Our honest thoughts about the Marvel Tokon Beta | Extra Trashy

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On this week's episode, Brian_F and iDom break down everything we've learned about Marvel Tokon, discuss the upcoming 2XKO closed beta, and delve into GO1 winning the largest online tournament ever for fighting games, with Chun-Li.

Episode: Extra Trashy #16

Recorded on: September 8th 2025

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
We're back extra trashy time. I'm back here with item and
we're here to talk about the latest happenings in the FGC.
Of course, we have the marvel token beta and our first
impressions with that and also go weechi climbing the ranks
here, man, becoming one of the best fighting players of all
time again for the 10 billionth time, proving that he's maybe
perhaps the go to the FGC winning World Warrior Japan

(00:22):
number one with over 2350 entrance, the largest ever
singles bracket tournament online in the FGC.
Let's get on into it. Adam.
I know you were a little bit busy cooking up there in
Tennessee, but it sounds like you had a good time playing that
tournament and also playing somemarvel Toca and how how was your
weekend? You know.
I went to F2 con had a fun time.I got to play Tokon beta.

(00:44):
I had to use all the other Playstations, but also I had to
bring this very large trophy home.
Oh my God, OK, pretty nice, pretty nice first place for
guilty of try not Street Fighter, but you know got the
got the nice little trophies forstraw.
I got to add that to my collection.

(01:05):
But yeah, fun little time. I got to play a lot of Tokon
there and I had a lot of fun playing Token.
I was still messing around with Star Lord and Iron Man, and I
did also try Storm. Storm was actually moving up on
my my character that I was fairly interested with.
I had a lot of like cool. Little neat setups with Storm's
little ice ball assistant. Those ice ball moves with her

(01:28):
unique skill was actually kind of had my brain flowing.
Interesting. I also think it's interesting
that you know a lot of people, it's going to be the first time
they even know that you played another game beside Street
Fighter. Yeah, what?
What is this? Strive what is this Strive what
is this? Marvel Tokon.
He's a Street Fighter player. Yeah, yeah.
Soft reveal for it's so funny tome how so many people like, I

(01:50):
assume you've only ever like youwere like born in a lab to play
Laura in Street Fighter 5, even though you've you've been
playing doing the thing in guilty of strife for quite some
time. So Congrats on your win there.
And I like that you had multiplecharacters to talk about a
Marvel token because you know, this beta, it was around like 24
hours total of play time across these three days.
And I'm too old to like power through all that.

(02:12):
I made an attempt to get up early like I I was honey trapped
into honeypotted to staying up too late on the first night.
It came out around midnight my time.
And I was like, oh, I got to play at least a couple games.
And then I was like, yeah, I'll definitely go to bed and wake up
at 6:00 AM now and start grinding in the morning until I
completely missed the morning session by a couple of hours.
I kind of took the second-half of it of the second-half of that

(02:35):
way, but I overslept like crazy.I had bags under my eyes.
I felt like crap. So I didn't get that much play
time overall, I feel like, and I'm a slow learner, so I only
played Captain America essentially.
I did the mean. People have been mean about how
this game is more like A1V1 or 2V2 game up front because it
doesn't have a lot of direct built in tag incentives to the

(02:58):
mechanics. Like there's, there's only one
health bar so you're not like actively tagging out to reach in
your health. So I, I, I took that to the
extreme. I played only Captain America
plus assist all weekend long because I could barely even
remember the moves. So I don't know if you got like
super in depth with these characters because I could
barely like wrap my mind around how to.
String things together. So I I was kind of doing that

(03:19):
when I was playing for like the first session.
So like it was mainly kind of just like Star Lord with doom
assist and storms assist becauseI like this is really good.
And then I was just kind of putting like one and one
together. And I was still trying to figure
out a bit how the tax system works and how to get everything
kind of like stringing together.But the more I was playing, the
more I was like, wow, this it you really do need to master the

(03:42):
tags. You can't play 1 character that
is 1000% fine. But when the tags start flowing
and the mixes start coming with like the the like fast tag or
like the active switch, it's it starts getting pretty pretty
degenerate pretty. Quickly, OK, so you actually got
to touch that layer of the game.I I, I'm happy for you.
I got to watch other people do that and I was active.

(04:04):
In fact, I was like, Oh well, that's what the game's supposed
to look like. Meanwhile, I'm like AB, where's
my C button? And then I'm getting on a combo
instantly. I can tell like where this will
go, but I just needed more time in training mode, like to wrap
my brain around and get my handsprimed.
I think players who are really familiar with like DBFZ, for
example, they feel right at home.
I think the big first impressionand I think it is a correct

(04:27):
impression is that this is for sure DBFZ 2 plus plus, right?
It it's like a the the if you played that one V1 style, you're
playing DBFZ. Do you think it felt that way to
you? It is.
In my opinion, Dragon Ball with partial like semi strive.
I will say there's a bit of strive in there and BB tag.

(04:50):
It's those two games put together.
What what's the BB tag influenceyou that I I never played BB tag
The the act like the active switch in like a lot of the
layer setups. It's just a lot of BB tag stuff
like oh, switch here and then kind of just mix from there.
Or kind of like have one character doing their move while
I switch and then I'm dancing onyour head with the other
characters. So that's kind of like the BB
tag part. Yeah, which was what I was

(05:11):
mentioning before about like Marvel Infinite when we last
talked about this, how I have concerns about active tag.
It seems like it's exactly that mechanic.
So I didn't use any of this myself, but from analyzing
players who are much stronger than me at these games who can
figure things out in a day, I'm so impressed with that ability.
A lot of the flow for getting the actual grime going with

(05:32):
using the full team together is you do your string with your
character, force them into on the opponent, and then you
activate a special move or some kind of move with a decent
amount of startup. Like for example, like a, a
normal example would be Star Lord with this charged overhead,
right? You string into the charged
overhead and before that activates you then or while

(05:53):
that's going on, you have an assist that was going forward
and keeping them in blocks and while you're charging the
overhead. And then the point where you
actually swap characters is after the assist completes its
active frames, you're you're tagged in your, your assist is
like standing there on screen, like, yeah, do you want to swap
into me real quick? Like I'm, I'm still here, I
won't leave for a second. And then you swap into your,

(06:14):
your assist as your original character is doing that charged
overhead as star Lord. And then you hit them low when
you active tag in. So you end up with these like
hard to blockable or unblockablesituations like people found
theoretically unblockable setupsin one day.
Yeah, it's it's like a pseudo unblock, but like, but kind of
like what you said, it goes backto Marvel Infinite because that

(06:35):
was kind of the thing like if you had a low hitting special
move, it was just kind of reallystrong and like why not do this?
I'm curious because I I was did not get too familiar with the
defensive mechanics. Like I I will say like obviously
is a beta. It's still early.
I'm not trying to block. I don't think anyone in that
beta was trying to block either,but I'm curious how if the

(06:57):
defensive mechanics are. The crossover mechanics seem
pretty good to get out of situations like that, so it's
not going to be just haha looping unblockable, but I'm
very curious to see how the gameactually does pan out.
Are like, is the defensive mechanic strong enough to make
sure that doesn't happen? Yeah, I think the Crossover is
supposed to be that mechanic because the way that works is to

(07:19):
do any of these assists calls during combos and pressure
strings. And to use the defensive
mechanic of Crossover, it takes an assist gauge and the assist
gauge, it depletes when you're on offense.
If you're doing a string, you call your assist, it's no longer
one of the assists that you would have, but if you're
calling in neutral, you actuallyhave a canned combo filler or
pressure extender assist that ispretty much universal for all

(07:42):
characters are pretty much all the same there.
There might be. I think there might be some
discrepancy like the active frames hit box, but in general
they have the same utility. Maybe it will be some
differences ironed out or figured out over time, but that
assist will come out and it'll be like it, it ends your string,
the assist comes out, you can extend your string or you get a
combo, you call the assist to extend the combo, it activates a

