History of the international fighting game scene (1991-Present)

Current Fighting Games Fighting Game Discussion
1

Some of us have read about the history of the American scene, and even the Japanese scene, but other places, like Europe, South America, Asia, Africa, etc… are left out. It would be much appreciated if people that come from these areas and know their scene’s history very well (Hanzo_Hasashi, FighterBox, Hanz0, Reko, etc…) to post information, so that people can have a better understanding that there is more to fighting games than two or three nations. You can discuss games like SF, MK, KOF, GG, Smash, Tekken, VF, any game that had some sort of competitive play.

Edit: Canadians are very welcome to post about the history of their scene.

2

hahahaha well the tourney scene in vancouver, bc canada started cuz someone made up a fake account number named “sega” and claimed sega canada was sponsoring a tournament for MVC2 back in like 2000 and hyped like EVERY local arcade up (mainly cuz i went to every arcade and told everyone i played to sign up for SRK cuz sega was sponsoring a tournament)… TOO BAD IT WAS A FAKE ACCOUNT AND NO TOURNAMENT EVER HAPPENED! fucking bullshit

so then like in victoria BC, the owner of that arcade and a local one in vancouver decided to throw a tourney cuz he thought people would enter and it would help promote business so he had a tournament and i went to it and then that was the first street fighterish tournament ever in BC!

3

Actually you want a little story about it or tournament data? Thx for inviting me!

4

Both, please.

5

I thought this would be about the International House of Pancakes. Fuck.

6

Toronto’s fighting game history is pretty extensive. I don’t know if I have that kind of time. On top of that, I wouldn’t be a proper authority on the subject prior to 2004 when I took over directing.

7

I’ll try to post on this tomorrow.

8

Ok Im writting and making some calls to foreign friends who can give me their insight on some areas I didnt travel so I can make some accurate, fun to read stuff.

LOL This maybe one of the weirdest fighting game scenes ever! Top games here long time ago were KI, MK (almost all games), Samsho (till 4), KOF and please BIG LOL… PRIMAL RAGE!

T5 is reining over here as well some KOF fans that still support their own scene.

It will take a bit so please be patients!

9

I s some one going to compile the data that will be posted? If it’s just going to be one big thread with long rambling i don’t think the purpose the thread will have been met.

10

The modern history of our scene isn’t very exciting but one of the guys wrote up the history on our site. Its not very exciting but its there

http://scigamers.proboards84.com/index.cgi?board=announce&action=display&thread=1201498351

Theres was a big scene here back in the day but I can’t really speak on it. Perhaps our OG player here will see it and post up.

11

Well well well; I’m from Morocco and the scene here is pretty damaged.
It was glorious from 91 to 98 like almost everywhere in the world.
PSX & “Cyber-cafes” killed it in the late 90s; the climax being KOF98.
There used to be arcades and stuff, but many ones are closed now.
The upcoming generation all have home console and prefer to play snooker :frowning:

As for the ones who are still playing ; they prefer to play GG over SF, and KOF over SF. (log on GGPO and you’ll always find more Moroccans on KOF than SFA2)
There’s not much love for the 3D games except Tekken (Tekken 2 was a “Hit” in the arcades), and the “MVC” series are simply ignored.

We’ve got a site where we meet to chat & discuss about what’s going on etc. , and sometimes organize tournaments (KOF98, KOF XI, 3S, GGAC, CVS2 most of the time).

The next thing we’d like to do is to invite foreign gamers to Morocco for some days in the summer :slight_smile:

12

I don’t fell like writing a massive missive at this point, but suffice it to say, Street Fighter 2 hit my country of Trinidad like a tidal wave, and it’s still played to this day.

I can go to any of about 5 arcades tomorrow (though most of the ones remaining in the capital city are way too ghetto) and get competition for hours on Hyper Fighting. In the arcades that are still around, HF is in every single one. And the players here are good. Sure. 90% of them play Ken and aren’t that hard to beat (I only play M.Bison), but the rest are pretty top notch.

