I been competing in fighting game tournaments for over a decade. Its a blast, even if you suck. The fighting game community is one of the most welcoming competitive environments I’ve ever been apart of. 10/10, highly recommend.
This. The great thing about fighting games is that today is one of the best times to join: there’s lots of online activity, long past the days in which you needed a local tournament to actually play. You will find a passionate player about literally any fighting game on earth, no matter if it’s an indie title (I suggest Punch Planet!) or an old KOF classic. Hell, good rollback implementation even makes playing on (decent) wi-fi actually acceptable.
I’ve competed on stage in a rural village in F-29 Retaliatory head2head tournament (over serial cable) around 1993. I’ve gotten to grab first place in a Bo3 single elimination format, defeating my nemesis, Lil’ Cloud, in the finals. I took home a mobo for a 286 (but no cpu, PC case, peripherals or anything else). For a bonus prize, they’ve pitted me against the final final boss, the IT admin from the neighbouring town. I’ve beaten him 4:1 in a Bo7, and my reward was an AdLib card. I did end up using this one in a 386 SX build that my dad bought me a couple months later.
Despite being on stage, I do not remember having any stage fright at all. I remember the crowd around us, but everything got drowned out by the sound blasters screeching the noise into my ears through some cheapo cans. I just remember being baffled that after having my toughest final against Lil’ Cloud, I suddenly have another challenger I have to sit down against.
Around '97 I got sucked in by Quake II in PC cafes, mostly playing FFAs on LAN. However the Q2 scene gradually moved on to QuakeWorld, Quake 3 Arena and Counter Strike. Since my PC was always lagging behind in performance, I chose to stick with QuakeWorld, and mostly played in 320x200 software rendering so I could aim for 120Hz + 120 fps vsync as time passed.
Around this time, between 98-2003 there were a couple LANs in and around Budapest that were CPL feeder events, however QuakeWorld has long been dropped from the biggest international events, and was relegated to mostly online tournaments and smaller local LANs only. Despite this, they always allowed QuakeWorld players in and even offered prices for first three places within categories. However the participants gradually declined from 50:50 Q3/QW to 50:40:10 CS/Q3/QW to 75:20:5 CS/Q3/QW by the end.
In the last LAN where they still allowed QW players in, must have been around 2003, I think we had no more than 50 players out of 600+.
I’ve competed, but not on stage, in the 1v1 category, choking due to nervousness around the quarterfinals, dropping to Loser’s Bracker. I did lose my LB match as well, the nerves never recovered. I remember one of my buddies talking over my shoulder, asking me wtf was wrong with me that I’m making all these mistakes. I came out as a sweaty mess from both matches, feeling totally defeated and unable to process why things were going the way they did. It haunts me to this day and gave me flashbacks to it in online competitive play, like WoW’s Arena 2v2/3v3.
I also competed in 2v2 at the tournament with my best bud as my partner later that day. The nerves were still pretty bad, but I was relying on my partner’s skill to carry us, along with some clever map selections. It was a Bo5, and we knew that with my nerves shot we had to focus on just one map that had mixed shaft (lightning gun)/rocket launcher (RL) play in order to take the series, as otherwise we could dominate maps that relied on RL only, as predictive spawn lockdowns was our forte, in contrast with raw skill/aim. Basically the moment we won first draw for map selection, we knew we could make it a 3:1 or 3:2 at worst if we selected our least favoured map and won it. I’ve still made a lot of mistakes in heated moments, and we did have to draw out one map by deliberately avoiding respawns near the end of the match in order to deny our opponents a win, but in the end my partner carried us to victory.
While the 2v2 finals were not exactly on stage, they did put a cam on a big screen and we also had a bit of a crowd forming around us. Smoking a light joint an hour before the match did help though. I forgot what we won. I just remember receiving a trophy at the finals ceremony and feeling completely undeserving of it. And then moving out of my parent’s basement and in with my buddy, getting high 24/7 for the next 6 months.
As for the question is it even worth it: yes, yes it is. Not when you are older though. At 20+ you are already aged out, and the commitment required is tremendous just to scrape the bottom of the barrel. Better stick to turn based strategy.
Capcom vs. SNK 2 was in the extended lineup. It’s great to see those passionate communities still playing those games 25 years later, even with plenty of new blood, though I will admit that both games fall into a situation where the top tier characters are so dominant that you don’t get a lot of variety in character selection in top 8, which can dampen the excitement a bit.
I hope Capcom brings an optional mode for new balance, like they added the option to disable roll cancel. The game is too unique with its mechanics, I think it’s one of the most interesting games ever with the modes, but the balance just isn’t great, which is holding the game back.
I was lucky that Strive top 8 were played early, so I could enjoy them at a decent time despite being in CEST. Bit unfortunate with the character variety, a lot of HC and Goldlewis matches and Johnny has proven to be very strong as people predicted. Would have preferred to see Ram win. Not that she’s weak, but in my opinion more interesting and somewhat underplayed. But alas.
Strive has excellent variety right now. Out of eight players, we had eight different characters. The nature of a tournament is that you’ll see repeats of the characters played by the people who stay in longer. The problem with a game like CvS2 is that you see those same characters over and over again throughout the pools stages, and you see very similar teams across the players in top 8. That Ramlethal player won the ArcSys world tour very recently, also.
I guess you’re right, my complaint was mostly about about the part of groups that I watched that was I think three Goldlewis matches in a row.
I don’t think the balance for Strive is in a really bad spot, and character skills can outweigh statistical advantages. Maybe it’s just that I dislike Goldlewis and HC due to their oppressive playstyles that I remember them as negative examples.
Didn’t want to complain really, the matches were hype, I got some really good laughs out of them too when RedDitto grabbed opponents in the most insane situations. Good stuff all around
Strive 2.0 probably means they’ll expand the game’s life like they did with REV, by making a REV2 update instead of shifting to a new game altogheter. The new update will probably cost around 30/35 euros. I’m good with this, I think GG:ST has so much life left in it. Incredible how it has been around 5 years already.
Even this is only a guess. There are a lot of reasons why developers got away from this model, and there are one or two reasons why I’m the weirdo who wants us to return to it.
This was when MS went sweeping in and started wide brushing over usernames as well. My friends’ tags were Babyfetaljuice and Yourmomstampon and they were forced to change them to keep playing.
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