10-25-2015, 03:19 PM
When Street Fighter IV was first released my buddy and I joined a tournament through Gamestop (back when I still shopped there). We had a month to practice with the game and train, but it was kind of pointless training because the tournament rules were to use arcade sticks (the idea, of course, was to convince you to buy the arcade stick controller they were selling).
Top one at our store went on to the county tournament, then regionals, and finally to the national tournament. Single elimination style.
My buddy and I played the game every other day for a month to familiarize ourselves with the characters, but we used custom controller settings because...who cares, we'll be using arcade sticks anyway so what if we get used to a particular controller set up?
Then tournament day rolls around and they lead us to the demo machine, which they have jury-rigged to play the full game rather than just the demo, but we are using the hard-wired controllers, not the arcade sticks. Turns out after they published the rules Gamestop realized how expensive it would be to send the arcade stick controllers to every single store, so only the ones in like...New York, LA, Seattle, etc. got arcade sticks.
Half the buttons on each controller didn't work right from years of being abused by demo-players; thank goodness it was SF4 and not Dead or Alive, which had pressure-sensitive controls, else nobody would have been able to do anything.
There was about twelve of us, and eight of them had never played a Street Fighter game in their lives. One was actually the girlfriend of a guy in the competition who decided to join, since the entrance was free. She played as Sagat because he 'looked scary, so he must be strong'. The guy she was up against had played Street Fight II in the arcade once, when he was a kid, so he picked Blanka, the only character he knew.
The funny thing was she figured out the Low Tiger Shot and just spammed it to victory. The only move guy could do was Blanka's electricity attack, which makes him crouch down and take the Tiger Shot to the face. Haha.
When my turn came I had three options I'd trained with: Zangief, Guile, Ryu, or Akuma. I should have gone with Zangief, but I was worried I wouldn't be able to do the Spinning Pile Driver with the demo controllers (one of the controllers didn't have a properly working analog stick - you couldn't go left with it, so you had to use the d-pad). I went with Akuma, and the other guy went with Ryu. Because of the button's not always registering being pressed I couldn't do any combos and it was just a matter of each of us smacking the other with a jumping kick and the occasional Hadouken until finally he won.
Eventually my buddy made it to the finals and went up against the guy who came in, I believe 8th, in the National Tournament.
Top one at our store went on to the county tournament, then regionals, and finally to the national tournament. Single elimination style.
My buddy and I played the game every other day for a month to familiarize ourselves with the characters, but we used custom controller settings because...who cares, we'll be using arcade sticks anyway so what if we get used to a particular controller set up?
Then tournament day rolls around and they lead us to the demo machine, which they have jury-rigged to play the full game rather than just the demo, but we are using the hard-wired controllers, not the arcade sticks. Turns out after they published the rules Gamestop realized how expensive it would be to send the arcade stick controllers to every single store, so only the ones in like...New York, LA, Seattle, etc. got arcade sticks.
Half the buttons on each controller didn't work right from years of being abused by demo-players; thank goodness it was SF4 and not Dead or Alive, which had pressure-sensitive controls, else nobody would have been able to do anything.
There was about twelve of us, and eight of them had never played a Street Fighter game in their lives. One was actually the girlfriend of a guy in the competition who decided to join, since the entrance was free. She played as Sagat because he 'looked scary, so he must be strong'. The guy she was up against had played Street Fight II in the arcade once, when he was a kid, so he picked Blanka, the only character he knew.
The funny thing was she figured out the Low Tiger Shot and just spammed it to victory. The only move guy could do was Blanka's electricity attack, which makes him crouch down and take the Tiger Shot to the face. Haha.
When my turn came I had three options I'd trained with: Zangief, Guile, Ryu, or Akuma. I should have gone with Zangief, but I was worried I wouldn't be able to do the Spinning Pile Driver with the demo controllers (one of the controllers didn't have a properly working analog stick - you couldn't go left with it, so you had to use the d-pad). I went with Akuma, and the other guy went with Ryu. Because of the button's not always registering being pressed I couldn't do any combos and it was just a matter of each of us smacking the other with a jumping kick and the occasional Hadouken until finally he won.
Eventually my buddy made it to the finals and went up against the guy who came in, I believe 8th, in the National Tournament.