Alrite, Part 2:
Once the older players retired, there were a whole bunch of new faces on the MvC2 machine. Nobody was really “dominant”, so a whole bunch of new people started playing without fear of getting horribly raped. By now everyone had a general idea of tiers. When people were playing seriously, there were no more wolverines and the usual garbage, although Guile and Charlie still weren’t rare. Shan was pretty much top of the heap at this point. Nobody could figure out how to get past Cable/Ken. But he only played during lunch, and occasionally after school.
Then one day, we walked in, and saw a brand new fighting game: “Capcom Vs. Snk”! The first question obviously was, “What the fuck is SNK?”. People really REALLY liked this game when it first came out. It was a throw back to the old school, for people who didn’t like MvC2’s insanity. Plus, you could charge your super!! CHARGE YOUR SUPER!!
Everyone started playing the game. For some reason, I was already good at the game, and I could pull out a couple of wins… I got cocky, until this short Asian guy with glasses showed up one day, with his very very big Asian friend, and they basically made a fool out of everyone. Yes, Calvin, Ken’s, and Alex’s time had come. They would split games, and nobody would be able to get them off the machine except when people would get lucky Ryu or Blanka. (Shin Shoryuken/Level 3 Ball = 3/4ths life gone, gg). Mind you, it didn’t really matter, as everyone just wanted to play. There were loooong lines of quarters on each machine, even MvC1.
Soon, there were regular players, faces you could recognize everytime you went (outside of the regular crew we know now). You could always count on this tall guy with a baseball hat and big headphones standing and watching, but NEVER playing. This guy continued the tradition until Skybox closed, though later on you would occasionally see him play (rare valuable sighting). Then this guy with longish hair and a bandanna would show up with his fat friend… and they actually gave Calvin a challenge. This was Pre-Afro Rich and Rade. They had the mechanics of the game down pretty well… Rade was pretty bad, but Rich had a solid game. Both of them never went near MvC2 though. There was also this random brown girl who would play CvS1. Eventually she disappeared, but was spotted as the announcer for that Indy game in Playdium.
Calvin would occasionally play MvC2… he’d do these godly combos with his execution, then lose to the scrubbiest tactics because he had no idea how to play. Eventually, he just gave up. Ken and Alex did play though, and could win occasionally.
Eventually, the person I’d end up playing the most often was Tylor. We’d go even most of the time, with me slightly ahead… until he discovered Blanka. Even back then, it was pretty much gg. He even managed to piss of Calvin a few times.
Big news one day; People from Toronto were coming down for a Sauga tournament!! This was the first “big” Sauga/Toronto tournament. There really was no real rivalry as yet… right now (and for most of the time in between), it seems Toronto and Sauga really really hated each other.
I can only remember off the top of my head, the people who came were: Flightwing, Ron(DeadlyRaveNeo/Sheng-Long), Shadow_fighta, Barry… and I can’t remember anyone else. Actually, i’m not even sure if Barry showed up. But I know there were a couple more Toronto guys .
Basically, Sauga got dominated in CvS1. Wing scammed the brackets and sent himself to losers early, then just ripped through it to the end. Nobody could believe that kid who HAD to be around 12 years old just won the tournament. This was also the beginning of the long standing tradition where I beat shadow fighta in every single tournament we entered. Fuckin scrub.
The tournament was a real eye opener though. I honestly think that tourney was the turning point for Sauga. Nobody had any idea what solid play was, until we saw those guys. Bread and butter combos, zoning, baiting, spacing, punishing, we never really knew what the hell we were doing until now. We didn’t stop being scrubs, but we certainly moved past the “beyond terrible” level.
I think by now, Teddy had started showing up at the arcade. He was this quiet kid who never said a word, but would just stand by the jitz table watching MvC2. Also, everyone in Sauga was pretty friendly too. Yeah… Sauga without drama… fuckin ridiculous.
Wow, this is taking way longer than I thought it would…Part 3 to follow, and possibly a 4 and 5. Next installment: CvS2 is introduced… Azn Rich’s big console tourney, possibly the best Sauga has ever had, the start of the DRAMA!!
