Mikoto - (note first vowel) cheerful feline death machine in human form, from Mai-Hime

Motoko - (first vowel, transposed consonants) Beautiful cyborg spec ops philosopher from Ghost in the Shell

It took me years to start getting them right.

I'm pretty sure the Makoto described in the narrative is this one. :)
http://streetfighter.wikia.com/wiki/Makoto

If you're ever curious enough to pick up SSF4 or youtube pros playing her you'll see why compound fractures is a part of her fighting style :P
______________________________________________________________
"I recognise my failing and will be sure to correct it." -saying of the Vlka Fenryka

Yup, that's the one. (Hence the remark about "dojo girl at large in America".)

As an aside, the mention of a game called Tatsunoko vs. Capcom in that SF Wiki page is a wacky enough image on its own (Tatsunoko Productions having given the world, among other things, Super Science Ninja Team Gatchaman and Hurricane Polymar), but it gave me the mental image of Tsuburaya vs. Capcom, which would be even a whole lot wackier.

--G.
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Oh yes. Very green indeed.

>> "You what?" I asked.
>
>I have this image of Megazone's face with just a flat "What."
>expression right here.

No eyes, just horizontal lines with dots underneath.

>Ironically, again, given the chops he's given in WL, a lot of Raul's
>hammier lines from the cheesetastic movie could become actually
>frightening.
>
>"What's the matter, Gryphon? You came here prepared to face a 'madman'
>and instead you found A GOD?"

"... but for me it was Thursday."

--G.
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Hun. I was thinking more like Inspector Li (aka Jackie Chan) than Chun Li, but good point. That would be more in the universe for it to be Chun Li.

Wicked!
t.

Trigger Argee
trigger_argee@hotmail.com
Manon, Maccadon, Orado, etc.
Denton, never leave home without it.

"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me." - HST

Heh. Jackie's character in the Police Story films is in fact Inspector Chan Ka-kui (or "Kevin Chan", as he's called in the English dubs).

Exactly what Chun-Li's name is has always been a matter of some confusion; it doesn't always appear with the hyphen, for instance, which could mean that "Chun" is her family name and we've just never seen the other half of her given name. On the other hand, if it does have the hyphen in it, then chances are "Chun-li" is her given name and we've never been told what her family name is. (If that interpretation is correct, it's doubly weird that her police nametag in Street Fighter Legends says "CHUN LI". It'd be like an American cop going around with a nametag that says "DAVE". :) The only name I've ever seen attached to her father (also in Legends) is "Dorai", but again, it isn't clear whether that's his family name or his given name.

For example, in the live-action film, she introduces herself as "Chun Li Xiang" at one point, but does that mean "Chun-Li Xiang", in Western order, or "Chun Li-Xiang" (or I guess the more modern romanization would be something more like "Lijiang") in Chinese order? It all gets very confusing if you poke at it too much. I'm pretty far out of my depth when it comes to spelunking the secret depths of Chinese naming conventions.

All that aside, I have to say that on the one hand, the temptation to say that "Kevin" Chan Ka-kui is or was Chun-li's father is very strong. On the other hand, her father's documented fate is a bit at odds with Inspector Chan's dharma. Plus, it's been strongly implied that Jackie Chan is an actual actor in the WL universe - Gryphon mentions having met him in Battle 06 (presumably by way of one of his contacts in the martial arts movie business, either Ken or Fei Long). Mind you, there are actors in real-life Hong Kong, playing cops, who actually were cops first (the guy who plays Tequila's boss in Hard Boiled comes to mind), so it's conceivable that he's both, and the Police Story films in UF are kind of metadocumentary, like Buckaroo Banzai always claims to be. But that's getting awfully precious, I suspect. :)

--G.
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It's possible to have a single given name rather than the more typical two-word deal. So 'Chun Li' is a plausible full name, with 'Chun' as the surname and 'Li' as the sole given name. Or vice-versa. It'd just be somewhat rare.

> It all gets
>very confusing if you poke at it too much. I'm pretty far out of my
>depth when it comes to spelunking the secret depths of Chinese naming
>conventions.

