Street Fighter 2 World Warrior Guile glitches guide

A Street Fighter 2: World Warrior Guile fan’s guide to Guile’s many glitches

Many, many years ago, I had access to a World Warrior machine, and it spurred me to finally learn the Guile glitches which were so awesome during WW’s heyday. There were a couple of articles on the net even back then, but they didn’t seem comprehensive enough for me. I wrote my own half assed guide, but found it was indeed pretty hard getting the explanations out usefully.

Recently I decided to completely redo my guide, and since there are considerably more tools for macros/scripting in emulators, I thought I’d nail down the details on some of the glitches I thought I knew how to do. I learnt a few things! I also decided I’d make a frame-by-frame instructional video on the inputs needed to perform these glitches. Hopefully it’s in-depth enough and clear enough that any person familiar with Guile should be able to do these glitches in no time.

Here’s the lua macros and instructions for reproducing the glitches automatically, if you’re interested.

1. Install mame-rr
2. Unzip macrolua into your mame-rr directory
3. Unzip nzism-guile-glitches-mamerr.zip into your mame-rr directory
4. Obtain the sf2 rom, drop it in your mame roms dir.
5. Edit the file in your mame-rr directory called macrolua.options and change the playbackfile property to read playbackfile = "wwguile.mis"
6. Open mame-rr and run sf2.
7. Press Control-L to open the lua panel
8. Browse to the macro.lua file within your mame-rr directory
9. Click Run
10. Now edit the file in your mame-rr directory under the macro directory, called wwguile.mis
11. Uncomment (remove the # in front of) whichever line you’d like to play
12. Press The “Play Macro” hotkey (Control-1) to play the macro

Repeat the last two steps until you are satisfied! You can pause the emulator by pausing (usually p) at any time, and step through frame by frame with Frame Advance (which I set to \).

So, without further ado, here’s the video transcription and some additional technical notes.

Free Sonic Boom 01:05

Guile throws a Sonic Boom without needing to hold back to charge.

Perform a Strong throw, then continue holding the same direction and press any Punch button just after recovering from the throw.

You can walk forward a little and still get a Sonic Boom out.

While this isn’t particularly useful on its own, it can be combined with some other glitches.

Extra notes:
It seems that the first two frames of recovery after the throw do NOT give you the auto Sonic Boom, only a normal punch. But the 10 or so frames after that DO. Perhaps the ‘start of free sonic boom charge’ glitch starts slightly into the strong throw animation, so enough charge is only built up 2 frames after the throw recovery? Regardless, you can get a jab out as well as a Sonic Boom in the time period.
Also, using Jab seems to allow for a later sonic boom than Strong does. As all the Sonic Booms have the same frame data, regardless of punch button used, I’m not quite sure why this is.

Stance 01:28

Guile becomes stuck on a recovery frame of his upside-down kick.

While having most of a charge for a Sonic Boom, press Back+Roundhouse while near an opponent to perform the upside-down kick. DURING the animation, press towards and any Punch for a sonic boom, and Guile will freeze near the end of the animation.

While Guile can be hit out of stance, this frame of animation has no low hurtbox, so is invulnerable to most low attacks.

Escape Stance at any time by performing a flash kick. If time runs out or you KO the opponent into Stance, the game won’t continue until you escape Stance.

Stance looks cool but is not generally useful, but is a requirement for other glitches.

Some Computer opponents will react to Stance in certain ways, which can allow for good setups into other glitches. e.g.

• Zangief – may Lariat just out of range repeatedly in front of you, or sometimes just spams various punches
• Claw – Can uselessly slide at you repeatedly
• Ken – Usually whiffs a dragon punch
• Dictator – Often slide once, which won’t hit
• 
  

Extra notes:
The upside down roundhouse takes nearly 50 frames of animation, but cancelling it into special moves (such as Sonic Boom) before the 5th frame results in that special move successfully coming out. So as long as you have charge for a Sonic Boom anywhere from frame 5 to 49 of the kick, you can perform this glitch. A Sonic Boom requires roughly 59 frames of charge.

