Ultra Street Fighter IV online: 2014.08.07

As much lip service as I pay to the fighting game genre, on this blog I've not yet addressed the topic of my own personal development as a player. This is mainly because my skill level is not yet to the point where a fighting game enthusiast of average or better proficiency would have any interest in watching me practice. A secondary reason would be that I have no way of capturing HD video from my Xbox 360 (long story), and I doubt anyone is interested in watching online matches recorded in crappy composite analog video.

Ultra Street Fighter IV has a built-in upload-to-YouTube function, but it's not ideal. It takes around an hour a three-round match in 720p so it won't be efficient for me to upload a lot of material. But, in the interest of following my progress, I'm considering uploading at least a couple matches a month.

In this first upload, my Blanka pulls out an unlikely third-round win against a top-100 Elena. What I've learned from watching this video is:

• I need to get better at timing my rolling cross-ups (I miss five out of six attempts)
• "Sweep, sweep, overhead" is a mix-up pattern that should have been predictable but I still fell for it
• The same players who don't anticipate Blanka's "River Run" attack apparently can't deal with wake-up Ultra I at close range