For those of you who have looked in my collection, you've probably noticed that I have several import games on my PS2. They're all fighting games and they're only available in Japan. I love fighting games more than other genre so I decided it would be worth to invest the money on imports. If any of you are interested in importign games, if you need any help on how to play the games, which games are worth importing, where to buy, etc, PM me and I'll be glad to help. If you like fighting games as much as I do you definitely should get a PS2 and import Japanese games.

For those of you looking for fighting game videos (combos/matches/tutorials/etc) I can point you to good sites with lots of videos. Also, you can go to my YouTube page: www.youtube.com/user/FS7kills/ go in the favorites section and you'll find a whole bunch of fighting game videos that I bookmarked (as well as a whole bunch of metal music videos, a bonus, if you will).

As for tips/strats/help with fighting games, I almost never post here on GS anymore so if you need something, PM me and I'll try to help you or at least point you to a website where you can get help. I can give you a whole list of websites for all kinds of fighting games (which usually have strats as well as videos of fighting games). My main games are CvS2 & 3S but I also have a basic knowledge of several other 2D-fighters.

I don't come here on GS very often but if any of you need help with something feel free to PM. If you have a MySpace or a Shoryuken account, those would be the best places to find me.

I'm not writing blog entries on GameSpot anymore (I don't feel like writing blog entries in several different places).
For my newest blog entries go here.

After several months without buying any games, I've started buying games again.

In the past couple of weeks I got the Korean version of MvC2 (PS2) and I sold the American version I had of MvC2 (which was a nice deal, BTW, I got a nice profit out of it). I also got NeoGeo Battle Coliseum (PS2-JPN). I was lucky and I ended up getting for $20 cheaper than the regular price (this is a Japanese import and it's really hard to find imports for a low price).

In the past couple of days I order Samurai Shodown V (Xbox-US) and Guilty Gear XX Slash (PS2-JPN). Hopefully those games will be in my mailbox sometime next week. I'm planning on buying King of Fighters NeoWave (Xbox-US) sometime soon. I'm also considering buying Burnout 3 (Xbox-US) and Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal (PS2-US) as well as some other import fighting games sometime soon but I'll have to give some thought before buying those.

College classes will be over in a couple of weeks so I should have plenty of time to play all those games then.

Check out my page on MySpace.

Here are the links to pics of my modded SFAE arcade sticks:

The first stick I got. Happ competition buttons, Happ competition joystick.

http://www.geocities.com/fsgamer/SFL04.jpg

The second stick I got. Happ competition buttons, Happ competition joystick w/ hard spring.

http://www.geocities.com/fsgamer/SFH03.jpg

A shot of both sticks side by side.

http://www.geocities.com/fsgamer/SFsticks01.jpg

If anyone is wondering if they should buy the SFAE stick, I recommend it, specially if you mod it w/ Happ parts (that's the closest you'll get to a custom stick for a decent price).

I'm back on XBL. Unfortunately, the connection isn't as good as it was before. Because of that, the only game I'm playing regularly online is KOF2003 (SFAC, CFE, CvS2, all get laggy connections).

If you have KOF2003, let's get some matches going (Expect a lot of matches against Iori).
GT: CheapTactics

I've never had so much fun with games like I had in the past two months. The reason for that is that two months ago I got Xbox Live. As many of you know, 2D-fighting is my favorite genre; I've loved 2D-fighting since I was a little boy. However, here where I live the very few people that play 2D-fighters are absolutely horrible so, that being said, there is no competition, I'm the best around here (no, I'm not an expert, is just that people around here suck really bad). When I got XBL I finally had the chance to play against people of my level and even against people who were a lot better than me. I lost a lot more matches than I won but still, I had a good time and I learned a lot of stuff about the games, how to counter scrubby tactics and also certain strategies that high level players use.

I'm a university student and I live in the university dorm, which means, cable, phone and internet are all included, all I have to do is to plug in my Xbox and start playing. However, in the past weekend the technology department made the stupidest decision ever: they decided to block XBL in the university network. That means, me and a lot of other people that live in the dorms won't be able to play on XBL anymore. They gave us all of that crap that XBL slows down the network, it puts the network in danger, viruses, etc. Oh yeah, people screw up and the first thing they do is to blame it on games, that's very easy, maybe they should actually do their jobs and find the best way to solve problems instead of just blaming it all on games. This is going to sound silly, but after they put the firewalls and blocked XBL the network actually got a bit slower, I want see who they're going to blame now that XBL is gone.

Anyways, I'm very pissed about all of this. I was having a good time, playing against good players, improving my playing but it's all over at least for now so, here I go again, back to playing against BS CPU characters. For all of those on my XBL friends list, you know who you are, good games, I really enjoyed playing you all, even when I lost. I hope I can get back online sometime soon.

I got my SFAC arcade stick yesterday. I played Third Strike with it for a few hours on XBL and I really like it. Compared to my other stick (Pelican Universal, see previous entries) the SFAC is better. The SFAC uses American button layout while the Pelican uses Japanese button layout but at least for me, that wasn't really a big deal. However, the stick and buttons feel very different. The buttons in the SFAC stick are convex, and both stick and buttons have medium springs instead of soft springs like the Pelican, which give them a more firmer feel.
Don't take me wrong, the Pelican is a pretty good stick considering its price but if you want to get a retail stick and you don't want bother modding it, the SFAC stick would be a better deal.

Here are some pics of the SFAC stick:

A pic of the Pelican stick:

A few pics of both sticks side by side:

I didn't have any trouble pulling of moves with the SFAC, the stick is very responsive but I might mod it with Happ parts for even better results.

Yesterday I spent a good few hours on Xbox Live. I started off with PGR2 and unlike the previous night, this time I didn't finish every race in last; I getting more used to the handling of the cars but I still screw up really bad sometimes.
I played some matches in GGX2#R and I was pretty impressed. The first guy's connection was rated "good" and there was occasional lag here and there but against the other two guys whose connections were rated "excellent" the matches were absolutely lag free. I lost every match for the fist two guys but I won about half of the matches against the last guy (I got to learn to play with somebody other than Sol ASAP). I CvS2, I played a few matches against a few different people and since they were all quite good I lost every match but I got pretty close to winning in several occasions. The connections were better than the previous night but there was still some lag (which totally messed me up sometimes). To end the night I played Third Strike. The first guy I played was really good and he totally kicked my ass. I played against a few other people and I won some matches against the last two guys. Interesting enough, the last two guys were falling for my throw set-ups almost every time. I still have a lot to improve, though.

Even though I lost more than I won I still had a good time. The fact I'm playing against skilled players will definitely help me to improve my play. For anybody willing to play me online just drop me a PM and we'll set up a time.

Yesterday I played on XBL for the first time. The first thing I did was to download stuff for all my games that had content download (which at least for me is a big difference between PS2 and Xbox online). Then I played a few races in PGR2 (and realized how much I suck at the game). I played CvS2 but the lag was so horrible that after a few matches I just gave up on it and went back to PGR2. I played PGR2 for a good 4 hrs (it's extremely uncommon for me to stay up until 3:00AM like I did last night) even though I finished in last in almost every race I still had fun. I got up to level 3 in Kudos points; playing online will be a great way to acumulate Kudos tokens and therefore unlock more cars. I'm definitely playing PGR2 tonight and maybe Rallisport Challenge 2. If I find opponents with a decent connection I might even play some fighting games. Anyways, if anyone wants to play me on XBL PM me telling which games you want to play and we'll set up a time. Just don't kick my ass too hard!