16 of us flew from the UK to Jonkoping, Sweden for the Street Fighter IV tournament at Dreamhack Winter 2009. Here is what happened.

Ryanair

Flying from London to Gothenburg.

I stood here for ten minutes waiting for her to move her trolley up so I could get some shots.

Shau

Femi

Chunkis, David & Zade. Sleeping on Ryanair is not a comfortable experience.

Say aaaaaah

The weather in Gothenburg was actually worse than in London. Wetter and colder.

Sweden

For some reason, Dreamhack brought the tournament forward one day from Friday to Thursday, so we had to rush straight from the airport to the event. We were pretty whacked when we got there.

Waiting for the bus

Some of my matches

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Ryan Gutierrez (aka Gootecks, seated right) and Cami (behind players) were invited over from California by Dreamhack to do commentary on Swedish TV. We played some casuals with Gootecks.

Ramzi & Gootecks

Dawgtanian & Gootecks

F Word challenged Gootecks to a push-ups match – whoever lost the fight would have to do 30 push-ups. Here is what happened.

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F Word gets on all fours

And then tries to escape after one push-up.

Zak ‘The Beastman’ Bennet playing his group

One of Zak’s matches.

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Ryu was in the house, in F Word’s group.

Here is the main bracket after the group stages.

I had Ryan Hart in the first match; one of the three worst draws I could possibly get (the other two being Zak and Gootecks). Here is how our match went. Not great for me by any means.

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Ryan Hart took down the tournament for the UK, eliminating me, Afii and Zak in the process. It was inevitable we would eliminate each other when 14 of us made the last 32. Pretty good showing by the UK.

We were front row supporting our guys. We were on Swedish national TV!

United States of Kingdom

After the tournament, we had a 6v6 against the Swedes. Gootecks represented the UK and Xian joined the Swedish, to give us ‘The United States of Kingdom’ vs ‘Swingapore’. It was great fun and there was a lot of trash talking.

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Nom

The wall of microwaves. You could buy a TV dinner and heat it up here in 5 minutes.

Et voila.

Random guy. It seems a lot of my photos are slightly under-exposed. I need to get used to Leica metering.

This is Jadi, he has a pretty gangsta joystick.

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Some kind of card game going on here at 4am

Cami & Gootecks

Cami and Gootecks preparing for a podcast recording with Ryan Hart and Zak.

Waiting.

Breaking down what they are to discuss in the podcast.

Podcast time. Zak and Ryan had an interesting debate on the limitations of Street Fighter IV.

2nd place finisher Ho Kun Xian was really jetlagged.

Live studio audience

Xian is not very live.

Game over

The last night of Dreamhack, we grabbed a bunch of beers and played Third Strike until 7 in the morning.
Group shot of some of us, some of the Swedes, Gootecks, Cami and Xian before we all hit the road.

Cami & Gootecks still had the energy to climb a tank. Crazy cats.

Sleep

Getting the train back to Gothenburg to fly home.

We met Jenny on the way to Gothenburg; she was on her way to pick up her son from kindergarten. She speaks five languages but is not available for marriage. Sorry chaps.

The others were still in Jonkoping when we got to Gothenburg, so we waited for them at the internet cafe.

Is everyone asleep in Sweden?

Seems so, but some are still keeping busy…

Geeky stuff: Leica M6, Leica 35mm 1.4 Summilux, Kodak Tri-X +2. Panasonic SDR-H250 video camera.

Bonjour

Welcome to Paris.

SFII Sagat stage

Femi on the hunt.

Crepes

We stayed up until around 7am every day playing Street Fighter IV & Pro Evo, so people closed their eyes every chance they got.

Lawrence

Homeless guy.

Tournament time

Bushido Impact 9. We came to Paris mainly to enter the Street Fighter IV tournament. Most of us made it out of our groups into the main tournament bracket.

Here are some of my group fights. I play Zangief.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Zero2000 (Wes, right) vs Yamazaki (Olivier). Yamazaki is is the best Ryu in France.

Yamazaki vs Dawgtanian. Dawgtanian is very popular in France, known from his online matches. There was always a crowd when he was playing.

Jesus is a pad player

The King Sagat.

Logan Sama. Logan and I stayed up all night Friday and played 200-300 games vs each other, Zangief vs Akuma. That is my tournament stick next to him, with a custom Zangief faceplate.

Close up of my stick. My gamer handle is ‘WorstGiefEVER’. I play SFIV on PC, my gamertag there is JBARDOLPH if anyone wants to add me. I am improving all the time, so one day I will probably change from ‘WorstGiefEVER’ to ‘Maybe not the Worst Gief EVER, but still pretty bad’.

Zero2000 (Wes) in battle.

Dawgtanian vs StarNab. StarNab is an awesome Fei Long player. He is SG rank on XBOX (top league). This match had HUGE hype, and Femi got it on camcorder and commentated. Probably the most hype match of the day. Video below.

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Bushido Impact 9 was a fantastic event. They are planning to run an event every month; it is a one-day event, so from the UK you could get the Eurostar there and back on the same day for £50. I will certainly be doing this again. The people we met were great and very hospitable (thank you Bushido), and we all look forward to seeing them again.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Geeky stuff: Leica M6, Leica 35mm 1.4 Summilux, Kodak Tri-X, Ilford Delta 400

So I went to Neo Empire’s Super VS Battle and entered the Street Fighter 4 tournament. Not many pictures as I was playing games most of the time, including online poker (at the same time as playing my group games no less). The event was in a hall behind the leisure centre.

A small part of the ‘Bring your own console’ section. Size matters. Big props for the SNES.

Most people brought joysticks, though there was the odd pad player. I’ve been playing joystick myself for six weeks now. Takes some getting used to. I still have problems executing moves for my character (Zangief), and especially combos.

Street fighter 4 alley.

Capcom had two cabinets for people to play Street Fighter 4 on. If you played around with the buttons between character select and the fight, the button mapping would screw up and the capcom guy would have to reset the controllers inside the box.

Ryan Hart (left) and IMX.

Joystick modding

King of Fighters (KOF) XII. This was a ‘money match’ between Kneero (left) and Sendo. Sendo won in convincing fashion. Crowd

Big crowd

Biiiiiiiiiig crowd.

You may be wondering who I am or how I did – my handle is ‘WorstGiefEVER’. The SF4 tournament was due to start at 3.45 but ended up starting at 8.30 – around 6pm I decided to play a poker tournament on my netbook. By the time my group was called to fight, I was not only still in the tournament, but I was also in the money. I had no choice but to play my tournament fights AND play poker (literally) at the same time. I play Zangief exclusively. I won my first fight vs a pad Guile player, lost the second fight to an Akuma, then played Zak (who has the biggest winning streak @ Tottenham Court Road) and lost to his Balrog (Boxer), then lost to an M.Bison (Dictator for those in Japan).

I expected to lose all my fights so I’m quite pleased with my one win. I think I would have done better against my other opponents had I not been playing poker at the same time, but probably would have lost to them anyway. I had a great time and will be back at Tottenham Court Road arcade  to receive more arse whoopings very soon!

Street Fighter 4 results, courtesy of Neo Empire:
1: RickyTTT (Spain)
2: Shirl
3: Prodigal Son
4: Zak
5-8: Roboduck
5-8: Shau
5-8: V-Ryu
5-8: Slick Rick

Geeky stuff: Canon EOS 20D, 24-70 f2.8 lens.