Soul Calibur IV vs. Master and Phoenix

Posted by: DrDogg

With the recent release of Soul Calibur IV, many Championship Gaming Series fans and players are wondering if the game will make it into the league for the 2009 season. While the official decision has yet to be made, there’s a lot of speculation going on that could have a significant impact on the DALLAS VENOM and the other teams of the CGS. VENOM DOA was a big part of the team’s success during the 2008 season, and if things remain unchanged, there’s a good chance Alex Conroy and his crew will be able to sing their trademark, “500k, day-by-day” mantra with the Dew Trophy in hand.

Emmanuel “Master” Rodriguez finished the 2008 season with an impressive 11-1 record and has been at the top of the DOA world since the series truly came into the competitive scene with Dead or Alive Ultimate on the original Xbox. However, he’s never been known to excel at any other fighting games, and early reports from Soul Calibur IV insiders indicate that the VENOM franchise player isn’t doing well with the transition. Does this mean if DOA were to be dropped, Master would be gone from the league? Let’s go back to the beginning of DOA4 to help answer that question.

When DOA4 was first released, Master was very quiet. At the time, online tournaments were the big draw as people had yet to see the light of LAN play in DOA. Master initially made a name for himself in the DOA world by winning several online DOA2U tournaments as soon as he came onto the scene. However, when it came time for the first online DOA4 tournament, Master was nowhere to be found. When asked why he didn’t want to participate he simply stated that he wasn’t ready. A year later, the man was dominating the DOA4 scene with the likes of Ryan “Offbeat Ninja” Ward and Carl “Perfect Legend” White.

While this page of history shows that Master can learn a game quickly, the transition from DOA to SC is very different than the transition from DOA3.1 or DOA2U to DOA4. It’s no secret that DOA is at the bottom of the competitive fighting game scene in terms of sheer depth. The game isn’t shallow by any means, but when compared to SC it simply isn’t as deep. In addition, this is the fourth SC title and technically the fifth game in the series. Just like Master, many of the big names in SC have been big names since the first two games. While no two SC games play exactly the same, there’s a great deal of knowledge that can be used from one SC to the next.


A possibility for the 2009 season?
On the women’s front, Michelle “Phoenix” Pleet had an amazing season, defeating Vanessa Arteaga not once, but twice. Get used to hearing that line because it’s going to be used to describe Phoenix for many seasons to come. The SC female community is in about the same state as the DOA female community except that there’s no real incentive for the girls to improve their skills. The Vanessa of the SC community goes by the name of Kayane and hails from France. But calling her the Vanessa of SC is an understatement. She has been going head-to-head with the top SC males for years and is largely considered to be a top player in Europe despite her gender.

Aside from Kayane, there aren’t any standout females playing SC so Phoenix and the rest of the DOA-F players in the CGS would all be starting from an even playing field. This automatically gives Phoenix the advantage because she’s already made plans to go into training for SC IV should the game be announced for the CGS. As a further 1up to the other girls, her SC IV training will not impact her DOA training since she’ll be training with the same people for both games. If Phoenix plays her cards right and continues with her unmatched determination, she could be an even greater force in SC than she was in DOA this past season.

So how will all of this affect the VENOM next season if SC is picked up? When it comes time for Alex Conroy to select his franchise player for the 2009 season, he’ll more than likely ask Master if he can hang with the top SC players. Master is a confident guy who will not back down from any challenge, so you can be sure his answer will be a resounding yes. That will almost certainly give Conroy the confidence to keep him as his franchise player. When he asks Phoenix the same thing, she’ll already have a lot of SC training under her belt and could be the top female SC player in the US by that time. But when it comes time to play, while Phoenix will probably perform at least as well as she did this season, it’s unlikely Master will be able to really give the top SC players a run for their money. There’s just too much experience going against Master and too little time for him to catch up. It’s not out of the question for Master to hang with the best but it would take more work than he’s ever put into a fighting game to get where he needs to be by the start of the 2009 season.