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Bang The Machine 219

Posted by Hemos from the what's-the-frequency-kenneth dept.
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."
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Bang The Machine

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  • I'm going to go down there and look around this weekend this is pretty wild. At first I thought it was a real fight and I'm thinking golfland wtf. Anyways chun li rules screw all you powerball throwing bastards out there.
    • besides, you know ken and ryu kick everyone's ass anyway.
    • It's called the kikokken.
  • That "Bang the Machine" link opened up 8 separate windows asking me to download Shockwave. 8 WINDOWS!!! I get the point. Geesh...
  • The movie rocked and validated my wasted life ever since the purchase of Street Fighter 2 Japanese for SNES.

    I don't think my girlfriend (or any non-geek) would agree :o)
    • I don't think my girlfriend (or any non-geek) would agree :o)

      On the contrary, many Street Fighter players aren't geeks. The most obvious example are the gangsta players (playas?). I'm sure there are at least a few geeks on slashdot who've been on the receiving end of gangsta violence after beating them at the game 3 times in a row. Oops, video games cause violence? No more than pool or poker.
  • Sad but true.

    I recall beating folks by watching the screen in the mirror on the ceiling...

    The fact that the arcade is disapearing is lamentable, and I'm glad someone has captured some of it's.. well glory isn't quite the right word.

    I'd go into SF Alpha 3 witdrawal if it wasn't for Mame. Mame rules.

    -Z
    • it's all about street fighter ex3, none of that alpha 3 bs, w/all the cartoon looking anime characters. that stuff can get on your nerves in no time. street fighter ex3 is by far better than any of the street fighter games i've ever played, and i had almost every version
  • A movie that wastes 2 hours of your life showing how other people waste hundreds of hours of their lives. Seriously though, would someone actually pay to watch this movie? Do you get game hints or tips? What's the attraction?
  • I live not a 5 minute drive from this golfland (and Neutral Ground, home of the regional CCG tournaments btw.)

    It is a terribly unassuming place, just a kinda shoddy mini-golf place with terrible parking. It's nestled among large apartment complexes near a diverse (ethnically) area.

    I heard about tournaments there a few months back, but have still never stopped by yet. But unless you knew any better, you'd just assume the place was a little shoddy mini-golf place, fighting off the Man to keep their little place alive. (there are tons of little shoddy shops in Silicon Valley that refused to sell, even when the land prices were exorbitant)

  • The SF scene (Score:5, Informative)

    by infiniti99 ( 219973 ) <justin@affinix.com> on Monday March 11, 2002 @08:05PM (#3145929) Homepage
    Check out Shoryuken.com [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. :)

  • Can'tt beat the original (Score:5, Interesting)

    by colmore ( 56499 ) on Monday March 11, 2002 @08:08PM (#3145942) Journal
    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.
    • You could throw people if you were on top of them. You could play Vega or Chun Li and just leap over your opponent, hit the throw button, and toss them down. It made the game pretty simple to beat, and fun to own people who were bugging you.

      more [videogames.com]

      • No (Score:5, Insightful)

        by CaptainSuperBoy ( 17170 ) on Monday March 11, 2002 @11:10PM (#3146573) Homepage Journal
        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.
        • The unfortunate side-effect of playing SF2: Turbo on the highest Turbo and difficulty settings since I got my SNES in '93 or '94 is that everything else seems painfully slow.

    • Re:Can'tt beat the original (Score:4, Informative)

      by Tofuhead ( 40727 ) on Monday March 11, 2002 @09:03PM (#3146167)

      I wouldn't worry about 2-D fighters going anywhere. Guilty Gear and Capcom vs. SNK are VERY popular, as are the Marvel line of games (though they're not my cup of tea). CvS2 is coming to GameCube from Dreamcast and PS2, and CvS3 is in the works. SNK's KOF franchise is alive, and in the hands of new developers in Korea. And if you ever get nostalgic for the gameplay, you can always seek out older games for Sega Saturn, NeoGeo, and Capcom arcade boards that weren't in wide release here in the U.S., like Warzard/Red Earth. You only really got 2-D goodness from Capcom and SNK anyway, though smaller challengers like Sammy have come up with interesting efforts.