Magic Throw 02:37

Guile throws the opponent without touching them.

For a Magic Throw away from you, while in range for the Upside-down kick, charge a Sonic Boom then walk forward slightly, then press Roundhouse followed by Fierce or Strong one frame afterwards. The button presses are exactly like Plinking in Street Fighter 4.

I do this by hitting Roundhouse with my third finger followed by my middle finger on Fierce.

For a Magic Throw towards you, while in range for the upside-down kick, charge a Sonic Boom then quickly tap forward then back on the stick, then press Roundhouse followed by Fierce or Strong one frame afterwards.

The towards magic throw has slightly less range due to not walking forward before the button presses, but as the opponent is brought towards you, follow ups are more possible.

Regardless of whether you use Strong or Fierce, the Magic Throw is a Strong throw, and the Free Sonic Boom glitch works after it just like a normal Strong throw. And since Magic Throw is possible off a Sonic Boom charge, you can use the free charge for subsequent Magic Throws too. As long as they are still in range, you can keep magic throwing until they are dead!

For repeated Magic Throws away from you, perform the initial magic throw then simply hold forward and tap Roundhouse,Fierce at the right time.

For repeated Magic Throws towards you, perform the initial magic throw towards and continue holding back, then tap forward, back, roundhouse,fierce at the right time. If the opponent crosses your body then you just have to switch direction as they cross, then press Roundhouse, Fierce.

Extra tricks with magic throw:

• As a throw, once the magic throw has started it is completely invincible, and nothing the opponent can do can escape it – not jumping away, not dragon punching, nothing!
• Anti air Flash kick often leaves the opponent near enough for a magic throw or three
• Ticks into magic throws are very nasty
• Claw can be magic thrown off his cage
• Blanka can be magic thrown out of horizontal ball
  And much more!

Magic throw from Stance 05:06

Magic throwing from Stance requires a slightly modified motion incorporating a flash kick. Charge downback, then roll the stick to forwards then up forwards as in the tiger knee motion, hold it there a little then press and hold RH then FP or strong as you would for a normal magic throw.

For a towards magic throw from stance, charge downback, then roll the stick quickly to forwards, then up forwards, then up, then press and hold RH~FP.

Note: In the video, I mistakenly assert you need to finish at upback, this is infact not the case. Finishing at up is sufficient (although up-back is probably easier).

Basically, do the normal magic throw motions but make sure to hit the diagonals.

Magic throwing from stance can be useful on its own, but is also part of other glitches.

Extra Info:
I believe the necessity of the modified motion is because you need to do a Flash Kick to escape Stance. The modified motion incorporates a Flash Kick and presumably cancels it into a Magic Throw.

Handcuffs 05:47

Guile throws the opponent, who then becomes frozen and stuck to Guile.

Charge down for a flash kick, perform a Strong throw then interrupt it with a flash kick. A practical way is to roll the stick from down to up-back and then flick your fingers quickly downwards over Strong punch then Forward kick.

The direction of throw you perform only changes the animation, the effect is identical.

Handcuffs is useful for wasting time, and for practicing other glitches.

The only way to escape Handcuffs is with a Magic Throw.

Note that if time runs out while you have the opponent in Handcuffs, you will be unable to escape and the machine will have to be physically restarted.

Handcuffs from Stance 06:30

Entering Handcuffs from Stance is a little different, simply do a Flash kick with Strong punch and Forward kick at the exact same time.

Extra notes:
How this motion performs a throw is a mystery to me, but I believe being in the Stance state must modify the inputs somehow (since it also requires an altered motion for the Magic Throw). Perhaps one of the L/R directions gets stuck on during it. Of course it could be argued that the animation doesn’t really show a throw being performed, so maybe it actually doesn’t.

Reset 06:42

The machine resets!