Honestly, this is one of those things that a non-speaker can just relax and let slide. Lots of rules, yes, but there's also exceptions to each. My own name combines two entirely different Romanisation systems in one linguistic trainwreck. It's pretty hard to go wrong when even Chinese parents themselves don't worry about the details.

Well! That would certainly be the simplest way to handle it. :)

>Honestly, this is one of those things that a non-speaker can just
>relax and let slide. Lots of rules, yes, but there's also exceptions
>to each. My own name combines two entirely different Romanisation
>systems in one linguistic trainwreck. It's pretty hard to go wrong
>when even Chinese parents themselves don't worry about the details.

That's good to know. I don't know why, but I've always had kind of a hang-up about the characters I work with having proper names, and Capcom's often a lot more casual about it, particularly in the old days. Almost nobody in Street Fighter II has a fully specified grown-up name, which is why I had to arbitrarily give Zangief a first name (and indeed a middle name, those being of particular importance to Russians, but since he hasn't reappeared yet I haven't had a chance to use it).

Another odd thing about the games' handling of Chun-Li's identity is her specified nationality. She appears, based on various out-of-game materials, to be from Hong Kong, but in the games she's always shown with the flag of the PRC. I realize the distinction could be argued to be academic now, but it certainly wasn't when Street Fighter II came out.

Mind you, I suppose in WL she could be both. If her father was Chan Ka-kui, her mother might well have been Yang Chien-hua (particularly since Inspector Chan's previous girlfriend seems - prudently, I should say, given what happened to her in the first three films - to have dumped him after Police Story 3).

OK, Police Story 3 didn't happen long enough ago for that to work, but it's an amusing image, anyway. :)

--G.
"Just leave it in Hong Kong until 1997..."
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Well, you're a writer. It's understandable you'd want to get things right, particularly when dealing with the unfamiliar. I doubt any of us who read your work complain about that attention to detail.

Besides, in prose storytelling, names are important. They're the primary form of identification. In a fighting game, characterisation really comes from visual stuff like the fighter's appearance, moves, so on. Not so important to Capcom, a lot more important to the, ah, fanfiction author.

>Another odd thing about the games' handling of Chun-Li's identity is
>her specified nationality.

Capcom apparently tends to adopt stuff from third party licensed work and flat out fan creations as eventual Street Fighter canon. Perhaps they never intended the Hong Kong thing, but once someone threw it in, it stuck? Or something.

>Mind you, I suppose in WL she could be both. If her father was
>Chan Ka-kui, her mother might well have been Yang Chien-hua
>(particularly since Inspector Chan's previous girlfriend seems -
>prudently, I should say, given what happened to her in the first three
>films - to have dumped him after Police Story 3).

As a point of interest, Chan and Chun are the exact same Chinese family name. It's only a difference in Romanisation. If 'Chun' is a family name, well...it's quite common for parents and kids to have different Romanisations on their official paperwork. In the past this was due to illiteracy or unfamiliarity with the English language. These days it can happen due to the wonders of bureaucracy. I'm very nearly an example of it myself.

Oddly, while the concept of linking Jackie Chan's Police Story character to Chun-Li amuses me immensely, what I really keep flashing back to is the Street Fighter homage scene in City Hunter (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4Psls1ngwM), which has Jackie in drag as Chun-Li. If that's not proof of a family relationship, I don't know what is.

'course, if Wikipedia's accurate, the official hanzi/kanji used for 'Chun' in 'Chun-Li' isn't a family name but rather a proper given name thing. Mind, I suspect that's more fanon than anything else, even if it's been taken on board by Capcom...and hey, who cares.

Well, that sounds like a better job of cosplay than some of the photos I've seen.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

______________________________________________________________
"I recognise my failing and will be sure to correct it." -saying of the Vlka Fenryka

I'm gonna guess it'd be pretty much along the lines of my own, i.e., MY EYES, MY EYES, THE GOGGLES, THEY DO NOTHING.

--G.
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*grin*

--
Geoff Depew - Darth Mephron
Haberdasher to Androids, Dark Lord of Sith Tech Support.
"And Remember! Google is your Friend!!"

