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DENJIN ARCADECalifornia Regionals has come and gone over the weekend and I must say it was the most eye opening and enjoyable tournaments I've ever been to. Held at Denjin Arcade in Simi Valley CA, players from not only California but literally all over the world (Korea, Hawaii, Oregon, Arizona) showed up to flex their skills in virtually every 2D game that is still played to this day.

Over 4 months of Street Fighter IV training, a chance to play some of the best players in the country and take home the trophy in the Battle for California 5v5. There was a lot going through my mind as I made my trek out to Oakland Airport on BART. So many variables in an event like this, so many possible outcomes and really that is probably what keeps me coming back to tournaments like this year after year. Here is the 3 day break down of the event from my perspective.

DAY 1

I flew into Burbank, CA from Oakland around 7pm and being very eager to get a feel for the arcade set up at Denjin, I decided to rent a car instead of messing around with buses and shuttles to get there as quick as possible. I checked into my hotel and made my way down to the arcade.

Once I stepped inside I knew this was like no other arcade I had ever been to. Obviously the first thing that stood out was the set up, which consisted of a long row of back to back fighting games in the middle, a separate "island" for Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike on the far right, assorted games on the left and a separate room for rhythm and dance games near the entrance. Beyond that, unlike some other arcades I've been to, I could feel that Denjin Arcade is all about competition. Virtually the whole arcade was built around competitive games, and you could definitely feel it in the air. This probably had something to do with the tournament being the very next day of course, but every machine I went to I could tell people were trying to level up and be on point as much as possible.

After scoping things out, I noticed that very few of my NorCal homies were there yet and I soon realized I was in enemy territory. For quite sometime this whole event has been hyped up as a "Battle for California, NorCal vs SoCal", so travelling from NorCal you can imagine I did not feel as comfortable here as I do at say, Keystone II in San Jose. None the less, I popped a $5 into the change machine and got to work.

Over all in casuals that night I did pretty well, mainly warming up to the equipment and getting a feel for the different play styles in the arcade. As far as Street Fighter IV goes, it was pretty obvious from the start that they have a lot more competition in SoCal than they do in NorCal. There was a wide assortment of characters being played (although more Balrogs than probably anywhere else on the planet) so it was really great training for match ups I have no experience against.

STREET FIGHTER IVThe Street Fighter IV machines that night were packed except during the SFIII: 3s FatBear vs. Kai $300 money match. The crowd was so out of control for that event I decided to just use this time to practice more SFIV since I couldn't see the match anyway. After each eruption of yelling and screaming I would just lean over and ask someone what happened. I figured the video would be up on YouTube soon enough and Street Fighter IV practice was more important. For those who are wondering, Kai won, 10-5.

After a couple hours of playing, I made my way outside  and kicked it in the parking lot till about 2am before making it back to the hotel to get some sleep. During all that, I met a bunch of new faces and a couple people even recognized me from the 1up segment I did with Andry earlier in the week which was cool.

DAY 2

I got a lot of sleep the night before, probably too much. I felt a little slow most of the day and realized sleeping until noon probably wasn't the best idea. Before heading back to Denjin, I had some breakfast with my friend Andy and his friend Omar who came all the way from New York. Those two had been up for almost 24 hours at that point but with all the hype running through their system it sure didn't show.

I made it back to Denjin around 1:30 and with the team tournament going on that day, there seemed to be a lot more people there than the night before. The arcade through out the whole weekend got pretty packed, so packed that at one point the Fire Marshall showed up. Not sure what happened with that, but the tournament didn't get shut down so I guess it doesn't matter. Still, when you throw a tournament and the Fire Marshall has to check things out, you know its hype!

Anyway, I signed up for 3rd Strike teams and Andry (MAGUS1234) signed us up for Street Fighter IV teams. The 3rd Strike team consisted of Kieran, Kevin and myself. We decided at the last second to form a team and give it a shot so we wouldn't be standing around all day doing nothing. Kieran plays Q, Kevin plays Ken and I of course play Makoto.

The Street Fighter IV team consisted of Kieran (Balrog), Andry (Blanka) and myself (Sagat). We initially had planned to have A_Rival (Chun-Li) on our team (and also the 5v5 roster) but he was not able to make it due to illness. This was real dissapointing too, because after checking out other Chun Li players at Denjin I knew he is currently one of the best on the West Coast.

The 3rd Strike team tournament did not go as well as I had hoped. Our first set, we were OCVed by and Ibuki player. All of us did our best but this guy was far too tricky for us too keep up with him. Even with all the Ibuki match up practice I've had over the years I wasn't able to do much damage. Granted I don't play 3s very seriously anymore and wasn't warmed up (no excuses!), but I was disappointed we didn't get through even one of their players.

