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Bang The Machine
riiv writes "I saw the premiere of Bang The Machine tonight at SXSW 2002. The film is a documentary of the Street Fighter tournament scene. There's another screening March 15 so if you are near the Austin area, it is your moral obligation to watch it. I asked director Tamara Katepoo if they had a distributor lined up, unfortunely they don't. If you're looking for a film to distribute please get in touch with the film creators. The movie rocked and validated my wasted life ever since the purchase of Street Fighter 2 Japanese for SNES."
Check out Shoryuken.com, for the latest information (tournaments/ranking) on the SF scene, as well as combo videos and recorded tournament matches.
:)
Currently, the most popular games are Capcom vs SNK 2 and Marvel vs Capcom 2. I am a big fan of the latter, and I often play at Southern Hills Golfland. The players there are incredible, and on the weekends the place is completely packed (15 minute wait for a game sometimes). I played in the MvC2 tourney last month, but lost first round.
And by original I mean Street Fighter II (the first one never really took off)
SF2 put fighting games on the map. It was a huge step toward the dominance of video games in youth culture. Whether or not this is a good thing, you can decide.
For like 3 years SF2 dominated the arcade and home console scene like nothing since PacMan. Only Halflife compares in recent times, though the PC market is much smaller than the console and arcade markets.
I don't want to think of how much money I put into that franchise during my middle school years. I was best with Ken personally, though I thought Blanka was the most fun to play. Some of the "sequels" were cool, Turbo, Special, and Super all added something. The later editions of the series, Alpha, III etc. never really did it for me.
And who remembers the huge debate over which was better, SF2 or Mortal Kombat. Where I was from the be-mulleted redneck teens were all into MK and everyone else was big on SF2. If you go back, I think it's fair to say that Street Fighter II had the better gameplay (at least compared to the first Kombat, MK2 was much better) though MK did a better job of getting itself in the news (for obvious reasons.)
Ah... memories.
3d fighters just don't do it for me, and now SNK is gone, and Capcom has been getting diminishing returns off of newer 2d fighters like capcom vs. marvel. I think we've finally reached the end of an era... oh well.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Round one. Fight!
...
Ush ush ush.
Hadooooooken.
Hadooken.
Shoruken.
Ksh ksh ksh
Arooo, arooo.
Bzzt bzzt bzzt.
Shoruuuuken.
Aroo.
Ka-kumph.
Bzzt bzzt bzzt bzzt bzzt bzzt.
Hadoooken.
Ooooh - ooh - ooh - ooh
You win!
Ash OS durbatulk, ash OS gimbatul, ash OS thrakatulk, agh burzum-ishi krimpatul! Uzg-MS-ishi amal fauthut burgulli.
Let me tell you, the best SF2 players in the world are at a whole other level than normal human beings.
I hate the terminology, but all the players I've ever played outside of Sunnyvale Golfland are scrubs compared to those that I've played there. Good Lord. I don't know if John Choi (one of the best pro SF2 players in the U.S.) still plays there, but by God, he and those that were at his level were a sight to see. I entered a few tourneys alongside folks like them back when I went to school in the valley, and I never did better then the third round. John once handed my ass to me on a plate, double perfect rounds, then shook my hand and walked off. I didn't feel too ripped off though...we were playing SF Alpha (1), and he was taking advantage of Guy's endless redizzy combo.
I highly recommend this place to bay area locals, whether you want to play or watch, you're bound to see some of America's best playing there on almost any given night. Reeks of tobacco too, just like all good SF2 arenas.
< tofuhead >
It is still the dark of night.
Hush now scrub. Chun Li doesn't suck; the problem is that in some of the games, she's TOO good. In my own competitive SF-playing days at Sunnyvale Golfland, I used her against all those ARK scrubs (Akuma/Ryu/Ken weaklings) just to get them off the machine so I could play other players who had more interesting strategies than hadouken/hadouken/shouryuuken.
My old game of choice was Alpha 2. Three sucked balls IMO. SSF2X was cool, but Golfland didn't have a machine. Marvel...NO. Anyway, in the Alpha games, Chun Li was too fast, had the most powerful super combos (that could be linked into each other), and had chain/link combos up the wazoo. One technique in these older games is to use her crouching forward to walk up to an opponent and poke (hit or force a block), then link the hit or block tick into her overhead kick or her fireball. She also had an air throw, which put her over the top.
In my experience, only inexperienced players could be defeated by lucky button mashers, even if they were using Chun Li. With skill, she's a top bracket character, which is why lots of the best players used characters that were more challenging/less flexible.
< tofuhead >
It is still the dark of night.
Street Figter 2 was the first game with any real depth that let you play against another human. Before that, you could only show off your "skills" by beating the high score. This game significantly increased the social aspect of video gaming.
Unfortunately, it also significantly increased the actual physical violence in arcades. Now before you jump in and shout about columbine, the violence here was caused by not playing enough of the game. Most arcade fights are started by people who haven't played enough to get good at the game, resulting them losing. Like I said, this game has plenty of depth.
Street Fighter requires skill. In the beginning it was about doing those cool looking fireball moves. Then we discovered combos. Then the strategies started developing. The level it's played at nowadays involves mind games and knowing your oponent. This is not your father's video game (not that your father actually had video games). Many times, Street Fighter has even been compared with chess. I await the day when it will be an official Olympic sport. Heh. Imagine the judging disputes when one player abuses a game glitch.
