Ode To The 2-Hit Combo - Commentary Document

Where Did The Idea Come From?

The concept of this video was actually born from a joke. Before Southern Hills Golfland was closed, I was there one night discussing the state of Combo Videos with Ed Ma. He brought up the fact that I hadn't made a Combo Video in a long time and my reply was that there are so many Combo Videos out there these days, it was too hard to do anything that really stood out anymore. Plus, the combos in them keep getting bigger and bigger, so much to the point where I really couldn't keep up with the skill level displayed in most Combo Videos due to my limited Combo practice time. Frankly, I didn't think there was anything new I could bring to the table in the world of Combo Videos. Ed made the joke that, since all the videos keep showing bigger and bigger Combos, I should go in the other direction and make a video of nothing but 2-Hit Combos. We laughed about that and the conversation went no farther than that.

After some time, I began to think: wouldn't it be funny to actually make the video? Wouldn't it be funny to make a video full of really stupid 2-Hit Combos and release it as a joke, in a way that parodies the concept of the Combo Video? I had thought of all sorts of ways to poke fun at the Combo Video cult out there by doing things like using the overused song "Sandstorm" as background music, since I saw on a poll on Shoryuken.com that people were sick of hearing that in videos. I was then thinking of making "failed" Combos and filling in the video with stuff like Cable doing an Air Hyper Viper Beam only to have it interrupted after 2-hits by Roll's Flower Pot or having Dudley do a Crouch Roundhouse and then try to Juggle with a Corkscrew Blow, and have it timed poorly so that it only hit once. So I sat on this idea for a long, long time, but never acted upon it.

Then one day, I was chatting with Maj and somehow the subject of this 2-Hit Combo Video came up. I said it was an idea that I had, but figured I'd never go through with it. But since Maj thought it was a such a cool idea, he was very much gung-ho for me to go through with it. I kinda did my half-assed, "Yeah, well, maybe. I'll think about it..." that usually leads to my laziness winning out. So we stopped chatting, and I went on about my business still thinking I would never actually go through with it.

Then, to my surprise, the next day, while chatting with Maj again, he came back with a series of 2-Hit Combos he recorded for CvS2. And they fit what I had wanted: goofy 2-Hit Combos, like Chun Li's Close-up Stand Roundhouse Super Jump canceled into a Head Stomp. I liked what I saw so much that the reality of this video began to take shape. Ideas started to fill my head. I still didn't act on it, but I would get more inspiration: as each day passed, Maj would come around with more and more goofy Combos.

And that was it. I committed myself to start making this Combo Video a reality, and began recording a few Combos here and there as well. So as the number of clips grew to a modest amount, Maj and I came up with an idea: let's try to record our clips and make the movie before April Fool's Day of that year, and then release it on April 1st. We wouldn't tell anyone what it was, only that it was a new video by "jchensor" and "SonicHurricane.com." So we figured it was a good April Fool's joke to have people download a video that ended up being only 2-Hit Combos. We both began to record more and more Combos. But two more things came about that changed the eventual mindset of the Combo Video from being a joke to something serious.

First of all, I had told Maj that if I made this video, I'd want to do Combos for many games, not just the basic Capcom fighters like CvS2 and MvC2. So with each day that passed, Maj kept coming back with more Combos from various games. And, quite unsettlingly, the Combos began to get good. I mean, like, technically really advanced stuff. Maj wasn't just making dorky 2-Hit Combos anymore, he was doing really complex stuff, such as Terry, in CvS, doing a late, third hit of his Power Geyser comboed into a Juggling Power Dunk that barely hit on its way down before the enemy fell to the floor. It was getting to the point where these Combos weren't jokes anymore. And releasing a "joke" video would do no justice to some of the complexity and skill Maj was putting into the Combos.

The second thing that changed the mindset of the video wasn't as obvious. Okay, a little backstory here: Previous to the 2-Hit Combo video, I was working on trying to make a Vampire Savior Combo Video (some people on the Shoryuken.com Forums may remember me mentioning this). However, my goal with the Vampire Savior video was two-fold: 1) Make a Combo Video in a game no one ever makes a video for. 2) Really do something interesting with editing. In other words, almost try to make a "Music Video" with the Combo Video, making things that happen on screen match the lyrics of the song, make all Combos start at the beginning of measures in the song, etc. In other words, really try to make the music more than just the background noise.

But at one point, I ran into a Combo Video for Vampire Savior released on the web by Japanese Players which pretty much destroyed any Combos I had already recorded for my video. Most of my clips were pretty much humbled, so I decided to put the Vampire Savior video in permanent limbo, and left it alone. Even though I had already picked out songs that I was going to use for the background music, and had already started matching some of the clips to the music, I decided it just wasn't going to be worth it.

But I never gave up the dream of making the "Music Video"-styled Combo Video, and that's when things started to click. I had one really big problem with my attempt at the Vampire Savior Combo Video: the Combos were too long! In order to try to make everything "fit" with the music, it seemed like shorter Combos would serve the purpose better than longer Combos. So the best way to make such a Combo Video was to make one out of Combos that were fairly short. And that's when the light bulb went off. Here I was, making a video full of nothing but short 2-Hit Combos! It was perfect for the "Music Video" style of editing I wanted originally with the Vampire Savior video. I had to go for it. So, again, if I worked really seriously on the editing and tried to do something really cool, it would be a shame to release the video as a joke.

So within the span of a year (and waaaaaaay past our original April Fool's Day deadline), Maj and I (and various other contributors) ended up recording over 500 Combos! And we really did a good job of recording a really good variety of Combo types: there were the very technical Combos, the humorous Combos, the purposely-made "dumb" Combos (like Guile doing Crouch Roundhouse in Street Fighter EX), and some really just plain-ol' cool-looking Combos. After about a year of recording Combos, we finally called it a wrap and determined not to record any more Combos and start the editing. 500 was WAY more than we had anticipated, and we could have gone on forever, frankly. So we had to put a limit somewhere.

So the editing process began. Of course, there was one big roadblock: I am lazy. One April Fool's Day had passed, as I mentioned already, and I hadn't even started editing yet! When the next one was coming around, I was nowhere near done. I would work on the editing in small chunks, doing a lot in the span of a week or two, and then not doing anything for another month. Then work on it again for a week, then stop again for two motnhs. Laziness was definitely winning out.

Then came the call: Joey Cuellar, a.k.a. MrWizard, came a-knockin'. He told me he was working on gathering "intermissions" for Evolution 2004. He knew about my 2-Hit Combo Video and told me that if I managed to finish the Combo Video by Evolution 2004, they would make its world debut there. The idea of this was too awesome, and I began getting very much excited by it. But one problem: by this point, only about 20% of the video was completed and there was so much more to be made! And I really didn't have much time left. Derek Daniels, a.k.a. omni, kept chiding me that, knowing how lazy I was, I would never finish it in time.

But the temptation was too great. The video was coming along nicely, and was already more than just an April Fool's joke at this point. So I figured I'd go for it. And as all of my close friends can tell you, the video then began to consume my life. Pretty much all free time I had went into making this video. I even took a week off from work specifically so I could work on the video. Day and night, night and day. Editing and rendering and editing and rendering. So for about 4 to 5 months, I worked nonstop on the video, and only 2 days before Evolution 2004, a DVD was burned with the video that was shown on the big screen on Sunday of Evolution 2004. You can only imagine how nervous I was while it played. But the reaction was favorable, and I breathed a big sigh of relief. The arduous journey of the 2-Hit Combo video was finally over.

And that's how the video came to be.

The Mindset Of Making The Video

I'm not gonna lie. I know the video is long. And I know it's a lot longer than a lot of people are willing to put up with. And I know the novelty of 2-Hit Combos will wear off quickly for a lot of people watching the video. And frankly, I don't care. I'm not being mean, it's just that I can't blame you at all for feeling that way.

See, the number one goal I had in mind when the editing for this video began was not to be just a showcase of various 2-Hit Combos. The number one mindset became trying to make the "Music Video" concept I mentioned earlier. So the novelty of the video isn't just the Combos themselves, it's how they were edited along with the music. So instead of making a Combo Video where music is solely just background music, I wanted the music to DRIVE the editing. I wanted the music to determine which Combos go where, what choices I made for editing, and how long I ran each clip. I wanted the music to mean something... to share equal billing with the clips themselves.

And thus, the selection of music became crucial. Because I wanted the music to be every bit as important as the Combos themselves, I really wanted to make sure I chose songs that I liked and that stood out. The songs had to have personality so that they provided a lot of opprtunities for interesting editing ideas. And they had to mean something to me personally because I didn't want to choose some random song that I had never heard before just because it "felt like" Combo Video music. Because the music was going to be the co-star of this video, I wanted to make sure I chose songs that meant something to me. Needless to say, a lot of sweat and tears went into picking the songs as a result. In fact, the last segment's song, Guitar Was The Case, was THE first song I had determined I was going to use. And the fourth segment's song, Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood, was selected pretty much right before I began editing the fourth segment itself, maybe only 2 months before the entire video was completed. I struggled a lot with choices and had a total of maybe 10 to 12 songs that were at once considered and later rejected.

