Just curious how the state of things are nowadays.
please post if you play at an arcade or any offline gathering. wondering how much activity is actually going on outside of Japan.
New York…there’s alot of players but no dedicated groups of 3rd strike players. You have to call around and put alot of effort into getting just one person to play offline with you because pretty much…most ppl that play and have played 3rd strike are around the age where life tends to happen. If you’re not a known player ex.(Nica K.O ,Frenzii…etc) good luck ever playing anyone offline…it’s a luck of the draw to walk upon a fellow 3s player. There definitely is a scene still in New York but the scene takes place mostly online at everyones home lol…There are 2 or 3 “arcade like” places here but theres only one with a 3s cab (American style and crappy) each one of the 3 places are overrun by kids playing magic cards, yu-gi-oh, P4A …hell last time I went I even saw someone playing Sailor Moon for snes…No love for 3s. But if youre a big name player, like I said earlier, you can call upon anyone u wish for 3s
LA - Whats left of the Denjin group plays mostly at Japan Arcade now, but its no FFA. Usually only gather once a week. Super Arcade has been running tournaments, and the one I went to actually had 27 people I think. Who are they all? Maybe someone who plays at Super more regularly can elaborate.
Im curious about things in norcal. Does Sunnyvale ever get action anymore?
I’ve been trying to stir things up in Chicago but I don’t warrant the type of 3S buzz a name like Nica does. If you ask me, a lot of the people who used to play (the vets if you will) apparently piqued early and didn’t leave a trace. Not a lot of notable 3S folks from Chicago… Will be at UFGT9 and I think I’m at least a decent player.
Coming from NC there’s a tiny hotbed of 3S players there and considering most of the people I know don’t post in this section of SRK, I like to be their little voice saying they’re there.
But to answer the op’s question directly: Not a lot going on outside of NYC and LA. Speaking of which, I just watched the LA Capcom 3S qualifier… God that was bad.
Super Arcade has the always dedicated group of traveling players. (wicked element, sanchez, scott tsai, leo, myself, a lot of the ai guys) There are monthly tournaments held by mando, otherwise known as temjinalpha. Watts is always there.
Myself and a couple other people still play on occasion at SVGl
People also play at game center in San Mateo which is conveniently across the street from a bar. Drunk strike
Then you really do not want to watch the other ones
Antwerpen - it’s been years since the last 3rd Strike machine has disappeared. 
Used to be a good one in a smaller town in the area with a good group of locals.
Closest arcade nearby would be in Brussels and I tried to go there a few times but everytime I show up within opening hours it’s closed. Then I stand around there in the worst neighbourhood…
Then at a 3 hours distance there’s Paris, who do have a scene ofcourse.
I’d love to hear from someone who knows a machine in the Netherlands by the way.
I have a friend in the Netherlands that has played on a 3S machine, says no one plays it anymore because it’s too expense. I wanted to smack him through the mic… How could you not want to play on a 3S cab? Next time he’s on, I’ll ask him where it’s located.
That’d be cool, thanks. I would definitely check it out.
Who’s that? Because I’ve been active in the 3s scene in the Netherlands for the last 9 years. There has not been any public place/arcade where there is an arcade setup. Only 2-3 guys had private arcade setups in their home but they didnt seem to care about the competative scene so no involvement with them at all.
About the current scene is the Netherlands; We used to have regular ranbats a while ago, but when we stopped with those the amount of players decreased alot. This coupled with releases of many new games has reduced the amount of active competative 3s players down to a handfull
We have to travel abroad now to Paris for example to get high level 3s action or play online (GGPO/3soe)
I can’t seem to find the other pools. Really would like to see what the other US quals pools brought to the table… Cuz that LA one… You just figure with all the resources out there by now… Dammit, if you block Urien should you can always, ALWAYS, punish w/ shoto c.mk. It was actually interesting to watch Bala play. If he tried, i think he’d actually be pretty decent at the game.
Free entrence, laggy monitors, no practice, lots of better players not bothering to enter, etc
When it comes down to it pretty much everyone in America is laughably bad at this game and that includes so cal.
with all the fantastic footage of top level japanese play that no one person could hope to ever watch, why you’d watch a bunch of scrubs play on PS3, with input lag, puzzles me. im pretty certain 75% of the entrants learned everything they knew 1 month beforehand from a gootecks video. clownshoes fuckin tournament
Because we all started from somewhere. It’s like your a 3-year vet watching a player in their rookie season for me [partly because I
started 3S in '10 :(…]. So I like knowing how far I’ve come from day 1… But god it’s worse than I was in my first days… I’m just kind of hoping a revelation starts and other people see how bad it is and think: I can do a lot better.
Gootecks don’t teach shit though. That Rudi 3S tutorial is amazing though…
“Do you think that guy knew what button checks were?”
“Shit, I don’t think he even knew what fighting games were man”
I agree with this sentiment. Partly because this is what I was doing while I was playing in tournaments at regency, ai, ffa et al but also because local scrubs led you in a certain direction while remote scrubs in another part of the world might lead you in a separate direction and thus teach you more different things. If you have tech developers all working towards the same goal, you won’t typically get marginal results.
I think the videos I used to watch were the WillVolution tournaments and random midwest footage.
These new Cheech & Chong jokes suck.
He said it’s in Enschede, at a gameshop Twente.
UK…
Small-ish tournaments monthly and sometimes 2 -3 times a month in the South West England and South Wales, Casual 3rd Strike sessions/ranking battles every week in Bristol (mostly new players with some more experienced players)
In London a new arcade opened, so hopefully a London revival will occur with regular tournaments, ranking battles and new players!
sooooooo hot, want to touch the heiney!