(08:04):
tumble state for the opponent and then you can pick up with
whatever and continue the combo.So very like streamlined in that
sense, but it cost a bar. The crossover mechanic also cost
a bar of that same gauge. So if you get end up in that
situation where they forced you to block, they win neutral and
then they're doing ABC Los, theycall assist low special move,

(08:24):
assist finishes and then they active tag and do an overhead
while the low special move is occurring.
That's that pseudo unblockable. You just crossover to stop that
and that cost a bar of your assemble gauge.
But it's almost like a defensivemove and ADI mechanic because
you can you can counter it. So I wonder if it's going to be

(08:44):
that useful because if you counter it, if you don't get the
perfect timing, you spend another bar of your assemble
gauge. There's only three of them.
So it is a valuable resource. You will, you won't get knocked
down, it'll go back to neutral. If you crossover counter and
they don't counter it, you get, you knock them down and you can
start approaching them. But if it goes back to neutral,
it's like neutral. But if you get the perfect
timing, you actually lock them out of using the assemble gauge

(09:06):
entirely or calling any other assist.
So there is like a risk to usingthe mechanic at the same time,
even though it costs resources to counter.
So you need to. You definitely need to use the
crossover to stop the unblockables, but there's also a
risk to using it. So I think there's going to be a
resource mini game going on there as well, because you might
not want to risk getting you having your team disassembled.

(09:29):
I'm curious how how that'll pan out.
Yeah, that that's kind of like one thing I actually I really
liked about it. Like the, the resource mini game
is actually like one of the morefun things in fighting is I feel
like that's kind of the managingsomebody else's resource is
actually like super cool. But yeah, for those kind of
things also playing like the auto combos are obviously, I

(09:51):
think the auto combos are reallystrong.
I don't know how you felt about the auto combos.
I was getting DBMZ flashbacks sometimes.
So the auto combos are felt really strong for like newer
players to kind of get into the game.
The supers look nice. The game, like I said, it always
looks pretty. Star Lord has some cool combos.
I was, I was doing like some grenade resets or like some ice

(10:12):
restand resets that I was kind of really trying to keep like
the mix going and even. Who?
Who's I? Who was I playing?
What was it? Star Lord?
I think it was Iron Man, Miss Marvel, Captain Mary.
No, no, there was like there wasa fastball mix up that I kept
doing. I think it was *.
Lord has a fastball mix up. Yeah, he's the yeah, yeah, yeah,

(10:35):
yeah. It was always like the fast
fastball mix up, just everything.
So to me, I was kind of playing Star Lord one assist, but even
Storm's ice ball assist, that assist seemed kind of broken in
my opinion. I didn't see that one.
What does that one do? It's she throws the ice ball but
it freezes you so you can just run up for a combo.

(10:56):
And that's one of the neutral assists.
Is that like Which direction? No, that was that was her first
assist. That was like the first assist
she got. That was like the neutral 1.
Oh, so not not the combo filler one, but the Ford assist Yeah,
the way the team structure workswith the assist is like the
order of your team does actuallymatter because when you are in
neutral and not actually actively pressing buttons and

(11:17):
hitting the opponent, you don't get the combo filler assist.
You get your neutral assist, which don't cost an assemble
gauge. It just has a very short
cooldown. The assist actually come back
very fast from neutral. There's a very short cooldown on
them. But the point character or the
second character you have like they're on their Ford and
assist, then there's down assistand back assist, Forward assist

(11:38):
or neutral assist is like meant to be like your horizontal
approach assist, like kind of like your beam in DBFZ, whatever
it's generally what it is. It kind of moves forward and
lets you approach behind it to cover your approach.
The down assist is usually like an anti error or vertically
traveling assist and the back assist are supposed to be more
character specific. So I can't really, I didn't get
listen, I barely unlocked all mycharacters.

(12:00):
I can't go into too much detail on the back assist, but it's
supposed to be like you're more unique per character type of
loadout for that assist. So yeah, I, I never even saw
anyone using the the Ford storm assist to get the freeze.
But it seems like anything that will lock the opponent down and
allow you to mix them up by avoiding the knockdown state is
really strong because there's nohard knockdowns except for like

(12:24):
very Special Situations. So you're able to tech back in
place upright for tech right to roll out of the corner.
So Star Lord was one of those doing the freeze.
You would end your combo into like the freeze gun, I think it
was, and it would cause him to stay still.
And it was better to go for these resets because combo
combos were cut short by the combo.

(12:46):
Integration meter, I'm not sure what the meter was called yeah,
I I don't know exactly what the IT was called, but yeah that
little meter on the like siler the red bar like hey, you know,
stop your combo, stop your comboright.
So it was better to cut your combo short and then go for that
little extra damage and avoid that that the knock down.
Because the knock down you can'treally cover all text without
spending a meter or spending a an.
Assist and it was hard to cover the text right.

(13:09):
So that once players that was Star Lord, they're looping that
mix as much as possible. I thought that was really
creative. And the other thing is, did you
get into the wall? Slump in in the corners?
Yeah, I, I, I, I did see I didn't do the wall slump
personally, but I did see onlinethat people were doing like wall
slumps from like Strive. I didn't, I, I understood the

(13:30):
theory behind it because like inStrive, you do it so you don't
go back to neutral. He just makes off the wall, but
in that game you would still want your character, I feel
like. So wouldn't you want to break
the wall? I guess it's kind of like
positive bonus versus not positive bonus.
But I you can't I I you. Can't do it when it breaks the
wall. It's only in the corner when
you're all the way at the eitherend of the stage.

(13:53):
So, OK, yeah. Because like there's no void in
the wall break. The wall break happens pretty
much with with half your moves it feels like.
I don't know the exact rules, but most of your specials, your
heavies, I, I think auto combo supers, like almost anything
you're going to go into in a combo ends up pushing them to
the next stage transition because I think there's three
stages. There's the middle, left and

(14:15):
right side. And so if you're in the middle,
you're going to break the wall of doing air quotes here for the
audio listeners, right? You're going to transition to
the other stage. But if you're on the left most
stage and you hit the actual left corner, instead of having
that happen, you'll actually getlike a wall slump.
Like they'll, they'll splat against the wall, maybe call it
a wall splat. And that allows you for like

(14:36):
pickups without assist. For one, let's do better combos
so you can extend without assistin certain situations, but also
if you end up not using that to extend your combo, they'll just
fall to the ground in place without a tech option.
It it, it effectively becomes a hard knockdown.
So players started doing that and then they would use that,

(14:56):
that slump animation to start setting things up like Captain
America would do do the up and, and his unique skill to throw
his shield up, which would startbouncing off the ceiling up and
down. And then use that to then start
doing like cross up left, right mix UPS, high, low mix, because
that became your hard knockdown.And so I was like, dude, these
guys are so creative. Like I'm so dumb when it comes

(15:16):
to tag games. Like their brains are so fast.
Like all these high level tag players.
I was so impressed. I was like, why didn't I?
Think of that I. Was so pissed when the bandit
closed. So there's a lot of grime that
started to develop with with thethe hard knockdowns because I
felt like it was pretty hard to keep pressure going without that
hard knockdown. Like how did you feel about the

(15:37):
the structure? Like if you got a hit and you
got the the relative knockdown people could tech either way.
I always felt like restanding was always kind of like the
strongest thing to do. Even in like Dragon Ball, like
Majin Buu was really strong because he could restand you
every time. So restanding to me felt like
just like the strongest thing todo.
But I always felt like break thewall first.