Charge down for a flash kick, perform a Fierce throw then interrupt it with a flash kick. One method is to flick your fingers downwards across Fierce and then Roundhouse. Just like handcuffs, but with Fierce/Roundhouse instead.

There’s no particularly good reason to do this, unless you want to quit in style.

Free Flash kick 06:58

Guile has a stored Flash kick which is unleashable with the simple press of a kick.

Perform a Strong throw then instantly begin charging down. Just before Guile recovers, press Up and any Kick. Guile’s animation looks like he walks backwards for a frame.

Do a normal kick.

You now have a flash kick charge stored for about 3 seconds.

Press any kick button while grounded to do a flash kick. This includes after jumping or walking forward, while crouching, in a combo, basically whenever you could normally do a flash kick. You can even use this free flash kick to perform the Handcuffs or Reset glitches – simply do a strong throw and then press any kick for Handcuffs, or do a fierce throw and then press any kick to reset the machine.

Extra notes:
It’s possible this bug affects World Warrior’s “random special move” seed, or maybe it really is just storing a charge for you. However, a charge runs out in about 10 frames, and this one lasts considerably longer.

Fake Magic Throw 07:43

Guile Magic Throws the opponent, but the opponent is unaffected.

Perform a Magic Throw from Stance, except let go of the buttons as soon as possible. Holding the buttons for longer than 3 frames will perform a normal magic throw. Technically it’s the Roundhouse button being held which determines this.

Fake Magic Throw from Handcuffs actually shows the animation throwing the opponent, but they reenter handcuffs.

Usually just for showing off, although it is essential for the final glitch.

Extra notes:
There must be a second input check being performed for some reason, though I can’t think what it’d be for.

Invincibility 08:13

Guile becomes frozen in place, but is totally invincible!

The “Useless” Invincibility is entered by performing Handcuffs, holding the direction of the throw you are doing, and then pressing the opposite direction then punch for a sonic boom just before recovering.

So if you enter handcuffs holding up-back, continue holding back, then press forward and punch.

This invincibility is pretty useless because while you are invincible, the opponent is also stuck in handcuffs. But it’s good for practicing the timing for the real invincibility.

The PROPER invincibility is achieved by entering stance then performing a Fake Magic throw when the opponent is within upside-down kick rangem Continue
holding the direction of the throw, then perform a sonic boom in the other direction just before recovery as in the other invincibility.

Guile is now completely invincible. No attacks or projectiles will affect him, and he is also unthrowable. In fact, the ONLY thing which can hurt him is another Guile’s magic throw – however since you can’t pick the same character in World Warrior, Guile vs Guile requires hacks.

Invincibility is considered the same as Stance in every way, so you can do the same tricks and glitches from it, and escape from it with Flash Kick, even after the round ends.

Extra notes:
The sheer number of layers of glitches that go together to make Invinciblity is quite remarkable! There’s clearly some pretty broken stuff with Strong throw and cancelling moves with Sonic Booms :)

Now you have a comprehensive repetoire of Guile Glitches in SF2:WW. Try them out, none are actually all that difficult. And try them in combinations! It’s a lot of fun :)

Evo 2k11 highlights

I’ve been watching the Evolution series for years now, and I have to say, it just keeps getting better and better. 2k11 was incredible. I watched pretty much all of all three days (including quite a bit of the after hours streams), and usually that long a stretch makes me incredibly tired, but I simply feel like I want to watch more! More! MOREE!!!