But after the songs were chosen, they were the kings. What Combo went where, how long they lasted, and how they were edited (particularly transitions) were all driven by the music. For example, about 85% of Combo clips begin at the start of a measure in the song (there are only a few sections where this doesn't occur). I mean, deciding where, in an almost 22 minute Combo Video, to place one clip from a pool of 500 clips is not an easy task!!! It really was nice to have the music help me make a lot of the decisions.

Something has to be said about the clips themselves. Eventually, Maj and I began to adhere to a bunch of "rules" for the Clips we made. We wanted to make sure the 2-Hit Combos were very much an be-all end-all 2-Hit Combo. In other words, we tried to make sure that it was difficult to add more hits to the Combo easily. So we didn't want to have Combos that ended, say, with a Thanos Bubble Assist in MvC2 because, obviously, you can add more hits very easily. We definitely didn't manage to succeed doing that with all of our Combos, but we came as close as we felt comfortable. But this is why we ended up with so few Mortal Kombat COmbos (Kombos?), for example. MK Combos just seem to lend themselves too well to adding more hits. Ending any Combo with a Sub-Zero freeze, for example, just didn't quite work well with our "rules."

Anyhow, this was my main mindset when making this video. So hopefully, when you watch the video, you will pay attention to more than just the Combos themselves. I'll be the first to admit that if you simply pay attention to the Combos and the Combos alone, the video will grow tiresome quickly. But I will advise that you may be watching the video incorrectly. For one, DON'T watch it on mute... you've just killed the entire purpose of the video. And two, try to pay attention to the editing and how it coincides with the music. Hopefully, it'll make the video more enjoyable for you to watch.

VIDEO NOTES: Intro Segment

Song: Fountain Of Dreams
Game: Super Smash Bros. Melee
Written By: Jun Ishikawa
Orchestra Conducted By: Taizo Takemoto
(c) 2001 Nintendo
Available on Gamecube
http://www.nintendo.com/gamemini?gameid=m-Game-0000-587

--- Music Note - This is easily my favorite song from a Gamecube game that's full of really cool versions of classic and new game songs. And it fit exactly what I wanted for the intro song: something that started off softly, and then went into something stronger after only a few seconds.

• 00:14 - This edit, which Derek affectionately called the "Disney Touch", was done manually. There is no automatic filter for that. I will mention a few of the things I did manually from time to time only because I'm just happy that I was able to accomplish the effect I wanted with an application that I had never used before.
• 00:19 - I admit it: I cheated. All of these clips of the "classic" Street Fighter games were done on Anniversary Edition. You can see a hint of Guile's headshot below his energy bar in the second Combo. For the older games, I even put the game at the lowest speed, to make it match the older games.
• 00:30 - This X-Men:COTA Combo was done on the Sega Saturn. You can tell, because it is hideously choppy. The Saturn version was so poorly animated and it shows in this clip. You can't even tell what Cyclops is doing!!
• 00:33 - Man, it felt good doing X-Men Vs. Street Fighter Combos again! It's still insanely fun to do XvSF Combos, even after so many years.
• 00:39 - For the record, I SUCK at doing Bison's patented Custom Combo in CvS2. That Combo was done only after many, many, many, MANY attempts.
• 00:43 - Again, I cheated: this Combo was done against 3 Juggernauts at the same time in Training Mode with infinite meter. I'm lazy, remember? 3 Juggernauts at once made the Combometer go up much faster.
• 00:48 - YES YES YES, I know. That last AHVB isn't going to Combo. I'm sorry. ^_^ Btw, you can see two of the three Juggernauts here as well.
• 00:54 - I got a lot of flak for the Combo I chose here from various sources. Most people thought I should do a Jump Roundhouse into Low Roundhouse, since that was the first "Combo" ever, to an extent. Or something simple like a Crouching Forward into Fireball instead. But I picked this Combo for a specific purpose: it's an inside joke. Long ago, in the alt.games.sf2 newsgroup days, I told Bob Painter (a.k.a. Kuroyume, one of the best old school Street Fighter players ever) that I was able to Combo Crouching Short into Crouching Roundhouse as a Link in the old Street Fighter II games. But he would not believe me at all. So finally, the first time I got to meet him in person, I did the Combo for him and he finally believed me. Thanks to that story, I figured it would be funny to make that particular 2-Hit Combo be the first 2-Hit Combo of the video.

VIDEO NOTES: Roxie's Suite Segment

Song: Roxie's Suite (djchensor Edit)
Album: Chicago - Music From The Miramax Motion Picture
Written By: Danny Elfman
Conducted by: Steve Bartek
(c) 2002 Sony Music Entertainment Inc.
Available on Epic / Sony Music Soundtrax
http://www.chicagosoundtrack.com/

--- Music Note - Even before hitting it big time with Batman, Danny Elfman had written a lot of my favorite theme songs on TV and Films. I mean, who here would argue against me when I say that the theme to "Sledgehammer" was one of the greatest TV Show themes ever?!? Plus, that whole intro section, with the logos, the title card, and the going from pure black to the sudden appearance of the first Combo, was what I had in my mind even before the editing begun, all set to this song. Then, the fact that this score was written by Danny Elfman and that I really like the song just made everything work out really well.

This song was edited slightly to remove some of the slower parts of the song that wouldn't work well for this Combo Video.

• 01:03 - That Chinese character is my Chinese name. No, it doesn't mean "James." And no, I won't tell you what it really does mean, so don't ask.
• 01:06 - I did this as a fully animated version of Maj's actual title graphic on his web-site.
• 01:14 - I began this video with a whole slew of CvS2 clips for a few reasons. 1) I wanted to "trick" people, essentially, into thinking that this video was gonna be nothing but CvS2 clips. I never said it would encompass multiple games, so I wanted to surprise people when it shifted into the other games. 2) We had almost 3 times as many CvS2 clips as the game with the next most clips. So I also figured I could use a lot of them now, and spread out the other games for the rest of the video.
• 01:14 - I'll only point this out once, so as not to repeat myself over and over again, but this is the first example of how every Combo begins at starts of measures in the music. So the first 10 Combos are of all the exact same length, so that they all fit the music well.
• 01:21 - First example of letting music drive the editing. I zoom in this particular Combo because of the way the horns grow really loud. And this Chun Li Combo was chosen because it's "noisy" to go along with the volume increase. Thus, it seems really natural for the clip to shrink suddenly, when the music also calms down a bit.
• 01:33 - Everything about the second super that Blanka does matches the music really really well. This was entirely accidental.
• 01:40 - Though you may not be able to tell, the 2nd hit of this Combo is Dhalsim's S-Groove Punch Dodge Attack. Since that Combo was made-up by Derek, Maj and I call playfully call that the "Derek Combo."
• 01:42 - The zooming edit here was made to match the slowly crescendoing horn in the background music. And the two Combos used were picked solely because their hits matched the musical cues perfectly.
• 01:51 - This section was my first attempt at doing something fancy with the editing. At this point, I was still biting off of other people. The idea of having 2 views of the clip at once, one regular-sized and one zoomed up fully, came from Ben Cureton, a.k.a. "tragic," in his VF4 "Sarah Bryant Evolution" video, which I think is still one of the most brilliantly edited Combo Videos ever (and a huge inspiration for me to try to do something so different). However, I tried to add my own twist, and added the zooming image with each Custom Combo activation. Thus, the character doing the Custom Combo is always intentionally visible in the zoomed clips upon CC activation.
• 02:02 - I have no idea why, but these three Combos in particular look REALLY nasty when highly compressed. The version of the video first released on the internet was highly compressed, and these clips just look awful awful awful. In the higher quality version, they look sooooooo much cleaner.
• 02:06 - This is NOT CvS2 EO. Maj performed this Combo by running with Guile and holding Down-Forward. This allows you do keep running while charging for the Razor-Kick at the same time. Then, some insanely good timing on Maj's part is required to get both hits to connect at the EXACT same time, since neither the Sonic Boom nor the Razor Kick can actually Juggle.
• 02:10 - The 8 images that flash by are the first frames of the next 8 Combos.
• 02:17 - Most of these 8 Combos are really short, to match the length of each "line" in the music. But this Venom Combo (and the Honda combo later) are both longer than the other 6 clips, chosen to match the slightly longer stretch of music they accompany.
• 02:23 - That was Blanka's Close-up Standing Fierce form World Warrior. Yes, BOTH SWINGS are one move. It's such a stupid move, mostly because it ONLY Comboed against Dhalsim!
• 02:31 - Yes. That's Street Fighter: The Movie. I had to do it, I'm sorry. ^_^ But I did put it in this part of the song purposely because the "Wah Wah" sound of the music fits well with the sight of this really poor game. And you'd better believe that I purposely timed the Combo so that the big screen in the background was showing Van Damme's face!
• 02:36 - It always makes me laugh how the soldiers in the background have their heads follow Ken.
• 02:38 - We actually had all four of these Combos recorded before I even thought of this. I even went back and re-recorded the top-left clip to put it in that specific background against Twelve to match the bottom-right clip. This section always ends up being one of everyone's favorite part of the whole video. I like it a lot because it fits the music really really well, IMO.
• 02:51 - This part also fits the music really well, IMO. The music revs up again, so Rugal decides to take his opponent across the stage into the wall. Rugal's Combo was slowed down, however, to make it last long enough for the other two clips to complete as well as long enough to fit this section of the music.
• 03:15 - If you notice, Athena is doing the Super Combo BACKWARDS. I never knew about this, but Maj knew that if you did the Super Combo right at the moment you perform a wall-jump, you'll actually do the Super Combo backwards ('cause the character turns around to touch the wall). Thus, Balrog gets a free hit against Athena.
• 03:26 - Watch the magically teleporting giant cowboy in the background. ^_^