      MK is a stereotypically gauche American game series. I played it with friends, but that's it. I'd never knock anyone who played it, but I didn't like it.

      < tofuhead >


      • Has anyone picked up Final Fight yet?

        FF: Mark of the Wolves kicks fucking ass on DC.

        The character animation in there put's Capcom's efforts in the CvS games to utter shame.

        And don't be so gentle with MK. The only worse fighter was Killer Instinct.

    • Re:Can'tt beat the original (Score:4, Interesting)

      by infiniti99 ( 219973 ) <justin@affinix.com> on Monday March 11, 2002 @09:16PM (#3146210) Homepage
      And who remembers the huge debate over which was better, SF2 or Mortal Kombat.

      SF2 was definitely a better game in my opinion. The characters felt stiff in MK, and they all played the same (and I won't even go into the number of palette-swapped Sub-Zeros). Here's a strange fact: I can remember that there was a developer called "Ed Boon" that worked on MK, but I can't name a single developer of SF. Why can I remember Ed Boon? Midway always had a thing about putting their developers in their games somehow (remember "toasty" ?). Note to future game developers: if you want to make yourself famous, put a character in the game whose name is yours spelled backwards. Then ensure that gaming mags make a point of it. You will be remembered for all time, no matter how bad your game is.

      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.

      Marvel vs. Capcom was pretty good. Each "Vs" game, as they are called, has been progressively better than the last (Not counting Capcom Vs. SNK series though, which has a completely different play style). Marvel vs. Capcom 2 is insane. No other game can top 56 characters, with each player choosing 3, and I think even Capcom would have a hard time topping itself here and remaining playable. Let's see how long the CvS series lasts.

      • Yes, but the problem is that MvC2 sucks ass. It has some horribly, horribly imabalanced characters (*cough*Cable*cough*), and it's the epitome of a button masher. It's made to attract crowds in arcades, which it does well -- alot of flash, and a few killer combos which dominate the game. 56 characters is all well and good, but when there's only a point to using 10 of them, it's not terribly impressive.

        The CvS series is an attempt to return to the precision games of the past, a'la Super SFII Turbo, instead of the button mashing frankenstien they created with MvC2. They are awesome games, if only Capcom would bother actually caring about the character sprites in them. It feels like they overlaid SNES character sprites with DC backgrounds and effects in CvS.
        .
      • Here's a strange fact: I can remember that there was a developer called "Ed Boon" that worked on MK, but I can't name a single developer of SF. Why can I remember Ed Boon? Midway always had a thing about putting their developers in their games somehow (remember "toasty" ?).

        That's pretty close - Ed Boon is the lead programmer of the MK team and it's actually his voice used for the famous "Get over here!" Scorpion line. The "toasty" guy is Dan Forden, who does the music and sound effects. Once long ago when MK was much more popular than it is now I met Dan Forden through the music technology dept at my university - he was a cool guy. Definitely a sound engineer.

        I really like the idea of putting developers into the games in creative ways. Another good example is Chrono Trigger - in one of the many different endings, you get to walk around a level talking to all the game's programmers and designers. That's the sort of team I'd like to work for! Put a little bit of my own personality into the product! (Hm, makes me wonder whose personality Clippy is based on)

      • Re:Can'tt beat the original (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Ed Boon graduated from my school (University of Illinois)! I remember he came back and talked to our intro to CS class back when I was a freshman 4 years ago. It seems Mortal Kombat was originally an underground project at Midway. He and his co-conspirators dressed their friends up in cheap costumes from a party store and photographed them to make the characters in the game. Then he showed us pictures of the costumes from "Mortal Kombat on Ice" (sounds really stupid), and unbelievably, they were worse than the original cheap junk!
    • Can't beat the original

      Yes! it must defeat Sheng logn to stand a chance!

  • round one! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Hagmonk ( 201689 ) <lukeNO@SPAMburton.echidna.id.au> on Monday March 11, 2002 @08:11PM (#3145955) Homepage
    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!
    • ya ta!
      yesyesyesyesyesyesyes!

    • Re:round one! (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 11, 2002 @09:00PM (#3146159)
      The sad part is that I can actually tell Ryu just beat Blanka.