(15:59):
Get your character because you want your you're going to say I
felt like Doom had a good anchorassist.
Like you say you never played the fourth assist, but Doom had
like, I don't want to say hiddenmissiles is hidden laser because
that laser covers a lot of ground and then you can kind of
just do whatever you want. So the I I wanted to get the

(16:20):
last character, but at the same time I did not.
I didn't see myself doing combosa lot of the time.
Oh, wait, not not doing combos, but going for the ice restand a
lot of the time with just star Lord, just kind of to reset.
And like star Lord and storm hadlike really good restands just
in general. So I never went for a knockdown
was just restand most of. The time, right?
That makes sense. Sense.
I think in the beginning it alsomakes sense to assemble your

(16:42):
team, right? That's kind of the whole unique
aspect of the game that really starts differentiating it from
anything else. This 4V4 concept where you want
to build your team. Because as you build your team,
you're you're not only getting more assists to play with to
extend your combos and also havemore neutral assists to enhance
your neutral, but you're also getting more meter, right?

(17:03):
You get more of the assemble gauge for every team member you
have, you get another assemble gauge which lets you access the
things that the defensive mechanics in the game and then
also your offensive mechanics, right, using more tags in a
combo. And I think it also increases
your life, like your life startsgoing up and I think your total
super meter also increases as well as you add more characters
to the game, which gives you more access to using your super

(17:25):
moves and your ex moves as well.So you're really incentivized to
do that. And I didn't iron out all the
rules for when you get a character.
It's like do an auto combo, you get a character, break the wall,
you get a character. Do a super, you get.
It's like almost any route you go down, I felt like you would
get a character. So I think passively without
thinking about the mechanics, you'll build your team for the

(17:47):
most part. But I don't think we've cracked
the code for optimizing that. At least I haven't.
I, I don't know the the meta foroptimizing it.
I don't know if you saw like a path like what's the best
strategy to build the team to start cooking?
I couldn't really think of anything.
For me, it was just like, you know, get a throw and, you know,
break the wall and get the character.

(18:07):
That to me felt like the easiest, most effective way to
do it. But at the same time, I, I, I'm
kind of with you, I don't reallyknow.
Maybe if you just lose the rounds, you get more character.
That might be. Maybe you throw the 1st 2 rounds
and then just win with the. You also got the character for
getting beat up in. Terms of situations, right?
Yeah, yeah. So I, I honestly was not even,
like I said, I always like whichbutton is what like that.
That was where my mind was the whole time.

(18:29):
So it was very hard for me to like consciously think about
those things. And I would often break the wall
in accident because I'd be doinglike my light medium heavy and
then special move. And then I'd call my assist to
to continue the combo And then the wall would break and I spent
my assist gauge and I'm like, OK, well that was a waste.
But I didn't. Realize that was about to

(18:50):
happen. So there's a lot of nuance there
that is said to be to be ironed out.
But did you play against any Miss Marvel?
Because I do think Star Lord hadthe most mix going on, but.
Miss Marvel seemed to be the onedominating the all my
tournaments. I did see the iPhone one with
Miss Marvel, but I did not play any Miss Marvel.

(19:11):
Actually I did not touch that character at all and I never
really ran into Miss Marvel likethat at all when I was playing
online either. So I I still am completely in
the dark about what that character is doing her.
She has like a combination to meof like super scroll and Spencer
influence because her command dash is the the skill she

(19:32):
doesn't have a she doesn't have a normal command dash or an air
dash of like this. The typical use of dash macro to
dash around in the air. You have to use her unique skill
to grab the other side of the screen and move forward and that
can actually interact and grab the opponent and start off.
And so I felt like that was a pretty unique take, the Spencer
sort of zip line that he had andthat seemed to be good.

(19:56):
People were moving across the screen and getting pickups from
all over. And it made me also consider, I
feel like potentially the crossover counters are unique
per character. Because one thing Diaphone was
doing that I thought was really interesting is he would use like
the crossover, like the alpha counter move defensively and
then immediately forward skill, unique skill with Miss Marvel to

(20:16):
grab and pull him all the way tothe other side of the screen.
And it was pretty much like a meaty.
And if they tried to jump away from that, like uptick or jump
away, he would get A2H when theyjump.
So he would use a defensive mechanic and then immediately
get in there and then immediately start his offense.
Whereas when I used it with Captain America, it felt like
they could always just float up in the air and I was not in like

(20:38):
an advantageous position. Like they were kind of like at a
perfect angle to fall down or uptech and then fall down with an
approach. So I think there might be a
difference with how these mechanics are actually
implemented. Like, I don't know if it's full
universal and then the oaky situations are going to vary.
So that seemed really strong to me.
Like that, that the fact that anoffensive mechanic LED into

(20:58):
immediate offense seemed really good.
So that to me was a big strengthof her and her overhead was like
instantaneous. Do you think that the common
threat was these fast overhead EX moves?
Yeah. I, I remember when I was playing
Cap, I got hit by caps overhead every time.
Little shield, the little shield, yeah, I couldn't block

(21:19):
that up for my life. But yeah, I didn't, I didn't
really play against Miss Marvel too much.
I, I correct me if I'm wrong. She does have a command grab
too. So like you might actually just
get like scooped up or mixed a lot of time when playing against
her. So I don't know, I'm I'm glad I
voted all in this Marvel. I was trying, I was just trying
to play like the Marvel 3 characters and just trying to
air dash because Iron Man was actually another personal

(21:41):
favorite because Iron Man was schmoven in the in the beta too,
and he had like a lot of unique like moves that he didn't
usually have the little hand lasers, the handguns.
I guess he had. It was like really good for
zoning. That was also another thing I
wanted to bring out. I felt like you could actually
run away and zone in this game because Iron Man was actually
kind of hard to catch sometime. Yeah, dude, I got for hours of

(22:05):
my play session, I ran into someone who was clearly a strong
DBFZ player going by the tag of Hulk and he was just beating the
crap out of me with Iron Man forhours.
And I'm like, dude, you're picking up every straight hit
into full like jump conversions and getting everything into the
full okie knock down. And then when when I finally got
away from his, his mix and pressure, he would zone me out

(22:26):
with Iron Man and do the little hand lasers and to the beam.
And that would confirm to super from full screen and to the DHCS
as well. And I was like, dude, I'm
straight up getting zoned right now.
So Iron Man definitely had that potential as well.
And they do have some mechanics to stop that.
So the other defensive mechanicssaid, I don't think we're
utilized that much. It's I, I'm forgetting the, the

(22:49):
name of them, but it's when you're not in blocks done.
So like on wake up or in gaps and strings.
The crossover is for when you'rein blocks done This mechanic.
There is the the neutral one, which was an overhead, like an
armored overhead move. And then there was another one
where you can do like a counter where you go hold back and it'll
actually activate a counter. But if they don't engage with

(23:12):
it, you kind of do a back sway and they can just chase you down
and get a full punish. But they also had an air version
where it was almost like a superdash where you kind of you press
light and assist in the air. And whenever you use any of
these mechanics with the assemble gauge, it has this
orange after effect glow as you travel.
So, you know, someone used it, so that should be your, your

(23:32):
answer. Not quite a super dash.
It didn't like, you know, 360 around the screen and cross them
up and and track them down out of nowhere.
But if they're like spamming projectiles and you air reset or
something, you could use that toget in and and punish them.
So it seems they thought about that a little bit, but I never
managed to land it. It was kind of a little awkward.
It didn't travel that far. So I wasn't sure the use case

(23:53):
for that, like air dash option. I don't know if you managed to
land it or see it at all. Not not, not really to me also
kind of just like I feel like you have movement like it's it's
different now. It's hard to get zoned.
You have movement and like unless the character's like
Morgan or something in Marvel three, if you have movement in a
game, I feel like it it it couldobviously be bad because you

(24:16):
could just get zoned if you don't have good movement.
But if you have good movement, you could easily kind of like
traverse the screen and get around a lot of like projectile
zony thing. But like, I don't know, Iron Man
felt I to me I don't know about you.
Iron Man and Star Lord were the 2 characters I felt that home
with when I was playing the most.