Nah, Charlie's just in that picture because he was there. The home game (as it were) mentioned in that bit was against Blanka; the one on the road was the rematch with Guile (and the reason why Sakura mentions having been to Vegas when she's bragging to her friends - the rematch was at Nellis AFB, because Guile can't exactly host street fights at Groom Lake).

--G.
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I can't help but imagine the inherent irony of non-sanctioned street fights happening on an Air Force base that is at least partially open to the public compared to a top secret facility would have elicited a bit of snark at some point.

"So what happens in Vegas really does stay in Vegas."

"Shut up, Gryphon."

You know what, I may explore this in another Warrior Dawn segment. (It's kind of the dawn of a different warrior, but that's as good a tag as any for the Forum aside pieces, at least right now.)

--G.
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>>just in
>>time to christen it with a party - and a fight. There is a terrific
>>photo of me, Sakura, Charlie Nash, and a very sombreroed Jimmy Blanka on
>>the wall behind the bar down at Tortilla Sam's now.
>
>Blanka. In a Sombrero. *Boggles at that mental image* Hmm, that was
>the fight he hosted at home? Was it the one he won, or lost?

Correction, WL-G won both, as stated in the sentence you quoted.

His current "World Warrior"-level fight card is as follows:

Cammy (Scotland)   - W  (Away)
Zangief (Russia)   - W  (Away)
Ryu (Japan)        - W  (Home)
Ken (USA)          - L  (Home)
Guile (USA)        - L  (Away)
Blanka (Brazil)    - W  (Home)
Guile (USA)        - W  (Away)
El Fuerte (Mexico) - W  (Away)

Putting his current World Warrior W/L percentage at : .75

(Or something like that, anyway).

And as an aside, Sakura's current "World Warrior" fight card is thus:

El Fuego (Mexico)  - W  (Away)

How long her winning streak will last is anybody's guess!

>>(Sgt. Janet Marshall got that call. She was... amused.)
>
>*snicker* I take it she's familiar with both G and his profession
>from past encounters then?

Yes, she occasionally referee's WL-G's fights at Bancroft Tower when the weather's nice and she's off-duty (See: WL-Battle3 - Rapproachment).

	Philip J. Moyer Contributing Writer, Editor and Artist (and Moderator) -- Eyrie Productions, Unlimited CEO of MTS, High Poobah Of Artwork, and High Priest Of the Church Of Aerianne -- Magnetic Terrapin Studios "Insert Pithy Comment Here"

Cammy (Scotland)   - W  (Away) 
>Zangief (Russia)   - W  (Away) 
>Ryu (Japan)        - W  (Home) 
>Ken (USA)          - L  (Home) 
>Guile (USA)        - L  (Away) 
>Blanka (Brazil)    - W  (Home) 
>Guile (USA)        - W  (Away) 
>El Fuerte (Mexico) - W  (Away) 
>

Almost. The two Guile matches happened in a row, then Blanka, then El Fuerte.

Also, his fight with Cammy isn't calculated in his World Warrior standings, because it's the victory that got him onto that level in the first place. That's why he states his "batting average" (wins over total bouts) as .667 before the El Fuerte fight - four wins out of six fights. (That also indicates that he didn't hold Guile to his offer of blanking the score from their Area 51 fight if they rematched; otherwise it'd be .800 (four out of five) going into Mexico City. He would have been within his rights to stand on that - Guile offered it in good faith, and there were no official witnesses to the Area 51 fight anyway, but he felt it would've been unsportsmanlike and petulant, and declined the offer.)

All of which means his current win percentage as of the end of Battle 07 is .714, which is pretty respectable. With the Guile loss scratched it would've been .833.

Similarly, Sakura doesn't technically have a World Warrior standing of her own, but having defeated El Fuego (I'm assuming he is one, since he and El Fuerte appear to be on pretty equal footing), she's eligible to start accumulating one.

--G.
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(Does the world warrior circuit even have an official records thing or central organizer? As it is, it all feels very informal, but at the same time, sanctioned enough that it officials look away when it's held in places like military bases).

Yes, it can be that simple. Assuming that Gryphon goes by the book (Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game, White Wolf Game Studio), the other route a fighter can take is to have fought sixty or more matches, with ten or more wins for every loss, in one of three divisions: Traditional, Duelist, or Freestyle.