Until about 2002, though, Trinidad players weren’t particularly good at anything else. They thought they were good, but they really weren’t. They relied mostly on “natural skills” and never went online to find out info about games, and there were (and still are) a number
of players who were still concerned about being “cheap”. That has changed, fortunately, since now there are players who are internet/SRK-savvy, and they are pretty decent at a variety of games (MvC, MvC2, GGXXAC, 3S, CvS2, etc.) as a result. We wouldn’t likely be upsetting anyone at Evo world, but at least the players won’t embarrass themselves like they would have 5 years ago.

Among the Marvel games, MvC1 seemed to be the biggest hit. MvC2, where I could find it, took years to catch on.

3D games don’t seem to be big here. Tekken 3/Tag/5 seems to have a following, but it’s never been big in the arcades like SF. Probably it’s more popular on home console.

Speaking of console, arcades are slowly dying here, though you can still find some good ones. But it’s mostly for games made in 2000 and before. If you want play anything made past that, it’s console or nothing.

SNk’s presence here has always been formidable, but never in SF’s class. Traditionally, the most popular series is Samurai Shodown (I even know a place that has SS0S!), though it depends on what’s available. KoF usually gets good play wherever its found, but good luck trying to find the latest version (and again, you won’t find anything past maybe 2001 in the arcade, maybe 2002).

13

Well, first of all i will say that believe it or not, SF1 had a good scene on Peru back in the early 90s. Sure, only two locals had it but still you could find good competition there. Then came SF2 which made a huge impact on the fighting scene. Not only it was played at local arcades, but because of the good SNES translation, it was massively played across the country. Back in the day, a lot of ppl already had SNES, but because we were coming out of a huge economic downfall (we had 100000% inflation in 1990) not everyone could afford to buy one so it became popular to rent SNES pretty much like internet cafes nowadays. Every 3-4 blocks were garages with 5 SNES at least and every single machine had SF2 (Top Gear also was pretty popular but nothing came close to the SF2 “rush”).

Early hacked versions where the shotos could throw 14 fireballs at once continued the popularity of the game until legal versions of Championship Edition and Turbo took the post.

However, another boom was about to come around 1995 with the arrival of KOF 94 (we live in south america, we get everything late). More than ten years later from now KOF is still the most popular game here because imo its fast paced gameplay appeal more to the “inexperienced” gamer who could learn more quickly than the more zone based street alpha series (or ex series for that matter) that were available at that time.

Along came Xmen vs SF and the whole VS series that grew up a good player base. MvC2 boost up this player base and you could see more MvC2 machines than “regular” capcom fighting games.

SF3 had little impact here. It wasnt till 3S came that people really noticed it. Besides, its different system (parry, ex moves, two button grabs) make the few followers took a while to adapt to it. Even so, it has a decent player base: in 2003 we had this major tourney with 40-50 good ppl on it. Not too many arcade locals have 3S but the ones that have it, have a good competition. As a 3S player myself i believe that after KOF and MvC2; 3S and TTT slightly behind are the second most played fighting games.

KOF have really good competition, and i would say that both 3S and the EX series have a decent competition. On a scale of 1-10 where jap players rank 8-10 (10 being top tier players like Nuki, Nitto Jiro, etc), top american players rank 7-8, i strongly believe that here the decent players are around 4-7 (most of the player base being on the 4-5).

Regarding other games I will say that even when GG series and SSBM are played, because they are console based there arent as much as competitivity as it could be (although SSBM players here are really good, few but really good). We have like only 3 GG machines in the entire city and sadly (for me at least, ive always tried to play this) only 1 CvS2 machine. Cvs2 comp here is pretty much dead because when it comes to team fighting games, KOF takes the lead and then MvC2 and TTT get the scraps.

I hope I havent forgotten anything but just in case ill let you know that serious arcade locals here arent that fancy and hence most ppl dont start goin till they are 15-16.

