With less than 9 whole days left to go until i34 kicks off, a lot of gamers like myself are probably very anxious, nervous, excited and for the serious gamers now will be the final parts of practice, where you make sure you have worked out all the kinks and are very accurate.

Now for the majority of people who don’t know who I am or what I do and probably think of infused|BanKs who the F*** is he, well I am James ‘BanKs’ Banks, I have been gaming since the age of 10, starting on Half life, moving onto Counter-Strike and now since grabbing my xbox360 I have dabbled in many different games, mainly Virtua Fighter 5, Dead of Alive 4 and Forza 2 Motor sports, now admittedly I am not AMAZING at all of these games but my choice of game at this current time and the one I play for infused with is Virtua Fighter 5.

I will explain Virtua Fighter 5, its one of them classic arcade fighting games, I always remember Virtua Fighter and Tekken titles being the top arcade fighting games when I was growing up. Anyway the Virtua Fighter series started in 1993 and you can find a lot more about it by searching on the good old wikipedia for anyone who is interested.

The reason I have taken such a fancy to Virtua Fighter 5 is that, I never feel 100% confident I am going to win a match, all the characters have such unique fighting styles and I don’t feel that one character can defeat ALL around, I have been using Kage Maru pretty much since I started playing, I did not want to change because I feel him a such a comfortable player to play with, many easy, quick damage and very speed attacks with some great combinations to throw into the mix.

Taken from Wiki

“Kage-Maru (??, Kagemaru?) fights with Hagakure-ryu Ju-Jutsu. He was born in the village of Hagakure. "Kage-Maru" is the name given to members of the Hagakure clan who work in secret in the shadows of society. His birthright was to become the tenth-generation Kage-Maru. His father, the ninth-generation Kage-Maru, taught him the fearsome Hagakure fighting technique. One day, his mother, the eighth-generation Tsukikage, was kidnapped by a mysterious figure. Nothing was heard of her fate. Several years later, the village of Hagakure was attacked by an unknown force. Kage-Maru and his father were out fishing, but quickly returned when they saw the blazing village. They were too late, however, and the village was destroyed. Kage-Maru's father had fell by a bullet from the mystery group. The next morning, Kage-Maru salvaged a keepsake from his father, donned his costume, and embarked on a journey to prepare himself to take vengeance on those who spilled his father's blood.”

Anyway, the last few months I have been without my precious xbox360 after getting the ring of death after buying GTA which is a shame but I have been finishing practice at my local lan and my friends house, who I have been sparing with. Before that I was sparing with my girlfriend who is also a very good Virtua Fighter 5 player who plays as Eileen.

Anyway these 9 days left I will be trying to get my xbox back from Microsoft…which seems to be taking forever, over a month now and I will be continuing my practice, I am looking forward to i34 as I am unsure on what competition I will come against, I have not seen much competition from the scene and playing online is a pain due to the awful internet conditions and the way to search for opponents.

Basically I will do my usual and make another few blogs while I am at i34 and after, I want to sum up my feelings and put across my goal for i34.

I am going into i34 with a great confidence in my self and skills, I believe I am as prepared as I can be, trying out many scenarios but obviously I can not read what my opponents will do at the event or the other way round, this will make for some really interesting matches and my goal was always number 1 ever since hearing about the event.

But as I have learnt with many of the other LAN Events I have attended, winning is not everything and I want the best person possible to represent the UK at WCG but I think this is me. I am going into this head strong, very excited and I really can’t wait to get the games underway.

So what’s left to say, see you at i34 and thanks to infused for giving me the opportunity to play under the infused name.

1st place here I come!!!!!

James ‘BanKs’ Banks