    • M. Bison (Vega in the Japanese version) was pretty, um, fun in the Champion Edition:

      Round one... Fight!
      Whooosh!!
      Smack!
      Whooosh!!
      Smack!
      Whooosh!!
      Smack!
      Whooosh!!
      Smack!
      Whooosh!!
      Smack!
      Whooosh!!
      Smack!
      Aaaaaahhh!!

      You win! Perfect!!

      Too bad Capcom weakened him in the Turbo Hyper Fighting version.

      Also, there was nothing like nailing your opponent with the scissor kick, which they later slowed down and eventually made it knock the opponent down (as opposed to leave them standing so you could mess them up more).

      A lot of people called him a "cheap" character. Cheap? No, he's efficient and effective! Easy to beat other people with! What the hell's wrong with that? Sure, they tried to "balance" the characters but always failed, usually leaving Ken or Guile too powerful and making Dhalsim and Balrog (M. Bison in the Japanese version) too weak. Oh yeah... Balrog was fun, too. Nothing like running across the screen and smacking your opponent in the face. The Dashing Uppercut was cool, too. Jumping characters never knew what hit them!

    • Guess who's playing who?

      Bom...

      Bom...

      Bom...

      Ouah Ouah Ouah Ouah....

      You Win!
  • If I wanted to bang a machine I'd go here [realdoll.com].

  • Sunnyvale Golfland (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Tofuhead ( 40727 ) on Monday March 11, 2002 @08:14PM (#3145973)

    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 >

    • Re:Sunnyvale Golfland (Score:5, Interesting)

      by hiryuu ( 125210 ) on Monday March 11, 2002 @08:56PM (#3146147)
      Let me tell you, the best SF2 players in the world are at a whole other level than normal human beings.

      Gawd, ain't that the truth. I made it through college (in central Indiana) thinking pretty highly of my SF2 skills, until I moved to New Jersey after graduation. I looked around for a decent arcade with Capcom machines, and on some advice from Usenet, managed to find 8 on the Break [thebreak.net] ten minutes from my place. (Much to my surprise, I found out it was one of the sites for the East Coast SF tourney.) For about a year I tried to keep up with the gods who frequented that place - most of whom fit the gangsta description mentioned elsewhere in the posts - and then I just gave up. Too many times losing in a handful of seconds - ouch.

  • I would've picked that Jean Claude Van Damme was involved in the Street Fighting scene at some time or another, but it was a true revelation to find that Kylie Minogue wasn't averse to the odd urban brawl.

    Before that I thought she was a little bit soft, what with that whole "Do The Locomotion" song and all, but like, WHOAH! my eyes were opened!
  • So is this how /. is trying to cash in? they want a Finders Fee for the distribution rights.

    Go For the Gold Guys
  • If you're gonna be around Austin, check out "Prizewhores" -- it's a documentary about all those people who go around to radio promos just for all the free stuff. It's pretty interesting. Made in Austin too.

    Disclaimer: I'm not at all involved with the film, I just find it kind of funny. I guess it's a more profitable way to waste one's time rather than playing SF ;)

    --gaz
  • Woah...lots of hostility in here today..

    Anyway, I just wanted to post and praise the fellas that put together the SxSW festival and bring neat little known movies like this to the (somewhat) mainstream. I havn't ever had the chance to check out the interactive part of the festival (mostly because this stuff costs an arm and a leg!), anybody see anything cool there?

    and ..oh yeah..SF rules.

    what do you mean M.Bison is Balrog is Vega is M.Bison???
    • SxSW is completely mainstream. It's not underground, or alternative, or cool in any way. It's just a whole lot of people who ordinarily consider Austin, Texas flyover territory, and muddy their boots once a year so as to see and be seen. This director we're speaking of would not even have his film featured at SxSW unless he was in the "in crowd".

  • For a minute I thought this was some weird fetish porno spoof of the new movie The Time Machine.

  • movie trailer (Score:5, Informative)

    by Pondy ( 565824 ) on Monday March 11, 2002 @09:03PM (#3146169)
    For those who are interested, there's a short trailer [fileplanet.com] for the movie on File Planet. There's also an interview [shoryuken.com]with 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.

