Gaming supermen

Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike - street fighter parry!!

Blocking one of the Street Fighter characters' crazy super moves is one thing, but parrying every single blow? That's something else. It's not a totally impossible feat by any means, deflecting 14 hits in a row, but the near-death victory is supercharged by the riotous crowd when Ken makes his last-minute attack. You might be able to parry moves like this, but you'll never have an entire convention cheering you on (this comes from Evolution 2004, the world championship for fighting games). Even if you're not a fan, you've got to appreciate the skills. And yes, there's a bigger screen somewhere.

We discovered this video on alpha06'spage, but we also managed to track down the original videographer, Seth Killian, who narrated us through this uncanny match.

"I shot it on handycam at the EVO world finals in 2004, and that's my voice having the geek-tastic freakout about 'madness!' The match is from the Street Fighter 3: Third Strike finals, between Daigo Umehara (playing as Ken) and Justin Wong (playing as Chun Li). Justin is one of the most dominant US players, best known for a really boring style designed to frustrate an opponent into making mistakes. Daigo is a legendary player from Japan most famous for an aggressive style and an uncanny ability to read his opponent's mind and predict their next move."

"Unfortunately, this is exactly what happened to Justin in the clip - Daigo had almost no life left, so just blocking the super move from Chun Li would have killed him. Justin activated it to go for the simplest win, but Daigo predicted Justin's move (you can't just handle that move on reaction) and was able to deflect the super move's 17 fast strikes by using a separate parry motion on each of them, before countering the prone Chun Li with a winning combo. It was a perfect marriage of top-level mind games and expert execution performed under the pressure of an intense finals match. And, of course, you don't have to take my word for it - the very vocal opinion of the crowd (made up of the world's most hardcore fighting fans) speaks for itself."