Hiya!

As you may have noticed, Street Fighter 6 has been on my mind a lot lately. I have been playing Capcom’s latest fighting game pretty much every chance I get and I have been loving it. I’ve even enjoyed a modicum of success playing against online players, reaching up to a 1-star Diamond rank before being promptly booted back to a 4-star Platinum rank after a really long and salty losing streak. Then again, I did get to Diamond rank thank to Street Fighter 6’s wonky placement algorithm. I mean, I tried playing as Manon and I got a 50% win ration during my placement rank. Apparently, Capcom thought I deserved such a high placement because of that, I guess.

After that experience, I did acknowledge my current status as I wasn’t getting anywhere against the Diamond players I was running into. That didn’t mean I didn’t want to improve my game, though. This is why I went online and perused YouTube to check out some pros to watch their gameplay and gather what I can learn from them. During this, I ran across a clip of a player named DarkSydePhil and a compilation of all of his salty moments while playing Street Fighter 6 online.

This did lead YouTube to believe I wanted to see more videos of DarkSydePhil, or DSP for short. So I did watch a few more videos of him trying to play Street Fighter 6 online and, honestly, I can safely say I’ve learned a whole lot from watching this person play.

Now, for those who are unfamiliar with DSP, I did some research on this, let’s say, charming fellow but I’m far from the foremost authority on how he became this notorious figure in the fighting game community. What I do know is he isn’t the most respected personality when it comes to fighting games. Honestly, a lot of my knowledge comes from the online video below. Spoiler: it doesn’t paint DarkSydePhil in a good light, to say the least.

To be fair to the man, I don’t think DSP is that terrible of a Street Fighter player. I would say he’s more than good and he probably would beat me in the majority of the matches we play if I encounter him online. However, I can safely say he’s definitely not up to par with many of the pro players who go to fighting game tournaments today. If I were to give a Street Fighter analogy, DarkSydePhil is the Dan of the fighting game community. Sure, Dan’s impressive as he can do things like throw a fireball, something your ordinary joe can’t do. However, against the likes of Ryu and the other Street Fighter characters, he’s more of a joke.

So, why am I saying I still learned some things from watching DSP play Street Fighter? Well, it’s not what he does. Rather, it’s more what he doesn’t do during his play sessions. If you’re confused, well, let me elaborate on what I’ve actually learned from going through his matches and from what he says during and after them.

First off, DSP has a habit of complaining about his opponents relying on “overpowered” moves. To him, “overpowered” are attacks which he cannot overcome. It could be something as weird as performing Drive Impact or even something as mundane as “mashing jab” as he would say. The best example I found of him ranting about these “overpowered” moves was when DarkSydePhil went against ChrisG during the closed beta test and lost 13 straight matches to him.

There is nothing wrong with getting annihilated in Street Fighter 6 by a player with the caliber of ChrisG. He’s been competing in fighting game tournaments for a long time and has even won an EVO tournament in Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Most of us would’ve been smoked by ChrisG. However, all he complained about throughout the session was how Jamie, especially his crouching medium kick, was beating everything he was doing. This demonstrates a problem with DSP as he doesn’t recognize he’s being outplayed by his opponents and he never really finds ways to beat these so-called “overpowered” attacks.

It’s not DSP’s opponent’s job to change their tactics if what they’re doing is working so well. If I can simply mash jab and you’ll just keep running into it, why would I bother to do anything else? It’s actually DSP’s job to figure out a strategy that’ll beat whatever his opponent is doing to force them to do something different. However, he doesn’t give them a reason to as what he’ll do instead is complain how broken whatever strategy is being used against him. I can sort of empathize with DSP as it is frustrating to go against someone like a Juri who’ll use her speed to do a Drive Rush and then I’ll have to guess if she’ll go for an overhead, a low attack, a throw or block whatever counter move I’ll attempt. However, that’s the game and, if my opponent keeps on doing it and it keeps on working, then that’s my fault.

Another thing I learned from watching DSP is how he’ll essentially blame everyone and everything else… but himself. While I could post any random DSP compilation video and it would be apparent, the best example of this would be a snippet from Ernesto Lopez Jr.’s Button Check show and it showed players calling out DSP for saying he shouldn’t have gotten hit from an attack because he was “purposefully waiting” for something to come out. If you watch the clip, though, the game registered a Counter Hit, meaning either DSP hit a button thinking he could get his crouching light kick in.

This is but just one of DarkSydePhil’s typical complaints when things don’t go his way. Online play is too laggy. His special move doesn’t come out despite him executing the motion perfectly. He was blocking the entire time. His anti-air should’ve connected. Things like that. If that sort of thing happens to you that often, that would mean several things. Either your copy of Street Fighter 6 is buggy, your controller is broken or, and this is the most likely scenario, you’re simply making mistakes. It’s easy to dissect the first 2 items as you can delete your copy of the game and reload it and, for the controller, try using a different one. For the last one, you have to do some soul searching and admit to yourself you’re not perfect and prone to mistakes. I don’t think DSP has it in him to do that last thing.

I already compared DSP to Dan so I might as well hammer my last point using Street Fighter’s premiere joke character. Although Dan can do impressive things, like shoot out energy from his hands and the like, he doesn’t have the introspective to actually try to better himself. In fact, he thinks his fighting style is superior despite pretty much everyone else being much better than him.

Doesn’t this sound like DarkSydePhil? He’s a guy with an inflated ego who, objectively, should be better than the average fighter. Unfortunately, he’s really not and he never really tries to up his skill level. He himself has said he doesn’t like to watch other streamers as it would be a waste of time. Why watch other people’s content when you can pump out your own? Well, maybe because you can learn something you didn’t think about before! Strangely enough, this makes my journey with DSP go full circle as the only reason why I noticed him was because I wanted to get better at Street Fighter 6! While he refuses to learn from others, I’ve learned a whole lot from other pro players giving their own tips and tricks, upping my game quite a bit.

Now, are these lessons enough for me to bust my way out of Platinum and go all the way to Master rank? Not really. Sure, there are some takeaways for sure. For the first thing, I can go look up strategies online on how to deal with Drive Rush pressure and better call out what my opponent is doing. For the second, I can practice combos until they’re committed to muscle memory and go rewatch my matches to see what I did right and wrong. The last thing I did learn was to be open to new ideas and new tech because they know a whole lot more about how to improve.

These lessons aren’t just for getting better at Street Fighter 6 or video games. These lessons can be adapted to real life as well. It’s trying to adapt to everyday pressures and finding ways to solve problems instead of complaining about them. It’s also remembering you’re only human and you’re going to make some blunders along the way. The important thing is to learn from those mistakes so you can, at the very least, minimize them from happening again in the future. I probably won’t be as good as him and he’ll probably wipe the floor with me if I do face him in an online Street Fighter 6 match. However, I’ll be a much better person than he is in real life.

Byee!

What’s your experience with DarkSydePhil? Are you a fan or not? Let me know in the comments section below!