  • ShoRyuKen.com's upcoming Evolution2002 Internation (Score:4, Informative)

    by *BBC*PipTigger ( 160189 ) on Monday March 11, 2002 @09:29PM (#3146241) Journal
    SRK is putting on an International Tournament! Check out http://evolution.shoryuken.com/

    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 :: UCLA Ackerman Union

    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.

  • I've lived in Austin for 27 years, and I've been watching SXSW since it started.

    Unfortunately, SXSW (the music part, anyway) is somewhat of a local joke for longterm residents and some local musicians.

    When SXSW started out, it was a great way to get some exposure for a struggling local band. I imagine Sundance was originally the same way for smaller indy film makers.

    Now, however, if you don't already HAVE a name, you can't play SXSW. And since it pretty much takes over the Sixth Street scene, your ability to play down there is very very limited during the "festival" as well.

    I've seen a number of local indy musicians wearing "SXSW SUX" shirts, and I think that sums it up pretty well. It's become too big, too commercial, and a waste of time for people that want to PARTICIPATE in the music side. The old Austin Aquafest went the same way in the last years before it went belly-up.

    I haven't attended the Multimedia Conferences or the movie part of things, but I hear they're still worth doing. I'm not sure how the dot-scam bust will affect the multimedia stuff, but it still should produce some interesting stuff.

    -l

    (flame on...)
    • I've lived in Austin for 27 years, and I've been watching SXSW since it started.

      So have I, on both counts.

      Now, however, if you don't already HAVE a name, you can't play SXSW.

      I don't know about that. For instance, do you already know of any of these bands?
      Uncle Smithee's Esoteric Music Emancipators:
      White Ghost Shivers (Austin TX) 9:00 p.m.
      Dark Holler (Austin TX) 10:00 p.m. audio
      Shorty Long (Austin TX) 11:00 p.m.
      Ridgetop Syncopators (Austin TX) 12:00 a.m.
      Dave Biller and Les Niglos (Austin TX) 1:00 a.m.

      • Shorty Long (Austin TX) 11:00 p.m.

        I've heard of Shorty Long...I think they used to sit down in the basement of the Empanada Parlour playing before the other bands showed up :)

        The film festival is definitely worth your time. I bought one of the $50 passes so I could skip the ticket lines, and I've seen 4 movies so far. Two of those are probably going to be coming to theatres across the country in a few months, but I don't think I would have heard of the other two. If you think sitting in the Alamo Drafthouse drinking beer, eating nachos and watching weird films sucks, then you probably wouldn't enjoy it! I also plan to catch:

        • Last Party 2000 with Philip Seymour Hoffman
        • Gigantic: They Might Be Giants documentary (with John and John at the movie Tuesday)
        • Journeys with George (W Bush)
        • Whatever else is around
        I don't usually like a lot of the musical genres they pick up for SXSW, so I'm not particularly planning on going to any of the bands.
    • The Interactive tradeshow was pretty dead..
      I really wanted to wear my F*cked Company shirt
      just to rub it in, but figured I'd get kicked out.

      Bruce Sterling's party was pretty good, better than last years, so it wasn't all bad.
      If you're in town, hell, run on down, it's still going on.
  • Cheng shi lie ren (City Hunter) [imdb.com]

    You haven't seen Street Fighter until you see Jackie Chan get beaten up by Ken Masters or Jackie Chan come back into the fight dressed as...
    I won't tell you. Check out this 8 meg mpeg to see [kikouken.com]

  • they list Mary K's as the place to play in Vegas. Fuck that shit. Mary K's is so ghetto it made a friend of mine from LA scared of that place.

    Anyway, bitching about that aside, it looks like an interesting look into a much MUCH neglected subculture that blends every other possible subculture into it. All walks of life, the thing is, is that if there wasn't such a stigma on females playing games, you'd probably see a few females starring here. This kind of reminds me of Tampopo Arcade...(Which is another story altogether.)
  • I'd just like to make a comment here from the land of the rising sun: If you think 2D-fighting is on it's death-bed, hop on the next flight to Nippon, and you'll realize it's quiet alive and well. Seriously, most arcades here carry more 2D fighting games than 3D ones, and you'll be able to play the original SFII in a box constructed nearly a decade after its release. Even better, you can play the original Kung Fu game on an arcade box for 100 yen, twice as much as for a game of Tekken 4! Hah! But other than the strong representation of classic 2D fighters, Japan has still produced some new modern ones as well. I recommend Guilty Gear X as an example of how Hi-Res, super-fluid 2D fighting can be done. But I must say, always kept a soft spot for Chun-Li and the hacked Championship Ed. with the mid-air moves and Guile's handcuffs.....Ahhh the good old days.