Traditional doesn't allow weapons, special powers, or abilities; Freestyle doesn't allow weapons; Duelist uses all three, but doesn't allow firearms.

Of course, Gryphon may have changed any or all of this to suit his world.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

More or less, yeah. It's also possible to get there on points, as it were, by winning a sufficient number of matches against people in the bracket just below, but that's governed by a ranking system that's as arcane (and as interesting) as the Maine Principals' Association's points system for determining who gets into the state high school basketball tournament, so I haven't bothered to get into any detail about it. It's much simpler to just win a bout with an established member of the rank you want to move up to.

>And I'm assuming the challenged warrior has the
>right of refusal to prevent getting deluged in challenges by no-names
>looking to leapfrog?

Yes. It's considered bad form for upper-rank fighters to challenge lower-rank ones, and the sanctioning body won't provide any help for someone trying to get hold of a fighter more than one rank above, in order to try and weed out the wilsons. Of course, you can always try tracking them down yourself, without going through the Authority, and setting up the challenge on your own terms, but just learning who and where some of these people are without outside help can require some pretty significant detective work - good luck getting a phone call through to Ryu, for instance.

>(Does the world warrior circuit even have an official records thing or
>central organizer? As it is, it all feels very informal, but at the
>same time, sanctioned enough that it officials look away when it's
>held in places like military bases).

The Street Fighter Tournament (as it is rather over-grandly known) is sanctioned, inasmuch as these things can be when they're illegal in a lot of the places where they're done, by the rather unwieldily named World Circuit Martial Arts Tournament Authority. WCMAT serves as a sort of central clearinghouse for the fighters, maintaining stats databases, simple dossier files like the one for Gryphon to be found elsewhere on this board, and (as previously discussed) helping to get fighters in touch with each other. It also publishes the Fighters' Times, the monthly magazine of the tour, which has profiles, articles of interest, and the same general sort of industry-insider chatter you get from any biggish specialist-trade publication. Kind of Soldier of Fortune for wandering full-contact martial artists.

It isn't anywhere near as formal as a "real" sports league - there are no contracts in street fighting, nobody gets paid, there are very few actual rules, and so forth - and joining the WCMAT tour isn't an exclusive arrangement. It's mainly just a way of trying to centralize information so that the world's street fighters can go about their peculiar semi-underground business with a feeling of community. It's not the only one of its kind - Gryphon's friends the Bogard brothers and Joe Higashi fight on a different, parallel circuit with a slightly different "flavor" - but it's one of the best-known, among people who are in a position to know about it in the first place, in the world.

Mind you, most members of the General Public have no idea this kind of thing is even going on, and if you told them about it, they'd probably assume it was a media entertainment organization, like those guys who do cage fights on pay-per-view, or some kind of outlaw gang. Only in places where there's a reasonably prominent member of the tour with some strong local roots - Worcester, Dnepropovinsk, or Dhalsim's village in India, for instance - does the man or woman on the street have any notion that such a thing exists.

(Well, and in places where the idea of full-contact martial artists who aren't just criminal thrillseekers is an accepted part of the cultural background hum, like Milmáscaras, certain districts in Japan, or pretty much all of Hong Kong. :)

--G.
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Sometime in the distant future, I hope that Sakura turns her old home in Japan into one of these areas. Would serve her father right.

And on a random unrelated note, the recent spate of activity in WL has been the inspiration I needed to actually go and get Street Fighter IV. It is much fun, so thanks for both the reading and (in a roundabout way) the video game enjoyment.

There are rumors that MasterCard was involved.

--G.
Proving the supremacy of the Saikyo style: priceless. FATHEEEEEERRRRR!!
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No, he won them both - just one was at home and one wasn't.

>> (Say, that would make a good premise for a movie. I'll have to
>>remember to pitch it to Ken next time I see him. "Support Your Local
>>Street Fighter", a screwball comedy about a young fighter, new to the
>>circuit, trying to get his neighborhood on side for his breakthrough
>>bout against the wandering champ. Maybe we could finally get Fei Long
>>to try comedy.)
>
>*BWAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!*

It'll be mentioned somewhere - maybe in 08, when they're in Hong Kong - that the first time Gryphon and Fei Long met, Gryphon mortified Zoner by admitting that, although a huge fan, G ultimately prefers Jackie Chan because Fei Long's movies aren't funny. Fortunately, Fei Long didn't take offense. In fact, it's conceivable that he agrees. :)

>Blanka. In a Sombrero. *Boggles at that mental image* Hmm, that was
>the fight he hosted at home? Was it the one he won, or lost?

