If you’re not making it out to EVO this year, and you’re heading to the California Extreme arcade show at the Hyatt in Santa Clara, CA this weekend instead, I’ll be running a Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting tournament at the show.
Registration opens at 1PM at the Street Fighter II section, and tournament starts at 2PM. $5 entry. 32-player cap (first come, first served … it tends to fill up quickly). Double elimination. Top 3 in the money.
Please keep in mind that the tournament takes place on the show floor, which means you must purchase a pass to the show to enter ($40 Saturday, $60 for the weekend). Paying for a pass does not automatically entitle you to an entry in the tournament, and does not wave the five bucks to participate. I highly recommend planning to spend the day enjoying an insane number of arcade games from just about every era, as opposed to paying 40-60 bucks just to enter the tournament. The Street Fighter II tournament is meant to compliment the show experience.
SPECIFICS
-Sign ups are at 1PM, Saturday, inside the show floor at SF2 heavy area
-Tournament starts at 2PM, Saturday
-Entry fee is $5
-32 player cap (first come, first served)
-Double Elimination
-Top 3 get a percentage of the pot
-Matches are best 2 out of 3 games. Loser may choose character. Winner must stick with character.
-Rock, Paper, Scissor for player side choice
-We're playing on several different set ups, with two different board types (some CPS-1 boards are slightly quicker than others). Until the brackets have eliminated enough players to make it convenient for contestants to choose a preferred machine, you have to suck it up and play on the machine that you're assigned.
FAQ
**How long is this gonna take?** As long as it takes. I *try* to get this tournament done as quickly as possible for a few reasons. Primarily, no one wants to spend all CAX in a tournament (it's why I avoid the pinball tournament). Also, there are people who paid to come to CAX who want to play SF2. I don't want us hogging the machines the entire show. Wham, bam, a few hours later, thank you ma'am!
**Why only 32 players?** See above. It helps keep the tournament quick. Also, although I get a lot of help from the KLOV community when it comes to equipment, I rarely have enough set ups to make increasing the bracket feasible.
**Why Hyper Fighting and not (Super Turbo/Third Strike)** Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting, next to Super Turbo, is considered one of the best releases of SF2. It's also much cheaper and easier to obtain boards for, as well as being much more accessible to the average person (Super Turbo is where the game starts to get complicated). I respect Third Strike, but it also suffers from being more complicated. This is an arcade show, not EVO.