It’s been two weeks since Team Upstate dunked all over the MTG tournament in Virgina. Yet again we have another member of Team Upstate placing Top 8 in a tournament outside of New York. Zzy giant-swung everyone around on his way to 4th place, just one win outside of the money. Also if you didn’t hear SeanPaulWallStreetFighterTwoForTuesdaysWithMauryPovich beat Holeman… in one casual match.

This tournament wasn’t just about results though, it was about fun. No one brings energy and excitement to an event like Upstate, New York and in case you missed it, room 220 was where you wanted to be when the tournament wasn’t going down. Upstate’s infectious hype help turn what might have been a lack luster tournament outing into a wild-time. Personal thanks go out of Don Frye (jhonda), Ben111, SeanPaulWallStreetFighterTwoForTuesdaysWithMauryPovich, and PhunnyKidd for keeping the good times rolling.

However, despite all the good times had at MTG, it is now over with. And despite Zzy’s success, Upstate as a whole did not do so well. Team Battletoads and Team Double Dragon ended up in second to last place in the team tournament. Upstate needs to step up it’s game. We can’t rely on one or two players to carry the entire community. East Coast Throwdown is only a couple of weeks away and we need to be twice as good as we were at MTG and three times as good by EVO.

East Coast Throwdown looks to have the largest group of Team Upstate members traveling ever. This tournament will be big not just for the Tekken players but the Street Fighter players.

Praise be we have a use for the Wii! I’m sure if you own a Wii ,I know most of Upstate doesn’t, it has been sitting around not doing much. New Super Mario Bros. can only keep ones interest for so long. Now finally a good fighting game (Sorry Smash fans, Brawl is ass) has hit the Wii. So dig around for your old Gamecube Soul Calibur sticks and prepare to not know which way to block, it’s Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All Stars!

First off, what is Tatsunoko vs. Capcom? Well it’s the continuation of the Vs. series which consists of the Marvel vs. Capcom games and the Street Fighter vs. X-men games. However, this does not include the Capcom vs. SNK games, why? I don’t know. It’s a game that features Capcom characters from fighting-games and various franchises and anime characters from Tatsunoko. WTF is Tatsunoko? Remember Samurai Pizza Cats? No? How about Neo Genisis Evangalion? No? Well they are the people that made Speed Racer and all of those animes, and a bunch of one’s you’ve never heard of. Ironically none of those series are represented in the game. So chances are no one from the Tatsunoko side will look familiar but that doesn’t mean they aren’t fun to play as.

Second lets clear up the difference between Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All Stars(TVC:UAS aka TVC 1.5) and Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Cross Generation of Heroes. (TVC:CGoH aka TVC 1). The original TVC was released early last year on console and in Japanese arcades.

So this is usually the part where I have to type out this big long paragraph about how the game works and the game mechanics. But lucky me people already made video tutorials doing that for me. So take a couple of minutes to learn about TVC:UAS mechanics.

I came to Final Round XIII with a promise I made to PolishMafia. “Both of you better place.” he said. Kind of wasn’t a promise more of a “I’m lending you fucking $80 it better not be a waste” sort of thing. We both kind of did that. Justin got 7th in singles and my team got 3rd in Teams so I guess we did both place. (Dave your money is totally getting paid back on Saturday.) However, I do feel my accomplishments are diminished because I didn’t do it by myself. It was basically Trung who got us to 3rd place by beating the Koreans and Clint. So saying I took 3rd is kind of a backhanded compliment. I did OCV team SoVa which consisted of Blackula, Ryry, and SMP. That was good but not good enough to claim I deserved 3rd in teams. My singles performance contained my first real name win in a tournament. Filthy Rich, two-time EVO placer, was the man I was able to beat. It was a good win and one that made me feel like I really accomplished something. Filthy isn’t that great at Tekken 6 but he’s good enough to say, “Yeah, I beat THAT guy.” So that was good but I lost my next two games tying for 33rd. 33rd is a long way from placing. Luck wasn’t on my side either when I landed in the “Hell” portion of the “Bracket of Death”. My loss right after Filthy to Trung my partner is what eats me up. It was a close match and he was definitely a good player who adapted very fast but still I could’ve had that match. I just needed to be more aggressive. My Lil’Majin match I have no excuse for. I got beat clean. He got maybe one launcher on me. Didn’t matter though, he threw the crap out of me. 1+2 and GS mix up was so good I couldn’t predict which was which. A lot of rounds were close but I was unable to close it out. If I ever play him again I’m going to keep him honest with some hop kicks. I let him get in and throw me too easily. But really that’s just a starting point to what I would need to do to beat him. He was very solid all around.

Lingmassacre would tell you I think overall that he did well at this tournament. He took 7th in singles and was a pixel or two away from taking 5th. Justin beat down Gandido and out played FightingGM. He defeated Grimmy, Turk, and NeoX in money matches. Not too bad of a weekend. However Lingmassacre’s weekend was not all good. He lost many close matches which if he won could have changed everything. His loses to Clint and BloodHawk in regionals, and Knee and Pokchop in singles, noticeably were troubling to him. Justin shouldn’t beat himself up though. His improvement since NEC has been tremendous and he placed again at another major tournament. If he keeps training and keeps progressing there is no reason why he can’t beat any top player.

After that match I didn’t play at all for 6 hours until I finally was able to money match the man who beat Zzy at FRXII, Me_RED_ATL. I noticed immediately that he was not the same kind of King player as Majin. He relied a lot more on poking and defense but luckily I’m used to that style of King play. I defeated RED 3-0 for $10. It was my first successful money match ever. My previous money matches, Bronson and Brian H where done to entice players to come to Upstate or to test myself against high level competition. Money-matching RED was about 2 things, seeing if I could hang with a great player and showing up Zzy. A 3-0 was pretty damn decisive. RED may not be as great in this game as he was in DR but it doesn’t change the fact he OCV’ed people in the regional team tourney this year as well as did well in the singles tournament. I wanted to get more money matches in but Korean BBQ and Justin’s ‘I’m going to play 3 money matches now even though all the stations are full, ok let’s wait,’ made it so by the time I was done the stations were being taken down. NeoX, Turk, Sayco, Trung, and Big Boi, you guys got lucky, lol.

Anyway I don’t know if I progressed or stayed the same. I mean I beat a couple of good players this time out but I still feel like my loses to Knee, GM, Trung, and Majin were proof of me not progressing. I need to continue to improve. We shall see what the future holds but I know one thing, I’ve got to concentrate on for EVO coming up in three months. Come EVO-time it’s all in, I’m either going to win big or go out bad. So let’s go already, I want to play some more.

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