(24:37):
Well, I only played Captain America.
Oh, Oh yeah, he only. Played captain that was my next
target. He he seemed really cool and he
has the actual like he has an actual eight way air dash and he
has a flight mode as well and storm I think.
Did storm did and did star Lord have a flight mode?
I think a lot of the characters.Had a flight.

(24:58):
Mode where like you, you jump and then you hold the jump
button and you can actually fly around for a bit.
I don't like that. I actually.
I don't like the the flight, like the move to activate
flight, like maybe marvel playerin me.
I'd rather have, you know, quarter circle back button or
something, But I hate the the new fly.
So is it just activating it or any other properties with it?

(25:18):
Is it no. Just activate, right?
Just activate. Just activating it it's.
It's just very awkward. I'd rather just have it tied to
a motion or something. Because it was tied to jump,
right? So you couldn't just do it off
the ground and you can't really cancel into it, can you?
I guess. Could you do button into jump
cancel into flight I'm. Sure you can, I didn't try it
personally. I'm sure you could.

(25:39):
I wouldn't see why you wouldn't be able to do it but it's still
like just awkward and I was finding myself getting flight by
accident sometimes as well. I see.
I I'd rather be like quarter circle back somewhere.
I see. Well, how about this?
I heard some, you know, I reallyenjoy the beta.
I want to spend a lot more time with it.
But there were some people, of course, you know, people have

(26:00):
differing opinions. There were some people who
looked at this beta, took part in it and felt that it was
rather restrictive in a lot of ways.
And I can see where they're coming from actually.
I do feel like it was a little strange the tagging system, how
that operates because you have the what about the tag?
I should say the assist system, you have the combo filler and

(26:22):
pressure filler extension assist, which costs the assemble
gauge. Then you have all these unique
assist that you can only be donethrough neutral.
But what is neutral versus not right?
And I think the rule is if you make contact with the opponent,
then you get the combo filler assist.
But I can see that being a little like restrictive because

(26:44):
you can't, you don't have accessto your set of assists while
you're about to or currently making contact with the
opponent. So I don't know, do you feel
like that's a little weird as a Marvel enthusiast?
Some people felt like that wholeassist system was a little
strange in that sense. I can see where they're coming
from. I understand the, the main

(27:06):
complaint with it, like there isno, are you unusual or not kind
of thing like that's kind of the, that's an argument in a lot
of fighting games. Like what is, what is neutral?
What are we even doing? What is neutral?
So I, I do, I do understand that, but I do think maybe they
just did it to kind of play it safe kind of thing, make the

(27:26):
game feel a bit more safer for anewcomer.
Yeah, I I think that's a big reason for it, right?
Because I think maybe experienced tag players like
this little boring because it streamlined the the combo
structure, right? There's a very basic ABC
launcher ABC ABC down heavy. Like down C, knock him down,

(27:48):
call assist, it causes a tumble state pick up again went to
launcher ABC down heavy, knock him down call assist and loop
that for all your assist gauge and then end with a special move
or like a heavy into super or something at the wall, right?
And that it's completely streamlined for everybody in
that sense except for maybe Doom.
I think there is still some unique strings.

(28:10):
Doom was like kind of the oddball character, but in
general it was very streamlined with that.
And that is in no small part dueto the fact that the assists are
canned when you're in the combo state or when you're pressuring
them instead of having like Doomactivating the the 10 second
startup hidden laser beam, right?
You know what I mean? Instead of doing that and then

(28:31):
you have to juggle them or properly stagger your string and
manage the height in order to pick up the assist.
He does a basic combo filler assist just like everybody else
during that moment. So for me, that made it really
easy to at least get a hit into a combo.
But in the long term, does that sacrifice any depth potentially?
Like I think some people were already feeling a little like, I

(28:55):
kind of wish I had access to my unique assist while I'm doing
these other things to get the creative juices flowing.
I I feel like that. That's kind of the other thing.
Like for the newer player, it's going to be like, OK, Doom was
here, Doom had this one assist, but now Doom got moved to the
fourth spot. But now I have a hidden laser.
So now I gonna eat. I need combos for when Doom is

(29:15):
here, and I need combos for whenDoom is here, and then I'm gonna
need combos from Doom is here too.
So it's like I have three different versions of B&B that I
also have to think that I have Star Lord.
Oh wait, maybe I'm not playing star Lord now I have Captain
America now any Captain America combos with beat with blazer
beam instead of, you know, dudesgunnesses, and it's like, OK,

(29:37):
this is like 50 billion combos. I have to know for a newer
player. So I I get it.
I get it. I, I do not envy all this stuff
because I do want fighting gamesto be a safer place for newer
player. But that seems like a lot of
studying, a lot of like awareness.

(29:59):
And that might be like, oh, that's too hard, I'm going to go
play Fortnite. That's, that's a great point.
I didn't consider that with the way they've done this assist
loadout where you don't pick your assist, it's based on where
they are in your team rotation. Yeah, that's confusing because
and all the other games you pickyour assist in Marvel, you pick
your assist from the get go. That's all you have access to.

(30:21):
And your team order would impactyour DHC routes, which was very
important. But it wasn't like you have to
remember which order your team is it.
And because you got a whole different assist that is a
that's a lot of complexity. So that is that does make sense.
I think for them to, to resolve that, that mechanic of we want
this concept of the team order to impact what type of assist

(30:43):
you have. It kind of makes sense.
Then wait a minute. We need to streamline the combo
and pressure system. Or maybe that was, I don't know
what came first. Maybe it was the opposite, maybe
to add complexity in depth because they wanted to
streamline the assist system andthe combos and pressure.
Maybe they created this system of, hey, your character order
decides what assist you have access to in neutral.

(31:05):
It seems related for sure. That's a really good point
because yeah, if if if my team order got messed up and I had to
figure out what assist I had at what time during the combo, I
never would have done a combo. I barely did a combo as is that
beta. If I called my Iron Man assist
and he didn't do that generic tackle to let me pick up, it was
over for me. You know, if he starts like
shooting out some missiles and it floats around, I'm like,

(31:26):
dude, man, it's over. Like I finally got a hit, can't
do a combo. Iron Man's fourth assist had
like the air raid, the, I don't know, the Sentinel assist where
he like came in and like droppedmissiles like that.
This is really good too, but that was his last assist you.
Had a whole different experiencethan I did.
I know I was either getting beatup and looped or I'm doing ABC

(31:49):
my one assist, ABC my two assist.
I barely use neutral assist at all.
I think that's probably my problem.
I was wondering why my neutral is so ass.
I think it's because I never. I never knew when to call assist
in neutral. That's that's not the, that's
not the Marvel player. When when I was thinking, I was
like, oh, he called the assist. Now it's time for me to call my
assist because he can't call an assist right now.

(32:10):
That's the Marvel brand of me thinking.
See, this is what I'm missing. I don't have, I have 0 tag
fundamentals. I mean, I had a little bit of
DBFZ for a while so I understoodlike a little bit of the pickups
and stuff like that. But I was like, why am I losing
neutral constantly? And I think it might have been
because I'm Captain America jumping around with zero assist
coverage. OK, this is what I got to work

(32:32):
on. That's why I want the training
mode man. One other thing that I also did
notice, and I don't know if I saw people bringing this up on
Twitter a lot, I don't know if this is DVMZ protection.
You can't whip a button and callto it and call an assist.
Now in Marvel, that's just that's normal.
You could do that anytime, but in Dragon Ball Android 17, I had

(32:57):
a broken assist where if you whiff the button, you would call
the barrier and protect you and then you get a full combo.
And then it was like I was getting combos for whiffing
move. So I don't know if they're
trying to protect that from happening again or or what, but
that was kind of like one thing.I was like the Marvel player was
like, why can't I do this? And the Dragon Ball is like you
don't want. This true, true.