VIDEO NOTES: Clash On The Big Bridge Segment

Song: Clash On The Big Bridge (djchensor Edit)
Album: The Black Mages
Written By: Nobuo Uematsu
Performed By: The Black Mages (Tsuyoshi Sekito, Michio Okamiya, Nobuo Uematsu, Kenchiro Fukui, Keiji Kawamori, and Arata Hanyuda)
(c) 1992 Square Co. Ltd.
Available on DigiCube
http://www.square-enix-usa.com/uematsu/black_mages/

--- Music Note - Nobuo Uematsu is my god. Not only does he write video game music for a living, a job I envy every day, but also he writes the most emotionally moving video game music that will ever be written. He has propelled video game music into the true art form it deserves to be. I am so grateful I was able to attend the Final Fantasy Concert in L.A. before E3 2004 and see him there in person. That was truly an honor. I picked this song because I wanted a very fast-paced, hectic song after the first, jazzy segment. I planned to throw in as many clips as I could in this section, so having something quicker paced and hectic would work better.

This song was edited only very slightly. First, the intro section was cut short to work with the 35 panel layout. Secondly, the guitar solo in the middle was removed, to make the segment a bit shorter.

• 03:29 - A secret here: the grid is one whole graphic. To create the individual glowing panels, I created single yellow panels to lay on top of each panel and had those individual panels glow. And in actuality, there are only 3 yellow panels total. I just kept sliding them around invisibly and cycled between them before it got to the EX2 Combo.
• 03:41 - This was probably the most painful edit I did in the entire video. My computer is pretty damn weak, and in this edit, each panel is a SEPARATE panel that I animated. So in each transition, I had about 20 or so panels flipping into 20 OTHER panels. So for each transition, I had to put in about 40 layers into the program. So my editing program began to chug and hang and crash because I had so many layers to manipulate at the same time for this one section. I actually had to break this panel-flipping section into 2 separate standalone projects just so the editing app wouldn't crash trying to handle so many things at once.
• 03:41 - This panel section, and the three following "tunnel" sections are probably the four most notable sections in which combo start times do not match measure start times in the music. For these particular sections, I chose to ignore it because I wanted to squeeze in as many Combos as I could, so I fired them all off as fast as possible. But outside of these four sections, there are barely any sections where the clips don't start at the music's measure starts.
• 04:02 - This is one of my original Combos that I had planned to use in the Vampire Savior video. But it certainly fits a lot better here. And the "freeze" from the 2nd move connecting fit the "pause" in the music perfectly. And I really like that zoom edit. I mucked around with that for hours, I swear, until I finally got the look I wanted.
• 04:06 - Most Combo videos have a ton of random transitions between clips. I wanted to avoid doing the "transition orgy" that a lot of Combo Videos do... but at the same time, I still wanted to do a lot of really wild transitions. So rather than do crazy transitions everywhere in the vid, I gave myself two sections where I could do my own orgy of random transitions: this and the 2nd tunnel section.
• 04:06 - Small secret: that tunnel graphic that plays in the background? That was stolen right off of Windows Media Player. It's the "Tunnel" graphic displayed when you play musical tracks on it. I just played some music and captured the tunnel graphic and used it for the background.
• 04:16 - I highlighted the moon in the background for a reason. It's an homage to Maj, who decided that if he found a background with a moon in it, he would record a Combo with the moon visible at one point. See how many moons you can spot throughout this entire video. ^_^ Maybe you can even turn it into a drinking game. Oh, and in case you can't tell what's going on, Zantetsu knocks Moriya into the wall, but the following move he Buffers his kick into actually WHIFFS. After Moriya bounces off the wall, he Juggles with the Air Throw move. So even though it looks like a 3-Hit Combo, it's actually not.
• 04:18 - A really subtle transition I did here: Guan Yu (the game is Dynasty Warriors, one of the first games ever made for the PlayStation 1) actually slices the Combo Clip into two parts. Really tough to notice, but I think it turned out kinda neat.
• 04:24 - I love how it looks like Paul throws the really simplistic Street Fighter EX Guile Combo away.
• 04:27 - It's hard to tell, but in that JoJo Combo, Maj got an Alpha Counter into the Combo.
• 04:29 - I have three of these types of sections in this segment. All three sections have three Combos in a row of some common Air Throw element. This one is all Throws that bounce the enemy off the wall followed-up by Air Throws. The next one (after the 2nd tunnel segment) is all Combos that end with Air Throw Supers. The last one (that comes much later on) all involves Air Throws (except the Juni Combo, which is an OTG) that do a rolling motion in the air.
• 04:38 - I purposely made sure Demitri was sliding along the floor in the background at the end of the Combo. I love that.
• 04:49 - Another edit that's really hard to catch: normally, when Astaroth knocks the opponent away on this move, the camera zooms out and Astaroth shrinks on the screen. But instead, I zoomed in the clip at the same rate the camera zooms out so that Astaroth remains the same size the entire time so it doesn't look like the camera pans out at all. You can see the clip subtlely slide over to the right to prepare for this zoom right before Astaroth knocks Taki away.
• 05:14 - Only three Air Hurricane Kick Combos were recorded before this Edit. So in order to get this edit to work, I had to record a fourth one that didn't repeat a character and didn't repeat a game. So I picked Evil Ryu in CvS2. If you notice, the Combo he does is pretty much EXACTLY the same Combo as the one Akuma does in the SFA2 clip. As Maj said, "I made videos to accomodate Combos, but I've never recorded Combos to accomodate a video before!"
• 05:20 - All hail Samurai Shodown II! Seems like everyone really misses this game. When this Combo Video was shown at Evo, the mere sight of this game created a huge roar of cheers. Maybe someone should work on making a resurgence for this great game.
• 05:20 - In this section, I tried to match the hits with the music in as many places I could. Hanzo slamming Sieger into the ground, Galford's and Genjuro's first hits of their respective Combos, and Jubei's Super.
• 05:20 - It's really tough to tell why this is a 2-Hit Combo, but if you watch, Sieger actually loses energy from Hanzo's Fireball. So the grab and the Fireball connect at the exact same time, making it, essentially, a 2-Hit Combo.
• 05:39 - This third and final tunnel segment is a much simpler edit that the previous ones. No fancy tranitions, just as many clips as I could fit in as possible, so I purposely picked a bunch of really, really short Combos.
• 05:52 - One of the biggest "WHA--?!?" Combos in the video. Everyone who sees it has no clue what happens. Basically, Vega jumps backwards and charges up for the Flip Kick. Rugal then DAHSES and Vega AIR THROWS him out of the Dash, and then hits kick the instant he turns around to perform the Flip Kick that Juggles.
• 05:55 - Really hard to see why this Combo is so odd. Ryu's Hurricane Kick in Street Fighter III usually knocks the enemy over on EVERY hit. But if you hit Necro's limbs in the original Street Fighter III, he doesn't get knocked over by moves that normally knock you over. That's how Ryu is able to Combo two hits of his Hurricane Kick together.
• 06:05 - Nice quick edit to mask four weak Combos. All four require Counter Hits, which give you free Juggles in KOF'98. So while none of the Combos themselves are particularly interesting, I think the editing makes them exciting.
• 06:44 - I've had a lot of people ask me what happens in this Combo. Basically, both Hokuto and Sakura have Meteor Combos (Full Level 3 only Super) that are one hit. Sakura happens to have the one where she takes a few steps and Taunts, and if the Taunt connects, it drains a TON of energy. So all we had to do is find another Meteor Combo that was one hit and did enough damage to drain the rest of Ryu's life. And that pointed us right to Hokuto.

