Facing The Beast
8/7/2011 – So it turns out that Ray didn’t get a chance to fight Daigo. Even though they didn’t face each other, Ray left the pool along with Daigo and was shy of reaching top 32. Regardless, congrats Raymond!
EVO Championship Series is the biggest annual fighting game tournament in the world. Players from all over the world will come to Las Vegas, Nevada to duke it out in SSFIVAE, MVC3, MK9, Tekken 6, and BlazBlueCS2. This year is a great deal since a good deal of players that I know will be going to represent Killeen. I’m extremely hyped and excited to see them all go and I wish them all luck!
One fighter that I will be particularly be looking out for is my close friend Raymond. This is the first EVO event he will be participating in. Even though he has the plainest facial expressions in the world, I can tell he’s super excited. But all of that excitement and joy may have turned into nervousness and stress due to a recent assignment. For his first AE match at EVO, Raymond has to face the world famous renowned Japanese fighting video game player Daigo “The Beast” Umehara. Talk about pressure. Out of the tens of thousands of players that will be participating, he has to start off by fighting HIM.
Proving Grounds UCC Tournament Flyer
Just spent the night collaborating with Raymond to create this guy. If you’re in the Killeen area and looking for some great Fighting game competition, then this is the place to be! This was pretty fun to make, but it was a little bit annoying. Supposedly we were given rights to name the tournament anything that we wanted. They said, “Go ahead, yeah! Just name it anything that you want!” Raymond and I brainstormed and did extensive scientific research to come up with the perfect name. After discovering nuclear fusion and finding the cure to cancer, we finally came up with the perfect name. It was an exciting moment. A breakthrough in the history of tournament names. Our children, their children, and many other generations would remember this moment for centuries to come. This moment in history would forever be remembered and worshiped by mankind.
The proposal was submitted. With such a perfect name, we knew that the chances of it being approved was 110.45%, but instead we got this back:
Seriously? We worked hard for that! Eons of valuable research, thrown away just like that. You guys just lost at least 40 participants. Way to go!!
That was Spring Break?
So this past week, I spent my Spring Break in Killeen. It went by so fast and it didn’t really feel like a break. Before the break started, the game plan was to focus primarily on work and schoolwork. Unfortunately, everything didn’t seem to go as planned. At the same time, a few upsets were thrown into the mix. Let’s sum it all up.
The Good
Being able to see old Killeen buddies throughout the week was probably the best thing about my break. I’m glad that I was able to catch up with people like Raymond and Matt, who stay in San Antonio and Houston respectively. Not only them, but also Jasmin, Green, Ana, Dustin, Thomas, Devo, Krystle, co-workers, and the Killeen Town Brawlers crew. It was great to see all of them again. Since my life seems to revolve around friends at College Station these days, seeing all of them was like taking a small peek into a time capsule. It’s also great to be around my mother as well as my sister Eunice. I’m not a confident Korean speaker, but I tend to speak more Korean when I’m around my mother these days. She constantly spends her time studying English pronunciation, I should at least do the same for her native language. Throughout the past few summers, I’ve tried to commit time to become fluent in Korean and failed every single time. I want to try and make it work this summer. Being close to mom makes me want to try to become more fluent in Korean by Fall 2011.
I also worked close to 40 hours at Geek Squad during the break. The workload was really insane and it looked like they could really use the help. I’m just glad that I was there to do so. Managers constantly kept thanking me for helping the store, but should they really be? I’m a full-time college student who is able to focus all of my time on studies without having to work. At any period of time, I am able to return home and work as if I had never left. And it’s not even a bad job either. I repair computers and make a decent wage. How many students even have that kind of power and flexibility? Not many. The managers shouldn’t be thanking me, I should be thanking them. My employment with the Killeen Best Buy alone is enough to be thankful for. It really helped make a difference while living in College Station, and I don’t even need to work for their location either.
Visually Reviewing 2010
2010 will be coming to an end soon. It’s been such a great year filled with memories and milestones, and it’s a year that I certainly won’t be forgetting anytime soon. These are a collection of my memories, events, and experiences from this past year. There is one photo for each of the past eleven months and they work together to create an abstract representation of my life throughout the 2010 timeline. Enjoy.
Joy of the Stick
These days, I have been committing to a lot of things. Running for miles to raise my stamina. Reserving time for my wonderful ‘miles-away-but-oh-so-close’ girlfriend. Studying two different languages. Korean for my family, and Tagalog for hers. And just simply working hard in preparation for moving to College Station and starting my university career at Texas A&M. One thing that I have not been committing to anymore though, is Street Fighter IV. *gasp* Yes, that’s right. The game that I have unwisely played for an accumulated 23.2 days in an eight month period has been placed on the shelf. I’ll gladly play whenever I’m with friends but I just don’t have personal time for it anymore. But one thing I want to note: while in my Street Fighter prime, I had a small passion on the side for modifying MadCatz SFIV SE Arcade sticks. They were really fun to take apart and be creative with. I don’t think that I will see myself modifying anymore arcade sticks anytime soon. So with that said, below you’ll find all of the arcade sticks I’ve worked with in the past and a little bit about them. Consider this as a small tribute to the end(?) of my Street Fighter IV career.
Women of Street Fighter
- Original artwork: Street Fighter Tribute Cover by Arnold Tsang
- Paint used: None
- Print finish: Lami-label from Fedex Office
This was my first arcade stick mod. After learning about how easy it was to modify, I decided to give it a shot. I wanted it to feature Crimson Viper, the main character that I fight with. Because Viper is a new character, finding decent artwork for her was tough. I chose this work of art primarily because the Viper work was very well done and also because it features every other female character in Street Fighter. If that’s not something good to look at on an arcade stick, then I don’t know what is! SFIV has a design concept of using brush strokes as a way of illustrating the art of ones moves. With this in mind, I added colored brush strokes to the buttons to place emphasis that the template is more focused on SFIV than Street Fighter in general. This was also my first time using Lami-labels from Fedex Office. Though the print quality was top-notch, the quality of the laminate was questionable. Cut it wrong, and you could end up tearing the paper that the laminate was supposed to protect. I ended up going back to the store three times to get it reprinted due to small mistakes while cutting it. All-in-all, it was a quick job and ended up looking great.
Inverted Viper
- Original artwork: C. Viper Official SFIV Character Art
- Paint used: Dupli-Color Vinyl & Fabric HVP104 Gloss Black
- Print finish: Lami-label from Fedex Office
I quickly became tired of how the “Women of Street Fighter” stick looked. Giving it color seemed to be a good idea. For the template, I changed the color to black and used the official SFIV artwork for Viper. To have her match with the black environment, I inverted all of her neutral colors while retaining all of the rest. I didn’t change out any buttons so the brush strokes from the WoSF tempalte stayed. For this design, it was the first time I’ve painted an arcade stick. Though it was easy to do, I failed to do it perfectly and it was only moderately satisfied with the result. The paint began to peel after a few months. The print was also lami-labeled and revealed small air bubbles all over the print due to the black background.