(33:18):
OK, that makes sense too. And I think that also helps
streamline the ambiguity of you to assist right?
Because like we were talking about before when and you get
the filler pressure combo assistversus the neutral assist,
right? Like what if you meant to hit
them and get the pressure assist, but then you whiffed you
just barely. You misplace your your M and
then you got your slow ass neutral assist instead and then

(33:40):
you get happy birthday. You know what I mean?
Like. I, I I.
Kind of think that it, it's the best to lead to less ambiguity
with the fact that you don't have full control of what assist
comes out at what time. Like that's to, to make it feel
like, OK, like I, I am for sure getting my combo assist at the
right time and for sure getting my neutral assist at the right

(34:00):
time. So yeah, weird, weird system.
Like it's a, it's a creative idea, but you could argue that
that's, those are restrictions, right?
Like it, it kind of guides you to play the game in a certain
way. I I like what they're trying to
do and like I don't envy people make it fight against.
Making fight against is way too hard, but I I do like what

(34:22):
they're I I like a lot of the ideas and I I like kind of what
they're going for with a lot of the the system mechanics even,
which is like the crossover, like a lot of it is to protect
new players or people getting unblockable actually quick
little story. I watched net impact for the
first time at F2 con because I was waiting for my I was waiting

(34:44):
for my Street Fighter pool. That game looked so jank and I
glad I never played it and it looked a lot of the the issues I
saw because like I have no play tile.
This is like a fish super that just came out and you were just
getting unblockable because you would active tag and then the
other guys dancing on your head while the fish super is going

(35:04):
on. I was like, this is what people
don't want, and I was like, thislooks so bad.
But yeah, I think that's kind ofwhat they're trying to do to
just try to avoid a lot of the that stuff from kind of
happening in like Marvel Toco. Right, Yeah, that's why whenever
you know, we're in like A tag game renaissance right now.
And with all these different titles coming out for tag
fighters, and I feel like they're the hardest to make work

(35:28):
in a in a esports friendly sense, because so many of the
best tag fighters of all time have either been free for all
happy accidents, which is like the Marvel series, or they've
been designed very intentionally.
And I'm looking at like DBFZ, right?
Like DBFZ has a very intentionaldesign philosophy behind it and

(35:52):
it shows. Like you could argue from a
Marvel player perspective, like this game feels a little, a
little. Limited compared to yeah.
The movement is great. Like there's there's definitely
elements of freedom to it that are not present in other titles.
But in terms of like traditionaltag mechanics, it's a little
streamlined and like, you know, you call your assist at the

(36:13):
certain times it comes out, you're not going to be, they had
snapback meta for a while, but they're like, let's tone that
down. Let's add some cross up
protection. You know, they started to kind
of negate the traditional degenerate strategies that
develop for tag fighters, which is part of the fun but also part
of the curse. Because if you don't manage that
well, if you're trying to make this a title that people play

(36:33):
for a long time, you either haveto capture lightning in a bottle
with, like, Marvel two and three, or you gotta be, like,
really careful about what you'recrafting.
Yeah. So I think this game is
definitely going down the more careful strategy, which for some
players, they're not big fans of, they get bored and I I envy

(36:53):
them. Like I, I hope to one day
achieve that level of enlightenment with tag fighters
to get bored because I'm, I'm not there yet.
And I, I guess that would be like what a player looking more
for two XKO would want, because two XKO debate is about to come
out. And I think 2 XKO offers a lot
more freedom in that sense. But funny enough, even you

(37:14):
mentioned right, didn't didn't 2XKO nerf just recently that same
unblockable strategy that we sawin Marvel talk on?
Apparently they reverted it backbecause I saw like a list of
passion notes that were supposedto go with the game that's
supposed to come out tomorrow. But yeah, they reverted it back.
So they're like ha ha, idiots. Welcome back to welcome back to

(37:36):
Handshake and getting mixed up stupid.
So I don't know. I don't know what they're doing.
Yeah, 2. XCL definitely wants you know,
it's an FGC LED team and they want to lean into as much of
that freedom as possible and have that depth while also
trying to keep it free to play casual fragilely.
They're towing a really tough line.

(37:58):
I would love like I got to address I don't know if you saw
it on people were a little pissed off at us me specifically
for that that last two segment I.
I, I, I saw it. It's like, you know, you know,
it felt good to be on the opposite side because I get
attacked for a lot of my s s 60 and now you were getting
attacked for the two SKL takes. I was like, huh, this is what it
feels. Like my point with that was not

(38:18):
to rag on 2 XKO. My point was to report with my
impartial reporting, my unbiasedreporting as always on
development in the community. But yeah, I just for people who
only listen to podcasts, I actually really want 2 XKO to
succeed and I'm going to be playing the beta coming up after
this. I feel like they have a really
hard job though, right? Like I'm very curious how this

(38:40):
will develop. But I do think it offers a lot
more flexibility in the actual mechanics in the systems
compared to a game like Marvel Token.
Absolutely. So if you're someone who is
looking at Marvel Token and feeling and it's a little
restrictive, 2 XKO is probably going to be more your flavor of
tag fighter. Oh, it's Speaking of.
Yeah, that's coming out. We didn't even talk about that.
You have any plans for playing the beta?

(39:00):
I'm going to be hopping on playing for the time being.
I mean, I'm going to be playing,obviously.
I like I said I enjoyed the I enjoyed playing Alawi and
already in the beginning. So I I'm curious who the last
character is. I definitely want to try
Blitzcrank. Blitzcrank looks sick but I want
to see who the last character is.
I'm assuming it's going to be a league fan favorite like Lux.

(39:24):
And I know you don't know who Lux is, but.
Why? Why can't be out here, Adam, I'm
going to say. Her nod and smile.
You're not going to call me out,but I'm.
Assuming the character's going to be a fan favorite like Lux,
so maybe Lux will be Joan tomorrow or whoever.
But yeah, I'm, I'm curious. I, I want to try it, I hope.
I'm curious what the tournament standard's going to be.

(39:45):
I hope it's the two on actual two on two and not, you know,
one guy playing by himself because I think 2:00 on 2
tournaments would be very sick and very different.
Do you think they'll you think we could potentially go down
like the smash route of adding singles and two V2 cross Tekken?
What the? Yeah, Cross Tekken, cross.

(40:06):
Tekken How many tournaments? 4 cross Tekken?
Did they actually? Run 2V2 and singles it was 2V2
training, infiltration and laughI think won the last evo that
was tag and I think that was thelast one they had.
I want to say it was 2012 and 2013, but they are EVO champions
and duo and I think they played Combo Fiend and Mike Ross grand

(40:28):
finals. I don't remember.
Yeah, yeah, I remember that. That's the last.
Time I think we had either combofiend or Mike Ross and Evo grand
finals. It was really like the the end
of a generation there with that one.
But yeah, I I don't think we ever the two V2 for Street
Fighter cross Tekken and evo felt a little forced.
I'm if I'm going to be honest, Ithink that that was the new

(40:48):
system and they wanted to make it happen, but he immediately
went to singles after that and then the game unceremoniously
died very soon after. That game had a tragic life.
It just never really took off off the ground with, you know,
the whole DLC on disc controversy, gems, timeouts.
There's a lot of problems that play that game and it's
lifespan. But in the smash community, they

(41:10):
do singles and duo's double S, they call it at older events,
but they're, you know, they're Smash only event.
So they have the capacity to do that right.
They're not running a ton of different variety of games at
one tournament and a bunch of side tournaments.
No, it's like you have the the the Smash titles only and then
you have the singles and the double S, right?

