ST on Ps1.

Evo Championship Series
141

Yeah, it’s that simple, really. Ask Capcom if it is okay that we play all of their games in a way that cost us no money and earns them nothing. That’ll REALLY make them wanna help us out more.

And for those who want us to build a bunch of cabinets, this is sort of a cop-out, but hnestly: what the hell do we do with the cabinets for the other 51 weeks that there is no Evo? Storing them somewhere, especially stuff that take up a lot of space and cannot be stacked, is an enormous extra expense.

Also, nametags and shirts and such are a necessity for us. We aren’t spending any money on stuff that are “frills”, believe me. The money is concentrated on stuff we need. I’m not even sure where “hats and wristbands” come from. This year, we went out and bought 20+ PS2’s, for example. How is that a “frill” with the money? I do agree with everyone, though, that the registration needs to be increased. I just fear that next year, if we double the registration, we’re gonna hear people whining about how expensive it is. sigh “I flew in from [LOCATION HERE] and played my friend in the semi’s, and was charged 50 bucks for it! That is total BS, Evo sucks!”

And Apoc, I’m a proponent of keeping ST, and making it as accurate as possible. For that game alone, maybe emulation might work, if we can actually have enough ST boards on hand that we own, to show Capcom we did buy them (have as many boards as there are for emus we are running). But adding HF and A3 to the mix is just too much. You always blame Evo for killing A3, and that is just plain false. Evo had no hand in its death. 3rd Strike alone proves that Evo can’t keep a game down. We gave 3rd Strike the same cold shoulder a few years ago, and now it’s the most populr game. The FANS AND THE FANS ALONE will determine if the game lives or dies. Call the voting thing BS if you want, maybe 100 paid votes WAS too much. But the results still stand: KOF had more paid entries than A3. MK had more paid entries as well, if I recall correctly. Even if it didn’t in the end, it did for a long period of time. The fans of Alpha 3 didn’t even fight hard enough for the game. I was one of the 10 or so people who actually paid for it, too. So I understand: I want Alpha 3 at Evo, too. But no one is giving us any indication that it should be included. And I think Hyper Fighting is arguably the best SF version there is, period. So I’d love to see that as well, but there’s just no time. We already had a shrtage of people running pools and had events run long and dropped some matches to best of 1 rather than 3, and we’ve taken a TON of slack for it. If someone on the side wants to run Hyper Fighting, they are welcome to, but we can’t afford to include it in our line-up. If we are gonna include 20 games, we’ll be forced to drop everything to best of 1, single-elimination. Hell, if people are down with that, hey, I’m game. But there is no way people will be down for it, since they are so used to American styled tournaments.

It’s great that people have this feedback, and believe me it is appreciated. It’s like DSP said, don’t just tell us what’s wrong, give us ideas. And when you give us ideas, please think them out thoroughly. It’s easy to wish for the grand high-tech shopping mall, but it’s always hard to think about all the homes and trees that had to be torn down and cut down to make room for it.

  • James
142

i said to use roms and a modded x-box dude…

143

Firstly it may be that hard to run emulated games, i had a ton of trouble getting capcom to write a simple form letter, and i never got it.

Secondly even if capcom allows emulation, I imagine M$ would have a lot to say about using xboxes. Evo may be seen as an endorsement of modding your xbox, and i doubt they would appreciate that. If somehow we get it by capcom, i assume we would need some barebones PCs to run it.

EDIT: I just read N-kens bit about linux xbox, it seems like a possiblity, but me running xbox linux myself may be different than putting it on public display. I guess we’ll need to find some more info on this.

–

As chen said, there is no way that evo can run a ton of games, and the only real measure is turnout, now i know that sets off alarms with some people, but thats the reality. You can’t explain why it’s important to put the work into making consistent ports, and why it’s important to make future installments and upgrades if your only backing is a 64 man national.

Since there are still many improvements to be made to scheduling, preliminary play, registration, turnout etc. I don’t see evo in a big hurry to go back and make all these special setups for classic SF and get arcade boards.

To me the only solution is to add a group that cares about doing all that and let them set up HF->A3/XSF/VS whatever and let the games that are going to have the high turnout be run as before. They may only need 5 or so setups for the tournaments, which sounds a lot better.

