Super Turbo Revival in ... TORONTO ...?

Classic Fighting Games Super Street Fighter II Turbo
121

Y’know what’s funny, I remember the first A&C night I went to when you brought your board. At the time, most people in the general scene hadn’t seen me in a longass time. I’ve been MIA for awhile, but I was pretty active b4 and I showed up to alot of SF4 related stuff.

When Russel saw me at A&C he encouraged me to try playing the 3D games again. Something along the lines of: “If you wanna play THAT(ST) that’s okay, but come back to THIS(new games) stuff again man.”

I don’t think he hates ST or the old school stuff, I just think that he has no faith in them. He probably thinks they’ll fail and that he’s happy with the way things are now.

Which is perfectly fine with me. To each his own.

Anyway I thought about it some more last night.

The reason why I wanted to have a tourney was to draw in more players from the “other games” crowd. It’s been 3 months now and although a few people have casually taken the ST syringe, it’s been pretty much the same 6 people 90% of the time. I propose we speed things up with a tourney. Or even a ranking thingy w/e.

But, to make things more enticing for the casuals and to spice things up for us veterans…

I propose that we throw in some monetary reward that ONLY and ONLY the non regulars can receive. Be it a tourney pot at the end of a small tourney, or something at the end of each ranking session which probably wouldn’t work cuz it would take so long.

Something that would exclude the ST regulars, but encourage the rest of the guys that playing ST is worth it.

Now I realize that this is essentially a mirror of the underdogs tourney idea which I lambasted in that thread. However, I thought about it, and realized very few people are actually playing ST in any significant amount due to your efforts Unessential regardless of our presence at A&C every month. Most just take one look at the game with it’s dated graphics and really cheesy stupid shit that is hard to get around at first and go FUCK DAT.

However, if we can get them to play and try out the ST drug over a period of time by providing an incentive to play, they may keep playing after realizing that ST has a very large erection compared to the rest of that crap they play.

Now, I know that most of you are gonna be like: “what? a tourney where I can’t make any money even if I win? WEAK!”

I hear you, and I don’t like it either, but these are desperate times friends. We need to grow our base before we can get seriously competitive and show those Yankee’s what we got for realz.

122

Hey Jed. I just have some thoughts I’d like to share with you regarding your posts.

I find it strange that Russel thinks ST is going to fail, when it’s been the longest running game that’s still competitively played across a variety of countries. Sure, its popularity has gone up and down, but fact is, it’s survived the rise and fall of many great games, and as long as the ST community is passionate and willing to put in the work necessary to maintain its competitive lifespan, it’ll be around. I also find it strange that he has a problem with your supergun setup, since you are literally bringing all of your own equipment, and don’t need much space to take up. I don’t understand how it would be distracting to the other games, since it’s not like ST usually brings a noisy crowd with it.

I’ve also been trying to come up with new ways to bring out new players, or players that only play online ST. I think one possible idea is to have a “Rookie of the Tournament” type award, where you contribute maybe $1 to the total pot dedicated to only the newer or inexperienced players, and the top players vote to see who deserves to win it. It’s not much money, but it’s at least a very minor financial contribution towards building a new player base, and gets the new players motivated to improve in order to win something out of the tourney. Of course, usually this goes to the winner of the tournament, but you could also vote on giving it to a new player who really stepped up their game, or performed extremely well against a better player or more difficult matchup. That would be pretty interesting.

You could also seed your tournament brackets by placing mid-top level players on one bracket, and the new players on the other bracket. This gives them a chance to at least play against people of their own skill level where they have a chance to perform well. The best of those players eventually goes up against the other bracket, for a chance to make it into the big leagues. At the end of each tourney, the best player from the ‘newbie’ bracket gets moved up to the big boys bracket in the next tournament, whereas the loser in the ‘big boys’ bracket gets moved down. People tend to get REALLY motivated when they get passed around between the adults and kid’s table for ST.

