I’m not a fan of emulation by any means - I’d much rather have the arcade boards, honestly. However, in the case of a game like Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Capcom can’t legally sell it anymore. The CPS3 board is overtly expensive. More importantly, the CPS3 board is prone to suiciding and, once it does, that’s it - you just wasted a ton of money. As soon as it is re-released by Capcom or gets Phoenixed, I’ll be glad to buy it - until then, emulation is the only rational option.
As for tourney organizers, they definitely shouldn’t be using emulation. For a tourney organizer who has sponsors, there’s no excuse. I was speaking more to players, not organizers.
Can’t help people who have shit tastes. Keep in mind, this is the gaming community - if it doesn’t feature big-ass steroid junkies in palettes of gray and brown, its fucking gay as hell kiddie crap.
This discussion inherently leads to the more actionable question of “to what extent do non-Capcom fighting game communities want to piggyback off of Capcom games/events going forward?” The most salient example of this I can think of is the periodic call for an “anime Evo” (as in, a tournament completely unaffiliated with Evo that nonetheless serves as the “worldwide event/standard-setter” for those games) from choice members of the Blazblue/Melty Bloody/etc communities, generally right after their games get taken off the Evo roster.
The problem is that it’s difficult to assess whether these sorts of relatively-standalone majors could find enough success to justify their existence, which in turn makes it risky to even try them, which in turn keeps them difficult to assess, etc. etc. etc… The only non-MLG, non-Smash example I can think of is Frosty Faustings, which is more of a Guilty Gear tournament “in spirit” than in reality.
But I can’t carry my desktop over to my cousin’s house or a friend’s house, not as easily as bringing over my Dreamcast or Xbox 360 or Wii. If we want to play some Super Turbo or JoJo’s or 3rd Strike we’ll be playing those games on my Dreamcast.
You can get a laptop for pretty damn cheap these days, and the laptop doesn’t have to be amazing to run NeoGeo/CPS2/CPS3 games. Then just get some cords/adapters to put the video on the TV, and bam. Getting X360 and/or PS3 arcade sticks/pads/controllers to work on a computer is only a driver download away from being a reality.
Emulation isn’t as easy as downloading something on XBLA or PSN and pressing play.
It’s also a matter of visibility. More people will know that a game exists if it’s released on XBLA and PSN after a reasonable marketing campaign.
Fighting game developers have squandered the opportunity that came with SF4. What few ports they’ve attempted have been botched and they refuse to port other games that fans have been screaming about for years. That’s the real issue.
Yeah, I guess I can do that. Or not spend any more money and just bring consoles and games I already have. Maybe it’s just matter of convenience and “legitimacy” for me. I’ve already ordered a copy of Vampire Chronicle for Matching Service partly because I’ve been playing Vampire Savior on GGPO recently.
I like GGPO’s idea so much. It preserves old games and lets people play them online a lot better than Capcom has ever bothered with. It’s also free - as it ought to be for old games like that IMO. I feel 100% justified in pirating games game developers don’t make a good-faith effort to port properly, frankly.
FF seemed like the way to go. How it’s marketed to the rest of the community is important. Anime cons are a punchline even in nerd circles, so there has to be a way to distance it from that image. I like the idea of reviving good old fighting games of all kinds and having their own events for them since we don’t have the luxury of Japan’s nostalgia tournies at arcades or whatever.
You can’t keep games alive forever. As time goes on, less people will care. As far as “new” games that aren’t as played, the only community that can really complain is the Blaz Blu community. As much as I don’t like that game, developers have done a lot of great things for the game.
Other lesser known anime developers either have screwed the playerbase over with porting them on outdated systems or flat out had bad ports. And furthermore they’re screwed themselves with bad netplays, and not many options for the user.
We can blame Capcom all day, but really it’s the developer’s fault in most cases. I can agree 100% with that. If I was the developer of some joe smoe anime game, and I was making ports for PS2, I’d be happy that my fan base isn’t blaming me, but blaming Capcom.
I hear you can create a CPS3 ISO to work with any other game’s security cart now, so if you don’t mind going a slightly janky route it’s not so big a financial risk any more, as the carts alone can be obtained fairly cheap.
I don’t blame anyone but the audience. You’re part of the audience who craves novelty over a good game it seems. You might deny it or I might be misreading you, but still – that’s what’s upsetting about the situation.
God damn, all these excuses upon excuses. I understand you are all cautious about joining the PC Master Race, but it’s not something you’ll regret.
Emulation isn’t as easy as downloading something on XBLA/PSN? Download GGPO/MAME/whatever, download the ROM, and 9 times out of 10, you are good to go. Yes, there is the chance that the ROM you downloaded may not be up-to-date or some shit, but hey: At least you didn’t have to pull out your credit card or, if you are much smarter than that, you didn’t have to go to GameStop/Wal-Mart/etc., to pick up a XBLA Point/PSN Money card so that your personal info won’t be in a place that hackers love to target.