That was the home fight, yeah - held in the playhouse because after about mid-October, it's really too cold to be doing it up at Bancroft Tower.

>>(Sgt. Janet Marshall got that call. She was... amused.)
>
>*snicker* I take it she's familiar with both G and his profession
>from past encounters then?

Yup, we saw Janet reffing for the "home" match at Bancroft Tower back in Battle 03. (She's erroneously described there as a WPI Campus Police officer - in fact she's with the City of Worcester PD. She's based partially on a WPI campus cop Zoner and I knew when we were at WPI, whose name I'm ashamed to admit I can't remember, and the rest on the character from Virtua Cop/Fighters Megamix.)

>>I wound up flat on my back in the center of the floor with
>>Cammy kneeling astride my hips, and she took advantage of my compromised
>>position quite shamelessly by pinning both my wrists to the floor and
>>obstructing my airway with hers.
>
>I suddenly have an inking that several of UF-g's sparing matches with
>Sumire ended much the same...

"All right, I apologize. I'm really, really sorry."

>> M. gave her a patient look. "You're angry with me. It's
>>understandable. I don't hold it against you, though I do hope one day
>>you'll grow up enough to recognize why I had to do what I did."
>> "Go to hell," Cammy shot back.
>> "I probably will," said M. imperturbably.
>
>*Sighs* How do you manage to both distill and convey the essances of
>a charecter so well G?

It helps that in this case, I'm standing on the shoulders of a giant. That characterization of M. wouldn't be there to capture without Dame Judi Dench's outstanding performances from GoldenEye on (and particularly in Casino Royale).

>Not to mention the thought of seeing Supergirl and Batman engaged in a
>passionate liplock, though I'm sure given the nature of the 'net there
>not only are such 'ship fics, but ones where they dont get
>'interupted'.

I'm not going to go check, but I wouldn't bet against it, particularly in light of the adversarial dynamic they introduced between those two when they brought Supergirl back in Superman/Batman a few years ago. Something about characters who dislike and distrust each other seems to switch something on in the fanfic brain. (I am not passing judgment on this. I've played with similar themes too. :)

>>We get our major gunsmithing done at a small shop in
>>Chicago, but cleaning, small repairs, and the occasional part
>>replacement are all things we handle ourselves.
>
>Eheh. But this isnt the first time you've mentioned that Rally,
>Minnie Mae (and probobly by extension, Bean) are around, is it? It
>doesnt feel *Where did THAT come from*

"Our gunsmith in Chicago" gets mentioned in Battle 05, too, when Gryphon's describing the Makarov he carries on "spy jobs". (He may also have mentioned learning to "drive angry" from a friend in Chicago at one point even further back; I know I considered mentioning that, but can't remember now if I actually did.)

I don't know if we'll ever see Our Friends in Chicago on screen, but if we do, we can expect the old inside-joke line, "You must be at least as tall as this line to ride the Gryphon," to appear.

>>I doubt any kid has ever had
>>such comprehensive instruction, not only on the nuts and bolts of how to
>>use weapons, but the whys and wherefores of -when- and -why- to use
>>them... and not to.
>
>You know, our own courner of the multiverse might be a better place if
>we required that sort of course of legitimate gun owners. My personal
>$.02, of course.

Yeah, oddly, when I got my concealed carry permit a few years ago, I had to prove I was technically competent to carry a firearm without accidentally shooting myself or someone else with it, but at no time did anyone actually ask whether I had sense enough not to haul it out and start blazing away in the middle of a crowd or anything. I would have thought that would come up at some point in the process, but it never did.

>Mostly because its their job to make sure it really is 'cool' and that
>your not brainwashed/intimidated/whatever. They worry because of
>either personal concern or professional paranoia, but the net result
>is the same.