VIDEO NOTES: Cantina Band Segment

Song: Cantina Band
Album: Star Wars A New Hope - The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Written By: John Williams
Performed By: The London Symphony Orchestra
(c) 1997 Lucasfilm Ltd.
Available on BMG Entertainment
http://www.starwars.com

--- Music Note - There is no one on the planet who cannot hum at least ONE of John William's theme songs. It's amazing how many of the film industry's most famous theme songs come from this guy. And he never shows signs of slowing down either. My favorite of his soundtracks go back as far as 1977 (Star Wars) and as recent as this past year (Prisoner of Azkaban). I picked this song because I thought it was a nice comical song that would fit this comical section well.

This song appears completely intact and unedited.

• 07:00 - As I mentioned, I decided to make this segment the "goofy clips" segment. To get it started off, I used the "intro" clip with Bridget from GGXX. One of her random match intro sequences has her running into the screen and knocking over her opponent. But I noticed that when she does this, the Combometer shows up and reads "2-Hit Combo". I figured, then, this was the best way to start this segment off with the right mood, especially since it begins with a fade-in automatically, and the previous section closed by going completely to black.
• 07:04 - Small edit trick here: Slayer (or whoever Bridget knocks down) doesn't really stay lying down that long. Part way through Bridget talking, the person actually gets up. But I figured that wouldn't look as good as having the opponent stay on the ground. So what I actually did was loop the footage of Slayer on the ground, and tried to make sure that the "BURST" meter repeated properly. And I picked Slayer intentionally, because he looks the funniest while lying there.
• 07:13 - This segment of the Combo Video mostly uses "Screen Wipes" as a form of transition between two clips. So throughout this segment, we have the slightly blurred line that wipes one clip into the next clip, or does the "radial wipe" that wipes the screen like a clock hand. The use of these transitions is actually an homage to George Lucas to go along with the "Star Wars" theme. Lucas uses Screen Wipes throughout the Star Wars films (he actually got them from a Japanese film called "Hidden Fortress," the movie that "Star Wars" is actually based-on). So I figured since I'm using Star Wars music, I might as well use Star Wars transitions.
• 07:32 - The top-left Combo was what Maj and I were intending to do: use Alpha 1's "Easy Mode" to do a walk-up Somersault Justice Super and have it Juggle once. But one of our first attempts to do it resulted in the Combo at the bottom right, which was a 2-Hit Combo as well. When it happened, both Maj and I were like "WTF??" Bison, right when he lands, actually grows "fatter" INTO the Sonic Boom and then gets grazed by the Super. I never intended to actually put it into the video, but given that this section is the "goofy" clips, I figured why not?
• 07:38 - I know some people don't consider Super Smash Bros. Melee a Fighting Game, but I do. So there.
• 07:51 - This section was essentially my "comic strip" of the Combo Video, but judging from most people's reaction, I think I failed pretty badly. I put four Combos in a row of 2-Hit kills. Then, in the final Combo, Ganondorf starts to use his Warlock Punch, one of the most powerful moves in the game. And his opponent, Luigi, is already at 133%! So of course Luigi will die, just like the previous four victims, right? But the Mr. Saturn object always causes the same small reel regardless of high damage, and it catches Luigi right after Ganondorf nails him, so Luigi lives. So after four 2-Hit kills, the one that seems most likely to cause a kill gets ruined by the Mr. Saturn. See? Get it? Funny, right? Ha ha ha... Oh, nevermind.
• 08:01 - Everyone loves Kobun. Gotta have some Kobun.
• 08:04 - Yes, that's War Gods. Yes, that game is terrible. But this is such a great Combo (MrWizard's ROCK FEST 2003!!!), how could I not include it??
• 08:08 - The CvS2 Ryo Combo isn't "illegal" as it may initially seem. Ryo burns an N-Groove Power Stock RIGHT BEFORE Dan's Super Taunt begins its final Taunt. When Dan does the final thumbs-up Taunt, he gives his opponent a free full meter... in N-Groove's case, that's one Power Stock. Thus, after burning one Stock already, Ryo still has 3 Stocks left, which gives him enough Meters to do two Level 3 Supers.
• 08:26 - I timed Dhalsim's teleport to match the music dropping in volume. In fact, to increase the effect, I even manually dropped the volume of the music a bit.
• 08:30 - Maj really, really wanted me to just show the very ending of the clip with Kim Taunting without showing how it was caused. I told him I'm not a big fan of not actually showing the Combo and was against doing so. So we went back and forth a bit on this one without resolution. As a compromise, I put it into the video as you see it now. If you are paying attention to the main clips in the top-left, you'll only see the part Maj originally wanted to show. But, if you go back, you can actually see what caused it. Best of both worlds, then.
• 08:34 - In CvS1, Benimaru had a glitch that allowed him to plant an invisible Level 1 Heaven Blast Flash (the Raikou Ken Super Combo) for a very brief moment. It gets planted by Benimaru's Towards + Forward Kick move (where he runs forward and does a punt kick) which you can see him do right when the clip starts. It ends up eating all of Ryu's Super, but 2 hits of the Super are still left... which is what Ryu walks into. Maj and I apparently love this glitch because we use it two more times in this video.
• 08:38 - This is Street Fighter Alpha 3's Dramatic Battle mode, where you can play two characters against one. However, only in the Dreamcast version could you have three players actually CONTROL all three characters (you could even go up to four players). So using that, my friend Jason Villarreal and I were able to record a bunch of these Combos.
• 08:54 - An interesting glitch involving Blanka's Level 3 Super happens here. When you activate the Level 3 Fruit Super, he takes a second to reach the ceiling. But he doesn't actually drain the Super Meter until he grabs it. So before he reaches the ceiling, Rolento can activate a full Level 3 Super as well. But since Blanka has already started his Super, he doesn't care if he has Meter left or not and goes on with the Super anyhow. So using one bar, we are doing 2 Level 3 Supers at once. Note: you can actually do this trick with Cammy's Killer Bee Assault as well.
• 09:03 - The Streets of Rage 2 Combo was recorded first. Much later, I thought about it and came to the conclusion that I could duplicate the Combo exactly with Dramatic Battle in Alpha 3. Note that every character "matches" the character in the Streets of Rage game, as well: a big guy with a slide, the American guy with a flaming uppercut, and a punk with a mohawk.
• 09:12 - This is what Maj called the "Lazy American Combo." Guile doesn't actually do any work!
• 09:24 - If anyone wanted to see if the supposed "Mr. T" poster in the background of a Street Fighter EX 3 stage is real, here is your proof: look at the very left side of the clip at the start. On a low-compression version of the video, you can actually see it there.
• 09:38 - This is by far my least favorite part of the entire Combo Video. I really, really didn't want to do this style of edit, squashing the two Combos into their owns halves of the screen. But I wanted to get all three of the "Broken Honda Super Combo" clips into this part of the video. And the third one is particularly long, so I didn't have a lot of time to squeeze in all three Combos one at a time (and I wanted to be consistent and give each Segment the nice slow fade-out and fade-in before the 2-Hit Death). So I came up with this idea after trying out about 5478025743 other ideas and figured this was the best I could come up with. In any case, both Combos have Honda do a Super that should hit at least 4 times, but for some reason, they just mess up really badly.
• 09:43 - Honda's Super, in CvS2, is a little glitchy. He's actually considered "grounded" the entire time he's doing his Headbutt Super Combo. Theoretically, you could grab him with various characters, but Zangief's Final Atomic Buster is the easiest way to do it because it has the longest range. I think they made Honda grounded the entire time mainly so, if he does a Level 2, he can cancel it into another Special Move or Level 1 Super Combo the instant it connects.

VIDEO NOTES: Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood Segment

Song: Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood (djchensor Instrumental Remix)
Album: Kill Bill Vol. 1 - Original Soundtrack
Written By: Bennie Benjamin, Gloria Caldwell, and Sol Markus
Performed By: Santa Esmeralda
(c) 1977 Premiere Music Group
Available on A Band Apart / Maverick / WMG Soundtracks
http://www.maverick.com/releases/99/

--- Music Note - If you have to spend 10 minutes only listening to one song, this is the best way to do it. I'm not sure where Quentin Tarentino gets his ideas for what music to use in his movies, but this song is absolutely awesome... and it almost didn't make it into the video! It was the last song I picked for the video, after I had already edited and made the other 4 main segments. I fought over what song to use for the final section for a LONG time because I had so many requirements. 1) It had to be long because even after doing 4 whole segments of this Combo Video, there were still A LOT of clips left to be used!! 2) I wanted it to have a lot of good edit opprtunities in it, so I wanted the song to be very distinctive. 3) It had to be a song I really, really like (because, as I mentioned earlier, I wanted to make sure to only use songs I like). 4) It had to be catchy enough so that people wouldn't get bored by it since it is gonna have to run for a fairly long time. I had intended to use this song for the credits, maybe, but my brother Jeff told me I should use it for the segment, because the song is so good. And he definitely made the right call.

