Ken Hoang, one of the best Super Smash Bros. players, will be a contestant in Survivor: Gabon, which airs September 25th, 2008. Ken is a national champion in Smash at the MLG events (hmm, I guess those count) and got 2nd place in Smash Brawl earlier this month at the Evolution World Finals.

I think it will be pretty interesting to see how a gamer fares. The strategy of contestants on the show is often extremely disapponting, and anyone who's been through the competitions Ken has just has to know his stuff about when to press the advantage, when to hang back, and how to stay cool under pressure. You might say, "but Smash is different than Survivor and the skills don't transfer." Something runs underneath all competitive games, and that certain something is tested in both Smash and Survivor.

The main worry is really the physical aspect. Often, surivor is a test of how well you can hold up under conditions of exhaustion and near-starvation. My secondary worry for Ken is that anyone able win tournaments might be dripping with clues of strategy. Maybe people will easily realize that Ken, unassuming video game geek, is actually miles ahead of these other people in planning. Planning what? They don't know, but they probably know it's something. Or maybe none of that will matter if Ken has trouble with the whole starvation thing.

My advice to Ken is to make it through the first ...

The world finals in Las Vegas have come and gone. I spent a lot of time at the event on monitoring the gameplay of the two games I designed: Street Fighter HD Remix and Yomi card game. Both of them are shaping up well, but there was also a Street Fighter tournament to worry about in the middle of it all.

I actually planned to win this year, and it felt within my reach. Winning would have allowed me to write a really great essay, too, explaining my view that more practice does not equal more ability. In fact, I don't really recall playing any matches of ST (Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo) the entire year between Evolution 2007 and 2008 except about 20 minutes before the 2008 event started. You might say that my practice playing SF HD Remix is a good substitute, which is somewhat true, but it's also "anti-practice" because it's a different game with different properties and different matchups. I had to remember not to be thrown off by that.

So if I had zero real practice, why would I think I was more able to win than ever? Because I had a trick up my sleeve. Not winning the whole thing makes for a pretty lame story, but that's what we're stuck with. The trick: perceiving that time has slowed down.

I have always relied on this ability. How is it that my low strongs in SF Alpha ...

The Evolution Fighting Game Championships are this weekend in Las Vegas. For a double dose of Sirlin-balanced games, there will be playtests for both Street Fighter HD Remix and Yomi: Fighting Card Game. There's also some fighting game tournaments in there somewhere.

It's (almost) always exciting to see the best players in the world come together at one event, so I hope you'll be there to see it first hand. For some reason, there's no official Guilty Gear tournament this year (*gasp*!) but wish me luck in ST...and even more luck coming out alive after the barrage of game balance comments I'm about to receive.

--Sirlin

This information is from Capcom Unity's site.

The beta for SF HD Remix (Xbox 360) has been extended to end September 5th. Also, it will receive a patch after all, with several fixes. The most important fixes are:

No more crashes when you try to join/create games (*crosses fingers*)
New network code that should perform dramatically better under laggy conditions
Ken's dragon punches are updated to the current build, so the madness will end
Game speed corrected to match arcade speeds, with default being US Turbo 2 (same as Japanese Turbo 3)

No, I don't know when the patch goes live, but I hope you enjoy it when it does.

--Sirlin

What is this virtual card game that I've been working on forever? Now you can find out for yourself here. It's deceptively simple in that you only make about two clicks per turn: first choose your fighting range, then choose amongst attack / inercept / rest / switch characters. And yet I think you'll find it tests the interesting skills of yomi (reading the mind of the opponent) and valuation (judging the relative value of moves in a game).

I take full responsibility for how good or bad the game balance is. ;) Oh, and I already know you think that Tafari is too good and that the random number generator is broken. Neither is true and everyone says both of those things when they start.

You can discuss the game on my forums, if you like.
Good luck!
--Sirlin

Here's a video that Cigarbob recorded of some casual play in the Street Fighter HD Remix beta. You can see me play starting at 3:15. I play Ryu here and demonstrate the use of the fake fireball several times (it has other uses too, but this is just a sample).

I forgo several crossup oppertunities in this vid, partly because we were distracted with talking partly because CigarBob has crazy reversal abilities. In later matches I went for the crossups more, but whatever. At some point I did a crazy dragon punch vs his sweep and declared the maneuver "old-school only."
Enjoy.
--Sirlin