Another idea, is to have a round robin tournament, if you have low player entrants. You could do the traditional round robin, or again, have 2 brackets for experienced players and the newbie players. Winner takes home a nominal pot prize.

It helps to have fairly low entry fees, $2-$5 for each tourney, which entices people to join, even if it’s just for fun. Tournaments are a definite must-have though, since it establishes a pecking order, gets people motivated to join, level up, and perform well. It’s a great tool for motivation. Beating someone in casuals is one thing, doing it consistently in a tournament is a whole different level. The ranking board system has also helped our own local players see who’s better than who, and they’re able to issue challengers against fellow players in order to take their spot. This creates enough mild hostility to provide players with some motivation to improve their skill set, while still maintaining a somewhat friendly and accomodating atmosphere for new players to join in.

123

It’s not so much that he thinks ST will fail, (although in Canada’s case, it never really got played in any significant number since the dawn of time) but more that ST will harken back to the days before SF4 were supposedly things were worse off for the community. Which is something that I vehemently disagree with as SF4 has done jack shit for us or the community as a whole.

There’s also the issue of the old school american players who have dabbled in ST in the past who might show up to Toryuken and see the board and show some enthusiasm thus upping our credibility in the eyes of the local non st players or casual players. That would piss off anybody who had an agenda pushing newer games over the old stuff. Especially at a tourney he was running, during the prime day too.

I disagree with that stance but it’s NeoRussel’s tourney so it is what it is. However he can’t stop us going to A&C and doing our thing.

Time will tell whether or not ST will spread to Ontario and enjoy a significant following here.

124

I like that “Kids table” idea. for the tournament. and Yeah, I’d be willing to put half my entry every tournament towards a prize for non-regulars. but $1 from everyone else sounds good as well, I mean, even with just us regulars $1 each. and a $5 buyin. we should be able to get at least 3 non regulars to join us since any less than it’d be free money/entry for them

There are the regulars @ A&C and that’s who’s playing most of the time, but JED I think you’re not realizing that the people who stay by for one or two games. (I think it’s around 4 people) it’s the same 4 people who stop by for 1 or 2 games every meeting. (especially that one black guy who plays KOFXIII he certainly doesn’t mind getting his ass handed to him…) I think we can certainly get them to join a tournament and put them in the kids table. and that will lure them in… Next time I gotta remember to ask for more than their names… (actually I’d forgotten their names already. I’m such a bad person lol) Actually on that note. I gotta ask for MM3D’s phone number as well…

How about this? If you lose a challenge on the leaderboard you toss a $1 into a bucket for the newbie fund? This would be honour system though. But. I’m sure most of us would be willing to do it.

125

ST made things worse for the community? ST has helped the FGC by being a staple in the competitive scene LONG before the smash success of SF4. I’m kind of insulted by this TO’s attitude that things were worse before the coming of SF4. The only thing SF4 did was bring players back into the scene. If anything, SF4 players aren’t build like the OG players of the older generation of games. I feel like new players aren’t as driven to become top competitors. Rather, they’re more into becoming popular, making money by having a gaming “career”, getting on stream, and getting to meet top players. I feel like we have more cheerleaders than players nowadays.

Thanks, I’m just trying to come up with new and fun ways to get newer players into ST. It helps having a tournament, and a stream setup, and a ranking board. Last night we had a tourney at Super Arcade, and we had several new faces show up. I really believe that fostering new players into ST is the best way to prolong the life of ST. We can’t just rely on the old guard to keep showing up to tournaments, we’ve got to increase our overall player base, for both veteran players and newbies alike.

Tossing $1 in the newbie fund works. Normally you money match like $5 or something in order to challenge someone, in order to put both pride AND ego on the line. But you have to cater it your players, and how they feel about these kinds of systems.

Looking forward to playing you guys up in Canada someday. Maybe we can organize some sort of Canada v. USA type deal one of these days. Or at the very least, play some casuals at one of our country’s majors.