The only problem was that the song actually has a lot of parts with vocals. And I had determined to use only instrumentals at this point, and only songs that had a distinct "ending," to accomodate the 2-Hit Death Combo. This song was not an instrumental and had a fade out ending. And so, out of all the songs I used, this is the song that was edited the most. I did a lot of rearranging of the music to create the instrumental version that you hear on this Combo Video. And thus, in the same way that George Martin will forever hear and be bothered by the edit he made in The Beatles' "Strawberry Fields Forever," I will forever hear the edits I've made in this song. They stick out like a sore thumb, to me, and they really do still bother me.

Some people have asked if I could give them the instrumental version of this song, but I have to apologize: I love this song IN ITS ORIGINAL FORM. And I in no way want to make popular a version of this song that isn't real and was created without any rights. So if you really like the song, please obtain the real version (by BUYING the soundtrack, mind you). It's an actually really, really great cover of a really good classic rock song by The Animals.

• 10:11 - The blurry fade-ins were chosen to match the strumming of the guitar. In fact, almost all of the transitions I chose in this segment were dictated by the music. I'll point these out as I go.
• 10:27 - Another transition dictated by the music, bringing in a piece of the next clip with each drum beat. I do this in a few places in this segment.
• 10:28 - This fourth segment is the only segment of the entire Combo Video that has clips that are muted. I didn't do this anywhere else.
• 10:28 - Maj Roll-Canceled Bison's Taunt to go through Guile's Low Roundhouse. Then, the Custom Combo activation is actually a Kattobi Standing Roundhouse. That's how he gets into the air for the Air Throw so quickly.
• 10:31 - This is: The Alan Combo. One of my best friends, Alan Sentman, did this Combo by accident in Street Fighter EX 1 when we were playing ALL THE TIME. So we deemed it "The Alan Combo" and, when I made this video, I knew I had to put it in somewhere.
• 10:40 - Hsien-Ko has already planted a Bomb that we bounced off screen. That's where the second hit comes from. You can JUST BARELY see it on the left side of the screen.
• 10:57 - Notice how the Fireball that hits Dhalsim is actually what gives Sagat the Meter to do the Super. That's how fast Sagat's Super Fireball is (and is it just me, or does it sound like he's saying "Tiger Chow!" when he does the Super? "In order for your tiger to grow nice and healthy, feed it Tiger Chow!").
• 10:59 - These are the only Combos (outside of one Combo in the Credits) that are performed on CvS2 EO. And it wasn't even used for the EO mode, it was used for the one place where you can legitimately do the Special Move -> Super Combo cancel in P-Groove.
• 11:04 - Athena is actually canceling her Teleport into the Super here. The way the P-Groove cancel works is that if the enemy gets hit while you are in the middle of a Special Move, you can cancel the Special Move. So you actually don't have to HIT the enemy with the Special Move you are doing. In this case, she's in the middle of her Teleport when the Fireball hits King, giving her the opprtunity to cancel it at any point afterwards. She could have actually tacked on more hits from the 2nd part of her Super, so this is one particular Combo that breaks our attempt to make sure the Combos we use are hard to actually continue. But it was the best example of canceling a Teleport I could come up with (outside of Shin Gouki, but he does a different cancel later on), so I had to go with it.
• 11:16 - Shin Gouki's Red Fireball pops the enemy into the air, and his Level 3 Super doesn't actually Juggle. So the Super Combo will whiff completely if you do this Combo just by throwing the Fireball and then doing the Super. You can only get the Super to Juggle if you do a P-Groove Cancel. When you do a P-Groove Cancel, the enemy automatically becomes Jugglable, so after throwing the Red Fireball, Shin Gouki needs to start a Special Move that he can cancel after Blood Iori gets hit. I could have easily chosen to do a Teleport here, but found it funnier to use the Taunt, which counts as a Special Move. Akuma actually does start the Taunt before the Fireball connects, though it is hard to tell. But if he started it after the Fireball connected, he wouldn't have been able to cancel it.
• 11:25 - LONG story here, but a great story. I had recorded several CvS2 EO P-Groove Cancel Combos by the time I had gotten to this part of the song, and I determined that I needed 8 total clips to fill out this edit. I had about 10 or 11 P-Groove Cancel Combos, but only 7 of them were ones I actually liked. So I needed one more. So one night, I was chatting with Maj, and was discussing this dilemma with him. So he decided to think of a Combo. And WITHOUT TURNING ON THE GAME HIMSELF, he said to me, in less than a minute: "Try this: have Dhalsim a full-screen from Eagle. Have Dhalsim throw a Jab Fireball, take a step, and hit Fierce. Then have Eagle do his Uppercut + Punch reflect to hit the Fireball and Dhalsim's arm at the same time, popping Dhalsim into the air. Then cancel the Uppercut + Punch into his Super to turn Dhalsim Jugglable, and have the reflected Fireball juggle him." Sounded really crazy, but I decided to try it. And outside of one small adjustment, the Combo worked EXACTLY AS MAJ IMAGINED IT. And only a few minutes later, I had it properly captured. Now, I gotta say, that is one REALLY complex Combo that Maj made up on the spot without actually fiddling with the game in front of him. Almost like how Beethoven could write music while deaf, Maj can come up with new CvS2 Combos while blind. That just shows how Maj is probably one of THE most creative Combo creators in this day and age and why he definitely IS the Beethoven of CvS2. ^_^
• 11:28 - This is one of my favorite Combos of this whole video. Again, it uses the concept that you can cancel a Special Move so long as a hit connects while you are in the middle of the move. So Haohmaru uses the Jab Fireball as the hit and cancels the overhead slash to make sure the Level 3 Super can Juggle. And this Combo just LOOKS brutal, and almost seems as if the moves were designed the way they were JUST for this Combo to work. I mean, he BARELY hits Hibiki before she lands on the ground.
• 11:33 - This is the craziest edit I did. Most people had asked me where I came up with this idea, and I really just wanted to do an edit where characters "fade in" to the screen so that it looks I make the characters "beam" into the background. I could only do this for a VERY specific few Combos, but I found a few that worked. Basically, the Combos that I used had to have some part of that clip where the attacker leaves the spot where he started empty, so I could crop out that square and cover up the character at the start. It ended up working out really cool, IMO.
• 11:36 - Most of the clips used in this section had background music, unfortunately. So how on earth would I do this section with the clips having their volume on with such a quiet part of the music? Any part of the background music from the game will be heard loud and clear on top of the "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" song. So rather than have that happen, Maj suggested trying something artsy and have only one sound effect play in each clip. So I recorded the sound effect and played it distorted on purpose, to give it a nice effect. Rock's "Double Reppuken!" was actually taken from CvS2 and Captain Commando's "Captain Kick!" was taken from MvC2. Adon's "Jaguar Kick!" was taken from Alpha 3, during a point in Akuma's background music where the music cuts out for half a second. I managed to time Adon's dialogue right in that half-second music silence on my first try. Believe me, I was THRILLED that I managed that.
• 11:48 - I had no intention of starting this next section with the same "fade-in" transition, but I noticed I could do the same edit on the first Ryu Combo, so I thought, "Cool!" and did it.
• 11:50 - Throughout this edit, where Ryu continues to be followed from game to game fading into each other, I tried to do them in "chronological order", starting the with prequel Alpha 3, going to Super Street Fighter II Turbo, then to the CvS2 Ryu, and finally ending with the most well-drawn Ryu from the much later timeline.
