Post by leunas on Mar 15, 2007 13:02:28 GMT -5
Watch this video. www.youtube.com/watch?v=np_5BHmaSI4&mode=related&search=
I was there, three years ago, when that video happened. It happened at Cal Poly Pomona, as part of Evolution 2004, the biggest fighting game tournament in the United States. I was eating a Famous Star from Carl's Jr. at the time.
The match would later become legendary, immortalized on YouTube and occasionally parodied: Justin Wong, an American player known best for winning four consecutive national championships from 2001-2005 in Marvel vs. Capcom 2, was pitted against Daigo Umehara, arguably Japan's greatest Street Fighter player, in the tournament semifinals for Street Fighter III: Third Strike. Watching Daigo coolly parry Justin's 15-hit super combo and retaliate with his own counter to win the round with zero life remaining ... well, you just had to have been there.
But being in that crowd was a funny thing. Somehow, the crowd always knew who it was rooting for, and, more curiously, why. I knew, too, as part of the crowd, but I couldn't quite articulate it. Sometimes it made sense to root for Justin, sometimes it didn't.
Of course, the crowd loves upsets, underdogs and spectacular combos. But how did we always know who to cheer for? And how did race tell us who to cheer for?
Maybe we should rewind a bit.
Street Fighter II was widely credited with providing a much-needed shot in the arm to the arcade game scene back in the early 1990s. The graphics were awesome, and the head-to-head gameplay hadn't quite caught on full force until then. But, perhaps more significantly, Street Fighter II demanded a social experience. In order to get better, you had to play against someone else, and - unlike Xbox Live - you had to play with someone who was actually standing right next to you. It caused communities of players to form around local arcade machines, and those communities would interact with communities around other arcade machines and have tournaments, and so on.
for more, goto: www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/88/16