To me if evo has to downgrade or work with mlg again, this can’t happen. So we would need to replace mlg with more evo resources. I don’t know what this involves, but i imagine a more money and hotel rooms from evo players.

–

Regarding the comment about moving joysticks, the reason they are accepted is because they are our joysticks. Its not like we all play with stable arcade style joysticks to begin with, so it doesn’t help as much to provide stable joysticks at evo.

Is it a bonus? probably, but it doesn’t solve the real problem.

I don’t know whether the sanwa sticks have the same problem in the end but a ton of people switched to them to avoid the issues with MAS/US style sticks, i think that’s the best we have right now on the console side.

Since the arcade side probably requires a lot less setups (5?) you can probably pull off standard controls.

144

you dont need storage for cabs…just sell the built cabs on sunday when evo is just about over and then who ever bought the cabs can supply them for the following year

145

umm so you are saying to sell off all the cabinets for over $1200 to who ever and then have them bring them back year after year? I highly doubt that will happen. It would be a large cost of them out of their own pocket I doubt many ppl would be willing to do.

Im going to have to agree with FMJ on this. The only way to do the OG arcade games is to allow a small group of ppl that care supply and run the tournys. I konw besides me there are a few other ppl that would be willing to step up and take the reins for st and A3.

And for all the ppl sying “How about we just get xxx of CigarBoB’s cabinets and have them at evo”. The cost breakdown just for arcade compatable with out any console would be $470 + labor for the person making them. If you are also wanting ps2/dc support you can add $50 onto that too. This is bare bones no grafix so swapable sanwa sticks. Only P360’s and buttons. And if you want to add sanwa on to that make it over $600 in cost. Then on top of that you add the arcade boards at $100 each. The cost can keep on going.

It is highly unlikely that EVO (or any one for that matter) will attempt to do this. I am still feeling the pinch financialy from my trip to evo with all my shit. Sure it was all well worth it but the $2500 i spent looks really bad on my bank account.

146

Yeah, that was exactly my point. ROMs and Modded X-Boxes are full of red flags and warning sirens. We could easily get totally reamed for using those and have Evo get completely shut down if we aren’t careful using those. Capcom or Microsoft could potentially have a field day with us.

  • James
147

You cannot be guaranteed anyone who purchased those things would even take care of them or be willing to haul them back to Evo next year. No, if we made custom CigarBob cabinets, they must be Evo property and STAY Evo property to ensure all cabinets are of equal quality and condition. Otherwise, you’ll get people wanting to play on certain CB cabinets over others because someone spilled Coke all over one of the cabinets or whatever. The nice thing about console tourneys is that most people bring their own sticks, so they are already using the thing they are most comfortable with on consoles, so there will never be that sort of preference problem.

  • James
148

i see your point.im just trying to throw out some ideas.the thing that sucks about console is haveing to carry your stick all day and then have to sit on the floor to play,its just a pain in the ass.last year i took my sticks,they were the big red ones that they showed on the dvd,that shit really sucked haveing to lug that thing everywhere.

i have had this idea for a while,why not build a stand where you can take your stick and slid it in to the stand and lock it in so it doesnt come out.then when your done playing you can unlock it and slide it right back out.the only problem i would see is that not every stick is the same size and it would be hard to make a stand that fits all

149

We would need some sort of clamp on the sides as well as the top and bottom to make sure nothing moves, but that would be a good idea. A few years ago i thought it may be possible to do just for MAS sticks, but today’s solution would need to be a lot more flexible.

Evo could use seeding by city/region instead of just region, that would can prevent roomates and people from the same town playing each other, but i don’t think just being friends is going to be something that will work. All of a sudden 200 people become friends of the top players and don’t have to play them.

150

How did you all plan on running A3 this year, then? My comments were under the assumption that there was, indeed, a plan on how to run A3 or whatever tourney was voted on. Of course, it probably really was just a way to blame the players and kill the A3 issue(shrug). Otherwise, there MUST have been a plan. So, if it was possible, just bust that shit out and hold the tourneys.

Why is that too much? I would think those tourneys would last a couple of hours at most. As for Evo killing A3, I stand firmly by that. I’ve explained better in the past but, clearly, A3 dropped all over when it was excluded at Evo in 2k2(no real tourney). EVERY year prior, A3 had a huge turn-out. Don’t pretend like it just died. There are many factors but, even I would have found some way to play if Evo had it in the line up. I love the game but, as a competitor, if it ain’t at Evo, I can’t really compete with the best so it means nothing to me. Claiming what I say is false is like saying that Evo going console didn’t topple the NW MvC2 scene. With how easy it would be to run A3, I’ll stop running my mouth when yall prove that, WITH Evo’s support, A3 would be dead. As far as I can see, EVERY time A3 was included in SRK’s national event, it had numbers. Then when yall dissed it in 2k2, players fell off. We weren’t going to all go out of our way to play an arcade version when we were going to compete on it. 3s was so much easier with somewhat close console adaptions. Not to mention that it was like a new game to us.

Tell you what. Drop MVC2 from the list for just a YEAR and watch the entire scene crumble regardless of how many other tourneys include it.

Seriously, yall are full of shit when you pretend that Evo has no affect on what the overall scene plays. That’s just playing dumb, imo.

and let’s be real with the 3s comparison. The US had no interest in 3s, for the most part, early on in it’s run. The US dissed it for the better part of the first 2 years. Meanwhile, A3 was THE game for years. 3s hadn’t even had it’s run yet. I don’t see a valid comparison between a game that got MAJOR tourney play and a game that barely anything in comparison for years. If anything, it shows that the US players preferred A3…until Evo took away their choice and handed them 3s. Not a fair comparison at all.

Apoc.

151

I don’t want to burst anyone’s bubble, but has anyone actually sat down with the emulated versions of ST and A3 on Xbox? The size is completely awry, needs to be adjusted at first, in comparison to an RGB monitor. To top that off, there is a slight delay when you are depressing buttons and moving around. I don’t know how this will affect some players, but it is there.

As for ST on PS1 this year, think of it this way. The game on PS1 is already 7 years old. No one has a lot of access to this game because it is pretty hard to find unless you like to get copied games. Second, most people considered EVO a “fun” type of tourney. I had fun, I did not take it seriously because it is console, and the best time I had was on CigarBob’s cabinet. Granted I could not use Bison in ST because of the PS1 differences (I chose not to use him or Vega), and was stuck on a lot of Chun-Li upward kick delays, it did not matter to me because I ALREADY KNEW BY ENTERING IT WAS PS1.

As of right now, new school players are console PS1 champions, simple as that. Does not make them ARCADE champions, but this was NOT an arcade tournament, was it?

Having PS1 tourneys on a Super Gun that ALLOWS access with a PS2 port is the best thing you can do. We tried using Super Guns for 3s at 2K4, but people did not like the sticks and having to sit down (everyone wanted it in their lap; etc) People are going to bring their own sticks to play. I am sure for accuracy, MAS can make an additional port that is mapped for PS2 pads with buttons preset for the most part. Sure, some people will have configs screwed up if they are pad players, but it’s the best you can do.

152

Simple. Now SF loses its’ personality and becomes like every other gaming competition. SF becomes just another video-game. What other serious competitions are played on the floor? It garners less respect from outside of the gaming community, I’m sure.

I guess I shouldn’t use the term “geeky.” It’s clear it offends a lot of gamers like nigge* offends others. To me, that’s really lame. Instead, I suppose I should say that Evo gets “immatured” and childish seeming. Most sports are games of some sort. I see kids and adults play the same sports in the same ways. The adult way. Any dumbing down is seen as a kid’s version like tee-ball or flag football…etc. Playing on the floor produces this feeling like all these fellas just can’t grow up. It’s just not a classy vibe for a competition. It’s not supposed to be a big living room. It’s a competition arena. Things like Mario also don’t belong in that setting.

This is all opinion, of course. You asked(shrug).

It’s like seeing the original SW trilogy for years and then getting greeted by Jar Jar, saying “exsqueeze me” while be in a, supposedly, more mature story.

Evo should get more serious and more intense. Check other changes in Evo. It’s clear that they realize this on some levels and we simply disagree on what subtracts the intensity.

Apoc.

153

That’s a stigma that is clearly changing, imo. Thank goodness after 30years of video-games the average Joe enjoys them and not just the stereotypical gamers of yesteryear.

…but I agree with what you’re saying. I just don’t see “geeky” as lame when it’s mainstream. In fact, “geek” is almost a compliment today, I think. However, the definition I’m looking for when I say Evo is headed that way falls more in line with the term “dorky.”

Apoc.

154

If Alpha had gotten voted in, we were going to scrounge up boards and arcade cabinets, no lie. But just for that game and that game alone because there is no other way to do it: all other versions are not arcade perfect.

True, if the turnout is very small. But there would be no big screen stuff for it (Sunday Finals), it would just run on the side, and at that point, as I said before, might as well be a BYOC tourney-run thing. And adding tourneys takes players away from other games they need to play. Lots of people complained about playing one game and being DQed from another. If we add HF and A3, their audiences will be mostly of the same people: hardcore old-schoolers, most likely. We’ll have tourney hold-ups everywhere.

Well, I always stand by the fact thatI’m a huge Alpha 3 fan, and I didnt stop playing it becuase it wasn’t at Evo. In fact, I kept playing it. I did actually stop because of the Crouch Cancel garbage. That’s my reasoning. I dunno… I really don’t see Evo affecting who plays what to the extent you are describing. I’m actually flattered at the idea that Evo COULD influence it that much, frankly. :slight_smile: But I still stand by what I say: players will determine the popularity of the game.

You bring up MvC2, so let’s look at it: attendance for MvC2 has dropped sharply in the past year for both ECC and Evo, and we’ve had it all these years. It had nothing to do with whether or not we had it at Evo. And I’ll bet if Evo dropped MvC2, say, two years ago, people would still be playing it anyhow. I mean, I HONESTLY believe that, and cannot offer up any claims to back myself up, but at this point, whether Evo excluding MvC2 would kill the MvC2 scene or not is just opinion. If NW had the interest, they woulda kept playing MvC2. I sincerely believe that. If they love it, they wouldn’t stop just 'cause of Evo. But I would be curious if someone from the NW who reads this could comment on it and express their reason for their scene dying out.

But that makes you as guilty as you claim we are of projecting our own opinion on the masses. The MAJORITY of the 3rd Strike players probably are playing the game now because it looks fun and they think it IS fun, not because they wanna compete with the best in the world. Maybe YOU lost interest in Alpha 3 because it is not at Evo, but I hardly believe that that’s what happened to everyone else. But again, I’d prefer to hear from the people themselves why they stopped playing Alpha 3.

Still not sure how running Alpha 3 is easy…

Before Anniversary Edition, which JUST came out, the 3S differences on DC with Arcade were FAR worse than the A3 differences on Saturn and Arcade from what I’ve heard. Saturn, if you banned the new guys, was virtually arcade perfect outside of some toning down of Dhalsim.

As I said earlier, I guess I stand by my modest view and doubt that we have that power just yet, especially since many of the fighting-game-playing-people of the U.S. don’t even come to Evo. I would like people to chime in and tell us why they stopped playing Alpha 3, but I suspect it has more to do with dying arcades, poorly maintained arcades, and no good home ports.

Can’t say I follow your logic there, Jason. :slight_smile: To me, 3rd Strike players griped when we took it out. And it wasn’t, like, 3 or 4 people who did, MANY did as evidenced by the deluge of “3rd Strike at EVO!” avatars that cropped up after we excluded it. And sure enough, the popularity of the game grew, without Evo’s support. Next year, we were practically forced to put it back in because of all the 3S circles that cropped up over the U.S.

So the reason why it’s a fair comparison is because the same thing happened to Alpha 3: we dropped it one year, people balked, and if the fans had played it anyhow and the community grew, it would have been back in the next year. But it didn’t (didn’t see a unified front promoting the game like we did for 3S), and even tourneys for Alpha 3 at the other Majors never prospered that well.

  • James
155

Wow, I thought for sure that you all would use emulation for A3. Yes, on cabs, it’d be hard.shrug

not to nitpick, but 3s was dissed for 2 years by Evo before returning to the line-up. It was unpopular, iirc when it WAS in the line up. I guess here we’re looking at different things. I’m looking at prior entries for A3 and your looking at verbal outcry on SRK.