    -Morgan McN.
  • this artcile [shoryuken.com] [shoryuken.com] is an analysis of a top level match in a tournament. if you think that button mashing is a way to win in street fighter, or that it takes no skill, think again!

  • I was working at Capcom Coin-Op around the time SF Alpha came out. We had one in the showroom on free play, so I played it a bit. Never could understand the popularity of it. Or any others in the fighting genre, for that matter... The whole thing seemed to come down to memorizing arbitrary joystick/button sequences that had little or no connection to what was happening on the screen. Wanna do your super-mega-knockout move? LLLDU-sweepCCW-punch-kick. I never really saw the game aspect of it.

    Now, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo [klov.com] , on the other hand... There was a great game! It was so cool to see half the company lined up to play it; everyone from the assembly-line workers through the highest levels of management. Time to fire up MAME, I think...

    • Now, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, on the other hand... There was a great game! [...] Time to fire up MAME, I think...

      See here. [www.mame.dk] SPF2T is excellent, but does not (yet) work in MAME. SPF2X works (apparently) but mame.dk has no known good dump.


      However, there are excellent Playstation (1) and Saturn versions, as well as a Jap-only Dreamcast version which you can play online.


      Why has there been no input from King of Fighters freaks yet?

  • Us Neo-Geo fans will always know that Garou: Mark Of The Wolves beats the pudden out of any of those capcom games. :)

    After you go MOTWs everything else just seems SOOO slow. (the SF franchise included, I can no longer play any SF game on the account of falling asleep in between moves. . . . . damn those games are SLOW. I mean unresponsive type slow too.)
  • ... on giving us a diverse story that breaks the mold of:

    Microsoft is evil, or MPAA/RIAA is evil, or power to Linux!

    There's a lot more to being a nerd than spending a Friday night recompiling your Linux Kernel. The guys at Penny Arcade [penny-arcade.com] said it best when they said, "You play video games? Welcome to Dorksville." [penny-arcade.com] I for one don't know how many days and nights I spent at the local arcade, wasting my hard earned grocery sacker salary on that game. I don't think I'm the only slashdotter out there that was flooded by memories when I saw this article. I hate when people flame just because they have no interest in the article. That's what makes Slashdot great, there's a little something out there for all of us nerds to enjoy.

    *Sigh* ...Let the flaming begin

  • See It (Score:2)

    by Puk ( 80503 )
    Having been a part of the Street Fighter "scene" for quite a while, having a lot of friends in it, and even being in the movie for an extremely brief period, I have to say that the Jab Strong Fierce crew did an excellent job with the whole thing. I drove down to Austin this weekend to plan in the tournament they planned around the screenings, see the movie, and just hang out with friends (some of whom I don't get to see much and flew in from Chicago, LA, and the Bay Area), and I was really impressed. To be totally honest, it's a bit worrisome when you realize they're going to open a window into the things you participate in, when most people don't even know they exist -- and I was scared about how the whole thing would come across to "outsiders".

    I was amazed with the results. The did a great job of capturing the events of that year and the people involved. Even people who have no interest in video games (including my friend who drove down with me) seemed to enjoy it immensely. If you have a chance to see it, go. Keep in mind, the Sunday showing was over-packed, and SXSW visitors get preference, so it may be difficult to get into, especially given the /. article. I really hope they manage to find a distributor so more people can get a peek into the fun and insanity that is involved in a SF addiction and the world around it.

    Now I'm going to go crash since I drove all night to get home so I could make it to work today after watching the Sunday midnight showing.

    -Puk
  • I'm glad there is a movie about SF2. Perhaps if people see how much skill is involved in playing video games, they won't criticize them quite so much. It's about respect. Watch a good player and you know what I mean. Their hands are as nimble as a concert pianist.