Here are a few of the highlights that stick in my mind, I highly recommend you track them down:

• Mike Ross’s completely unwarranted win vs a very impressive Deadpool comeback in MvC3 pools
• Valle vs Daigo, the rematch – this time Ryu vs Yun. Always great matches between these two.
• Juicebox looking incredibly strong with both his Abel and Juri, just missing out on top 8
• Noel Brown making Sanford eat his words to get into top 8 MvC3
• MK9 finals in general were very entertaining, JOP’s Johnny Cage, 16bit’s Kitana
• Reo’s immensely impressive Mileena in MK9
• Xray in MvC3 – it takes a lot to make me impressed by a Dante/Amaterasu/Magneto, but he did it
• Justin’s amazing LEGIT Akuma comebacks vs Richard Nguyen in MvC3
• PR Balrog in general in MvC3 top eight! Perfecting Justin Wong to eliminate him!
• PR Balrog’s unbelievable Tron lvl3 vs Viscant’s Dark Phoenix in grand finals
• Viscant! Viscant!!!
• Poongko making Daigo look absolutely free in SSF4AE winners bracket of top 8
• Latif’s incredible run in SSF4AE top 8, eliminating Tokido, then Daigo, and then Poongko
• Fuudo making both the above look fairly silly, easily beating them both!

Big kudos to Viscant in particular, great to see him win the biggest major of them all. And to Latif for taking out such big names, pity he couldn’t pull off the final but no-one could ask for more, really!

Thanks to the organisers for yet again hitting it out of the park, all the commentators, and of course the streaming team – this year it was damn near flawless. Good work Spooky!

Team Tournament formats for fighting games

Sometimes team tournament formats can be unfamiliar, or for tournament organisers the advantages and disadvantages of each aren’t easily comparable. Here’s a little guide to the common formats for players, spectators, and TOs alike.

There’s a lot of team-building strategy which can go into any of these formats, especially with some of the extra stipulations.

All examples will use Team A versus Team B and players within the team are denoted by the number.

Variations are possible for each, depending on format or number of games per match, eg:

Fixed character – where once you have chosen a character, you MUST keep using that character. 
Fixed character, loser can switch options – As above, but the loser may change ultra/super
Loser may change character – But winner must stay same character and options
Loser may change character, winner can change options – Winner may switch super/ultra/etc in response to the Loser’s character switch

Additionally, there may be a restriction that only one of each character is allowed per team, just to up the variation. Or that each player may be allowed to pick between one of two characters they have preselected (to help against bad matchups).

And of course these rules just relate to a single matchup between teams. The overall tournament format can still be Single Elim, Double Elim, Round Robin, etc.

Round Robin

Each player on each team plays every player on the other team, then the total wins for each player/team are added up.

A1 vs B1, B2, B3, …
A2 vs B1, B2, B3, …
etc

A variation is when both players change, which is much more confusing to follow but doesn’t allow any one player to get too comfortable (or fatigued!) by playing multiple matches in a row.

Advantages: Every matchup is seen.
Disadvantages: Maximum possible time used. n^2^ number of matches.

Mikado

Players pair off and both leave after each game. After all pairs of players have played, the earliest winners of each team face off until all of one team is defeated.

A1 vs B1 (A1 wins)
A2 vs B2 (B2 wins)
A3 vs B3 (B3 wins)
A4 vs B4 (B4 wins)
A5 vs B5 (A5 wins)
…
then winners pair off eg
A1 vs B2
A5 vs B3

Advantages: Each player seen at least once
Disadvantages: Some matchups missed.

Pokemon

Players pair off and the winner stays on until one team is completely defeated.

A1 vs B1 (A1 wins)
A1 vs B2 (A1 wins)
A1 vs B3 (B3 wins)
A2 vs B3
etc

Advantages: Least time used possible
Disadvantages: Not guaranteed to see every player – if A1 beats all the players in team B, that’s it!

Conclusion

My personal opinion is that Mikado format is a great compromise in general. Round robin can drag on a little long both for the TOs and the spectators, but I certainly get annoyed when “Exhibition” tournaments use the Pokemon format and then you don’t even get to SEE half the players. As always though, time may dictate what you have to choose.

NZism current status

First off, I apologise profusely for my lack of posts, there are several reasons:

1) The current content I’m working on is taking WAY more time & effort than I had expected
2) I haven’t had as much time to work on it as I’d have liked, random things keep popping up
3) I’ve been sick the past week so have been pretty limited to what I’ve been able to do in general. This includes not being able to attend the Southern Cross-up event that was on last weekend :/

Rest assured, I am working on stuff and do still have a big list of topics I’ve been wanting to post about.

