I know, I’m trying not to laugh, too. I think Portland alone has quintuple the population of this entire half of the state.
Anyway, I’ve only lived here for about 8 months. I moved from the EC (NH, specifically) and to be entirely honest, it sucks. The transition from being able to play tons of good players to now valiantly squirming to manifest a scene from people who’re pinker than Indian river grapefruits to FGs. The good news, however, is that a gaming venue just opened up where I’m from (La Grande). The owner and I’ve made friends, and he’s down to let me host tourneys.
That being said, given that this area pretty much completely precluded any hope of building a scene, this venue’s a Godsend. So, if there’s actually anyone in EOR (lol), consider this my stentorian summoning from atop the mighty buttes. I fully intend on putting in work to fill in this enormous gap of geographic Twilight Zone.
Give us a shot over in the Idaho thread as well if you get stuff off the ground. We’re roughly 3 hours away from you and considering we made the drive for Walla Walla, I’m sure most of us could agree to La Grande. Everything else is six or more hours away for Idaho, so we’ll happily look at anything that’s not a whole day of driving.
And yeah, as qoqo said, every Thursday we have free fight nights. Though, be warned, that as I said in the OP, my brother and myself are arguably the only people in the area who currently have any real FG experience. So if you guys do come, I’d strongly encourage bringing a few other people with you. Lemme know ahead of time, too, which day you plan on coming so I can make sure to get as many folks as I can so you don’t end up coming on a slow night.
On the other hand, however, we’ve only been having fight nights for about a month now, so people who actually play seriously could still show up.
Yeah, I can second that fact that folks in La Grande could not possibly be greener (I’m the brother Verm spoke of). We’re ready to get a scene started out here if we can find folks willing to come. Hopefully if we can get some good players out here the locals will start training. So far from what little experience I’ve had playing with locals, they don’t seem to grasp the fun of competition just yet, but a few of them are showing promise. I think they just need a kick in the right direction.
Any of you guys dabble in VF? I’m gonna be bringing along VF5 vanilla or Final Showdown this coming Thursday if the guy running Wired is cool with me using my own PS3.
I’ve never played a VF, but I’m willing to learn/play pretty much whatever. I’m thinking I’ll bring my 360 next time in case anyone wants to play AE or Skullgirls.
If you come down this Thursday again, definitely bring AE–you know I’ll be down to play. Hopefully one or two others come from the surrounding area as well. As fun as Thursday was, it was pretty obvious that most of the folks in La Grande just aren’t huge competitors. Though, once they get enough exposure to upper-levels of play, they might see what it’s all about.
One of the other guys there is getting pretty interested in it, which is good. If we can get at least 6-7 active SF players in EOR, I think we can say we have the beginning of a scene.
I’m glad that Eastern Oregon is coming together, keep it up you guys!
For those who are interested in Virtua Fighter, feel free to join the Northwest VF Group on Facebook. It’s my mission (with the help of many others) to help improve the overall Northwest Region in VF and we frequently answer questions and try to help each other out to understand the game better and compete better
That said, also keep communicating as a group in places like this thread in public–it’s one of those things you can do to help your scene by showing that even online that the group is coming together. Anyways, keep it up Eastern Oregon (and Eastern Washington too)!
Location: Wired Gaming Lounge - La Grande OR http://wiredlagrande.com/
Date: 15th of September
Time: Registration opens at 12:00pm, tournaments start at 2:00pm, we can stay until 12:00am
Pricing: $5 for the venue, $5 per tournament, 70-20-10 pot split for 1st-3rd
Games: SSF4AE2012, UMVC, MK - all on X-Box 360
Format: Double elimination bracket, 3/5 matches for Marvel and 2/3 for everything else
I’ll ask around. I’m enjoying the game so far (<3 IADs), and it sounds like there’s a number of people in Idaho that are playing it. I would be cool with running it as a 4th game.
