wheres those tuts at? -.-
Both sides of this little argument seem to be missing the fact that Bebop’s sentiments don’t apply to everyone in the world. They don’t even apply to everyone on SRK. There’s definately such a thing as casual players and hardcore players. If you’ve never been hardcore into SF, you’re obviously not going to be one of the people who “gets” what those of us who have been through the tourney scene identify with here.
I’m fine with any number of activities out there. Like for example, if i meet a highly ranked chess player i’ll show them due respect, but i don’t feel what he feels towards the game. I’d just kind of be nodding and trying to understand his side of it, but i don’t think i could ever understand it fully unless i had invested the time and effort into it that he has. Same goes with art or literature or war strategy or architecture or anything widely accepted as a “valid pursuit.” If you’re lucky enough to be born in Brazil, you’re surrounded by a bunch of amazing soccer communities and you can pick it up quickly. It all comes from the competition in your area. But to most people in the world, it’s just something you play once a year when you’re in the park celebrating some little cousin’s birthday.
It’s just not feasible for everyone out there to understand how some of us see SF. No point in arguing. Not everyone has something to be really passionate about. Some people are even opposed to the idea of being passionate and go around calling random people they’ve never met nazis and kkk members.
Personally i totally identify with a lot of what T-Bebop said, and at the same time i totally understand that i would never be able to explain it to 99% of the people out there.
T-Bop give me a hug.
<3
Very well put Thongboy. If it wasn’t for Street Fighter I wouldn’t have the friends I have now. Its the one thing that has connected me with other people. Its just something that remains with you after you toss in that very first quarter of your very first match. I started out as a scrub and started to get good with age. I’ve spent so much money on Street Fighter that there was no reason for me to stay playing at a scrub level. I began to get better. Of course I’m not a top tier competitor. But, with enough practice I can give the Sanfords and J Wongs of the world a run for their money.
Hell, I still want to excel at SF till this very day. That is the one game that will forever remain in my blood. Also, thanks to SF I developed a hankering for a lot of fighting games. Over the years I’ve played a lot of fighting games. I’ve played just about EVERYTHING that has come out minus a few fighters here and there. But once you get good at Street Fighter you just get this “I can conquer any game and anyone” kind of attitude and it helps develop high self esteem when it comes questioning your ability at anything you can do well.
But, of course, the first moment you feel great is when you master the ‘Z’ motion for the Ryu’s Shoryuken. Thats when you realize that you’re onto something and with just a bit more practice you’ll be able to pull it off at will and at any moment out of pure reaction. Its just one of those motions that is so difficult to pull off because its basically a ‘Z’. It’s one of those “how the hell can you do that?” kind of moments where you’re questioning the joystick because you’ve become so used to the fact that a joystick is supposed to move up, down, left and right. No ONE in their right mind ever thought of making a joy stick move in a diagonal motion to execute a move. And once you master that ‘Z’ motion, thats when you can do anything. All other motions are simple to look at and require just a few minutes of practice to get down pat.
And I love Street Fighter for the fact that its such a simple game when you look at it from the select screen. But when you actually play, it becomes so complicated. Even when you know that the game only has six buttons and a handful of characters. It’s still a complicated game with such diverse strategies and combos that not just one person can even create. If anything, EVERYONE in the SF community has put a little something into Street Fighter. You may have not been the one to make up a combo, but you could have been the person to prove everyone wrong and said “yes, that combo does work.”
I always thought of Street Fighter as the ghetto olympics. All the kids that weren’t good at sports would just gather around a machine and perfect the art of a video game. It can also be considered the nerdish olympics as well because the complex gameplay of Street Fighter involves knowing framerate and all other technicalities of the game.
Thats why I love Street Fighter. A simple six button game being turned into something so complex that you can’t help but get yourself involved in it. It’s 2D chess at its best.
Apoc, I DO have to take personal offense to that comment (among other comments you have made, truth be told, seeing as how you’ve hit me where it counts in just about every angle possible in your initial post), seeing as how I HAVE worked on trailers for tourneys in the past. And believe me, few people are as aware of SF’s history than I. I can even claim that I’ve played in a Pico Rivera tournament before.
The intention IS to focus on players, Jason. But keep in mind that a trailer can only be made out of whatever footage we have. If I had the budget and the ability to interview/record all the various players (not just the famous people, but even unknowns who might possibly end up placing high) like an ESPN broadcast of the World Series of Poker, believe me, trailers would only be MOSTLY clips of the players themselves.
When I make a trailer, I only have the footage that is available to me. And most of the times that means no footage of the players themselves. So I have to make do with what I have.
