Hey there,
For the writers and responders who are looking at this thread… can you please take a look at my own thread called ‘Are there any scholars out there? Brainstorming…’
I make a direct reference to the people in this thread and especially some of the writers. Maybe you folks could help out an old schooler… =)
Anyways,
take it easy.
Visceral_1
Hey, whats up eggo. Im from the torrance crew where roger chung played. I remember the first few times i met you we used to talk about breaking top 10 on the rankings board…on sf2 i got as far as 8 but you got farther than me though! Us guys from torrance always talked about vahe. SF2 was very scientific and we didn’t understand vahe’s “psychic” flash kicks. We swore, as soon as we pressed up to jump in (which rarely happened), vahe would flash kick us so early!!! He even got us a couple times when we barely had a chance to take a step forward.
Well, i have funny stories to share too. Man, i saw everything and was right at the beginning of a lot of shit…
Alladin’s Castle in Torrance was the hotbed of sf1 and sf2 competition. Roger was at the top there. I came from this little arcade in hermosa beach we called 4th street. To make a long story short, i was a pretty notorious player and people from all over torrance used to come down to play me. Roger and i had serious battles…we were the best two in the area by far. I know exactly what George means when he says, if i don’t know you, you already lost. Well, here’s the funny part, when i would beat Roger, he would always say “cheeeter” in this real annoying way. It was just his thing. Sometime during the first couple months of sf2 Roger goes on a trip to taiwan and comes back with a very deadly new technique…we called it the “cheat move!!” He jumped in with guile or ryu with short kick, we blocked it, and he threw us as soon as he landed. It was sooo mind blowing and people was PISSED! We yelled back at roger after losing calling him a cheater…but in a friendly and joking way of course. But when we learned it and beat him he would call us a cheater. Everytime we threw after a block we just simply said “cheat”. It really took a lot of skill to do it and reversing it was even harder. Only the best players could do it. Anyway, months passed and more people started using it but they started called the technique all these different type of words like “cheap” and even “cheese”. What the hell? Its a cheat move dammit!!! Roger brought the cheat move to america and because people couldn’t understand his freaking accent everyone started calling it CHEAP!!!
SF2 was without a doubt the best street fighter experience. Even in the beginning when we were so ignorant that we thought you could only do one flash kick or sonic boom per round. I remember i used to low roundhouse people to death who thought they were the shit on that game.
more later…
Marco
wow, what an awesome thread.
stupid me 
. when SF2 first came out, i was only about 5, and i hated sf because i didnt even know how to block, let alone do fireballs. it wasnt until about 7th grade (that would be almost 4 years ago) did i finally realize the competative potential in sf. i missed out big time.
Street Fighter 2 is the one that launched the fighting game industry. The reason why SF2 was so successful was because it was designed to be a player verses player game. What a lot of the developers realized is that a computer is a poor substitute for a human competitor because a computer has an IQ of zero. You can make the AI as complicated as you want, but eventually you will find a pattern and figure out a way to either counter or get around it. For example, take DEEPER BLUE, the biggest and most powerful supercomputer designed to play Chess. Yes, it did beat Kasparov, however, if you noticed, in the first game, Kasparov used the closed openning and completely wasted DEEPER BLUE. In the remaining games, he used the open game and the computer basically beat him by tiring him out. Kasparov didn’t lose because of his skill, he lost because he couldn’t beat the stamina of a supercomputer.
In the beginning, you have some guy pick a character with an abusable pattern that no one knows how to counter yet and become king of the hill. Eventually, a counter is devised, but this takes time. People investigate and this tremendously improves the life span of the game. In SF2, its history would begin with the shoto’s fireball/uppercut pattern. Easy to do, very hard to counter, since no one knew how to counter it at the time. Then people who love a good challenge start to think and experiment, looking for weaknesses and lo and behold, 2 weaknesses are found. The first one involves the recovery delay between the fireball and the uppercut, which characters with really fast jumps like Blanka and Zangief can exploit. The second one lies in the fact that there is a vulnerability window at the beginning of the fireball that allows you to totally nullify the fireball and damage the shoto’s at the same time if you can score a hit in this small window, which character with fast pokes like Chun Li could exploit, since she had a really high and long jump. More and more theory and analysis started coming out and more and more people started to practice. The average skill level started to rise. The potential of the other characters were being realized. You started seeing more Blanka’s, Chun Li’s, Guile’s and Zangief’s in the field. But each game has a limit as to what it can offer. Eventually, everything will be discovered and the best tactics will be laid in stone.