    The best competitors of the original SF2 know that Guile is unbeatable (original arcade ROM)... once you learn how to shadow throw and freeze. I have never been beaten after learning these tricks, and no one will play a Guile that uses a glitch in the game.

    After becoming a good player, I played competitively at the Broadway Arcade in NYC (now deceased). The competition was the best I have ever seen, many players played 5 days a week for about an hour (on lunch, like me) and were significantly better than competition in any other arcade in the NYC area. I got so good I often get treated like a celebrity when I display my skills at local arcades. When good players see me shadow throw, they know they aren't on the same level and usually stop playing and start asking questions.

    Hyperfighting was the best SF2, turbo sped things up too much for me. I liked Hyper the best because the characters were so well balanced. But again, a good Bison can beat anybody, so I don't play him.

    You know you are playing a good SF player when you think your mind is being read by your opponent.

    On a related note, its impossible to beat an arcade cabinet for these games. Having a large, unmoving arcade cabinet significantly increases your ability to execute complicated moves and combos. Even the best home controllers (the Dreamcast Arcade stick and the Shadowblade come to mind) can't duplicate the precision of a good standup unit.

    One last thing to note is that no 2d or 3d fighter will ever ever translate well over tcp/ip... latency is too much of an issue. When the stakes are high, you would never trust your shoryuken to a missed packet... hence, fighting games may go the way of the arcade, since you have to have friends who come over to play, and who have their own expensive arcade sticks. Also, good competition is hard to find. When you reach a certain level of proficiency with a Capcom fighter, people can't beleive that they can lose hundreds of games in a row, and then they never play you. Its sad, but true.

  • SF2 in EGM and a Bit of SF2 History (Score:4, Informative)

    by Rahoule ( 144525 ) on Tuesday March 12, 2002 @02:32AM (#3147350)

    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:

    1. the original (subtitled The World Warrior), released in early 1991. Play as one of eight fighters, beat the other seven, then fight the "mysterious Grand Masters", as the manual called them (the boss characters). You could play against another player, but the two of you couldn't pick the same character.
    2. the Champion Edition, an upgrade released in March 1992 which allowed you to play as the four boss ("Grand Master") characters previously reserved only for computer use (Balrog, Vega, Sagat, and M. Bison), allowed both characters to select the same character, and added various minor tweaks to the characters' abilities
    3. the Turbo Hyper Fighting edition, released in December 1992, which was basically a patch for the Champion Edition which sped up the game by about 20% and attempted to even out the fighters' abilities. This was released partially in response to the number of unauthorized ("pirate") hacks circulating for the Champion Edition which allowed midair fireballs, etc.
    4. Super Street Fighter II, released in September 1993, which featured improved backgrounds, reorchestrated stereophonic music (previous versions were mono), and added four new characters ("the New Challengers"): Fei Long, Cammy, Dee Jay, and Thunder Hawk (T. Hawk). This version was criticized because the faster gameplay from Turbo Hyper Fighting was eliminated (to "allow for more technique"), and there was very little in the new technique added. This also marked the transition for the game from the Capcom's CPS1 arcade system to the newer CPS2 system. Capcom also released some sort of networking kit which allowed an arcade owner to link four of the machines together for eight-player "tournament battles".
    5. Super Street Fighter II Turbo, released in early- to mid-1994, the final upgrade and probably the best. This version introduced vast amounts of new technique and new moves to the game, such as ability to "juggle" your opponent by hitting them multiple times in the air before they fall (like in Mortal Kombat), the ability to "soften" throws, and "Super" moves, which were extremely powerful special attacks which could be executed only after filling one's super power meter (separate from the life meters at the top of the screen). True to its "Turbo" name, this version restored the faster gameplay from Turbo Hyper Fighting, but its most celebrated addition was the addition of a hidden boss character named "Akuma" in the English version, or "Gouki" (pronounced "Goki") in the Japanese version. This character may appear to fight you at the end of the game if you played well enough. The exact method to reach Akuma was never clearly documented and apparently was different between the various home versions (PC, 3DO, etc.).

    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.

  • Fighting games are the worst thing to happen to video games ever. Useless, brainless games designed to suck another $.50 from you. Wait that pretty much sums up all video games..oh well back to the arcade :)

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