For those who are interested, there's a short trailer for the movie on File Planet. There's also an interviewwith Peter Kang,one of the producers, on Shoryuken.com. We got a press DVD this weekend which has 4 more teaser video clips. We'll planning on capturing them and putting them up on SRK in the next few days.
SRK is putting on an International Tournament! Check out http://evolution.shoryuken.com/
:: UCLA Ackerman Union
The best fighters from every continent are coming to LA this summer to battle. My friend (Sirlin) did a lot of the narration for Bang The Machine && we're working to make Evol2k2 great this year (it was called B5 last year). Please show up to compete or spectate. TTFN.
e v o l u t i o n
International Fighting Game Championships
August 9 - 11
This year, SRK's national leaves the warm nest of Folsom, CA., to take the action downtown. It's Los Angeles, CA, and the going has never been rougher. Last year's event showed that the only guarantee is that there ARE no guarantees in these events. With a powered-up Japanese contingent and new faces from around the world, this will be the premier event of the North American calendar. From rickshaw to junk, from the junk to a trunk, from your moped to MOPAR, find a way to get there. Start planning NOW to catch all the action and take your place alongside the true world warriors.
This is where the legends are born. Old-school? New-school? Doesn't t matter. It's time to put the hype down, and your fists up. Because Evolution is all about the basics: Fight. Survive. Win.
You're thinking of one of the hacked versions. There were ones where you could shoot fireballs while you were jumping, throw people while you were over their head, etc. In contrast, SF2 Turbo: Hyper fighting was as close to perfect as they get.
Does anyone remember all the fuss Electronic Gaming Monthly (or EGM) made over the game? They had nonstop coverage of SF2 in all their issues (and even in their spinoff, EGM^2) from 1992 to 1995!
I've got a box with a whole load of EGMs from that era right beside me now. SF2 was featured prominently in a lot of the issues, and whenever any version of the game was review, it always got high marks (with an exception, below). Granted, it deserved them at first (until it was obvious that Capcom was trying to milk the game too hard).
As a quick sidenote, there were five SF2 games:
I guess that wasn't a "quick" sidenote. Anyway, as you can see, except for perhaps the last version, each upgrade was only incremental in nature. This was probably done to keep the game fresh (apparently) and keep in the pages of game magazines and on the minds of game players. Capcom also released home versions of the games for the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis (Megadrive in Europe and Japan). They first released a port of the original World Warrior game for the Super Nintendo in July 1992. In September and October 1993, they released a combination Turbo Hyper Fighting/Champion Edition for the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. And in July 1994 (I think), they released Super Street Fighter II for both systems.
The first two releases of the game (World Warrior and Turbo) got high marks in all game magazines, but with Super, EGM broke ranks. EGM had been one of the biggest cheerleaders of SF2, as I mentioned above, but by this point, they finally started to see the continuous upgrades for what they were, and gave the home versions of Super marks like 6/10 and 7/10. This greatly upset Capcom, and EGM's editors had some interesting things to say about this, but I don't have time to retype their interesting editorials or drag out my scanner and OCR program.
If you didn't quite understand that, let me clarify here, since it's late at night and I can't be bothered to edit. Capcom released three home versions of the game -- now if you're a kid who got your parents to buy the original, and even the second version, could you get them to buy the third? And why bother, because, when you look at the release dates, the port of Super (the 4th arcade version) was release around the same time as the arcade release of Super Turbo (the 5th arcade version). Furthermore, Super Turbo added loads more technique not present in Super! Anyway, Capcom got into some financial trouble for this and had a lot of unsold Super cartridges for the Super NES and Genesis. Yes, there were home versions of Super Turbo for the PC and 3DO, but not the Super NES and Genesis, and this is where most of the money in home versions of arcade games was at the time.
I thought all the incremental upgrading was silly, myself, but I did plunk quarters into all five versions, and I played all three home console versions (in rental form), so Capcom made money off me with the game in some form. I left the video game scene in 1995, so I missed out on Alpha, Alpha 2, Alpha 2 Gold, Alpha 3, etc. I did recall seeing a Street Fighter 3 machine once, I think around 1997 or 1998. It was just labelled "THREE" which was pretty funny, because once it was clear what Capcom was up to with all the incremental upgrades of SF2, people would make jokes that Capcom couldn't count to three.
Anyway, despite that criticism of it, I still must say that Street Fighter II was truly a landmark game, not only because it was incredibly fun to play, but also because it revived a slumping arcade industry (at the time) and gave game companies everywhere a whole new format to copy! Remember all the SNK Neo-Geo fighting games?
If I ever see a "Top 20 Games of All Time" list with Street Fighter II not in the top five or (gasp!) not listed, in my eyes, the purveyor of said list has instantly lost all credibility!
I'm sorry if all of that was poorly written or didn't make much sense, but I'm tired and want to go to bed now. Thank you for reading.
Oh, and by the way, I never thought much of Chun Li. She never seemed very cute or very strong, and Cammy, the second female character who appeared in Super, was fucking ugly. Blecch.