14

Yeah, Toronto’s is massive, because we cover a huge area(like 5 or 6 cities), yet still consider ourselves “one scene”. I’ll post up about my local city’s scene in a bit.

15

I really wish I could contribute to this. Unfortunatley, in Saudi Arabia the fighting scene is very poor, as most people would rather playe GTA, Winning Eleven, or NFS, and if people play a “fighting” game they usually go to Smackdown! It sucks.

However, Egypt, until recently, had a good KOF scene in some areas. Any KOF machine used to make people flock to it and spend tokens like crazy. KOF '99 seems to have garnered the most success there. The interest tapered off with 2000,though, and that was it. That’s to my knowledge anyway.

16

Correct for the most part, but Trinidad @ about the late 90’s took a different approach regarding the the arcade environment , this is because cabinet arcades are simply not a viable option in Trinidad and Tobago. Because buying an original cab today,would then require the gamers to pay $3 or $4TT per token if provider is generous and content at breaking even So we’ve adopted a time based system using consoles. Whereby you pay by the half/hour to play any game on a console system. As a result, this has spurned a significant Tekken and super smash brothers melee/Brawl following as well as various naruto titles because of its popularity here YEARS before the US
It seems as if Tekken5 onward has taken the mantle as the most played fighting game in Trinidad with SSBM in the background and SF2 in all its forms. It is for above reason we hold tournaments in the respective titles yearly. And we are fully capable of causing a few upsets at EVO . We just lack the funding

17

Until it happens, its just a fantasy.

18

Same here about the time based stuff with consoles. BTW these “arcades” are held mainly by chinese ppl here in venezuela.

19

Street Fighter 2 was incredibly popular over here in the early 90’s. King of Fighters still gets alot of play over here (as in tourney-worthy, some guys over here play amazingly well), but the players who remain loyal to the game are, sadly, in the minority. Folks here ignored the Samurai Shodown series, MvC and SF3, to name a few examples. Games like Tekken and Soul Calibur (The Virtua Fighter series was just flat out ignored and just happens to be one of my favourite games!) were popular for a while but that is no longer the case. People just play these games casually nowadays.

The only games South Africans actually consider to be worthy for tournament play are first person shooters (COD4 is played religiously over here). Fighting games no longer have the same allure they once did and even back in the day, we never really had any tournaments. Today you’d be hard pressed to find anyone in South Africa that has any real interest in fighting games. I’m probably one of the only South Africans that knows about GGPO and this site! Most people here probably don’t even know (or care) that a new SFIV is being made :rofl:

It’s a bit sad actually…

20

Haha, around the late 90’s/early 2000 there was a pretty big arcade scene going in Pakistan. This is because all of the games were mostly bootlegged and thus were extremely cheap to play. Probably like 10 plays for a U.S. quarter. This is great because back then, getting internet was really annoying (I don’t know if it changed). You basically had to drive 20 miles or so to the ISP and buy minutes for internet. And since buying legit games is too expensive for 90% of Pakistan population, they only sell (or sold) bootleg Genesis and PSX systems/games. As a result, the arcade scene boomed crazy.

My local arcade had a modded PSX running Tekken 3 to take money to play (!), KOF '99 to replace 98 back then, Street Fighter EX+ Alpha, OG SF2, and some other games I cannot remember. The most played however was by far KOF '99. People worshipped that shit. I got so addicted I loaned coins from the arcade operator, and still haven’t paid him back yet. :rofl:

Even earlier than that in the mid 90’s, I lived in UAE, and there was a random arcade with Street Fighter 2: Rainbow Edition, complete with hitting Start to change character on the fly. That’s right bitches :rofl:

Man the arcade scene in UAE in the 90’s was amazing. My jaw dropped to the fucking ground when VF3 came over there, it was the best shit I’d ever seen. Same thing for Fighting Vipers 2. They had everything from SF2 to fucking Dynamite Cop.

Other than that, my brother won a Nintendo-sponsored SF2 Turbo national tournament on SNES back in around 1994 in UAE. He got another SNES, a shit ton of games, and a trophy for it.