The next team we played went a little better. Kevin and Kieran tore through the first two players with Kevin losing to the last player who played Ken. I hopped on and thought this would be an easy win but came in overconfident and ended up losing. I was the team anchor but didn't do as well as my other teammates! Bummer! Oh well, none of us were too upset about it, just something to pass the time.

The Street Fighter IV tournament on the other hand was serious business. Andry and I especially had been practicing IV for sometime specifically for this event. We were all pretty determined to do some damage. Our first match was against a Zangief. Kieran went first and lost then I hopped on, again overconfident with this match up being heavily in my favor. I don't remember the specifics but I ended up losing and Andry proceeded to OCV the entire team.

This pattern continued up until we were taken out of the tournament ranking at 5th place. Not bad! Not bad at all considering there were 32 teams, but I can hardly take credit for this. Through out the event Kieran and I would swap for who would go first, lose, then Andry would step and in destroy the opposing team. I did win a match here and there, but in the grand scheme of things Andry did most of the work.

The team we lost to consisted of Alex Valle (BI), UltraDavid (ZA), Combofiend (BA). Combofiend, their first player, OCVed our team. You can view my match below courtesy of GetYourTournament.

As you can see, it was a pretty decent match that I could have won, but dropped an Uppercut xx FADC xx F+RH xx Ultra combo in a couple places. I did a good job of tagging with Tiger Shots and hitting him with my Tiger Knee when he would rush in and over all played solid but wasn't enough to close the deal.

The whole tournament I was having trouble hitting F+RH after the Uppercut xx FADC. One thing I realized is that it's probably better to just do a Tiger Knee or Ultra instead of messing around with the F+RH. F+RH seems to be easier to connect when you hit the Uppercut xx FADC within a combo.

So, although losing to a well known player like Combofiend is better than losing to a nobody, I was still pretty disappointed I didn't play to my full potential in the team tournament. I felt hesitant and slow through out most of the tournament, had a lot of close matches but the majority I was just not clutch enough to seal the deal.

After taking a quick break and once the tournament wrapped up, I decided to do something about this. I had to shake this fear and get my act together or else I'd be at the ass end of the rankings come Monday morning in the results thread on SRK. I had been there before not too long ago and didn't want it to happen again.

That night I started to play some casuals and really began to look at what I was doing wrong for most of the day. Instead of wiffing c.mk so much, I replaced it with s.lk xx Tiger Knee or Tiger Shot. Instead of so much F+RH, I used more standing roundhouse which served me much better in the long run. More throws, more Tiger Knees, more Tiger Shots. More everything!! What's there to be fearful of? I know what I was supposed to do so just do it!

I was soon reminded that it's sessions like this that you will most likely only encounter at major events like EVO, NEC, Final Round and now CaliRegionals. It's sessions like this where you level up and take your game much further than you imagined it could go in such a short period of time. Two hours into it and playing some top players along the way, getting a lot of experience against unfamiliar match ups and styles, I was feeling really good and ready for the next day.

DAY 3

So maybe I'm just not a team player and that's what this all boils down to, but I did a lot better in the singles tournaments in both games than I did in the team tournament. Part of it had to do with my comfort level. I felt like Friday and Saturday was warm up while Sunday was when I was able to play at my true potential.

STREET FIGHTER III: 3RD STRIKE 5V5Before we get into that though, there was a point in the late afternoon where the 5v5 battle for California matches were going down. I watched the CVS2 and 3s battles and of course participated in the SFIV 5v5 which happened later in the evening after all the others. Both the 3s and CVS2 battles were a lot of fun to watch even though NorCal ended up losing both of them.

Our NorCal SFIV team consisted of Andry (BL), Anthony (BA), David (RY), Long (BI) and myself (SA). The SoCal team consisted of Mike Ross (HO), CSB (BA), Keno (BA), Gootecks (BA) and EdMa (KE). Yes, team SoCal had 3 Balrogs on their team! I told you there were a lot of 'Rog players down there.

Anyway, the first player, Mike Ross, went through our first 3 players using Honda. I thought this was a pretty good strategy on SoCals part considering most of us NorCal players don't have much Honda experience. Most of the matches were pretty close and I almost took him out using Sagat, but missed two Uppercuts and a F+RH into Ultra opportunity.