Also, I’ve kind of re-opened the NZism forum, but it’s not really the forum you remember. People are welcome to use it, but it’s never going to be pushed as a forum ‘for the community’ again. All your old logins will work though. Any problems, just pm me on the forum or email me.

Fav Vids: #3 - 3s: 5 on 5 teams final, Co-op cup #1

Game: Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike
Date: 2002
Location: Japan
Players: Boss (Yang), Hitotsume (Ken), Ryo-chin (Remy), J (Makoto), KO (Yun) vs JOE (Ken), Nuki (Chun), Match (Akuma), Tokido (Urien), Xiao (Ibuki)
Source: Co-op cup 1 DVD

2002 was a good year for fighting games. In fact, so far every one of these favourite vids have been from 2002! It used to take a good couple of years after a game’s release for people to really break down the engine and work out some nasty tricks, and 2002 was about that period after the release of the last few fighting games before the ‘dark years’ which lasted until the release of Street Fighter 4.

I believe this video surfaced after the Evo 2k2 video I posted previously, but either way it reaffirmed Tokido as true master status and also Urien as one hell of an awesome character. The top tier was already set in 3s, but Urien and Makoto were beginning to shine, with people like Tokido and J showing off the potential of these characters. It was a very exciting time for 3s.

Although the gameplay may look a little clunky by today’s 3s standards, you’d better believe this was still lightyears ahead of anything in the US at the time, since the US didn’t think much of 3s for a long time. In fact, this video was one which really helped to invigorate the US 3s scene.

It’s also worth thinking about how primitive video sharing on the internet was back in 2002 – I downloaded this 20-odd minute video (with the between-match footage included) on a dial up modem from an FTP site! You actually had to have some contacts to see video like this. The excitement of seeing ANY footage from Japan was tangible. It was hard enough to get any from the US!

This video also popularised the “Ei! Ei! Ei!” chant during Yun’s Genei Jin super, for better or for worse.

Highlights:

00:49 For Euan!
02:42 The good ol’ double shoryu in the corner. Even this was hot stuff back then!
04:19 A very tense Ken battle!
08:22 Good ol’ jab reset dash under grab
10:07 Low parry can win you games…
10:42 I find knees scary too.
11:18 Good start to the round by Gouki, yeah?
12:20 The first midscreen unblockable I’d seen – even as ghetto as it is
13:03 Here it is! Eiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!
13:15 I’m sure this looks way nastier than it is, but it’s still cool.
14:38 NO FEAR!

For more videos from this team tournament, check out the coop cup playlist

Fav Vids: #2 - MvC2: NEC3 Team Tournament finals

Game: Marvel vs Capcom 2
Date: December 2002
Location: University Pinball, Philadelphia
Players: Ricky Ortiz, Xecutioner, Justin Wong vs Bryheem, Josh Wong, Sanford
Source: NEC3 DVD

Have a think how long ago this was, how early it is in MvC2’s lifespan. This is back when off axis (tape!) camera positioning and scrolling black bars were the norm in match vids. When having the atmosphere and in-arcade commentary captured was unusual (although just as NSFW as you’d expect!). When successfully mashing out of hypergrav-tempest was worthy of note. Storm air combo, Lightning StormDHC into Hyper Sentinel Force etc wasn’t discovered yet. Justin Wong was only just the king of the heap but evidently very beatable, not yet the dominator of MvC2 that he became.

Clearly the top tiers of MvC2 were already well developed by this time however – Sent, Cable, Commando, Magneto, Storm, Psylocke, and Doom are the only chars to appear. Oh all right, there’s Blackheart in there too. MvC2 definitely continued evolving after this vid, but the sheer entertainment displayed here is hard to beat. Bryheem’s outbursts in particular are hilarious.

