It was a 360 exclusive, though. People who live in bargain bins don’t have any consoles!
Personally, I grew up in a discount clothes rack and the only time I ever got to play games was when I went over to visit my friend Tommy, who was staying under a warehousing sales shelf at the time. We would make up our own games like “chase the dust” and “jump from tile to tile,” or my personal favourite, “guess what I’m drawing on the floor.”
Jeez, that brings back memories. Makes a guy feel nostalgic, you know? I haven’t really thought about the old days in years now. The last time I saw Tommy, we were thirteen and he and his mom were running from a security guard.
lol, I guess I could have phrased that better.
People living in bargain bins make me think of the bear always sitting in the “take whatever you want” box in the store in the DiGi Charat anime…
You know what brightens my day? The fact that even in SF4’s wildest dreams of success, it will hardly last half the time 3S is lasting. Bring on year eleven! Shitty little fad games that get hyped up as the next big thing will always end up dying for good.
3rd Strike still being on the charts after 10 years does not mean a whole lot. A lot has happened since the release of 3s and it should not be surprising that any game released now dies after 2 or 3 years. In fact, I would argue that 3s being on the charts now is actually a very, very real indication of the health of the arcade industry.
Shouldn’t you compare SFIV’s lasting power to that of the first SF3 though?
For the real comparison we’ll have to wait for SFIVs third strike, then wait 10 years to see what happens.
well considering SF4 does not have easy infinites or QCF = parrying high and low at the same time, I would consider SF4 to be a success compared to the first SF3.
Not to mention Alex’s “You Can’t Escape” on that game is hilariously bad. painful even.
I think you guys are missing the point. Reno is implying that the reason that 3S is so high on the list is because it’s an inexpensive game to both play and operate. It runs off of CPSIII hardware, on standard definition arcade monitors and cabinets, and you can find literally dozens of used game boards for 3S in Japan on sale from various arcades.
Now take SFIV. Extremely expensive to purchase, which means that arcade operators must make a big investment on a game that isn’t even getting future updates. And you must purchase them in quantities of four, correct? And Vewlix, or any HD cabinets for that matter, are going to be far more costly then sticking the SFIV boards into a older cabinets which are less attractive to casual players.
So the option is to keep the old games like 3S around that still attract regular competition, a game (3S) that has probably paid for itself hundreds of times over now, so each token is mostly profit (minus electricity, wear and tear). Or, you could spend thousands of dollars for SFIV, possibly several thousand more for HD cabinets, and then pray that your investment is returned years down the road which given the state of Japanese arcades seem like a massive gamble.
Sega and Namco closed over 100 arcades each last year, and independent arcades fell at the same rate, meaning the arcade industry isn’t that healthy.
If SFIV was less expensive to purchase for arcade owners, and the arcade scene was more healthy, then SFIV would probably be much higher on the list. But older games remain high on the list, not just because they are good or popular games, but because the actual cabinets are far more frequent in appearance than the more expensive games (like SFIV, BB).
I’m still sure that the way Arcadia samples arcades skews the numbers for certain games but SFIV is not higher on the list because it’s way too damn expensive for arcade operators.
Nope, you don’t have to buy the entire 4 player setup anymore. That hasn’t been for awhile iirc, when I was in Osaka last year some game centers had SFIV on regular Blast City head to head cabs.
3S is forever loved by Japan, haters gotta face it.
