James “jchensor” Chen is a lifelong member of the competitive Street Fighter scene. He’s been living and breathing fighting game culture for over a decade, and we’ve asked him to keep us abreast of Marvel vs. Capcom 3 tournament trends and results. For more history on Wednesday Night Fights, read his original article: Know the Marvel vs. Capcom 3 Tournament Scene.
At the start of Wednesday Night Fights Season 3, two of San Diego’s top Marvel vs. Capcom 3 players made guest appearances. Tong “Genghis” Ho of San Diego took first place over many of Los Angeles area’s best Marvel vs. Capcom 3 players. And Jay “Viscant” Snyder, also from San Diego, took second place. The following week, Genghis returned sans Viscant and took first place again. Since then, the players from San Diego have not returned to Wednesday Night Fights to continue their dominance of the Southern Californian scene.
Instead, they let their words do the traveling. During the third week of Season 3, a challenge was offered by The Box Arena, a team of gamers specializing in fighting games from San Diego: They would take their three top Marvel vs. Capcom 3 players and form a team to challenge any other team of three players from the Los Angeles region to a two-team tournament. Both teams would put up $500 and the winning team would take home the grand. By their thinking, San Diego has blended in with the L.A. region, and they desire to once again prove their dominance of Southern California and separate themselves from the SoCal pack as their own entity.
For those who weren’t around the fighting game scene in the 1990s and early 2000s, San Diego had always been a haven of talented players. Early on, San Diego players such as Bob Painter, James Romedy, and the visitor from Japan, Kuni Funada, were extremely dominant players in the era of the Street Fighter II series. Bob Painter and James Romedy would continue being strong players for a long time, lasting through the Alpha series and into the early Street Fighter III series. And then more players became prominent around that time that Marvel vs. Capcom 2 began taking over the fighting game community. Viscant was already known for playing the original Marvel vs. Capcom, but it was in Marvel vs. Capcom 2 that he bagan to shine. Also joining him were players such as Long “ShadyK” Tran, Genghis, and Ed Ma. Daniel “Clockw0rk” Maniago was also an honorary member of Team San Diego, having trained largely alongside ShadyK and Genghis.
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Since then, the San Diego players had always had a presence in the fighting game community. Viscant, ShadyK, Genghis, Ed Ma, and Clockw0rk all were top Capcom vs. SNK 2 players. ShadyK, who had all but disappeared it seemed, came out of nowhere in Evolution 2009 to finish top eight in Street Fighter IV. Ed Ma, who was a strong player in Street Fighter III: Third Strike, became an extremely well-known Street Fighter IV player, finishing third at Evolution 2009, losing only to Justin Wong and Daigo Umehara. And Clockw0rk has been a constant presence in Marvel vs. Capcom 2, even up to the end when he went up against Abraham “Neo” Sotelo in one of the greatest grudge matches in the history of the fighting game community. The grudge match was a first-to-15 match at West Coast Warzone 3 in January of this year (check out the archive stream).
But in the most recent years, San Diego’s presence as a rival to the L.A. area has dwindled. In the Street Fighter IV era, fighting games have become more global and the regions have become larger. Having a rivalry between L.A. and San Diego is not an easy task when you have rivalries such as Southern California vs. Northern California, or the more encompassing U.S. West Coast vs. U.S. East Coast. In fact, many may see the biggest rivalry being that of U.S. vs. Japan. As a result, San Diego, in the past few years, has just been lumped together with Los Angeles as the nebulous “SoCal” region.
The Box Arena’s goal is to change this and bring back the L.A. vs. San Diego rivalry from the days of old. And after the performance of Genghis and Viscant in weeks one and two of Season 3, it seemed Marvel vs. Capcom 3 would be the perfect stage to renew this rivalry. So far, no challenges between L.A. and San Diego have played out, but hopefully one or two teams from L.A. will step up to the challenge.
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It’s hard to argue why San Diego feels so confident. For week two of Season 4 of Wednesday Night Fights, perhaps attempting to give more incentive to the L.A. players, Viscant returned to challenge the L.A. area on his own. With many of the L.A. region’s strongest players in tow, such as ClakeyD, Richard Nguyen, Nerses, Clockw0rk, Infrit, P.Gorath, and Mike Ross, there would be a lot of players gunning to take Viscant down. But Viscant had none of it.
Making his way through the winners bracket, Viscant didn’t fall, taking down opponent after opponent using an extremely efficient Wesker and, if needed, Jean Grey in the form of Dark Phoenix. Eventually, Viscant made his way into winners finals to face Mike Ross, who had just knocked LLND into the losers bracket in a close, high-level match. While watching the match, Viscant often noted how impressed he was with LLND’s performance and “technology” (a term fighting game players often use to refer to the overall knowledge of tricks, strategies, baits, and advanced combos). Versus Viscant, Mike Ross took the first game the his 3-out-of-5 set, with Viscant using his secondary team of Storm, Morrigan, and Tron Bonne. Viscant immediately switched to his main team of Wesker, Iron Man, and Phoenix. Mike Ross was unable to hold it down with his team of Hulk, Thor, and Sentinel and so Viscant took winners finals and proceded to the grand finals.
In the losers bracket, Mike Ross had to rematch vs. LLND, who had just defeated Season 3’s champion Gabe “P. Gorath” Fowlkes. This time, however, LLND utilized his technology and–playing an extremely unorthodox team of Chris Redfield, Hsien-Ko, and Amaterasu–took it to Mike Ross. Mike Ross was eliminated and took third place.
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Viscant now had to go up against the player that impressed him early on. But there is a delicate balance between respect for your opponent and giving your opponent too much credit, and Viscant knew that well. Not giving LLND any leeway, Viscant, who only needed to win one set while LLND had to win two sets, quickly won the first set to take week two of Wednesday Night Fight’s Season 4, once again showing why San Diego desires a return to the spotlight. And according to Viscant himself, there will be a good chance of him returning to Wednesday Night Fights for week three.