Anthony went on to take out Mike Ross and CSB. Next he had a close mach against another Balrog, Keno. Anthony barely lost and Andry hopped on the machine. I can't remember if Andry took out Keno and moved onto Gootecks and lost or what happened exactly, but regardless we ended up losing the 5v5 to SoCal. I feel things may have gone differently if A_Rival was able to rep his Chun-Li during this, but we all played our best so no worries.

Now on to the singles tournament...

3RD STRIKE MACHINESI entered 3rd Strike, again just really to pass the time. My first match I won, it was against an Akuma player, so that is a pretty bad match up for the other guy and I personally know the match up pretty well.

Next up was Alex Valle who played Ken which I ended up losing too. This was an interesting match though because as far as I remember I was doing pretty well the first round but he stopped mid match and told me we had to restart becuase he picked the wrong super. Turns out he had the right super but we decided to start over anyway. During all this, I joked with my friend Ryan that this was an OG tactic to throw me off my game! Mind games beyond the games, I guess that's part of it! Really I doubt it was intentional but I'll probably end up trying that against some kid who is new to the scene one day.

From there I go on to play FatBear in the losers bracket. I didn't know what to expect even though I have a lot of experience playing against Yun. I knew he had to be good if he was participating in money matches so I really just had to play as solid as possible.

I ended up winning thanks to a little coaching from Rom (who ended up winning the entire 3s tournament. Very exciting matches, good job Rom.) and over all pretty solid play on my part. I was surprised myself that I made it this far in the tournament considering I could care less what happened with it. I eventually lost to a Dudley player the next time I was up. I could have had the match but got impatient and kept running into his standing roundhouse which as most of you know leads to all his high damage combos. Oh well, on to SFIV!

My first match was against Viscant who played Blanka. I may have been able to take this one if I didn't have the mind set that he would play like Andry who is also a really good Blanka player. Viscant seemed to play much more aggressivly, using a lot of cross ups and electricity. He stunned me more than once and over all dominated the match. I had a couple good rounds, tagging him with standing roundhouse, but was not able to provide enough creative gameplay to shut him down.

So off to the losers bracket for me after the first match. I really didn't know what to think, knowing my next match could be it. First I thought "don't sweat it just have fun" then eventually came around to "What the hell am I thinking? I want to do some damage, let roast these fools!" and it showed.

I ended up winning a good number of matches in the losers bracket. I ran into Nothingman who plays a solid E. Honda and CSB who is a really respectable Balrog player. Both very fun and intense matches that I hope I am able to see at some point.

There were a couple other wins along the way and eventually I made it to Laugh, a Ryu player who came all the way from Korea. Very nice guy, he was telling me about the arcade scene in Korea and what characters people use around there. He said all the strong characters such as Sagat and Balrog are used heavily which I guess is to be expected in any competitive environment.

Our match finally came around after a bit of waiting and I will say this is probably the best I've ever played from an execution stand point. I landed most of my combos, zoned well and played much more solid than I had for most of the tournament. If I won I had to fight Andry next who was also in the losers bracket at that point. I really wanted to beat Laugh so Andry and I could see who would come out on top in a tournament environment. Unfortunately, as well as I played, I still lost. I was hit by two Metsu Hadoukens, and played a bit too reckless in our final round. I feel I could have taken it if I would have been more patient in the last round. I wasn't upset though knowing that after all that, I came away from my last match knowing that I didn't half ass it and gave it virtually everything I had left at 12 in the morning.

CVS2 & ST MACHINESI stuck around for just a bit longer, but with my flight being at 7 in the morning I knew I had to get moving and get some sleep. I said goodbye to just a few people and made my way out. After a hectic morning trying to find my way back to the bay, I finally made it home and was able to reflect on my time in SoCal. Only after a bit of time away from the arcade back in a familiar setting was I able to realize how much I learned and progressed while I was there playing at Denjin.

More than that though, reality sunk in and I realized it was over! Only then did I really understand how much I enjoyed being down there and how much it sucked not to be able to player Street Fighter for another full day. Luckily after work on Monday a couple friends of mine wanted to play and catch up on the event so it all worked out.

So as you can tell, California Regionals was really something else. As dissapointed as I was that it seemed to end so soon, I felt a bit better knowing that this was the start of an event that will be sure to continue for years to come. At least I hope it does!

GGs to everyone I played and hope to see you at EVO2K9!

Oh, and one more thing, here is a video showcasing an a quick shot of Denjin, a SFIV match featuring Mike_Z and assorted matches from the 3s 5v5. Enjoy!

 Also, if you missed it here is the California Regionals official slapper from Lil' Shoto: