I think we had cameras at the Hyper Fighting tournament in La Jolla, CA. The one where they combined SF pinball and Hyper Fighting together. Are those uploaded anywhere???
How about the E3 Alpha 2 tournament? That was fun although the organization of it was weird. It was the first time we had top SF players at E3 playing a tournament…lotta old schoolers there. We had a huge screen showing the fights, a lot of close matches, and at least 100 people watching those.
GOOD LORD REALLY?!?!?!?! :amazed:
I head about this tourney Im sure, this would have been height of HyperFighting era no? Presumably put on to promote the SF2 pinball release, which is listed here as March 93: http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?gid=2403
Please tell me anything more you can think of… Who was there etc…
This could actualy be like the holy grail, some peak era HF footage caught on tape… Thanks for bringing this up. :lovin:
OH WOW, and this sounds amazing too…
I still want to watch some tomo, jeff schaeffer (sorry if it’s mispelled) matches 
please encode them!
oh and I missed the pics too! damn
Does anyone have any stories about how things were different back in the “golden days”, besides the popularity? Did anybody PLAY the game differently than people do now, like were there any different “styles” or at least trends that have now passed?
I’m trying to understand how certain players could dominate so completely back then, winning 100 wins in a row and whatnot, if they don’t play the game any differently than we do now. I don’t think that would happen nowadays. No one dominates old-school SF; there’s an elite class, but really there’s no undisputed champion cuz the elite regularly lose amongst themselves. Nowadays there’s an abundance of information though, so there will be a lot more elite players cuz it’s a easy to get the skill you need; it seems to me back then you’d have to find it yourself or happen to be in the right place at the right time, so most players wouldn’t have it.
Did a person dominate because the caliber of players was lower back then, due to lack of information?
This was an awesome thread, and I really enjoyed it. Back in '92, I was in the 4th grade when SF came out and played every weekend at my friends house on the SNES. I went to the arcade once to play and it was intense. Good shit.
I can understand why og players aren’t into the shit out today.
Wow this thread was an amazing read.
I tried all the links in this thread for the daigo vs schaeffer matches but none of them seem to work, anyone know where I can still dl it?
This thread rocks.
I even saw the training video. Takes me back. I used to play a lot at the arcade back in the day. I was actually pretty good. My Ryu could beat most people, but there were some players (especially the Guile players) that were awesome.
The funny thing is that back then I don’t remember combos being a big part of the game. We generally tried to zone people out, chip away at them, and try to get them to make a mistake like jumping in at us in order to punish them. I mean, in most matches a nice combo would be given out by both players at least once a round, but that was usually when a player made a mistake and allowed a jump in, or was in a corner.
The worst was getting stuck in a corner. That’s when the combos really came into play. Since most of the combos required a jump in to start, they weren’t used that often unless the other player was knocked down or in the corner.
I hated being stuck in the corner against a good Guile player. He could hold you there incredibly well.
Man I miss those days, whatever happened to the Golden age of SF
old videos should be rehosted – if anyone has any they’d like to share, i have plenty of space and a fast server 
Godlike read…
my memories
Being 35 now and reading this thread has brought back a lot of memories.
My SF play started back in the day on the original Street Fighter at the Puente Hills Mall. I think back then the arcade was called Time Out and the game had the huge ass buttons. Even back then 1 on 1 competition was to be had.
It wasn’t until a day after high school I went to this arcade called Western Arcade (aka Super Arcade) to play this new game called Street Fighter 2. The arcade had two or three machines so I saw opening and I selected my character. Right away I was intimidated by the multiple buttons so I asked my opponent how do I play this. This opponent was Tomo, but Tomo at the very beginning of Street Fighter 2.
So he showed me some basics, but he took his time and went easy on me. After that I just started to watch the other characters and this is where I started to like Chun Li. To this day Chun Li is my main.