(41:31):
So it it makes sense logistically for them to support
it. Do you think we'll have a world
where we end up having both singles and double s for
brackets at major fighting in tournaments?
It depends. I don't know how big 2X KO is
going to be if like Riot host their own events, obviously they

(41:51):
could like if I don't know if there's a League of Legends
world's going on and like to open it is a 2X KO tournament,
then yeah, sure, I could definitely see that kind of
stuff happening. But if it's a FGC event and 2X
KO got to run singles and doublebut also Tekken got to happen
and you know Grand Blue got to happen, then I don't think

(42:14):
you'll logistically have enough time you.
Think it'll be relegated to community side tournaments.
I think they'll have it. The the duos tournament, I think
it'll probably be more side. So which one do you think will
be the main singles? Right.
It's gotta, it's gotta be singles.
It's. Gotta.
I think culturally we're not ready for two V2 to be the main
thing. I think duos is a cool idea, and

(42:36):
I think duos would probably get a decent amount of people into
the game to be honest if they have a friend teaching though.
For sure. I think that's one of the things
I'm most excited about. And just to touch on your point
about the tournaments, just to be clear, I do think you know
the the dev team is a ton of folks from the FGC, right?
This is an FGC LED team. So they're very much they've
been vocal about like integrating with the community,

(42:58):
not like pulling these out to only their own events.
So I think the plan is to have two X go to XKO run at like
Aceo, comma breaker Evo. Like that's kind of the vision
right now. There hasn't been any discussion
of like, hey, let's pluck this out of this and put into its own
pro tour and its own separate events.
So for now, it's mostly focused on community events.

(43:18):
Riot does their own event, so like, it's a Riot game.
It's got to be there. It's still a Riot game.
Maybe, yeah, maybe it'll add it on there.
But I, I, I guess what I'm saying is it's not the only Ave.
they're they're looking at it for sure.
There's been a lot of discussionnow, like bringing this to
community run events. So there'll be some discretion
for the community to decide whatthey want to run, right.

(43:40):
But yeah, maybe at a riot eventswill have more flexibility or
more focus on doing something like that.
But I do agree my my most anticipated feature for two XKO
is the two V2 with the what is it called?
It's not the backpack fuse. That's what I'm calling it.
It's. I, I, I I call it the what?
What is the? Name of it?

(44:00):
I'm forgetting the name. I I don't, I don't remember the
name, but I was, I always calledit the yeah, the backpack fuse.
Are I, I I've been calling it the, the, the E girl fuse.
That's what I call. Oh got it, I got it.
It's a sidekick fuse. All right.
The fuse is called the sidekick fuse.
We couldn't remember the name for a second there, but in the
sidekick fuse, the assist cannotbe KOD or tagged to you and has

(44:23):
unique tools to help out the point.
Great pick if your duo's new to the game, since it allows them
to impact gameplay without having to actually carry.
So literally you're the sidekick.
You're you're in the backpack being carried and you can't die
and all you do is really call the assist and there might be
some other subtle mechanics there that the fuse description
is hinting out. That's what I'm excited for.
So item, you going to you going to carry?

(44:44):
You're going to put me in the backpack and carry?
You're going to have to be a good assist character.
You're not even going to have anoption.
I I just need the best assist because Ari had when I was
playing I, I got my brother to play with me, but I told him
just to pick Ari so you could dothe best assist for me.
And I just played it and I was like, you know, pick the
assistant, I'm thinking. Bron, no matter what, I'm sorry

(45:04):
and you're. Going to have to.
Carry no matter what, but I think that's a great mechanic.
I think that is like ripe for community engagement, like
getting your friends into it andalso even like content like I'm
already like predicting that because, you know, I'm kind of
asked of these games. I do want to get better, but I
think that's funny. I think it'd be super funny to
hop on a stream and just pick the sidekick fuse and just like,

(45:26):
you know, make your time difficult while I'm just calling
bullshit assist, right. So I think that's a really good
idea and you can even get other content creators like that's a
really smart mechanic, because Idon't think that's a
competitively viable fuse. It's not like you're not going
to win EVO 2V2 with someone doing a psychic fuse unless they
do something to make it broken. I don't know.
Yeah, you don't know. You don't know how good Psychic

(45:49):
Fuse might be. That might be the first evil.
Somebody wins, but they don't even have to play the game.
Yo that'd be so funny and some fucking random E celeb ends up
doing the sidekick fuse and justgets carried all the way.
Sonic Fox. Plus I don't know some streamer.
It just gets. Carried that'd be so sick.
So yeah, maybe I don't know, like to me that's the most

(46:11):
anticipated mechanically. I like the fact that two XKO has
that type of unique perspective with it because every other
fighting game is so hardcore andI think this game is actually
really intimidating in that sense.
It's supposed to be the free to play, more friendly game, but I
feel like yeah, compared to likea Marvel token, it is harder for

(46:32):
sure. It's a more difficult game.
So like I said before, they're trying to toe that line.
Real expressive depth and a lot to chew on for the hardcore
player base, but also having these more fun loadouts and and
mechanics to ease people into the game.
So I'm curious if this will likereally succeed.
I wanted to I wanted to but be checking it out.

(46:54):
I don't know if you have any final thoughts on 2 XKO.
I, I mean, I, I hope the game does well.
I, I'm assuming the game's goingto do well because they have a
lot of, you know, excellent FGC,mind you know, working on the
game and it, it sucks seeing fighting games die like DNF
duel, but it's, it sucks seeing fighting games too bad.

(47:18):
And like you want every fightinggame to do good.
So I hope 2 SKO has a a good launch and a lot of people play
it because I had fun playing it.Yeah.
Well, it's, I guess it's gettingused to this different paradigm
because I guess it is kind of launching, right.
Like I don't feel like it's releasing right now and it's
still a limited audience and they will be adding waves.

(47:39):
I think the idea is they keep adding waves of people to the
beta to like keep building up the player base over time before
it becomes officially released. But do we consider this like a
release almost? Is that what we're supposed to
think of it as? To me, it's like a Season 0.
So like a lot of games do season0 and they're like, oh, it's
early access or this isn't the full game, but it's, it's the

(48:01):
full game. Like it's it's kind of an excuse
to be like, oh, this might be messed up, but haha, it's not
the full game yet. So we could fix it versus if
this was the full game and this is broken.
Wait a minute, this game is terrible Refund.
Well, I gave a refund to SKL actually, but you would you

(48:22):
would probably just uninstall itLike this is the full game.
This is what they're doing. No, I'm not playing this.
No, I think it's kind of season zeros are just kind of safe.
Like Tolerant did a season 0, Rivals did a season 0.
It's just it's a safe thing to do now, dude.
I see I see so they're taking the standard playbook for the
the free to play game here. So yeah, we'll be hopping on it.

(48:43):
I'll be getting my ass beat for a while.
Hopefully Idom you'll carry me alittle bit with the sidekick
fuse and yeah, really big time in the FTC for tag fighters.
I'm really hoping to get some training with time and and
marvel token soon. I I I need redemption from that
bait out. I was getting beat up too much.
I need. To do it when I don't know when
the next Toe Con beta is going to be.
I was so surprised we got this beta now because I feel, I still

(49:06):
feel like that game's not comingout till like next year, October
or November I feel like. I, I think from the
communication, I recall it's expected to be a while.
Yeah, but I think they're doing it right, man.
I, I think that was the main critique I had and a lot of the
community had with 2X KO is there's a fine line to tow with
transparency and communication. And I think 2X KO was too

(49:30):
transparent upfront and that ledto definitely some people
getting turned off in the game because they, they basically got
off the hype train. But I do see a path forward for
2X KO as a slow burn, momentum building product.
I think that's the angle they'regoing for.
I just hope it continues to build that momentum over time,
right? Because it I think our initial

(49:51):
interpretation or our initial vision for this game was it was
going to be just like a bomb dropped on the FGC like Boom 2
XKO is here. We're.
All fucking E sports. We're all going to be
millionaires playing for Riot full time, you know what I mean?
That was kind of the vision at the time this was announced, and
that's clearly not what it's becoming.
So I think it's going to be moreof a slow bird trying to build

(50:11):
audience over time. So I'm I'm looking forward to
it. I hope it I hope it pulls it
off. It's a completely different type
of product release backing developer.
Like everything about it is so foreign to the FGC that I'm just
curious how this experiments going to pan out.
That's my my biggest thing. And then the game.