• 12:04 - This is what I lovingly call the "Epileptic Seizure" section. I went through a BUNCH of different edit ideas for this part, but most of the ideas I came up with had the flashing clips be waaaay too distracting and seizure inducing. So I came up with this idea to keep the flashing clip in the background go with the clapping in the music, but put a second copy of the clip zooming in in the middle of the screen. That way, it eventually covers up a large portion of the flashing background to prevent the flashing clip from becoming grating (and to minimize the chances of seizures occurring when watching this section...). ALso, the idea of doing all the clips here in Slow-Mo was something I wrestled with: if I put them in regular motion, I could squeeze in a lot more Combos. But in the end, I went with the more artsy edit and was glad I did. I decided, since it was in Slow-Mo, to put in a lot of confusing Combos that are hard to understand when viewed at regular speed. And as a result, a lot of the Combos are really a lot easier to understand.
• 12:18 - At regular speed, this Testament Combo is almost impossible to see what happens. But in this slow-motion fashion, it's so clear what happens.
• 12:22 - In case it's hard to tell, Billy cancels his move into a Powering Up, which allows him to Block Shermie's attack and perform an Alpha Counter to Combo.
• 12:25 - Anakaris, in Vampire Savior, can actually catch B.B.Hood's Jumping Roundhouse, where she throws out a small land mine. From then on, Anakaris can throw out as many as he likes... and REALLY fast, too. So in this Combo, he throws out a mine over B.B.Hood's head, and then knocks her into it.
• 12:30 - Okay, even in slow-motion, it's really hard to tell what happens here. Basically, Maj got B.B.Hood to throw out a slow missile under Anakaris and then call out the Cammy Assist right before she Blocks Anakaris's attack. Cammy then strikes Anakaris, but since the AAA Cammy pops people upwards, Anakaris won't hit the missile that's behind him. So what does Maj do? Since B.B.Hood blocked the attack, he performs a Push Block after Cammy connects, shoving Anakaris straight back into the Missile for the 2-Hit Combo. Crazy stuff. ^_^
• 12:34 - Once again, the Benimaru Glitch from CvS1.
• 12:46 - I'm really annoyed how in most of the Alpha 3 Combos, the Throw won't count on the Combometer. I still consider these 2-Hit Combos, even though the Combometer doesn't say so.
• 13:14 - If you notice, in the next two Combos, the Combometer comes out with no number count! They both come out as "__ Hit Combo." The "__ Hit Combo" sign on the fireball reflect Combos were discovered by Maj, and he found out the cause of this bug, too. Basically, CvS2 can only fit three messages on screen at once per character. So if the game needs to output 4 messages, three get drawn on the screen, and the last one comes in after the first three go away. If the fourth message happens to be the Combometer, the number (which is animated separately, obviously, since it increases during Combos) never gets drawn in properly, so the number is just gone. So in those two Combos, you see two "Tech Bonus" messages and a "Counter Hit" message. Afterwards, the Combometer scrolls in and the number is missing. And THEN, though you can't see it in the video, the game gets REALLY confused and a "Reversal" message scrolls out after the Combometer instead of the typical congratulatory message.
• 13:19 - This Double Fireball section is another section where the background noise cuts out of the clips. I did it for one main reason: to make it more apparent that I timed it so that the second fireball is always thrown at the exact moment that the second guitar strum occurs during each clip. In the end, whether or not the Fireballs matched the Guitar sound, I think it turned out cooler with no sound effects.
• 13:27 - The Combo starts with King being knocked over and on fire... by Dhalsim's standing forward kick?? Actually, the Combo Maj used to knock King down was to hit with a Jab Fireball and a Standing Forward kick simultaneously so they register at the same time for 2-Hits, even though neither can Juggle.
• 13:31 - Maj used Charge Partitioning, I think, to get Remy to throw two Fireballs so quickly in a row.
• 13:35 - Totally an accidental Combo. I wanted to Combo two ninja stars from the same side on different Jumps. But by the time I ran up to Testament, I noticed I had thrown the SLOWEST-ASS ninja star I could have possiblly ever thrown. So I let Chipp jump over Testament, and did another one from the other side. They connected for a Combo, and I said, "Cool!" and kept it.
• 13:43 - Another odd edit, with the saturated colors transitions. I wanted to create a "warm" feeling to match the warmth of the horn sounds in the music. This is what I came up with.
• 13:47 - SOOO hard to see what is going on in this Combo. Basically, Strider calls in a bomb and Roll calls in Cyclops. The Bomb, which usually does 2-hits on its own, hits both Roll AND Cyclops, dealing one hit to each. But Cyclops managed to get his beam out against Strider, who Blocks it and performs a Team Counter Assist. So Captain Commando switches in and does his Counter Attack, Comboing Roll out of the air.
• 13:51 - This actually ISN'T the same Combo you saw in the beginning of this video, though it uses the same concept: that you can hit the enemy with Blanka's Super with the very last frame so that he hits the enemy and lands instead of bouncing off. In the CvS2 clip at the very beginning of this Combo Video, he does a Level 2 into Level 1 cancel. In this CvS1 clip, the Level 3 has a natural Juggle Potential, so he lands, charges up the rest of his SNK-Groove Meter, and does a Level 3.
• 14:08 - Tougher Combo than it looks. You can't see it, but Slayer actually has to Dash forward before doing the unblockable, otherwise it won't reach. So doing the Roman Cancel, landing, Dashing, and doing the move is actually fairly tough to time, because it's easy to get the unblockable off too late.
• 14:17 - A glitch existed in Champion Edition that made it so that Dhalsim could be Juggled in the air after getting hit out of the air by a non-knockdown move. For more examples of this, check out NKI's video from Evolution 2004 as well. He's got a really nice Guile Combo that takes advantage of this.
• 14:44 - This Combo only works on Faust and only in GGX.
• 14:58 - In over 95% of the clips used throughout this Combo Video, the sound effects were not muted. So if the clip came from a game where I couldn't record it sans background music, the background music was left in. But for the majority of the time, the song I have playing in the background is loud enough to drown out any game background music, and the sound effects are still loud enough to be properly heard. In some instances, I also tried my best to cut out the game background music where I could, if no sound effects were occurring at the same time. So I would mute the clips until every instance a sound effect needed to be heard, and then I'd unmute it. The results were mixed, however, and this Blue Mary clip is a good example of where it didn't work out too well. Whenever you can hear Blue Mary, you can also hear a "hum" along with it, which is the game background music. So my cutting in and out of the sound is painfully obvious here. I also try to mask it here by lowering the volume, which, unfortunately, just makes the sound effects for this clip really hard to hear.
• 15:11 - I like how I go from a dizzy Rolento to a dizzy Benimaru. In KOF98, if you were dizzy near your teammates in the background, you could actually call them out to protect you from the opponent. So Maj actually managed to perform a Combo with this helper. Good stuff.
• 15:15 - There's that Benimaru glitch again! This is probably one of the most well-crafted Combos in the game. The first hit of Super Fireballs don't normally Juggle, but all the later hits do. So to get this Combo to work, Maj gets all of Akuma's Super Fireball's hits eaten up (by the invisible Raikou Ken Super planted by the Beni glitch) except for the last hit. He then can knock Benimaru into that last hit of the Fireball Super which has Juggle Potential.
• 15:20 - Also a well-crafted Combo. Again, Maj gets every hit of Evil Ryu's Super Fireball eaten up by Akuma's Super Fireball so that only the last hit makes it through. Normally, Crouch Roundhouse into a Super Fireball doesn't Juggle, but by doing this, it can.
• 15:35 - The way this segment ends is an homage to myself, basically. I know I know, how full of myself can I get? ^_^ No, in actuality, the Tekken clip goes IMMEDIATELY into replay after the defeated Paul finishes crumpling to the floor, so the only way I could end the segment is with something quick. And since alsmot ALL of my Combo Videos in the past ended with this "TV off" effect, I figured I'd bring it back here for nostaligic purposes. However, the new Video Editing app I was using didn't HAVE this transition built into it. So I took one of my old clips and examined it frame-by-frame for how the "turn off" effect looked, and reproduced it frame-by-frame.

