Hi Guys, first let me say I am new here though I have been visiting this great site for a long time. I am from Singapore, a really tiny island in South East Asia.
We have a very active and tight community for SF4 and have some really young children starting on the game. However, I could hardly find any children’s community or competitions anywhere in the world (though they have chicks’comps in Japan and Choco Blanka rocks! ).
With USA being one of the biggest SF communities, I wonder if you guys have really young children (who will be the next generation fighters) playing SF4 actively? I wonder if Capcom does not have a big child’s movement in Japan because minors are not allowed into arcades in the evenings. How is it like in the USA?
I humbly attach a few links of one of our 8 year old boys playing (and winning) against adults in our most popular arcade called Bugis Junction (14 SF4 machines!). He could put up a nice challenge to much older guys.
[media=youtube]4LshyEPirBY"[/media] (Ryu)
[media=youtube]QOmg5PMRd9g"[/media] (Sagat)
[media=youtube]_CEuLkpyUSY"[/media] (Sagat)
I hope you will also encourage your young ones to pick up the game and one day we could have an international gaming event just for kids!
Thanks for your time and sincerely appreciate any comments
PS - if any of you are coming to visit sunny Singapore and would like to play with some of our better (adult) players, let me know and we will arrange for them to come down and exchange tips. Cheers!
The key problem arises that most American kids suffer from a serious case of stupid. There is a kid I know around 8 years old who does play fighting games including SF4, but no clue as to how well I play it as we don’t have it in the arcade I work at.
But in refrence to our kids intelligence. I have worked at an arcade designed for younger kids and firstly, it has very few fighting games and the one that is there (sadly tekken 4) is rarely played, and when it is, it isn’t by 8-12 year olds, generally their parents while the kid plays something else. Most american kids nowadays, when playing video games, play very friendly, very easy, non-competitive games… There are a few exceptions but for the most part, kids in USA are generally raised on easy games, and when things present a challenge they quit.
For instance, in the arcade I work at frequently some kids around the age of 8 fail instantly as they try to jam coins into the token slots (as we have tokens for the arcade machines as opposed to accepting normal currency). If they manage to beat the “putting in tokens” part of the game frequently they complain about not knowing how to put money into the machine that gives you tokens. If they somehow managed to succeed at that they might actually play a game, generally they choose a redemption (ticket) game wherein they mash a single glowing button to get tickets randomly thrown at them to go exchange for prizes. If they chose something else, they frequently complain about it not working. For instance there is a boat game. It has a wheel and a throttle lever… most people under the age of 14 or so seem to fail to realize that it says “Speed” under the throttle and pushing it forward goes forward.
On the occasion I actiually see two kids walk up to tekken and fight eachother, they are mindlessly mashing. To be fair for tekken that isnt too far from competitive play, but as soon as one person dies and the computer controls the other, the other person gets beat immediately (even on the lowest difficulty) and they walk away.
Problem is, arcades are a rarity here in the USA, and most of the arcades that do exist are places like Chucky Cheese or Dave and Busters. Chucky Cheese is a oriented towards little kids and has very few fighting games. Dave and Busters, on the other hand, is oriented towards older teens and adults, so no little kids there.
Also, like Fenrir mentioned, public schools in the USA are terrible, and parents are lazy, and most kids age 8 don’t even know their right hand from their left, much less how to play a relatively involved videogame.
Whats with the evening age limit in Japan? Complete opposite here in the USA, no minors until 3PM on weekdays.
As for kids in the USA, it the truth. Most kids of this generation are really, really nerfed. The fact that most grade school standardized tests are only graded on what the child is able to complete is not cool.
You know what was really involved about old, hard arcade games? That beating them was largely about doing the same tedious tactic over and over in a test of endurance. Holy shit, idiots, have any of you actually played the Metal Slug series past the point at which you’re whining about other people giving up? 1cc’ing those was a huge grind.
Love people using a display of a complete lack of insight as an argument of insight. Because yes, fuckjobs, everyone in the world loves starting fresh with fighting games with no real information of how it works. I mean, you’re not actually here for any particular reason, right? You’re totally awesome because you play SF4 without looking at the character forums or framedata. You’re just that good. And by all means, let this utterly absurd train of thought be the entire basis of your view on the quality of a generation; with masters of critical observation like yourselves at the vanguard of generational excellence, it’s all going to be down hill from here. Be sure and *** up the thread telling us ALLLLLLLLL about it.
i think the problem is that kids these days weren’t raised on sf the way my generation was. when i was a kid, it was right around the time when sf2 hit and became a monster hit all around america. everywhere you went that had an arcade had SF. hell i remember 7-11’s had SF machines. basically if you were a kid around my age, and you liked video games, there was a good chance you had at one point or another played street fighter because is was THE game everyone talked about.
now that generation is mostly around there 20’s and still have very fond memories from back in the day, and have either never stopped playing, or have picked it back up. but the new generation of kids now dont have those fond memorys, and they are playing THE games of the present, COD or Halo basically.
not to mention that most fighting games in general have a pretty steep learning curve that most young kids arnt willing to take the time to get over, and i cant say i blame them. why would they want to when 1. everyone on their friends list is playing COD and 2. i doubt many kids would want to try to get into a scene that is mostly dominated by people in their 20’s right now. i know i would be intimidated. and i think the cold hard fact is if you wernt around during the early 90’s and didnt experience the hype 1st hand, YOU JUST DONT GET IT. and thats not a knock on kids, i really dont expect them to get it. i mean how could you know if you wernt there for this?
My nephew is 7 years old and is alright. He can beat me on any given day and I’m not terrible. He’s been playing sf4 since he was 6 (obviously) but he’s been playing fighting games since he was 2. Old enough to pick up a controller but still not strong enough to push down the buttons
His first fighting game was sc 2 on ps2…then sc 3, then 4, now sf4. I’m actually really proud of how good he is for his age. I’ll try to score some video of him playing this weekend and throw it up.
For Christmas my dad made him the white fight stick i posted in the TT forum, yet he still prefers playing with the pad. I might try to find him a ken or fei long pad in the future. He plays online sometimes and has a pretty decent record. I’ll have to go over this week and double check what that record is.
…why am i a retard, the guy just asked a question about kids in america, and i just game him a legit answer. i didnt say anything bad about the younger generation at all, i just said i dont think they get it when it comes to SF, thats all. most kids today dont get the beatles either, but its not their fault they wernt alive back then, thats all im saying. just that times have changed and the days of fighting games being the number 1 genre of multi-player video gaming (sales wise) are well behind us, that title now belongs to FPS’s, and if you have ever played online with a headset, you’de know a huge % of people playing these games are younger kids, where as with fighting games, online or at tourneys, you rarely see anyone below their 20’s. yes i know there are exceptions but im just talking generally.
and anyways, your probably gonna flame me again, even though i wasnt even talking to or about you when i made that post because ive seen some of you’re other post and its obvious you’re just and angry troll whos not even worth my time to try and have a legitimate discussion with so yea, i wont be responding next time.
Well yeah, young kids don’t really have the patience for a lot of these games. But that doesn’t mean they don’t play any competitive games. Lots of kids play FPSes I bet. If Capcom made a Street Fighter IV cartoon on Foxbox or some shit we would get lots of kids up in here.
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