super Fireball War video from Rithli and chat a bit more if I remember correctly (the days are kind of foggy). A group of us head down to watch the video live on the big screen and head back up after TvC and Women SSF4. We play more poverty in the room and head back down for the Bang the Machine viewing (something I missed apparently the 4 times I went to Evo.) The rest of the time in Vegas was just hanging out with friends, watching Black Dynamite, playing Arcana Heart 3 on Paikman’s board.

Overall, this Evo was satisfying, even though it was kind of overwhelming at the same time. Here’s for another year of Melty Blood, and good memories.

Evolution was a blast, I had more fun this year hanging out with people at the event than previous years, although I think the rooms from the Rio were far superior. I can’t really remember much after running my brackets because I was perpetually intoxicated. I just remember if I’m going to be a judge again I need to supply my own megaphone, I can’t yell like that ever again. As I recall certain events I’ll update this post, but as of now, I’m glad to be back home in lovely California weather.

Evo is soon. I still don’t have the funds to enter Evolution itself, but at least I’m judging this year, so it’s not exactly for nothing. I also hear there will be some form of classic Super Turbo, so I’ll have something to play too.

I’ve been really hard pressed to find some sort of motivation for me playing Melty Blood lately. I enjoy doing combos, but excelling in the game for tournaments is a different story. When I first started fighting games, I had constant competition for Capcom vs SNK 2. Every week I would go to the arcade to get better, even if it was on unfamiliar hardware. Just to be able to stay on the cabinet for more than 3 games was enough of a motivation for me to get better, and to get somewhere in tournaments was also another thing supporting my quest in conquering the heavens. I didn’t do much with the game, but it fueled me with the passion of wanting something. In Super Turbo, it was not getting humiliated on GGPO when it first came around, and to also prove that you didn’t have to be in the arcades when the game came out to do well in it, or live in Japan. I decimated everyone in my path, as long as they were not a long time player, and even then sometimes I was able to get a couple of wins out of long sets. There wasn’t many wins, but it was learning every loss was that mattered. Now with Melty Blood there’s nothing. There’s no arcade, there’s no proving anything, there isn’t a fuel source for my want to get better. There’s the small spark of “Not wanting to be a part of the NorCal sucks at Melty outside of YAT.” But if I win a local here what does it prove? It’s nothing. I would have to travel to different regions to make a name for myself, but a lack of money these days prohibits me from wandering in search of greater opponents to level up my game. I’m the wrong man in the wrong location essentially. It doesn’t prevent me though from practicing all my optimal combos and confirms with my character in chance of playing people that I can learn from. I think that’s enough of my rant for now, my sleeping medicine is starting to kick in with my cup of chamomile tea.

So it’s been awhile since I’ve had to visit the optometrist (I think the lady said I haven’t been there since 2000?) For the longest time I never noticed anything wrong with my sight, I always thought it was the same perfect 20/20 I had since last checkup, but I was wrong. I was one step down from the right, and 2 steps down from my left. No call for needing glasses, but since I did have a slight deficiency with my eyesight, I could have gotten a nice pair of sunglasses. This was my chance, finally a nice pair of shades.

I spent about 30 minutes looking at shades and narrowed them down to 2 pairs. I just started to remember my difficulty of seeing the smaller text from a distance, and wanting to see clearly far away again. So I asked the lady helping me to bring some glasses that fit my wants in the aesthetics of the glasses, It only took me 10 minutes this time to easily sift through the glasses and narrow them down to 3 pairs (2 were just color swaps.) And then when I finally put the last pairs on I found the perfect pair! I’m really excited for the pair to come in, even if I won’t be using it that much, but at least I’ll look cute in them.

Also, dilating sucks.