I’ll give you the matter of visibility, but I’d argue that any fighting game fan who only learns about a game through marketing campaigns isn’t worth bothering with anyway. A willingness to dig for info is what separates a fan of fighting games in general, and a fan of the flavor of the month.
Agree with your last statement as well, although you should put the blame where it should go: on the fighting game publishers, not the developers. Many of the folks who developed the old games don’t even have the rights to those games anymore: they couldn’t port, re-release, update or sequel them regardless of how much they want to - and most of the publishers are just going to sit on those properties for no reason.
i.e.: I won’t be convinced of anything unless you are trying to convince me to do things exactly the same way I always have.****
If you wanna be cheap, you’d get a cheap laptop and not have to worry about paying $60 per game for the rest of your life. Emulation, Steam, Good Old Games, PC has all the cheap options. I can’t think of anything more convenient that getting top-notch brand-new games for below half their retail price without even getting out of my chair.
Also, if you want ‘legit’, Vampire Chronicles For Matching Service is not exactly the way to go. It’s fun, for sure, but the legit option is to get Vampire Savior on the Sega Saturn.
Really now? Hmm… I’ll have to look into this. Thanks for looking out man, this is great news!
emulation isn’t the original. that’s why it is called emulation. cps3 certainly is not perfect. emulation is not an answer by any means. it’s a temporary fix.
most of the older games have been re-re-released on consoles a few times now. of course they too are not arcade perfect. that’s always going to be the case though tbh. they’re never going to emulate it 1:1, that’s essentially impossible.
more often i hear the reason someone doesn’t want to play an older game is : scene too small and everyone is too skilled already. the first thing there i can understand, the second is just weak as fuck to me. today, with the internet and all our social and networking tools you can progress in any game dramatically. giving up before you’ve genuinely started is sad.
if the reason is graphics i dont know what to say. flashy stuff is cool and all but come on. anything past sf2 is totally fine. how does alpha or vampire look bad? last blade? garou? kof98? come on. i’m not even including 3s here because lol it looks better than sf4/mvc3 by far.
Of course emulation isn’t going to be a permanent fix - that’s why I’m searching for some way to enjoy CPS3 the real way. It just wasn’t worth it to pay $500+ for Third Strike when I knew that it would die eventually.
Regardless of that, you shouldn’t discount emulation as if it’s not worth it. Emulation is a great, and relatively risk-free, way to enjoy many games that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to experience. Hell, my favorite Beat 'Em Up of all time is Battle Circuit - a game that never got a console port and never saw release in the States. There would be no way, NO WAY, I could have experienced this game without emulation.
I’m not saying emulation is perfect. I’m saying that when you refuse to give older games a fair shot, even when it’s free and fairly simple to get them running on your computer, that’s weak. I’m not arguing emulation is better than the real deal - I’m arguing emulation is better than “LOL OLD GAMES, OUTDATED GRAPHICS, NO COMMUNITY, WAIT FOR RE-RELEASE, LOL”
The unwillingness to do the smallest amount of work just to experience older games is kinda what the problem is, though. That’s why SF4 and MvC3 is helping out Capcom a lot more than it is helping out fighting games in general. If people are too unwilling to step out of their comfort zone to play Vampire Savior with an emulator and download some drivers so they can use their controller of choice, then they damn sure will be too unwilling to step out of their comfort zone to pay $60 to play a different game from a different company. It’s why getting SF4/MvC3 folks to play MK9 or BlazBlue is akin to pulling teeth.
bsnes puts that whole “emulation isn’t the real thing” discussion to bed anyway. Only a matter of time and effort for emulators for all things 2D to reach that amount of accuracy. Not that it’s a huge deal to begin with imo.
Since when have hot new games ever been good for other scenes/games in the scene?
When CvS2 came out, did it suddenly inspire people to play ST?
When Tekken 5 came out, did it suddenly inspire people to play VF or SC?
When BB came out, did it suddenly inspire people to play GG or VS or MB?
Big new titles always draw players away from competitively playing other titles; there’s only so much time anybody has to play, even for players who devote a big chunk of their lives to playing. It certainly might help make players interested in past games, and it certainly helps build a playerbase for future games, but you can’t reasonably expect a big new title to cause people to devotedly play other, past games.
…except if the game is CFJ, in which case people didn’t so much go forth and find other games as they did go back to business as usual once its SBO event was over.
ok so you have a cab? otherwise a setup is more than $500.
i assume you know you can replace the battery. so i dont know what this means at all.
there is no way to enjoy cps3 that isn’t owning a cps3 setup or playing on one. that’s it. end. you can play shitty emulation or shitty ports. other than a cps3 kit those are your choices.
Yeah, I was just planning to put it in a spare cab. I can get a six-button cab from an arcade auction for dirt cheap.
And yeah, I know you can replace the battery, but I also know that unlike CPS2, it can’t be Phoenixed after it dies. There’s much less risk in own CPS2 compared to CPS3, which is why I’m unwilling to drop the cash on a Warzard or Jojo’s until I’m damn sure I’m not buying a ticking time bomb.