(50:32):
I hope it's good. I'm I'm looking forward to some
exciting moments. Another tag fighter in the
spotlight. Hopefully a lot of crossover
from different communities, likea DBFZ era.
I think those are super exciting.
Even if I don't partake heavily in competing in it, I love
watching those types of games and seeing all the the crossover
talent. It's always a really exciting
time in the FTC. So 2 XKL it's going to be fun.

(50:55):
That said, back to Street Fighter, I do want to touch on
Goichi and the Japan World warrior #1 before we wrap this
show up. We were hyping up this
tournament because it was the largest ever online tournament
for the FTC 2357 entrance for the final number, which is more
than the biggest EVO for Street Fighter 4 back in 2015, which

(51:18):
had 2000 entrance. So massive, massive, massive
tournament. And in the end, the champion was
Goichi with his Chun Li. And funny enough, a lot of
people were talking about Chun Li being kind of wack.
I saw some buzz about Chun Li being a bad character right
before this tournament concluded.

(51:38):
And Japan always rated Chun Li pretty high.
And I think a big part of that is due to this guy right here,
Goichi. But what a run from him.
Dude, he's been on such a tear lately.
I he like he played probably like the most most perfect
Street Fighter six you could play with Chun Li, I would like

(52:01):
to say, but he also one thing I think Oici is really good at is
like he doesn't want to engage unless he's at an advantage.
Like he'll like throw a lot of fireballs because Chun's
fireballs obviously really good.But then it's still I'm going to
pick my spots going to walk up jab because Chun Li's jab is a

(52:22):
sword for some reason. And you know, engage with low
forward drive rush and you know,just take my take my chance.
If, if the if I get off and started, great.
If not back up back to neutral. No more fireballs.
Same thing like rinse and repeat.
And it's like a very non committable way to play which
probably leads to a lot of Koichi consistency.

(52:46):
Yeah. And I think it's also like a
meter battery, right? Like he always is managing his
drive gauge. And Tony is really good at that
because like you mentioned her fireball, it's so good for
stalling because the way that fireball controls the screen,
the recovery is super fast. It's slower on startup, but like
you're going to get anti aired. Like if you jump at it, you're
for sure getting anti aired. You you can take this space like

(53:06):
she backs up and and and puts herself into the corner.
So that's really like your only recourse.
I feel like against that fireball, it's a very difficult
fireball to punish with traditional anti fireball moves,
unless you have like a really far forward moving invincible
super like you're not going to really effectively for a lot of
characters just do like an anti fireball move against it.

(53:27):
I feel like with the the way it the the slow start up and fast
recovery operates, generally those types of fireballs are
hard to get around. So yeah, I agree that he's kind
of like cracked the code a little bit.
And that's what we've been seeing.
I think in season 3 is a lot of the highest tier of players are
starting to pull away. They're starting to crack that

(53:47):
code of having like the ultimateconsistency, which was the big
talking point and criticism of Street Fighter sticks leading up
to this, this moment. It's still a little bit of chaos
right below that, right? Like like second to top 64 is
like, dude, you never know, especially this tournament,
right? Like if you look at the results,
I do want to touch on Dogra. Got second at this with Elena.

(54:11):
I that that that to me is the crazy.
That's more crazy. Second one Elena and everyone
says Elena's, you know so bad. Elena's trash.
Bottom 5 S 2nd 1 Elena is crazy.I did hear you did play a bit of
bison. But yeah, it was primarily
Elena. And second one, Elena's nothing
to scoff at. Yeah, I think he played Bison

(54:31):
for Goichi, but the rest of it was Elena.
So even in the top eight, he he he lost to Yanay with the Elena
pick against his Bison. And then through losers, he
played Elena. And then against Goichi, he
tried the Elena. It didn't work out.
Then he pushed a Bison, got a game within law.
So it was like primarily all Elena until the very end.

(54:53):
He tried a Bison. That's crazy, man.
People, yeah, people mostly wrote this character off.
And I felt that way too, right? I, I played her for a while on
release and it felt like she wasn't built for the current
meta. Often times we see with DLC
characters, we feel like we're getting a preview into the
direction of the game to come. And both Elena and Sagat have

(55:14):
this direction where it's like they don't have meterless throw
loops. You have to drive rush to throw
loop and they don't have low fordrive rush, right?
They, they feel like they reset to neutral a little bit more
often than a lot of characters and then have other unique
mechanics to keep their offense going.
Elena has the role and then Sagat has his tiger knee.
That's kind of like his whole structure, right?

(55:36):
So I felt Elena was really awkward.
I think she had strengths. I think you're crouching medium
punch, like the compensate what they're doing with these
characters. They they give them amazing
crouching medium punch Dr. rushes.
That's been the the compensation.
Both Sagat and Elena have that that far range crouching medium
punch drivers cancel, which can true string on a drive rush into
another medium where normally you can't go into a medium

(55:58):
button on block from a low four drive rush.
There would be a gap there. These characters have that.
So that seems to be like the design philosophy with both of
them. And most people want the
character off. And I respect Dogra, man, I kind
of wrote Dogra off. I'm not going to lie, man, I
haven't I haven't seen him cook in a while with not just Elena,
but Dogra, right? Like have you seen Dogra in a

(56:20):
tournament this big in a grand finals position in since Street
Fighter six? He he's had some good results
here and there, but this is huge.
He was close to qualifying for EWC, if I remember, I think like
13th or 9th or something. But he was fairly close during
EWC. But I also think, I mean, I, I,

(56:43):
I don't want to say he had one of those days, but I mean, he's
grinding Atlanta. So I, I don't even know what to
really, really say about that. Maybe he he learned something in
the past two weeks. I don't know.
Yeah. I don't think he's been on the
come up. I do agree that you bring up a
good point with him getting close to qualifying through the
LCQ right at EWC. He, he had a really deep run and

(57:04):
he just had to crack that top 8 and he got really close to
making it in there. And he also went to, I believe
it was CEO before that and he didn't have the greatest run
there from what I recall. But you know, he was, he was
showing up, right? So CEO, he got top 64, Evo, he
got top 48, LCQ for EWC he got top 16 and now he got second.

(57:27):
So he's consistently fighting with his Elena and it's been
like a slow come up and it's working now, which is really
interesting to see because he hasn't been dominating in in
Street Fighter 6. For a guy like Dogro, who's been
a world class champion across multiple titles for forever now,
and OG in the scene, it's cool to see him kind of find a

(57:49):
character he's clicking with anddoing something unique to get
this far. Yeah, I, I, I want to also point
out that with that top eight, there were actually, there were
no Mys in that top eight. There were no Mys, no akumas
either. Yeah, interesting kind of
characters. Yeah.
So kind of kind of going back like everyone's complaining

(58:11):
about Maya and Akuma. I want a big work but.
Me too, man, me too. Man, but who's not?
I mean I'm I'm complaining aboutmy and akuma too.
What do I even say? But yeah.
Bison, Hold on, hold on, hold on.
Character right there. Big Bird was M Bison and this
top eight had two A1 in. A4 Bird.
Bisons OK there was M Bison and also all the my's were in top

(58:33):
32. They all lost before top.
Eight yeah, the character's not unbeatable.
She's annoying, but she's not unbeatable.
But I, I, I will also say it's just, there's no I, there's no
bad character in this game in myopinion, except for like Lily,
there really isn't. And Lily is not even.
There's no back there. Lily is bad, but I also think

(58:55):
Lily's is badly designed. Like even if she was.
Going to be bad. I agree it's it's a universal
mechanic game for the most part,and it it's very closely tied in
power levels. I, I do still think that, you
know, I, I my to me is still thebest character.
I still think there's there's characters that are cut above,
but we've seen these level of surprise results happen here and

(59:17):
there. It shouldn't be surprising to be
surprised, right? I guess is what Yeah, you should
really take away from this. Tashi Kao was was in that topic
with Manon also, Tashi Kao has been doing amazing with Manon in
these past couple of tournamentsas well.
Are you feeling inspired item? What's going on here?
Tashi Kao was doing Thunder a little bit.
What's going on? I mean, he's playing good.
I would have won F2 Con if they had the swimsuit outfits on the

(59:39):
console. I'm just saying that's that's
the problem. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was.
Actually I mean all men on players so it would be nerf but
I think Tashka would have struggled too right?
I. Mean yeah, exactly.
That's that's just how totem hiswork.
It's anti men on bias right there.
We got to get that result from the FGC.
But I just want to touch on the full top 8 here.
Yeah, Kobeon with his Zengeef in7th and Haitani.