Anyways, the game turned into an addiction and I played at many different places. Tilt at the Hills, Western Arcade, Golfland, and of course World Finest.
Entered a couple of WF tournaments and was able to place 9th with Chun Li. Which was a big deal to me since no one else used Chun back then.
After Hyper I played on and off, but now its for fun.
Small World it is though cause now Gerald (aka LA_Akira is a friend of mine). Now our main game is VF and we throw in some SF here and there.
btw… Gerald ask Tomo if he remembers Big Rob from Nogales High. Rob and I are friends too.
-Brian
Man what a legendary read. I remember reading this thread several years ago under my first account with this site. It’s amazingly golden.
Dunno what to say, I guess the only word that comes to the mind is the ever versatile “manly”.
My only frustration is that I’ve never witnessed Tomo play irl, so I can only hear from word of mouth about how beastly he was, and from the interviews that I’ve read about him back in the days.
The thing that simply amazes me the most, is just how ridiculous some of the OG elite players reaction and footsie games where back in SFII. Reading up about the Top SFII players then, it makes me wonder just how crazy their abilities where, back then, and seriously even in comparison now, it still seems almost unreal and well, borderline broken. I mean, things that Tomo did at the absolute peak of SFII’s popularity and heavy competition, never went into loser’s bracket, with only four notions of him taking second, while all the rest where 1st place finishes…that’s absolutely unbelievable, not to mention the stated 100 or so tournies he played. I mean, is there even a FG player on the planet today who has this kind of a resume in the FG that they dominated in?
Honestly, if there ever was a definition in the dictionary for a competitive Street Fighter player, there should be a picture of Tomo.
Cicada,
Can we have the links to the videos?
i was just at geralds house this past weekend. if you went to world’s finest im sure ive met you. name?
this thread is amazing. what a great read!
this brings back so many memories. i was only 12/13 back then and in NYC, SF mania was everywhere. I would play people in Flushing, Harlem, and other parts of Queens and take the things i learned from one area to another. I remember silly things like people in harlem calling Guile General Uile, handcuffs and freeze reset on Vega’s stage and bringing what i learned to my home town in Sunnyside, Queens.
I still remember this one time i was playing in harlem at a pizza parlor at night. I was just playing this guy in CE and we were having a really good game going. All of sudden, a guy runs in and sprays gold spray paint into the guy’s eye i was playing and runs off. Then that guy blinded with spray paint just stumbles out of the store covering his eyes and runs off too. I’m still dumbfounded on wtf happened! i think about it every now and then lol.
i moved to suburb NJ around ST and since then, my level of play would not be the same. i remember beating people in NJ with just one hand at the time, the difference in skill level was so vast in areas where there was not as much competition.
So because of my personal experiences, i would consider the golden era the best era for fighting games for me.
I dont think any tomo matches exist on tape (I’d love to be wrong about this though)
As for Jeff, these are the only matches I can find, vs Daigo of all people
[media=youtube]u9YyLKWbiXk[/media]
[media=youtube]lEcEM2apkGo&feature=related[/media]
[media=youtube]zCbrj7Kz8ic&feature=related[/media]
You can really see the OG skills when he’s playing the older versions of the characters, especially guile.
TO ANYONE
If anybody has any media they’d like to post/repost, a lot of the links are dead. I understand that you cant just keep em online forever, but it’d really be nice to have some tangibly digital mementos from the past we can all enjoy again.
I remember all those places you just mentioned. I wonder how many folks are part of the Rowland/Nogales demographics.
the nogales/rowland heights tradition lives on at video 94 and arcade infinity
Exciting news posted by Mike Watson in the Hyper Fighting thread that Tomo may be making an appearance at Evo this year!!
It would be nice if he was given some role in the proceedings, like handing out the awards or something, since the SF community doesn’t have a Hall of Fame induction or anything…
Anyway, news taken from here:
http://forums.shoryuken.com/showpost.php?p=6152220&postcount=1110
Crayfish.