And don’t go hating on Combo Videos for their “impracticality”. For one, there was never any claim that they were practical (unless specified as being a tutorial… and even then, I don’t count the two in the same genres). Secondly, there should never be a comparison of Combo Videos to competitive play, nor any claim that Combo Videos are a source of competitive play degradation. The two fulfill two very different audiences. We all know that competition is one thing, but watching 3-Point Shot contests and Slam Dunk contests are still fun.
- James
Maybe what the scene needs is a fighting game that can be ‘updated’ much like, say, Starcraft, and where the updates don’t cost you a pretty penny to put out. That way we’ll have a game that can truly be called balanced, even with the bad matchups, because after enough revising, characters will probably fall as well into place as they need to (and constant testing will always be available).
o_O
“If you don’t understand, don’t even bother to ask…”
Jae- I think Apoc meant the thing about Christians as an example of zealots who aren’t all bad. At least, that’s how I read it.
As for how to get the scene going…new games. That simple. Game vids being online and available for download is new…that started about five years ago. The closest thing were vids of tournaments made by players and old combovideos, and there are about 4 people reading this, out of dozens (if not more), who even KNOW someone who’s had one of those. The sharing of information is also new; GameFAQs wasn’t always around, and Shoryuken.com makes alt.games.sf2 look clandestine. I suppose it’s to replace the info in guides in gaming magazies that were out when the games were popular. Even so, the amount of stuff online now dwarfs that.
Street Fighter is, for many people who get hardcore into it, about competition. Unless video arcades come back in a BIG BIG way…even if they did, new games are needed if you want the scene to actually grow. SF is an arcade culture, at heart…what someone who wants to get into the game needs is a group of people who like the game even more who they can play. Every new game is a new chance for that, and doesn’t require a strager’s house…but rather gives you a chance for that stranger to stop being a stranger.
About the initial post: Bravo. Well said, and I understand it very well, and understand how others counldn’t possibly understand.
It is a hobby, but it is the single greatest hobby around. People talk about the competition is the best part, and the tourney scene…that’s true for me now, but I fell in love with SF long before I started playing other people.
Something about the game was just…beautiful. It was a beautiful game when it was new, but there was something about it that just drew me to it, and asked me to learn about it.
In hindsight, I think it was mastering something. Even that sounds more crude than what was my oddly innocent aim. It wasn’t about being the best, it was more about being better.
To compare it to role-playing games which are now popular…apply RPG elements to life. The more you play, the better your excecution gets. The more you play, the better you learn to deal with defeat, and when losing to other players, with stress and your own ego. The more confidence you have in your practiced ability. The more knowledge you aquire about the game. The better insight you have into other people’s matches, and character-specific matches. To fighting games, and games in general.
Add to that, the competitive aspect- standing around with strangers and competing with them may not sound with a big deal…but there’s a weird male bonding thing that goes on if you play enough with the same people. Whoever said it was the closest thing we have to a fight club…was pretty damn correct. The fact that you can love a game more than anything, and some stranger can absolutely son and destroy you is a beautiful thing. When you learn a lot about yourself with other people…something happens.
Frankly, it’s not anything I can explain very well; all I could ever really do is tell you about the dozens, if not hundreds of hours I played SF2:CE/HF trying to “master” the game (truely, trying to perfect myself at the game, I could mention that the only reason I ever learned about newsgroups was because someone told me there was an alt.games.sf2… I could try to explain the weird tingly, overjoyed feeling when I saw a new game in the old Birdcage Game Room (particularly Marvel Super Heroes vs Street Fighter and SFA3), I could tell you that I pick weird characters that I don’t know how to play too well, and nearly always have more fun trying to win than actually winning.
I could try to describe to people uninformed about how the feeling changes completely when the setting is a tournament, and how litle it has to do with money. How it feels to lose to somebody who has to leave immediately afterward, robbing you of your chance to beat them. How I’ve never been mad for losing a tournament match, only dissapointed in myself. Why people love Kuroda, jeer Justin Wong, even if they do the same thing.
This is a subculture! We have celebrities, we’ve literature, we’ve a shared sport, and language. Even when we don’t speak the same language, the play speaks to anyone who is sharp enough to hear it. If you didn’t know better, there are people who could convince you they graduated from (Ivy League University) with a Master’s degree in Street Fighter. Not just memorizing frame data, but the history of the games, the enormous differences between Street Fighter Alpha 2 and Street Fighter Alpha 3, the difference between the Japanese and U.S. tournament scenes, about Skill Smith, Guile vs Shotos (in any or every game), why Rose’s Soul Illusion is sometimes unblockable, or, simply, the difference between a chain and a link. And please understand that if people could major in Street Figher, they would have…they love it enough to speak it and live it for years.
The fact that money matches and other challenges exist is a beautiful thing…I think gambling is stupid, but it’s what a bet reprsents. It’s not luck of the draw, or that you team can beat another…it’s YOU.