Then CE came out with noticable, but not any big significant changes. They were enough to change the tiers of the game, but not how each character was played. Plus the introduction of the bosses present a whole new set of posibilities to explore.
Then HF came out with big changes that were enough to change the way each character was played slighty. For example. Ryu would still use the good old fireball/uppercut trap, but not that often as characters had new ways of countering it.
SSF2T, was the game that brought about the biggest change to the way characters were played. Supers presented powerful possibilities for each character as well as powerful new threats. This combined with lots of new moves, gives the game more potential for competition. Then Capcom split the game into 3 series, Alpha, SF3 and the Vs series, each one with a different focus. There wasn’t anything really special about the Alpha series, its too similar to SSF2T, Alpha combos were a nice addition, but other than that, there wasn’t enough change to provoke significant change in the way the older characters were played. The Vs series brought about a massive change. Massive beam supers, crazy infinite combos, mad speed and super jump demanded a lot more reflexes that the previous SF games never required.
SF3 introduced the parry, which was enough to completely change the way each character was played over time. The change wasn’t immediate because the full potential of the parry as well as the skill to utilize the parry wasn’t realized, but eventually they were brought to light and lo and behold, change was everywhere. Fireball/uppercut patterns went out the window, attacking first from certain positions would never guarantee an advantage, players waking up from the ground would never always be at the mercy of some wake up block combo. The whole emphasis on patterns that was present in all previous SF games went completely out the window. This game demanded ingenuity, you had to outwit your opponent to win.
Games like SSF2 and Alpha didn’t offer enough change to warrent an extended life span like HF or SF3 did. This is why games like SSF2T, HF, SF3 and the verses series are still played while games like Alpha are gathering dust in the backroom.
ChunLi
This is little more than a long opinion with a whole lot of ignorance. Not trying to be rude. Just clarifying that none of this is truthful knowledge and is merely someone’s perspective.
Apoc.
Yes, Describing SF3 series with “This game demanded ingenuity, you had to outwit your opponent to win.” Is a sure fire give away.
Apoc, i know you have stories. Please share em. I have a question for you. I remember seeing you alot in LA but i know you’re from vegas. Didn’t you live in LA during sf2? What arcade did you practice at?
Here’s something that baffled me. I met some friends in San Bernardino at a real ghetto arcade called lazer blast. Me and this guy from there named kha discovered the dhalsim invisible glitch and how to get out of the handcuffs. Someone else later figured out that you could do the magic throw without being in handcuffs…dammit, we didn’t try that. I only showed 2 people the dhalsim glitch and 1 week later i go to vegas and you guys were trying to do it. How did you find out? It wasn’t like we were trying to hide it, but i remember egm had a $50 bug contest back then and kha wanted to keep it hush so we could split it. :evil:
Alright. Back in the day, these were the hottest Socal arcades to go to…IMO 
Don’t let this thread die…
Memories not in any particular order:
-Remembering seeing a HF or turbo machine everywhere I went (wal mart, MCD, Burger king, yes they had them!) and always finding people to play.
-Some guy who did nothing but threw fireballs and uppercuts, he was unbeatable.
-The excitment of hearing about HF!
-Going to arcades JUST to play SF and nothing else (well maybe some MK).
-Getting WW for SNES and getting my ass whooped by my scrubby friends (at the time I sucked)
-Getting my ass handed to me by CPU chunli and blanka
-Bison’s zigzag pattern!
-The SF guide my friend got for xmas which I borrowed and studied religiously
-Hitting puberty and finding chunli attractive
-Playing SF on a big screen at the wharf (even tho it was rainbow edition)
-Being somewhat let down my the Alpha series and Super/Super turbo
-Would of killed a man for a copy of SSF for SNES but only to be let down
-Boss code for WW using game genie
-My friend teaching me how to play SF and telling me about it (it’s sad how I can beat them now very easily)
-Death of SF and arcade scene…
Street Fighter… my best friend, my first love, forever and always.