(01:00:01):
The streamer, retired pro player, streamer, team owner or
I, I don't know if he's the owner of team reject or like a
big like manager of that. But you know, he's moved into
the community community role where he's not technically a pro
player and he's more of a consecrator streamer, but he's
still there. And top eight with Chum Lee, by

(01:00:22):
the way, 2 Chum Lee's in that top 8.
She's pretty. Good one of the five gods and
yeah, Chun Li is pretty good. I I did see I I wanted to bring
this up too, because I did see safe talking about how Guici
guici and Xiaohai are also doingreally well in you know, Street
Fighter 6 and fatal fury. But I think one thing that is

(01:00:46):
funny to see they're both playing characters.
I feel like that are not really interacting with the game across
both games. And these are both very high
damaging games as well. Like mine's not really
interacting with you. Like mine's probably the closest
character that's interacting with you across all the four
characters that they pick in both game.

(01:01:07):
Chun's just, you know, Fireball,Fireball low for driver is kind
of like stay away from me. I don't want to get I don't want
to eat 60% combo. And you know, Kine and Billy are
just, you know, stay away from me.
So the the best thing to do is not engage with the game a lot
of the time if you think. Well, it's more of like engage
in your terms because I, I wouldsay not engaged would be pure

(01:01:29):
zoning the entire time, right. But it sounds like, like we
mentioned before, like being like a battery to build up your
resources to then engage when it's going to lead to a high
reward with like a low for drivers confirm and then control
the pace when you're not in an advantageous position to
minimize our chances of getting their momentum going.
So yeah, I guess if you could snap your fingers and optimize

(01:01:49):
to the highest level, any character or play style that
might be the play style. Is that the meta?
Is that like the the peak of themountain?
It's it's very hard to get there.
It's not like you're going to pick up Chumley overnight and be
able to do that because you haveto really.
Chumley's a technical character.She's not easy to master.
But I think that's why a lot of people say she's bad because I
think she's one of the harder characters to play in this game.

(01:02:11):
But clearly there's some kind ofreward there, like maybe the
juice is worth the squeeze if you if you go down the rabbit
hole far enough. But I do want to touch on the
other people on topic. You mentioned Tashikawa 5th
place again with Manon doing a lot of work recently and then
also Typer 5th. Excuse me if I mispronounce the
name Satoru out of Japan of course playing Rashid. 16 or 17

(01:02:34):
years old, apparently born in 2008.
We have another young player on the come up just maybe a year
older than Blahs out of Chile. Not an actual O 9 or a 2000
eighter here, but I guess in in Japan it would be an O eighter
right? In America we say O 9 but in
Japan Street Fighter 4 came out in the arcades in O 8.
So he's an O eighter in Japan. Born when Street Fighter 4 was

(01:02:57):
released in top 8IN Japan with Rasheed.
So keep a eye out for that name.He might be the new young
prodigy to look on out for kingsVega with his Blanca and 4th.
He's been doing a lot of work recently too.
He was traveling the world trying to take names here and
there. And this is like his best
placement. I feel like in this level of
competition. So he's been on the the come up

(01:03:17):
this year and I also been reallyconsistent in Japan in 3rd place
and then Dogroad second, Goichi in first.
So diverse top 8 interesting results.
And aside from the takeaways from Top 8A, big part of this,
what I heard is that in Japan. Raw DI is the meta.
That's the other thing people were using a lot of a lot of raw
DI. I'm, I'm glad I could inspire

(01:03:40):
the Japanese player base and, you know, show them that raw DI
is actually the way I I've from what I've seen over there,
though, a lot of their best players are on the older side,
so they're actually having trouble reacting to DII saw Mago
even make a tweet about him having trouble reacting to DI.
Maybe it's just an old man thing, I don't know.

(01:04:01):
You just get out of it as soon as you pass like 35 but.
You think that's really the Meadow?
You think that's really what's going on?
Yeah, if you're over 35, are youreally going to react to DI?
Once again, to me, I don't thinkit's, I don't think it's their
reaction slowing down. I just think younger players,
once again, I think your brain, it slows down the ability to

(01:04:22):
adapt over time. And I think younger players are
just molding their brain to queue into DI.
So I think raw reaction times, Idon't think that's the downside
for the older players. I just think it's the
situational awareness to be molded to look for DI in all
these situations that that's my take on it.
But a lot of the. These players have been looking
for solutions to DI. You don't think they're looking

(01:04:44):
for DI, which is why they're getting hit by DI.
They're you're thinking like they're kind of playing like a,
a Street Fighter four or five, like, oh, nothing's going to
kill me from this far. Oh shit, what's this new
mechanic that came out of nowhere?
Yeah, I I would argue I could bewrong, but I would argue it's
the manipulation of their mentalstack.
Like they're not prioritizing DIin the right situations is what

(01:05:06):
I recently underwent have changed with this in my own play
style where I was in a lot of situations where I was like,
dude, I need to just stop looking for other things and
look for DI, which is funny enough, I think I was doing that
in the beginning of Street Fighter six.
And then I stopped doing it because I think everyone there
was a meta shift in the community where it's like, oh,
people are getting kind of good at stopping DI shouldn't just
throw the game away. And then now it's on the way
back. And my experience was like, wait

(01:05:28):
a minute, I need to go back to like literally just hovering
over the DI button and just staring at the screen.
Like, and, and folks, you can jump at me, you can dash up,
throw me. I'm just going to be staring
there waiting for DI. Do anything you want, but I'm
going to counter that damn DI inthis moment.
And then, of course, the moment I stop looking for it
immediately they DI, right? So I think that that to me is

(01:05:51):
not reactions. That's strategy.
That's my view of that. It's like, yeah, if I was still
in that mindset of looking for it, I would have reacted.
And you, you, I mean, you were being facetious, but you're
really good at using raw DI and you did beat the crap out of
Memochi. And what was the other guy's
name? Yes, at at combo breaker with
raw D is robbing them in the clutch moments.

(01:06:13):
So there is a strategy element there.
Well. Monon actually has the best DI
in the game. But also for me, it's you're not
really thinking about it. Like you're it's kind of like
pocket sand. Like you throw pocket sand.
Nobody's expecting that. So it's kind of like you're not

(01:06:34):
really thinking about it. You're like, OK, you could jump,
he can dash at me, he could drive rush like that.
That's kind of the three things in the back of your mind.
And then it's like, oh shit, what is this 4th mechanic?
And then you get hit. Very true.
Very true. Well, to all the listeners at
home, be careful of pocket sand out there.
Make sure you don't get hit by that.
And we're going to go ahead and wrap up this episode of Extra

(01:06:55):
Trashy. Thank you so much for listening.
We'll catch you guys in the nextone.
Peace. Thank you so much for tuning
into this episode of Extra Trashy.
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(01:07:17):
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