You know me, I’m just looking at the Utopian view of the best tourney possible for SF. I think that’s what folks should strive for. So, I tend to overlook words like “impossible,” “can’t,” and “never” with regard to what can and can’t be done. Eventually, a way will be found or, at least, could be found. Without A3 and even HF in the mix, it’s not the perfect and fully rounded SF tourney it should be. But that’s my “purist” perspective.

Apoc.

156

And while we’re lookin for a well founded SF touny, how bout some respect for the 3D SF titles ^_^.

While it’d be nice, I know not to expect much. Especially with having to buy 20+ copies of a game and find someone to run it (aka me) and a time slot for it.

157

Im from the NW, and a part of it currently is lack of viable arcade(at least in the marvel populations mind) Thats not the root reason, and actually imo a big part IS evo. NW scene always ran in seasons even when shit was hot, ie summer and especially before evo people would get hyped and want to practice, then come back and alot of people would get renewed interest in really playing, then in mid - late fall or so, shit would slow down, and eventually almost die. That is, until the next evo prep time began. Then in 2k4, evo went console, and people lost motivation big time. Seattle IS an arcade town, dont doubt that. NW has never had a serious console tourney(or even anyone AFAIK) for a major 2d game that wasnt named Guilty Gear. And the thinking is not “well if arcades die out then we gotta play console” its “if arcades die out we stop playing”. Im gonna link Mandel to see if he disagrees with me on this, but Im pretty sure he agrees.

158

Yup I most definitely agree with Ken’s assessment. We play on console all the time but we’re definitely arcade kids up here. Not to dog on Evo or anything, but the majority of the people up here don’t wanna travel x amount of miles for a console tourney. I know that a lot of us were hyped about Evo 2K4 until it was announced that it was console. Then we were like “bleh…” A lot of the people that went from Seattle this year went mainly because it was in Vegas. And only two of those people that went were Marvel players (BIG UPS to Kyle and Zach for puttin down for Seattle!). But Ken’s right, Evo is a big part of it. Seattle’s a Marvel city and outside of that, we only have scenes for games that are at Evo. So imho what Apoc says is true, because if Alpha was at Evo, I’m pretty sure people from Seattle (the people that do play it anyway) would play it. The reason why I stopped playing A3 was because it wasn’t at Evo, but yeah.

Apoc-How’ve you been man?? You should visit Seattle someday for no apparent reason.

159

Co-sign to both of you guys.

160

People are blaming evo for for things, when IMO evo is just the reason they didn’t die out sooner. For instance if your philosiphy is “i’m going to play arcade games until evo isn’t arcade”, then by all rights you should have been done around B4/B5, cause arcades were dropping out and everyone knew it was only a matter of time.

What evo did was keep arcade games on life support for a few years before the truth became too obvious to ignore. Of course if something is already on life support, it will die when the plug is pulled, but it’s not evos fault that the situation occured in the first place.

None of that has changed, even if HF->A3 are at evo, i’m not saying at all that everything is ok and fine in SF land. There are just many pluses to having classic SF games, and as i said years ago, as evo grows, it can get a little more diverse and creative with it’s selection.

I think that we are getting too caught up in what evo does instead of the overall state of SF. Even if HF->A3/etc… are in evo, they still have major problems that will eventually need to be addressed. Either the games will just die again when:

the new people in charge leave and wilson stops running MWC and phi decides to stay retired,

OR we get a proper version of the game to be put into the main tournament,

OR we convince capcom to make a REAL game to replace them in the lineup (gl!).

I think the people that back the games should be aware of these larger problems, because evo gets a ton of flack for not having A3, but if capcom never releases an acceptable A3 port, it’s going to eventually be irrelavant what evo does. If people have a beef it should be with capcom as much as with evo, and if you thought srk staff wasn’t listening, who knows what we have to do to get capcom to listen.

Having arcade tournaments for the sake of having arcade tournamnents is still a losing proposal in my eyes,unless you are doing it at an arcade like MWC or ECC, however having arcade tournaments as as a means to get more community involvement and eventually find the long term solution is the main reasons i like the idea.