126

He never actually said any of these things, this is only what I suspect he’s thinking.

I only hope that regardless of what games we all play, that we can be respectful to each others communities and help each other out.

Either way, ST hasn’t been bad or good for the Canadian community because it’s so rarely played here. HDR made a slight bump in the graph for a few months and then that died too.

It’s not really what ST did or didn’t do, it was the state of the FG community in Ontario period.

However, that has nothing to do with the games themselves really, and more to do with peoples reluctance to travel, mm, go to majors. Those few people who do are few and far between.

That hasn’t changed. Yeah new people came on board cuz of the media hype, but they could have easily done the same thing repping cvs2 and 3s and gotten the same results. If SF4 arrived with the same advertising half assery that fighting evolution (thx Ono for this other pile of crap btw) got then it would be in the same bargain bin with EX3. Same with SFXT.

127

Actually Now I actually recall something similar I’ve seen in a documentary, some thing about weekly tournaments 4 stations 1 would be like tournament vets and other 3 would be everyone else or something like that… I do recall it being in cali since I remember seeing mike watson in that documentary. You wouldn’t know much about that system and how it worked would you? What you said was pretty straight forward. but I’m sure there’s probably something unforseen I haven’t considered…

128

Fighting evolution… that sounds very familiar… //googles it

edit. wow. Gotta try it sometime so I can form my own opinion…

129

THat piece of shit game.

Fuck Jedah btw.

130

Neorussell’s attitude towards the old school games and how toryuken and other big tournies are run these days would make me laugh, if only it wasn’t so tragic. Giving shit to unessential for bringing in a supergun to “distract” from casuals? “Come back to the new games?” Is that how you maintain/grow a community? Give me a fucking break. But then a lot this has to do with the TO scene’s history. I was playing from the very beginning and there were no old school tourneys that I had ever heard of in the GTA. I don’t think TO had a competitive scene until the 3rd strike and CVS1 days. When your scene is built on people who played these games, it’s probably safe to assume that those players don’t know/care enough about OG SF2 to join tournaments for it. If these people think that ST reminds them of the dark days before SF4, it’s not their fault. They weren’t around to know any better. Without SF2 there wouldn’t even be the big games of the “dark days” era like CVS2, or even SF4. But either way, OG SF is pretty much a non-factor in how the TO scene was built, it might as well be a new game without the flashy graphics, easy-mode controls and stupid comeback gimmicks like ultra and x-factor.

Anyways, now that I’m done ranting, Josh, Jedah isn’t even the most ridiculous part of CFJ. It’d probably be someone who had a good CC or maybe Kenji’s ridiculous keepaway, not to mention ultimate guard.

I’m down with the challenge system for casuals at A&C tho, and also the cash bonuses for the rookies who are willing to play in tournament settings. Or maybe we can start doing MMs to build some hype?

131

redeye’s on GGPO by the way. he’s not in the tourney. I might have a match soon so if somone can hop on GGPO and try and get his attention ask him about A&C that would be nice.

132

Interesting. I never knew about how the FGC operated in Canada. It’s a shame to see that it seems like TO’s aren’t very accommodating of the OG games, and only want to promote the newer stuff. From a business perspective, I get it, but it’s not going to kill anybody by allowing a supergun setup to come in. Neglecting any single community within the FGC as a whole is such an irresponsible and ignorant attitude to have towards older communities.

That would be ‘Road to Socal’, by Red Rapper, and featuring a lot of Socal community members. Yes, that was how Wednesday Night Fights started its original format, but its changed since then. It was originally 4 pools, A, B, C, D, with Pool A being consisted of top players. The winner of each pool would move onto the higher bracket’s pool for the next tournament, losers would drop down. It keeps the salt factors pretty high. This is best achieved with extremely high number of players though, so it’s not really feasible for smaller scenes that have less than 50 entrants. Now, it’s just a standard double elim tournament for all games, with a seasonal pot prize, along with the standard tourney pot prize.