It has the depth and society of any other hobby, and more than many others. There is no team to root for…you can play on the team! You ARE the team! If you have heart and skill enough, you can be world-class in something that thousands of other people also enjoy.
To say you don’t understand means little. No one asked you to. In pointing out that you don’t understand, your are elevating yourself above those who do, in their trivial pursuit. Of course, you don’t go to a golf course and hang out with PGA players, just to let them know that you don’t really dig golf. It’s an OK game, and all, but you don’t understand how they could waste so much time… They might look at your noncomprehension as the confession of ignorance which it actually is, and, if only in their head, shuffle you into the “other” category with their wives and girlfriends. Street Fighter has people with the same passion as rabid sports fans, as any competitive outing or game, old or new. And all without televised matches, or it being a cultural staple, like sports. Without people teaching it to 8-year-olds and putting them on little league teams. Without jerseys or shoes or baseball caps (for the most part). The heart is the same. It’s just in smaller numbers.
When is zealotry not love? The word was used because it has a negative connotation… Rather than ask to understand, you simply state that you don’t understand, and say that anyone has passion is insane. When there’s a riot at a Street Fighter tournament, like the thousands of riots in sports, when SF players form an international gang and start killing people who play Samurai Showdown, when I run up on you and tell you The Good News, how Ryu is Love, and he forgives you for your sins…then maybe you’ll have a point. Generally speaking, bragging about your ignorance will not make you look smart to the people you are bragging to, unless they are also stupid.
Too true. A great post.
Happy New Year, everbody. May we all learn a new game, and, of course, keep playing SF.
is it okay if all i love is cvs2 and thirdstrike?
To each his own I say. Not all of us took the traditional route to SF. While I may have played SF as a kid, my first serious FG was Tekken 3. I was a Tekken player long before I was a SF player. I didnt start really getting into any SF games seriously until CvS2. Then from there I actually worked backwards.
i just had to lol at this, considering my sig, which ive had for the longest time, heh. anyway good thread, i definetely feel the same way as Thongboy there.
Haha, being nice is the sneakiest move of all. You can’t fight it!
I was just trying to get a frame of reference for where you’re coming from, that’s all. Like other people in the thread have posted, it’s not a big deal to not get it, just kind of peculiar to seem so adamantly against it. The reason this ‘shared zealotry’ over the feeling is so important to us is exactly that: You can’t get someone else to feel it if they don’t, and you can’t explain it to people who aren’t there. But when someone else does, you just kind of know. And no matter what else you have in common with that person, that sole thing is enough for you to get along.
I made reference to art and music and whatnot because it is, at base, the same. The same spark that drives people to be good musicians, rather than just making popular radio bullshit, is what makes people strive for excellence in SF. That’s why I made the Ohnuki example. When he picks Chun, no one gives him any crap about it. Because it’s really the same when Kuroda picks Q, or Chikyuu uses Twelve. He’s trying to be the best he can be, and Chun focuses that energy best for him. Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins lead) can play pretty much every instrument you hear on the albums, and often does for the recordings. But when they play in concert, you see him rear back on his guitar and just rip the shit out of the thing, and you KNOW that’s what he was meant to do. No matter how good he is with the other instruments, the guitar just feels right.
That’s the main conundrum for SF people. The thing that we’re amazing at is pretty much completely useless in our culture at the moment, but it’s just the luck of the draw. So we’re all either going to burn out and go insane from not having anywhere feasible to focus our potential, or figure out a way to get it done. I’m still retarded enough to think that within SF can be found a way.
N
Too bad Billy Corgan cant sing… lol
Good thread T-Boy
I have to agree that most people would be appalled by the “hardcore” players, the ones who “get it”. We need to get people who play these games casually to get better, or just find others to play. We have a lan party twice a year at auburn, I bring my dreamcast, and ps2 and play mvc2 and 3s till my eyes hurt. If you bring street fighter into other video game related events someone will always want to play. I’ve introduced some really good mvc2 players to 3s and vice versa and they are getting hooked. more exposure to other gamers seems to be the key in my area.
omg thongboy is alive and boy do i understand i took leave without pay and spent aprx 500 bucks to go to evo
did anyone even bother reading what i said? lol
if not it’s fine, just had a bit too much spare time waiting for someone to wake up in order to do stuff on this vacation.
thanks to those who did PM me… even though that was only 2 people 
It’s a noble quest that I’d want a part in, but I doubt I can do much to help. I’m sure others feel the same way about the state of the American fighting game scene, but I dunno if we can really save ourselves on a national level.
Some of the better friends I’ve found along the way I’ve met by playing SF.
That moved me.:sad: 
I’d just like to say I cried a little when I read that.
Welcome back Thongboy Bebop!! We missed you at CV.