Oh, she knows they mean well; it just gets on her nerves being asked the same freaky questions over and over. It's like, hello, we've had this conversation already? :)

>>The masked wrestlers
>>of Mexico, los luchadores, are a national institution, and Milmáscaras
>>is one of the places where they came from. In Japan I'd once visited a
>>village, out in the sticks near Nagano, where everyone in town was a
>>ninja. Milmáscaras was, I'd heard, a similar kind of thing, but with
>>luchadores.
>
>Or like the district of Tokyo where all the Sumo gyms are

Indeed, though Gryphon was picturing something like the Ibuki Clan's ninja village, in the event it turned out to be a lot more like Sumotown. Like he says a few grafs down, in the ninja village literally everybody is a ninja. The grannies, the little kids, the raccoon dogs, everybody. It's a little freaky. Cool, but freaky. :)

>> "Hi, I'm MegaZone," said Zoner, putting out a hand. "Lead
>>singer and driver of the Winnebago."
>> El Fuego looked puzzled, switching to English: "You have a band
>>too?"
>
>Well, not YET. Wouldnt surprise me in the future, though...

The joke in the studio is that that's how you can tell WL isn't UF; if it were, they'd have discovered in the first episode that Cammy was a bassist and spent the next two episodes searching for a drummer, until Sakura showed up, and now they'd be a street fighter band. :)

>LETS GET READY TO RUUUUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMMMBBBBBBBLLLLLLLEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!
>Seriously, I dunno if its what you were aiming for, but in my head
>Ray's voice is the same one you hear at pro wrestling events.

Ah, the immortal Michael Buffer, long may he wave.

My mental image of Rey is actually a Hispanic version of the Young Elvis, more or less. Not in the sense of a professional Elvis impersonator, but a guy whose personal style is so much like the '50s Elvis anyway that he just went with it. That's why he's called "Rey" (Spanish for "King"), and his gang, naturally, are Los Reyes (and yes, that is a Fallout New Vegas reference). :)

>>El Fuerte went so completely over backward that he ended up flat on his
>>face. For a couple of seconds, nobody moved; even the hometown crowd
>>had gone silent.
>
>Hmm. Was that the move combo for "Murder"?

Nope, that wasn't Murder on the Orient Express. The Stark Fist of Removal doesn't have any kicks or throws, it's just a whole lot of punches - sort of a closed-fist version of E. Honda's Hundred-Hand Slap or Chun-Li's Lightning Kick. Murder is a much more complicated affair.

>> "Your friend sounds like she's done this before," I observed.
>> "Yeah, there was this big conspiracy at her school last year,
>>and - tell you what, ask me later,"
>
>Hope not only does SF-G remember to ask, but that we get to see it in
>print, cause at it sounds really interesting.

It's a reference to the plot of the game Hinata, Natsu, and Akira all come from (more about this in a sec).

>Yup. Martial arts Volleyball. Hang on... I have this feeling that
>Sakura's school friends are a crossover import that I'm not
>recognizing. GAH. Now this is gonna bug me till I figure it out or
>someone clues me in.

It came up earlier in this thread, but, those three are from another Capcom fighting game called Rival Schools United by Fate (also known as Justice Academy: Legion of Heroes), in which pretty much everyone is either a schoolboy/girl or teacher. Sakura was a bonus character in at least one version of it, and in subsidiary material (like the UDON Street Fighter comics) it's established that Hinata and Natsu are friends of hers. (They didn't mention Akira, but she's my favorite Rival Schools character, so I added her.)

>> Moving slowly and calmly, Akira zipped up her leather jacket,
>>then picked up my older brother Rey's motorcycle helmet from where he'd
>>left it hanging on the knob at the bottom of the stairs. Her voice was
>>very soft as she said something I couldn't understand to the men.
>
>"I am Akira Montoya. You have threated my charges, prepare to DIE"
>(aka, beware the quiet ones)

Actually, what she said was, "You guys have the wrong house," but since the narrator of that scene didn't speak Japanese, I didn't have any way of sharing that directly with the readers. :)

["Broke into the wrong God damn rec room THIS time, DIDN'T ya!"]