VIDEO NOTES: Guitar Was The Case Segment

Song: Guitar Was The Case
Album: Mono Puff - Unsupervised
Written By: John Flasnburgh
Performed By: Mono Puff (John Flansburgh, Hal Cragin, and Steve Calhoun)
(c) 1996 Rykodisc
Available on Rykodisc
http://www.rykodisc.com/Catalog/dump/rykoalbums_34.asp

--- Music Note - I wanted so so so so so badly to put a They Might Be Giants song into this Combo video, but couldn't find one that would fit the Combo Video well enough (plus, they don't write that many instrumentals). So I had to go to the next best thing: the band Mono Puff. Mono Puff is a side band headed by one half of the They Might Be Giants duo: John Flansburgh (the other half being John Linnell). They Might Be Giants is hands-down my favorite band. Heck, they're even responsible for my nickname "jchensor." ^_^ It can only be my honor to put one of their songs into my Combo Video, even if it had to be a Mono Puff song. Rock on, John and John! You guys are the greatest!

This song appears completely intact and unedited.

• 15:37 - There's nothing I hate more than parts of a Combo Video where more than one Combo is going on at the same time, because you can't watch all of the clips in the first viewing of the Combo Video. So I swore I would never do it myself. And yet, here I am, doing the very thing I swore never to do. So why did I end up doing this? I mean, I agree wholeheartedly that it is not easy to see all the combos at once... but I really had no intention of having anyone actually go back and watch them all! But I'll explain my mindset real quickly: I wanted to match the frenetic sound of the electric guitars. So I thought a good way to do that was to show a ton of clips at once. But I really, really didn't want to put in 25 Combos that I thought were worthy enough of being viewed cleanly. So what I decided was this: Maj and I basically recorded over 500 2-Hit Combos for this video, with only 365 being seriously considered to be put in (in the end, just shy of 300 2-Hit Combos made it into this video, making the grand total of Combos over 300 thanks to non 2-hit combos in the Intro section). The 25 combos-at-once portion, as it turns out, was the very last part of the 5 main segments that I did. For a long, long time, I just left the first 14 seconds of this segment black with no clips playing. So by the time I finished doing everything except this small section, I had about 50+ Combos left without a home. So there were two choices: leave them out completely, or go ahead and squash a bunch of them in, even though they won't be easy to see. So I went with the second option, figuring I could get a bunch of clips in while also matching the hectic sound of the music.
• 15:51 - The 25 clips I had to use in the previous section were sorta "forced" upon me given the criteria with which they were chosen. However, even though I didn't specifically pick the clips for this purpose, I did my best to "match" all 25 clips with the cross-fade into the next Terry Combo. For example: the two combos with a red background in the upper right-hand corner turn into the pink sign in the Terry Combo. All the Combos on the top and middle left are mostly black to transition into that black portion of the Terry Combo background. The bottom row has more "white-based" clips, to match the floor of the Terry Combo. And so on and so forth. I think it worked out decently.
• 15:52 - Okay, the most abstract and artsy thing I did in this entire video is this section. The portions with the slanted clips and the swirling colorful backgrounds were created with a very abstract concept in mind. The song used in this segment is a "Guitar Duel," with one person playing a portion of the song and then being matched by a 2nd person. So I wanted to create a similar thing with the clips that were used. So one person has the "green" background and has all Combos going from left to right. The 2nd person has the "red" background with all Combos going from right to left. And the clips actually used are all done with an "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better" mentality. So, the first time this edit is done, the "green" player does a Terry Power Geyser Combo and a Combo where the Zangief uses a cancel to fly across the screen very quickly. And then, to counter, the "red" player ALSO does a Terry Power Geyser Combo and a Combo where Johnny does a cancel to fly across the screen very quickly. Then, the second time this edit is used, the "green" player does a Combo with Shadowgeist where a Raging Demon-type Super is used solely to make him move across the screen to land the 2nd hit and then does a bizarre Guile CvS2 Combo that combos a Sonic Boom and a Razor Kick. Afterwards, the "red" player fights back with an Akuma Combo that uses the Raging Demon for travel as well, and then does another odd Guile CvS2 Combo that Combos a Sonic Boom into a Razor Kick. Very abstract, very hard to notice, but I had to mention it since I went through the effort to do something so bizarrely artsy.
• 16:29 - "Wave-Dashing" Guile, as Maj likes to call this. What Guile is doing here is activating the Custom Combo with a Kattobi Standing Roundhouse to give him some forward momentum. Then, he lands and does another Standing Roundhouse, which brings him forward a bit more. In the middle of this kick, his Sonic Boom connects, which allows him to suddenly be able to Chain his Standing Roundhouse Kick into another Normal Move. So why not? Do another Standing Roundhouse, which brings him forward AGAIN. Then, before it connects, cancel it into a Razor Kick (since all Normal Moves can be canceled into Specials at anytime in a Custom Combo) to connect before the enemy recovers.
• 16:40 - This Combo is just odd. The explanation of this Combo will be tough, but I'll try. In a Custom Combo, you can charge up for Charge-Up Special Moves instantly, right? Well, Maj found out that by doing the Super at the end of a Custom Combo, you're still considered in a Custom Combo. So right when the Super is about to end, Maj does the code for a Sonic Boom before the Somersault Justice recovers and starts to charge up RIGHT AWAY. Because of the leeway inherent in almost all Street Fighter games, the Sonic Boom comes out after the Super ends even though the motion for it was completed while Guile was still in delay. But since he held Down-Back while still in delay (and thus, still in a Custom Combo), he charged-up instantly for the Razor Kick. By getting Vega to do a Back Flip so that the Sonic Boom connects as a Meaty Attack, Maj was able to perform the now instantly charged Razor Kick and have it Combo.
• 16:56 - Nothing particularly odd about this Combo. I just wanted to say that this Sakura Combo is another one of my favorite Combos, just because it's another really well constructed Combo courtesy of Maj.
• 16:56 - I call this background effect my "Megaman" edit, since this edit reminds me so much of Megaman games when you choose which opponent to face. The enemy usually drops down into the middle of the screen with a colored stripe behind them as they do their pose. That's where I got the idea for this background edit. This edit, btw, was really, really tough to do, too. It was not something that was naturally available to me through the editing program I used, but something I had to construct myself out of a ton of different effects combined together.
• 17:03 - There is a glitch with Kyosuke that occurs when you hit him out of his Triple Team super (which has been always done by making Kyosuke land on a Jab Ground Fireball from someone like Iori or Rock). When this occurs, Hinata comes out and does her first series of hits and then sits there and waits. And waits. And waits. Then, she does the final hit from the Super sans Kyosuke and Batsu. Fortuntely for me, this final hit has Juggle Potential. So after Hinata finishes her first series of hits, Maj and I quickly scrolled her off the screen, and performed the Counter Attack, which ended up perfectly timed for Hinata to come from nowhere to Juggle Rock.
• 17:12 - Just so we could get as many 2-Hit Combos as possible, note that the Sean on the right actually Jabs the Sean on the left right when the basketball hits. As a result, both Seans get 2-Hit Combos, and that's pretty much the only reason why the right Sean does the Jab.
• 17:17 - Just in case you can't tell what happened here, yes, using Urien's Aegis Reflector, Sean shoots HIMSELF with 2 Super Fireballs for the world's only 2-Hit Combo performed on yourself.
• 17:23 - I don't know why, but I really like the effect of the Yellow background that comes and goes along with the guitar riffs.
• 17:23 - Rolento's Flash-Jumping Short is not supposed to be able to Juggle. That's done with a bizarre glitch using Level 2 Supers in C-Groove. You can get Rolento to cancel his Level 2 Tripwire Super with his Scouter Jump to head over Yuri. When he lands, he has to turn around, which makes him avoid a "Neutral State." Because he avoids this Neutral State, the free Juggle that comes with a Level 2 cancel is "stored" in Rolento and can only be "unlocked" by performing another Cancel before he reaches another Neutral State (which he avoids by walking forward). Thus, he can cancel the close-up Standing Fierce he uses to hit Yuri out of the air, which unlocks the free Juggle, with the Scouter Jump and get a Juggle on Yuri.
• 17:26 - Again, Maki shouldn't be able to Juggle with the Crouching Fierce. The same thing occurs here as with the Rolento Combo. Maki cancels the Level 2 Super into the Saka Hayagake (running backwards) canceled into the Forward High Jump, which goes over Cammy. So just like Rolento, she avoids the Neutral State because she has to turn around when she lands. Stored again by walking forward, she goes into a Jump and hits Cammy out of the air with a Jumping Strong. But in order to Juggle Cammy, she needs to "unlock" the stored free Juggle. To do that, she actually Buffers the Jumping Strong with her Air Throw Special Move! That Buffer unlocks the stored Free Juggle so she can then land and quickly Juggle Cammy with the Crouching Fierce. This technique was discovered by Sai-Rec, and this particular Combo was actually taken from them.
• 17:28 - This Combo is accomplished using the strange Tech Throw Reversal glitch in CvS2. The glitch is performed by having both characters perform a Reversal after the Tech Hit. When this happens, the FIRST CHARACTER TO REACH A NEUTRAL STATE actually cancels the other character into a Neutral State as well! So when Honda whiffs his 720 and reaches a Neutral State, Geese gets reset as well. Thus, he's able to jump and do a Gale Slash in the air immediately after doing the Double Reppuken on the ground.
• 17:31 - Rolento gets the knife and the slide to hit in the EXACT SAME FRAME. When this occurs, the hit that keeps the enemy on the ground takes precedence, so the slide doesn't knock Guile over.
• 17:34 - If you notice, Chun Li does a Head Stomp to step into Iori's Fireball.
• 17:37 - Just so you know, the fact that the first three cymbal crashes during this Combo match SO WELL with the actual Combo itself was never planned. I just noticed that they were perfectly timed, so I matched them up on purpose. But the fact that they matched at all was total luck. Also, this Combo uses 9 levels of Super, so yes, I am cheating here, but so many MvC2 Combo Videos use Infinite Meters these days just to do cool looking Combos, so I think it's okay for me to do so as well. Besides, using it to help me create one of the longest and most long-winded 2-Hit Combos ever was worth it! If you can't tell what is happenening, Zangief cancels his Level 3 SPD Super into Dhalsim's Air Throw Super, who then DHC's into Ruby Heart's Super. Her Super ends really quickly, if you don't make it change directions, so she immediately starts a new Super, which is DHC'ed into Zangief's Level 3 SPD Super again. He recovers in time to catch the opponent off the ground with a sweep.