I also love the gameplay. The simplicity (but effectiveness) of Ricky Ortiz’s Storm combos. The first time I really saw Sentinel fast fly combos in a match. The aforementioned mashing out of hypergrav tempest. Sure there are mistakes and dropped combos, but take into account the age of the video. Magneto’s five fierce combo hadn’t even been discovered yet. No-one had Sentinel-only infinites. Even with the mistakes, back in the day the stuff in this video was godlike. This was one of those videos that forced me into training mode to try and emulate various plays within it.

Highlights:
00:52 Stop Beastin’
04:44 Bryheem would quite like Storm to enter the match
06:20 Hypergrav-tempest? No thanks.
07:18 Unmashable doom
12:20 Assist death (imagine it taking this long in MvC3!)
12:55 The first fast fly combo I had seen (and tried to replicate)
13:36 This Magneto combo blew my mind, took me quite a while to work out how to do it.
18:28 Sanford’s own fast fly combo. Look at the damage!!!
21:35 Stomping with Sentinel
23:30 The famous “everybody gets fucken shot”
29:00 The classic “Don’t fall for his gimmicks!”

David Sirlin's Yomi - online!

While I may have poked some fun at noted fashion game designer David Sirlin in the last post, I actually have immense respect for the man. While I don’t think I can follow the “playing to win” attitude (I’ll write more about this in a later article), his book of that title is an extremely interesting read for any competitive gamer, and will probably teach you something about yourself. I’ve been following his game design and projects ever since I read it.

One such project is Yomi, a card game which somewhat mimics the choices made during a fighting game match. It was in beta for many years, some versions of which I tested out. It went in to final production late last year, and while I was extremely interested in purchasing it, two main things stopped me: insane shipping rates, and lack of people to play it against.

Well, turns out there’s something which avoids both those problems: a free dev version on the internet that you can play. I had a brief go at it last night, and while some of the rules have changed since last I played, it was just as good as I remember it. I reckon it’s worth checking out. Try it here

There’s also an interesting post David Sirlin made about some statistics from several thousand games that were played: Yomi online rankings

I reckon people should check it out, it’s good fun.

In The News - E3

We sent our roving news reporter along to report from E3, but he was way too lazy and decided to wait until after the event and just report on the reports fromOTHER news reporters instead. He saved us a lot of money. So here’s what he came up with.

E3 news from the field

E3 saw the announcement of several new hardware platforms which are certain to revolutionise gaming once again. Microsoft however decided their Kinect motion camera system had revolutionised quite enough already and plan to just keep on making games for that.

Nintendo Wiiuu

Nintendo have noticed that gamers are increasingly becoming large Americans and so recognised they needed to create a controller suited to them. The Wiiuu places a 6.8” touchscreen between each of your enormous hands and allows you to play games while you’re playing other games without your opponent knowing.

We tracked down noted game designer Savid Dirlin to ask for his thoughts on the possiblities of the system:

“I am extremely excited for the Wiiuu and the multiple levels of side-by-side Yomi it allows. I’m currently toying around with multi-dimensional fighting games where you simultaneously play 2 or more matches in parallel on your controller, out of sight of your opponent. Then you can collapse the game down into one and probabilistically Yomi the shit out of your opponent. They won’t even know what hit them! The Wiiuu will also be perfect for my new range of computerised card game systems”.

As you can see, there’s a lot to look foward to on the new Nintendo Wiiuu system. You can also pretend that you’re making ambulance noises while saying the name.

Sony Play Station Veto

Sony have been in the limelight recently for their cunning 6-week long advertising run where they faked a security breach with millions of PSNsubscribers’ credit card details escaping into the evil clutches of computer users, with Sony righteously taking down their services and telling everyone ‘Sorry’ in a way that makes them want to buy the new hand held console, the Sony Play Station Veto. The Veto features more cores than an average orchard, several cameras capable of covertly uploading pictures of you to the internet no matter where you put it, and touch screens on both the front AND back.

