Saturday, August 30, 2008

ABDC VMA Battle Recap!!



So MTV gave us an ABDC special to hype up for this year's Video Music Awards, which could be likely crap - Live blog of that craziness when that happens. Anyway, let's recap today's ABDC show of five of the top crews from the top 2 seasons competing for a VMA slot doing the nominated videos for Best Dance Video and 25k for their favorite charity.


Actually, the show started off with a performance by Jabbawockeez and SuperCrew, the winners of the two seasons, and it was sick. The number is a collaboration of the two crews and Shane Sparks and it is just awesome seeing these winners do their thing together.


The competition started off with Irvine's very own Kaba Modern doing "4 Minutes" by Madonna and Justin Timberlake. Right off the bat, the conveyor belt they used is true to the video and plus its your typical Kaba performance of isolations and MTV cameras following Yuri around. Good thing they're not letting their success of traveling worldwide performing everywhere get into their heads because they're still doing their thing.


Next up is BreakSk8 doing Ne-Yo's "Closer" and they also ripped it. It feels good that they are still doing their thing showing that skating and dancing can mesh pretty well together. Like Kaba being true to themselves, BreakSk8 stayed true to their style with various b-boy moves on skates and being accurate to the video from the outfits to the chorus moves.


So Real Cru continues to do their thing as well fresh off their loss to SuperCrew last week at the Season 2 Finale. At least their hunger for winning was still in for this little competition doing Chris Brown's "Forever." Nothing really surprising from this performance since the ABDC audience is pretty much used to their style already of crazy hand illusions and bringing the "Explosion." Plus, we finally to see So Real and Kaba dance in the same show since everyone says they're the same, but there are noticeable differences with their styles.


Once again, Fanny Pak continues to amaze with their creativity and crazy concepts for their performance of "When I Grow Up" by the Pussycat Dolls. From the beginning, you just expect randomness from them, but the whole thing still came together with the baby carriages to the various outfits they were wearing just like the song of what they want to do when they grow up. This is hands down my favorite appearance of the show today.


Last up is Status Quo and no wonder they disappeared after Season 1 because of drama and their egos going off. Yet, they still managed to do okay doing "Damaged" by Danity Kane despite getting a song they don't like and doing LOTS of flips at any moment. I hope they stay broken up and MTV could of replaced them with Boogie Bots. This performance was the worst one compared the rest of the competition.

So the judges picked the top three crews to have a shot of being in the VMAs and I agree with who they picked.
  1. Fanny Pak
  2. Kaba Modern
  3. So Real Cru




After that, people vote for the top 2 they want to face off at the VMA pre-show and then the winner gets the 25k for charity along with being in the award show as presenters. Its pretty obvious Fanny Pak gets in as one of those two, but it can be a toss up between Kaba and So Real for the other spot. Overall, this ABDC special is pretty good with great performances and shows how why the show is successful. Good thing Season 3 is in January, but the tour should be cool with the lineup of crews in.

Capcom gets GGPO



According to Capcom's Unity Blog, they announced a multi-year deal of games to have the GGPO netcode. For those who don't know, GGPO has been the saving grace for fighting games on the PC for playing online which is usually for 2D fighters like the Street Fighter games (Super Turbo and Alpha 2 are favorites). The article stated that the head of GGPO stopped by the Backbone offices to consult about the online netcode for Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. Capcom getting the multi-year license of GGPO for future games like the console versions of Street Fighter IV and other games is a good thing for the fighting game community that wanted near-perfect online play for their matches. This is another reason why Capcom has been perhaps the best Japanese based publisher / developer now delivering on solid products, listening to the fanbase, being one of the ambassadors for downloadable games (Bionic Commando Rearmed), and bringing back the franchises people care about (Strider could be next). Imagine the possiblities with GGPO on Capcom's side, they could finally release my dream of Marvel vs. Capcom 2 HD Remix with lagless online play if they could get the Marvel rights back. To celebrate another victory for Capcom fans, I posted another Street Fighter IV match with Ryu and Dhalsim (the Dhalsim is pretty good using the telports to his advantage).

Slightly off topic but SF4 related: Check out the blog links here for The Street Fighter Blog for more on my most anticipated game with new footage of playable Akuma with two versions of his Raging Demon as his super and ultra as well as his ending possibly hinting Gouken as another secret boss / playable character.