Kan-Ra is so dead right now. With a sliver of health against Sabrewulf with a full bar of backup, how can he possibly win this match? Watch.
Not even Sleep NS, Kan-Ra’s player, can believe he survived the vicious onslaught of UA | My God’s Sabrewulf, but even that miracle should only have delayed the inevitable. With the clock ticking down and the health pool firmly in his opponent’s favour, it looked like all hope was lost for the poor, rotting corpse. All Sabrewulf had to do was keep blocking Kan-ra’s signature sand spam and it would all be over soon enough.
But there’s something about a live crowd egging one on that makes ridiculous, borderline magical things happen. Check out baxt3ria‘s archive of the match (via Reddit) to see for yourself.
The look on My God’s face (below, left) says it all.
Tournament spoilers follow.
You have been warned.
Sleep NS’s victory halted My God’s tournament progression, locking him in fifth place as Sleep progressed to the loser’s semi-finals. Kan-Ra carried Sleep into the loser’s final, where he fell to Rico Suave, securing third place. Rico went on to defeat GutterMagic’s Thunder and win the EVO 2015 Killer Instinct tournament, but the most memorable moment will always belong to Sleep.
Check out our EVO 2015 post to catch the final day of fighting.
Comments
11 responses to “Epic Killer Instinct Comeback Is One Of The Best EVO Moments So Far”
i understand that sitting in the corner is the tactical way of winning. but its cheap. he deserved the humiliation.
I used to consider a lot of things cheap when I first started playing fighting games. And some things really are. But runaway or stalling for time over is a legitimate way to play, especially for the biggest fighting game tournament in the world. Both players can do it, and the timer is in the game for a reason. Time is a resource, and you need to use it efficiently to be a good player. It translates into pressure… it forces the person who has a health deficit to attack. If you are in that position with a game like mahvel, you can change your style to do things like resets, snapbacks, change a character, or use a level 3 to squeeze the win. A really good example in this Evo was Phoenix in UMvC3. In one match, the Phoenix player had 5 meters and was the last character on the team. This is a very dangerous situation to be in if you’re fighting her, because if she dies, she resurrects as Dark Phoenix, and is INSANELY fast, does stupid chip damage, can teleport, and there’s a very high chance that you’ll lose if she’s in this mode unless you have specific tech to deal with her. I think most good players felt that the best situation here was not to “pop” her by killing her, and play defensively with the health lead by time over. Who is the cheap player in this situation? The answer is that both players are probably cheap, and it’s part of what makes Mahvel beautiful.
Sitting for MOST of the match letting time tick isn’t hype and is pretty lame(but I still respect it).
like i said. i understand the tactics. but to me its up there with footy/soccer matches and playing the ball back down your end of the field to waste time.
i dont know if its because i grew up watching sport when the time abuse wasnt as much of a tactic and teams used to go hard to see who could beat who from sheer skill.
its just my opinion, but i think i will always consider that style of play as ‘cheap’.
me and a mate of mine used to play xmen vs street fighter so much that most of our matches would be won from chip damage or when the other person stuffed an attack and we capitalised, but we were always on the attack looking to best each other. they are some of the fondest memories i have of fighting games.
and if i ever did get into a pro arena, who knows, i may have adopted a style of play that i deem as ‘cheap’,but im not and i havnt, so it remains cheap in my eyes.
Yeah I get where you’re coming from. I think time over wins are probably less than 1% of of games though so it’s not too bad. The timer for MvC2 on Dreamcast is really fast so I prefer to turn that one off completely. And while it can be a strat to runaway like with Storm, most good players apply so much pressure that it’s not something that can be typically maintained for the whole game.
Overconfident. Both were sitting there for 2 minutes doing nothing but charging up the bar.
Is this how all EVO matches play out? Because that was…unimpressive, to say the least.
Depends on the game and players… Mahvel is more hype imo:
https://youtu.be/gVmc5ZepdVs
https://youtu.be/oVcqjfAiiSI
Why can’t all matches be like those? They were really interesting to watch!
There are a lot. Here’s another fav of mine:
https://youtu.be/yNqokaFoLC0
@gwenclone
that first video is what im talking about.
same situation, being three down. and just out-playing to claw his way back and win.
I have no idea what was going on, but that was very satisfying to watch none-the-less.