This is so very interesting… read almost all of it.
Does any of you people play old street fighter on the internet? By ANY chance? I’ve been looking for your kind for a while…
So please let me know, I want competition.
Bumps thread out of respect.
man this takes me back to my youth in England, nearly all the stories are true, who here remembers when the Sheng long story came, where you could fight him after bison or he beats up bision and you had to do some psycho thing to fight him, like perfect everybody or something like that. Hey I was 13 when championship edition came out and that story sounded creditable, yo Apoc or liquir storyteller man you guys want to back me on this and tell the young uns about it. The past, tell us about the past
errrr bump!
damn i just stumbled onto this thread and its awesome! BIZUMP!!!
oman those were some awesome stories guys it makes me sad that I was too young to be around for the old school scene.
it sux, i finally get into fighting games (VS series), but arcades are on their way out, dying left and right, with capcom abandonining its fans and stuff. Damn if i had just been born a coupla years before… 20 people in line for sf? 6 machines dedicated to it? a machine in every 7-11, liquor store, restaraunt??? :mad:
WTF happened to all that shit. this thread made me sad, but it makes me wanna learn how to play SF2 now. gonna play on emulator now.
dude, the part of the story where jcase (sp) compares the dragging out of the SF2 cabinets out like a funeral procession made me really sad. so did the ominous part about rushing into to play the new SSF2, only to see that the room was empty. that is fucking good short story material.
I’m not able to say all of what I want to as elegantly as the others on this thread, but here goes.
I’ll never ever forget the first time I played SFI, or SFII. I played the first one at the galleria mall where I hung out a lot and just chilled. There was this black guy there in his 20s who played the game. I walked up and asked if I could play. I was like 6 at the time I think. Played him, and just slapped buttons. I went a few rounds and he looked down at me and said “no no, you play the game like this” and showed me. Even taught me how to do a fireball after I’d come back to the arcade a few times. I’ll never forget it.
The first time I played Street Fighter II was at Malibu Speed center by Town Center mall. Back then the place was like a giant warehouse with a go-cart track. I stayed all day playing as Ryu. I was hooked. Just like everybody else has stated on this thread, Street Fighter II was so different from anything that you HAD to come back for more. I remember trying to get rides everywhere so I could spend every day after school playing SF.
Later on, obviously, it all dried up. For the longest time I thought nobody played SF here in ATL. Then I found SRk and that kind of changed everything. I’m very thankful to the people who run this site because it allowed me to get in touch with people who’ve loved the game as long as I have, and who love the compitition it brings.
It’s so great to read about the birth of the fighting genre and the excitement of those days.
I only got into SF during the Alpha 2/EX era, so most of the hard work was already done for us, we had magazines and internet FAQ’s. I can just imagine the stuff people would talk about gathered around the machines and telling each other what Ryu’s DP is and how to fireball trap…
I think that’s a once in a lifetime experience… and I missed it! Awww crap. :bluu:
The PSX Collection with CE/HF is -GREAT- It has a “Deluxe Versus” mode which is awesome IMO… You can pick The WW/CE/or HF version of your character and challenge another WW/CE/or HF character.
Anyhow, The only glitches in it with WW Guile are magic throw, and free boom charge after strong throw… So repeated OTG magic throws are easy. Mwahahah…
Just so you know.
The load times are annoying though, sometimes its like sfa2 loaded faster!
This thread is top-tier.
OK, don’t keep us in suspense, what happened next???
This shit is like a daytime soap opera for SFers. 
:lol:
The story MUST be told!!
its true… and I loved it… and Ive seen alot more than just 20 people waitning to play… "I’ve got up’s… "
--------->>Ben
man im new school only played 3 times at the arcade’s wish i could of been born back in those days cant wait till im older and actually have a job to get money to go to paridise:D
and thanks 2 the guys who shared all those storys from ther personal life big ups to you cats