there is a pretty sick free arcade at the camp i’m staying at.
3x pinball machines (avatar, x-men, another one i cant remember), a brand new namco classics cab with the new pac man game, plus a brand new multi-cab with 165 classics including SF2 and SF2CE.
sticks are bat-top circle gate (which is kinda bad) but it’s all brand new and the staff take care of the machines on a daily basis. first time i went in to see it the 2p stick was off it’s hinges. next day it was back up and in perfect order.
SF2CE is fucking hard. found a rival at camp so i got the feeling our forefathers had for being in an actual arcade and playing a fighting game – pretty rare in our parts.
but the question is, really, why does a camp in the middle of nowhere have this, and an established city like calgary doesn’t? i know tubby doge has a few cabs there, but lets face it – they are in rough shape. that arcade at deerfoot mall can’t come soon enough! sure hope they bring in fighting games.
the final beta is this coming weekend, jan 30th and 31st. unfortunate for KI, since the world cup is happening on those dates with a bunch of season 3 reveals, lol.
It reminded me of that meme with Wolverine looking at the photo. I lold.
Story mode not until June though which is a suuuuper odd choice. Story mode is meant to appeal to the casual audience and isn’t that the audience that’s going to lose interest long before June? Kinda seems like why bother at that point.
eh, my guess is the game is ready for release but story mode isn’t, and in order to do a year-long capcom pro tour for SFV, they can’t postpone the game
it’ll get press coverage and casuals will come back to SFV to check out the story later, i’m sure. the people who only want to try the story mode will probably get SFV at a discount when they wouldn’t have bought it at full price anyway.
arcades dont work when people can get the same experience for cheaper in their own homes. the initial investment is more expensive(console + stick + game) but most gamers have some kind of console so they just need the game and a stick
release game, hardcore guys buy into it, drops out of the news. release story DLC, casual guys buy into it, drops out of the news. release new character DLC, everybody gets back into it, drops out of the news. capcom pro tour finals, back in the news, drops out… season 2 drops start it all over again
gotta keep your game in the headlines with some kind of major happening every 3-4 months
As someone who hasn’t gotten to play video games in a few months, playing in my underpants and eating junk food sounds like the funnest thing in the world right now ;).
I miss video games…Dicken’s should be a pretty happening place in a couple weeks and for some time to follow. And the girlfriend works Sundays now starting this week. Everything is coming up Milhouse! Hoping the old MK heads come back for MKXL too? Cyrax seems like a character Greg will have to play…
Was the delayed story mode thing successful for KI? I honestly don’t know.
i totally agree, but most people aren’t invested enough into these games to make it viable
even tubbydog/dickens in its prime peaked at probably 30 regulars? you can’t keep a business afloat if you only get 30 people show up regularly to a once a week free thing
Somebody needs to buy a house with a large basement in the middle of the city and dedicate it to underground esport fighting games. Then you all can sit in your underwear eating doritos together!
arcades probably could’ve survived a lot longer if it didn’t cost $17k to buy 2 SF4 cabinets. let’s do the math here.
$17,000/$0.50 per play = 34,000 times the cabinets have to be played in order to break even.
lets say both machines combined average 150 plays per day, that means we would break even after 226 days (roughly 7.5 months)
that’s actually not too shabby IF people consistently play at your arcade.
keep in mind these calculations don’t include tax and shipping costs to buy the cabinets.
According to Kotaku,
“Shoryuken reports that you can get your very own pair of SSFIV cabinets for a pinch under $17,000. That price gets you the two official Taito cabinets (so you can engage in some linked play) with Street Fighter IV pre-installed, along with a 90-day warranty.”
to expand further on this idea, let’s say you’ve made your money back plus $85,000 on top (if you profit $17k for 5 years). you can now sell the cabinets for $5000-$8000 USD. that’s close to 100k in 5 years on one very popular title in a high traffic area.
each story mode (for only the season 2 characters) had you fight through like 6-7 fights against a predetermined CPU opponent, and between each fight they gave you a single screenshot with some plot text on it (looks like this). at the start of story mode and the end, they have some voiceover work set to a few “in motion” screenshots to tie up the plot. they hired maximilian to help work on the presentation of story mode (these screenshots, etc)
the plot is super hamfisted and dumb, just like every fighting game plot, and i imagine most people never touched it, or played it once and never again.
i dunno if this matches your definition of “success” other than just checking off the “we now have a single player mode” box so people stop complaining. although lots of KI fans just started wanting a full scale MKX story mode with tons of FMV cutscenes, which is super infeasible for a game as underfunded as KI is and probably not a good use of the money even if they had it.
i dunno story modes are dumb lol
if you’re gonna do single player content, do something fun and cool that doesn’t break the bank, like alpha 3 or soul calibur 2 did. KI even has its unique “shadows” AI which allows for them to make CPU fights not as frustrating. don’t waste it on dumb FMVs imo
the thing about arcades is that they are really expensive for the players. at tubby’s i could grind a set of 60 games with a friend over the course of the night and not spend $30+ on it. that adds up super fast. i don’t really know how the higher placing SF4 arcade players can afford it. even if they win like 80% of the time, if you look on their card it says they have 1000+ losses, which is $1000 or more.
the best thing to do is just have consoles set up in a public place, where i can go socialize but not pay per game. tubby’s and dickens fill this role way better than arcades would IMO.
even arcades like gameworks in downtown seattle now have days where people bring in consoles to play fighting games (dunno if they charge entry fee or what). it’s a much better model i think, especially now that most fighting games won’t be available in arcades anyway. japan is going to have to follow suit soon too.