>Give that Luchedor a Ciiiigar! And also explains why Balrog was
>mentioned... Balrog IS that first 'boss' you face, the boxer, right?
>or has my memory become corrupted?

Yup. Shadolu's resident specialist in dumb muscle. He was really the only choice to lead the Milmáscaras operation; Vega would have considered it beneath him and probably caused a great deal more bloodshed, which could have led to a larger-scale public outcry, and Sagat would simply have considered it beneath him, full stop.

In WL, his full name is Joseph J. Tolkan - disgraced ex-heavyweight champ and all-around morally dubious guy. He used to be called "Buffalo Joe" in the fight game, but when he started making a name for himself for dirty fighting and seriously injuring his opponents, some particularly erudite sportswriter noticed his surname's resemblance to that of the fantasy author and nicknamed him after the biggest, meanest, but rather dumbest monster in said author's canon.

That's my explanation for why he's called Balrog and yet has an attack called the Mad Buffalo, anyway. It fits the setting better than the real reason, which is that he was called M. Bison in the Japanese version of Street Fighter II, and Capcom was afraid Mike Tyson would sue them when the game came to the States, so they switched a bunch of the bosses around. :)

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

It was also mentioned in Battle 05, during Gena's fantastic display of reckless endangerment.

-Droken

The way it's been described, I've always imagined it to be somewhat similar to that chain uppercut of Dee Jay's.

It started out that way (it seems odd that I'd have just directly copied it in Battle 01 - possibly I hadn't encountered it yet), but has evolved into more of a flurry of straight punches that concludes with an uppercut, rather than being all uppers.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Offsides

Stark's Repulsing Palm, Stark's Armored Gauntlet, Stark's Crushing Hand, etc. :P

[...] in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.
-- David Ben Gurion
EPU RCW #π
#include <stdsig.h>

Heh, that works. It's actually a Church of the SubGenius joke. I stopped thinking the SubGenius riff was actually funny in about 1996, but I still quite like the phrase. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>Every time I read "Stark Fist of Removal", I keep thinking that in
>some odd alternate D&D universe, Tony Stark was an ancient Wizard, and
>Stark's Fist of Removal is the most powerful of a series of spectral
>hand-related spells in a world where noone has heard of Bigby...
>
>Offsides
>
>Stark's Repulsing Palm, Stark's Armored Gauntlet, Stark's Crushing
>Hand, etc. :P
>
><...> in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.
> -- David Ben Gurion
>EPU RCW #π
>#include <stdsig.h>

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Offsides

[...] in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.
-- David Ben Gurion
EPU RCW #π
#include <stdsig.h>

If the vast interdependent knowledge of the Enternetz can be trusted, she and Hinata attend the same school, which would provide a linkage there (now that she's not pretending to be a guy to get into Gedo High, which I'm still not sure isn't the Japanese making a joke out of the pronunciation of "ghetto", given the other characters from there)

That said, if Gryph thought Sakura's immediate circle of friends was crazy, I can't imagine what he'd make of Akira's. Yurika's a bit standout(and makes Juri's hair look relatively normal), and Zaki's just waiting to bring about a back-reference to Sakura's snark about the Baroness being a dominatrix.

Though I have this chapter mostly to thank for being aware of Rival Schools at all (I was a SNES/Genesis player back in the era it initially came out), but I'll have to see if I can track down some of the discs. Good over-the-top Capcom fighters are always fun to acquire.

So, then, is Murder the combo that, quite thoroughly, plants Ryu into the ground next to Bancroft Tower? As that is the longest combo we've seen Gryphon do, I think.

Oh, and as an aside, out of curiosity, what's with Elvis Reilael?

Yes, although in the Ryu fight he left off the finishing blow because it wasn't needed. (Decapre in 06 got no such courtesy.)

>Oh, and as an aside, out of curiosity, what's with Elvis Reilael?

Saturday is the King's Birthday.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

> Just keep hanging around them. You'll find out eventually; most likely
> after being found out and befriended by them.

"Befriended" in the Lyrical Nanoha sense, most likely, given the fighting-game-based environment. :)

Well, yes. I sorta figured that went without saying...

Contrary to popular supposition, this move is not called the "Friend Request".

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.