It’s important to improve your overall players’ skill level, get them to start to develop some confidence and ego, and then they’ll seriously consider travelling to other arcades, majors, etc etc, in order to get better. You can play with the idea of having some money being put forth whenever you want to challenge someone for their spot. You can take $1 per person from that money match, and put it towards a ‘ranking challenge board’ pot. At the end of the month, whoever is at #1 spot gets to take home the money. Then you can reset the board, have a ‘rankings tournament’ to determine initial placings, and start again from there. Just another idea we can play around with.

Depending on your venue’s setup for the supergun, you could also have a ‘pay to play’ session for the supergun. Put up a quarter whenever you want to play a match, winner takes the quarter. This makes it so that people get to earn a little bit of money while playing, motivating others to do the same. People tend to take the game a LOT more seriously when there’s money on the line, even a quarter, and there’s no better feeling than making even a little bit of money off of playing a game.

You could also talk to your local scene about running some different formats for tournaments. You could do 2v2 teams. You can assign teams according to player skill, so that you can balance each team favorably so that everyone has a chance to contribute towards their team’s success of failures. You could also have a giant ‘team v. team’ format, where you have all of the players divide into 2 teams, and play each other like that. Have team captains pick their team, and play each other in a single game single elim format, where winner stays and loser leaves, until everybody on one side is eliminated. This help foster some sense of teamwork and camaraderie with the players, and nobody EVER wants to be that guy who lets their team down. You could have a fun ‘ratio’ tournament, where you’re character locked, and assigned ratios to each character in the game determines how many characters you’re allowed to use. You could do a ‘old characters only’ tournament, where you can only use old characters. Maybe ban O.sagat for this one, lol. Just a few more fun ideas you guys might want to consider using.

133

Can’t make it this Wednesday guys, couldn’t get the day off.

134

We really need to work out another meetup that’s not A&C… I know when september comes I’m bringing the setup down to UofT meetings… but until then … we need to think of something…

I also doubt turbo2tone’s coming down as well…? I don’t think I’ve ever played with turbo… I’m free most saturdays Past 4:00, unfortunately most weeks my place isn’t an option to hold casuals…=(

I do have a friend who I hope will be coming this coming wednesday. He normally plays Melee but I convinced him to try ST. He tried it for a bit, and told me last sunday, “I should start that again” so I told him to come wednesday. I hope he makes it.

135

Yeah, getting a hold of some digs to play in is a big problem of this hobby.

136

Anybody down to play this weekend?

Brett, mind if we invade the Brettcave sometime this weekend?

I know I’m grasping at straws here but I’m bored again.

Also I noticed that Capcom is repping the sf series again for the anniversary thingy. Including HDR in the lineup of tourneys to be run. I’d cry foul that they’d even bother with that failure but there isn’t even a decent port of ST vanilla so I can’t blame them too much.

Wonder if that means HDR might return to the tourney circuit a bit for a couple of months. Prolly not tho.

137

I just got the sync cleaner in the mail today. Noticable improvement in the quality of the image. I don’t think it’s as good as before though… I’ll record a bit more, and upload all 3 for comparison. (not that it really matters to most of you. but I spent time making the comparisons and trying to get improvements. want to show people my work)

where did you get the information for HDR for anniversary tournaments?

Saturday I’m busy. (wow, normally saturday afternoon’s what I have off) Sunday afternoon-night I’m free though.

138

It was somewhere on the front page.

I’m not free Sunday. :frowning:

139

I dunno what the deal is lately but working 1am-6am every day gets to you.
I know I’d like at least 2-3 sessions before Summer Jam 6.

140

Fuck your telling me.

It’s totally screwed with my system.

I don’t feel right during anytime of the day or night anymore.

Either I feel dizzy, lightheaded, headache, tired… and it doesn’t help that I’m doing boring ass factory work for 8 hours plus.

Yeah tho if you guys wanna chill today I’m totally down.