I posted this on the SRK forums about a week or so ago, but I suppose it would be good to post it here too. So this month's issue of Arcadia (released in Dec, marked Jan, has DVD included for those who want it) includes a special for SFIV where they held a kumite between Daigo and six of the top players in the country from different games. The people that they chose are:

Nemo: Guilty Gear, KOF player (65K BP with Chun)
JOE: VF player and SBO '08 winner, uses C. Viper (56K) and is ranked in the top 10.
Inoue: Cvs2, etc, etc. (32K BP)
Fuudo: VF player, first VF5 national champ and SBO '08 winner with JOE (43K BP)
Itabashi Zangief: Well known VF player (35K BP)
Mago: CvS, CFJ, etc. Top 3 in SF4 ranking. (73K BP)

Here are the results of the Kumite.

Umehara vs Inoue: 2 - 1
Umehara vs. Itabashi Zangief: 3 - 0
Umehara vs. Fuudo: 3 - 0
Umehara vs. Joe: 2 - 1
Umehara vs. Nemo: 3 - 0
Umehara vs. Mago: 1 - 3

Umehara: 14 wins, 4 losses

The DVD shows some of the matches plus commentary from Umehara and his opponents, but unfortunately putting this up on YouTube would be mean copyright infringement, so if you're interested in watching some high-quality vids of Daigo playing, I'd suggest you guys go out and get the magazine if you can!

Went to meet up with some of my friends for dinner and a drink, and the place we go to is called Tengu. For those who don't know what Tengu is, it's a chain franchise of Japanese-style restaurants called an Izakaya, and they're all over Japan. The one that we always go to is located in Namba, in downtown Osaka, and conveniently located above Sega Avion, one of the most popular arcades in the city.

So while waiting for my friends to show up, I got in about 10 matches of Virtua Fighter 5R, 15 of Street Fighter 4, and then 3 matches of Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, which was out this week.

I picked a team of Ryu/Karas, and did pretty well, getting two wins off before getting owned by someone using a Ryu/Chun-Li team. The game looked good although it wasn't on one of the newer cabinets like Street Fighter 4 is. Still, it's really fast and enjoyable to play... I just wish I knew wtf to do sometimes. XD Sometimes it goes a little TOO fast for my old, old brain...

HD Remix doesn't seem to be available in JPN on PS3 or 360, but since I have a Canadian account from when I was living in Canada, I was still able to buy it. The game is gooood, and the netcode is also very good, considering I usually have to play against Americans across the ocean. There's not too much lag in matches, although I can totally feel it whenever I can't get a reversal on wake up off. Still, it's a really fun game and the new changes made to my characters -- Ryu and Honda -- are really cool. I loooove using Honda against projectile characters now because getting around fireballs isn't stupid hard anymore, but it isn't brain dead easy.

Ranked matches tend to have a lot of pullers so I've been sticking with the tournament matches and player matches, and it's a lot funner since I can try to aim for the Master Of All Things achievement without worrying about my rank.

Me against some random Akuma player... the lag was bad in this match but I mainly took the picture to show some of my Japanese friends who aren't aware of the game yet.

Winning my first tournament two days ago... I've won about 5 or 6 tournaments so far with Honda. The man is a total beast!

It feels kind of wrong to talk about non-Capcom games here, hah, but I guess those are the breaks. One of the great things about living in Osaka is that you get a combination of great food, great-looking women (!) and a lot of great places to play games in the arcade. I usually find myself at Monte 50, an arcade that offers games at 50 yen a pop, rather than the regular 100 yen ($1US) charge. It also boasts the best Virtua Fighter and Tekken players, and I hear that every Wednesday, the top 3rd Strike and Super Turbo players also gather there. Problem is that they won't be getting Street Fighter IV in the near future, but I can always head down a couple of stations to Namba and go to Avion, where they had all of the Osaka-based SFIV location tests. Over at Avion, you got Haitani, Umezono (2007 SBO winner) and Kusumondo (top ST Honda player) all playing there, so the competition is fierce.

So I headed down to Monte first to play some VF5R and I played a bunch against Anaguma, who is considered one of the top players in the country. Not just the area, the entire freakin' country. Needless to say, I lost 7 in a row before I could even get one win off of him, and that streak didn't last too long... it actually ended the next match when he played me with another character and destroyed me 3 - 0, haha.

Now, in 5R I use three characters: Lion, who I have used ever since VF2, Goh, who I started using in VF5, and Taka-Arashi, my new main character. I used to play Taka in VF3 and I was really disappointed that he got cut from VF4, but now he's back and I couldn't be happier. He's not as bad as he was in VF3 but he's about mid-tier in 5R, especially with the buffs that Jeffry, Aoi and Shun got for this upgrade. Still, he's really fun to play. I wanna start using Aoi because I have always wanted to use her in VF, but she's a pretty difficult character to use so I don't know if I'll have time to work on her. She's definitely my favorite female character in any video game though.

So after my VF5R matches I headed to Avion to play some SF4. I saw Kusumondo there playing Super Turbo and said hi to him, then I saw Haitani playing SF4 and decided to see how bad I was, considering i haven't played in three weeks lol. Got owned pretty hard, but I guess that's what I get for maining Honda and El Fuerte, two of the weaker characters in the game. Even though they're pretty bad compared to Sagat and Ryu, I think they're more fun to play, and that's all that matters.

Friday night is gonna be fun since Avion is having a 5R Open Battle tournament, so hopefully I do well enough to pick up some battle points and get some new items for my Taka. Anyway, here's the lone win I got off Anaguma in 5R last night. Enjoy!

I found this photo on my hard drive randomly while cleaning out stuff. This is 1st Angel, a Virtua Fighter player during VF3/VF4. I didn't take the picture, one of my friends did while he was visiting Japan and I was still in Canada. Funny thing was that once I moved to Japan, I had the honor of playing... and losing to her. =) She plays a pretty strong Akira, and is considered an above-average player by most, and I guess as far as female players go, she was one of the strongest.

I have no idea if she is still actively playing Virtua Fighter now, and if she is nothing about her has surfaced anywhere. Perhaps she goes by a different ring name now, or perhaps she has quit and I dunno... got married and had kids or something. Still, it would've been awesome to get my butt handed to me by someone as pretty as this again. ;)