OG Street Fighter Legends: Lost History

[Aizen]

As predicted, Alex Valle is very good at Street Figher 5 thus far, but it is still very early in the game's life. But there is an old player from Street Fighter Alpha 3 who played Sodom named Crusher, who gave Diago a great challenge. So besides Alex and Diago, Crusher is another veteran who looks solid in Street Fighter 5 and is able to compete with today's younger players.

 

[Rice N Beans]

Still remember people being skeptical of Jeff and Tomo until Jeff gave Diago a beat down. Solidified his story along with Watson.

I know that Tomo had a leg up with his crazy reaction time. Don't think he'd be as successful without it.

 

[Aizen]

^ I remember Valle saying Jeff was a "mechanical player" but a very good one. Since Mike Watson, Valle and Tomo got most of the credit, many people forgot about Jeff. But his old method of practicing, while very tedious works well: take every single character in the game and working with a friend, press each button in each circumstance and see what happens. From doing that enough, you'll have an idea what to do in each scenario.

Tomo could apparently dragon punch most moves on sight, even quick special moves like a Blanka ball from almost point-blank range. That's really crazy because most people simply block the move and take chip damage in those instances. But Tomo used his reflexes to make hard, risky counters. The whole "psychic dragon punch" of the OG generation is called the "YOLO dragon punch" today. People back then believed great reflexes combined with great instincts could counter anything (and thus isn't a "YOLO" move at all, like some guys on the streams say whenever a person makes an intuitive but risky move).

 

[Aizen]

Tomo Ohira literally took Guile's advice to heart: "Go home and be a family man." The YouTube channel "Great Big Story" caught up with Tomo and of course, his contemporaries Jeff Schaefer and Mike Watson are featured in this video. Tomo is a father of 2 year old twins, says when they get older he'll put a controller in their hands to see what they can do and has no regrets with leaving Street Fighter when he did (says he'd do it all over again). Perhaps if Tomo was a current player in today's era of sponsors, vast international competition and more money, he'd have stuck around longer.

 

[~*--------(Big Boom)]

ALways wanted to play against tomo

 

[Aizen]

^ Me too. I'd love to play the original players in long sets.

If EVO could ever make a one-time, special "Legends Tournament," that would give many people a shot at guys like Jeff Schaefer or Tomo or anybody else who could attend. Having a full-blown Legends or Seniors Tour probably wouldn't work but a one-time, go-for-broke type of event would be fun.

Over on Event Hubs, there were two comments by a user named BurningKY which I found very interesting.

This guy was the player who when I heard about him made me want to play SF2 at the highest level that I possibly could at that time, during that era.

People really, Really forget just how Dominant Tomo really was in SFII during the World Warrior-Hyper Fighting and into the Super Era.

The Only real legitimate stretch of dominance in a fighting game that you could compare to Tomo during his reign was Justin Wong in MvC2 from 2001-2004 to where he literally went Undefeated within that entire span.

I still remember Mike Watson posting on SRK about how Tomo would dominate Watsons CE. Bison with Ryu in a 100 set match, 80-20.

This is made even more impressive when you consider the fact that CE. Bison is arguably the most overpowered legal tournament SF character of all time.

CE. Bison would make characters like 2I Ibuki, 3S Chun/Yun, ST. Sim, O. Sagat, ST. Claw, or for more recent players like Vanilla AE Yun look as though they were respectively balanced.

Still to this day, I can't even imagine how someone could use Ryu and not just win, but destroy CE. Bison that convincingly.

Tomo also just didn't mop Watson's Bison up back in the CE days, he dominated the tournaments with Ryu/Guile in a game that was filled with Bison players.

There's a reason why many times you'll see people posting "The Legend" in between his Tomo's name, in the same many will say Daigo "The Beast" Umehara.

I 100% Agree with you.

Listening to some of the things people stated about him, is absolutely mind-boggling. People should remember that Jeff put a number on Daigo back in the mid-2000s in HSF2, and I understand that this ver. of SF2 was very different from any other incarnate, however this was Daigo in his SF2 prime, in which one could say that he was arguably Top-5 in ST or better.

Yet, Daigo was mauled multiple times by Jeff, to the point that even Daigos strongest characters had perfects scored on them by Jeff.

This is made more impressive that Jeff up to this time had not played in competition for 10 years and was completely out of shape in the game of SF2, however he was shown not only to be capable of competing with Daigo, but literally having rounds where he would straight up destroy the Beast.

Jeff is the same guy whom has stated, over and over again, that during his absolute Prime, he couldn't even get a Single Round off of Tomo.

Another reason why he quit SF (of course he found out about girls, doing other things etc, and losing his drive to continue playing) was where the game was going.

He has made a mention (Tomo, Jeff have talked about there dislike of ST, along with Mike Watson) that he did Not like the Supers in ST. Supers having the capability to depleting half of your life with little risk, and skewered the concepts of leading with a life and controlling the match up, etc, etc.

Regardless, his legacy during the WW-HF and partially into the Super Era is a 3-4 year gap that I once again say is practically unmatched by any other fighting gamer, say once again possibly Justin Wong's Dominance in MvC2 during the 2001-2004 in which he went Undefeated at every single tournament he went to, including capturing 4 straight Evo Championships in that game.

However, Justin during the MvC2 days of his dominance showed signs of struggle with amazing comebacks, while Tomo during his Peak seemed to have literally no equal to even come close to dominating him in any fashion.

Oh yeah, James Chen also talked about how in One SF2 Tournament, Tomo decided during the tournament that against his next opponent he would use only ONE BUTTON, and with that, he completely and utterly destroyed his Opponent doing so with Guile.

That is Straight up Legit, and complete Savagery right there.

Tomo definitely is the Greatest SFII player from the WW-HF era.

 

[Aizen]

Mike Watson on the Twitter handle @SuperDojo has really advanced his arcade. Some people lost patience, thinking the project was hopeless but they kept working hard. Once the venue is streaming Street Fighter tournaments again, I'm sure some of Street Fighter's original history will be discussed on the streams. Some of the older players might come back every once in a while for the new and improved Super Arcade.