VIDEO NOTES: Credits Segment

Song: The Boogie Bumper
Album: Big Bad Voodoo Daddy - Big Bad Voodoo Daddy (Americana Deluxe)
Written By: Scotty Morris
Performed By: Big Bad Voodoo Daddy (Scotty Morris, Kurt Sodergren, Dirk Shumaker, Joshua Levy, Glen "The Kid" Marhevka, Karl HUnter, Andy "Lucious" Rowley, and Jeff Harris)
(c) 1998 EMI-Capitol Entertainment Properties
Available on Coolsville Records/EMI-Capitol
http://www.bbvd.com/discography/index.htm
http://www.bbvd.com/discography/ad.htm

--- Music Note - Again, my brother comes to the rescue here for music selection ideas. He figured I started with a jazzy song in Roxie's Suite, had a light-hearted jazz song from Star Wars' Cantina Band, and so why not finish with a jazz song as well? Especially since jazz is NEVER used in Combo Videos. So where better to get some upbeat jazzy Credits music than Big Bad Voodoo Daddy? And to be honest, I really love how it turned out. The modern Kings of Swing really worked out well.

This song was very minorly edited to remove a few measures towards the end, because I didn't have enough credits to fill the entire actual song.

• 18:16 - One of the alternate songs I had considered using was something comical: I had planned to use the oldies song "It Takes Two" performed by Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston. But my desire to only use instrumentals kinda prevented me from using it. And, as Derek put it, "only 3 people will get it." Yeah, the song is hella old, and I can't even say that many Street Fighter players of today will have even heard of it. Also, the song is just really, really happy and was too cheery for this video.
• 18:35 - I KNOW I've left people out. I mean, we were making this video for TWO YEARS. In the course of that time, the amount of people Maj and I pestered for Combo ideas (without letting them know what they were for) probably greatly exceeded the list of people there. So if I forgot to list you, I deeply apologize.
• 18:45 - I decided to use all the "broken" 2-Hit Combos we had in the credits. This Plasma Sword Combo is the first example of pure "broken-ness." This is obviously not really a 2-Hit Combo. June is clearly getting up and is hit by Hayato during her get-up animation. That's not a 2-Hit Combo, but for some reason, it registers as one.
• 18:54 - This was the type of Combo that was originally going to populate the majority of the Combo Video: Combos that look like they should do many more hits, but end up only doing 2. This is probably only one of 5 or so Combos of that variety that actually made it into this Video. You can see it if you look really carefully, but what happens is that Roll is landing from a Super Jump... after throwing a little flower pot. So Cable gets in two hits of the AHVB before getting nailed, and having it stop.
• 18:58 - The only other CvS2 EO Combo in the video outside of the eight in that one section.
• 19:03 - A glitch in the Japanese MvC2 allowed Guile to leave behind "trails" of his Somersault Justice. You've probably seen them in other MvC2 Combo Videos before. Juggernaut is at the mercy of the Flying Screen, here, and gets nailed by them as the screen, and Juggernaut along with it, scrolls by.
• 19:07 - I wish I had more time to show this clip, but I wanted to fit it in the time alloted by the music. What happens is that Roy is charging up his Flame Sword, and it looks like he's gonna nail Luigi. Anyone who has played Smash Bros. knows that there's no way Roy can do a Combo if he hits Luigi with the Flame Sword... so where's the 2-hits gonna come from? Turns out, nothing that Roy does. Instead, Luigi walks into a Sensor Bomb, which launches him into another Sensor Bomb, and that's the 2-Hit Combo, as Roy whiffs his fully charged Flame Sword futilely. And since Roy threw down the Bomb that Luigi walks into, he actually gets the 2-Hit Combo count. Yeah, I know, not particularly spectacular, but I wanted a clip from a company that was listed on that screen at the time. So this was the very last Combo I recorded (right before I put it into the video), just so I could have a game from Nintendo during that screen.
• 19:11 - This Combo was given to us by Kamui. Akari actually AIR THROWS the other Akari out of her GET UP animation! So there really isn't anything the 2nd Akari can do. In essence, this is a true 2-Hit Combo, but a really screwed up 2-Hit Combo.
• 19:16 - I had to put in this Combo. I almost died laughing the first time I saw this Combo. Go Streets of Rage 2!!
• 19:20 - The "old film" look of all the clips on the top of the screen was manually done. There was no filter to produce that look that I wanted, so I did the whole thing manually: the flicker, the fuzziness, and the black "hair-lines" that cross the screen. I'm actually quite proud of how it turned out.
• 20:06 - It felt really, really good to actually finally record a long-winded X-Men Vs. Street Fighter Combo, after not having the facilities back in my XvSF Combo FAQ writing days to capture clips. I made this clip for the Intro, but I really, really like the Combo (it's actually the "Insane" Combo I listed for Cammy in my FAQ, with an added relaunch thrown in for the heck of it), so I had to try to find a way to put it in its entirety into the video. So since it was played during the Intro section, I figured I'd show the whole Combo during the Credits when I talk about the Intro's music. Also, the Combo IS sped up. It was actually too long to fit in the space that was given, so I sped it up a bit to make it fit.
• 20:24 - This was actually a really short Combo recorded by Maj at first. He just had Strider do two of the Panthers, and that was pretty much it. But I figured it'd be perfect if I had it drawn out waaaaaay longer between the two Panthers, and it would fit perfectly for the 15 seconds I needed to fill for this part. So I, at first, tried to improvise what Strider was doing, but it always turned out really poorly. So I eventually choreographed the entire routine, and I really like how Strider starts to go nuts, with Thor, at the end. The timing of everything worked out really well, particularly with the music at the end. Oh, and how does this glitch work? If you throw Gold War Machine in the MvC Training Mode and he does the Tech Throw (because the stupid Training Mode dummy in MvC sometimes Rolls and Tech Hits Throws for NO reason except to annoy you) at the 2nd point he can, he gets stuck in a Crouch and everything that hits him, from that point forward, Combos... up to the point where you make him turn-around. When he turns around, the Combometer resets, but again, everything Combos on him until you switch sides again.
• 20:41 - Yes, this is my huge thanks paragraph to Maj, because he really did sooooooo much for this video, and he really was the one who got this thing made. Without him, I NEVER, and I know this is 100% true, NEVER would have done this video on my own, due to my laziness. So here it is, my big "Thank you!" page that's supposed to be all warm and fuzzy... but, like the idiot I am, I freakin' SPELLED HIS NAME WRONG in this paragraph. Needless to say, I feel like a total moron. All the other times I list his name, it's spelled right, but not in my big "Thank You" paragraph. *sigh* Lemme spell it right here for you: Artavan Mkhikian.
• 20:50 - Chris "Kao Megura" MacDonald passed away earlier in 2004, and I had to give him his proper respect here. Chris and I were fellow FAQ Writers and became good friends over e-mail, but at one point in time, there was a misunderstanding between us... resulting in us no longer being on speaking terms. I won't go into any details, but needless to say, we were both not talking. I can only speak for myself, but I think it was mostly out of stupid pride. Then, when I learned of his passing, I came to the realization that nothing is worth holding a grudge like that. I felt horribly foolish afterwards, and I promised I would never be so stubborn ever again. However, even though we grew bitter at each other, I don't think either of us ever stopped respecting the other person at all. I think Chris's FAQ work is still the exemplary FAQs out there. Thus, because I do still respect him so much, I had to dedicate my video to him. The care and work I put into the video is exactly the same that Chris put into all of his FAQs... I only felt it appropriate. You won't be forgotten, Chris.
• 21:00 - Unfortunately, this is just a joke. I have no real intention of making the 3-Hit Combo Video. Seriously, if I decided to make it, I won't be done with it until 2065. The 2-Hit Combo Video was so tough to make, I can't even imagine what a 3-Hit Combo Video would entail. But I had to put this Combo in, because my friend Alan made it up a long time ago, during my MvC2 Combo Video making days. And I promised I would put it into a video, but never did because I stopped making MvC2 Combo Videos RIGHT then. But then, this opportunity presented itself, and it was perfect. I put it in with this mock "preview" of the next video. But I'm 95% sure I won't be working on this video any time soon. Maybe I'll do it one day, but don't expect anything for Evo 2005. ^_^
• 21:25 - I don't know why, but I LOVE the way this Combo SOUNDS. Yes, sounds. It's just so loud and explosive and violent. I was tempted to jack the volume of this clip WAAAAY up, but decided against it with better judgement. But turn the volume up on the clip, and see what I mean: this clip just sounds really cool. I think it made a perfect capper to the entire video.

And that's about it. Hope this write-up was entertaining enough for you. I guess you can call this my version of a Director's Commentary track, huh? ^_^

- James "jchensor" Chen