We asked Savid Dirlin his thoughts on the Veto as well.

“The Sony Veto is the perfect system for an amazingly Yomi-licious fighting game. I’ve just patented a game design which utilises the opposing dual touch screens – you use the back touchscreen to input commands which are what the opponent sees on his screen. This is however a cunning ruse, because simultaneously you use the front controls to input your REAL commands which are what your character actually performs. The display on the back of YOUR controller shows what you are really performing, so the opponent has to make the decision to either look at the back of your controller which reflects reality, or his own, which does not. It’s like a double blind guessing game where you have the option of seeing what’s going on!”

The Veto also is the first handheld to include the most desired feature amongst fighting gamers in the past decade: dual analog sticks.

edit: Upon further investigation, the PS Veto has only ONE touchscreen, the touchpad on the back in fact does not display anything. We’re frankly surprised Savid Dirlin made such an error, but are sad (as you surely are) that his patent will likely fall through and his vision is not going to come to fruition. The reporter has been forced to only post on GPforums until he repents and promises to check his facts more solidly next time.

E3 also had a few fighting game announcements.

Street Fighter 33 1/3: Online Strike

The next entry in the Street Fighter saga, based on the name it’s either a parody or Capcom have finally decided to count all the Supers and Hypers and Turbos as separate numbered releases. But if it is a joke, Capcom seemed pretty serious about it. SF33OS has some kind of new online code called PPGO which I believe stands for Potentially Pretty Good Online, and if that’s the case there are going to be some happy fighting gamers because so far online play in other games has been a mess. You can put your replays in a tube too, which is something everyone’s been waiting for. It also has Chun Li on the virtual box art. It’s out soonish.

Street Fighter xx Tekken

Street Fighter and Tekken embrace in an awkward hug in this upcoming game for every platform you have. Current gameplay videos show a bizarre mixture of Tekken characters envisaged by developers who know nothing about Tekken, and Street Fighter characters as seen by developers who can’t get a Street Fighter game right. A camera that couldn’t be harder to watch if it was mounted using only a rubber band, irritatingly long combos and low damage combine to make a game that is sure to keep you clawing the controller until time is up, time and time again.

BlazBlue Continual Shift 2: PlusPlus

Didn’t this just come out for the Play Station Portable?

Super Street Fighter 4: Anniversary Edition

This brand new entry in the Super Street Fighter 4 series comes on the 6th month anniversary of the previous arcade release, and contains several new features like intentional unbalancing and the disappearance of all the characters that aren’t from Hong Kong. The claim is that Capcom are hearkening back to the days when games were simpler and that choosing characters and stages is too hard these days. This reporter thinks that Capcom’s notorious racial stereotyping has just gone too far. Luckily it’s being released on the PC, so some guy on the internet is sure to make a better version of the game anyway.

King of Fighters XIII

SNK attempted to tell the audience that this game will finally be released in October but the crowd shushed them to talk about things people actually are interested in. I think I saw a tear roll down the SNK representative’s cheek. He was not wearing shoes.

So that concludes NZism’s initial coverage from E3. As you can see, there’s a lot to look out for in the near future! What do you guys think of the various announcements? Excited for the Veto? Can’t wait to play Street Fighter Hugs Tekken? Leave your comments below!

Top 10 MvC3 characters

The top 10 Marvel vs Capcom 3 chars… THAT I HATE!

1) Wesker

Huge health, huge damage, stupidly long combos. Ridiculous crossup that hits everywhere. Ridiculous range. Pathetic sounding pop gun. The only redeeming feature is his constant cursing when being hit.

2) Tron

Huge health, stupidly long combos, that silly jumping C soundbite that you hear constantly.

3) Wolverine

Floor bounce everywhere, insane dive kick, super makes everything safe, and most of all, he’s a jerk!

4) Dog

The sound of a person mashing C!

5) Doom

“Foot Dive!” “Hard Kick!” “Walk forward!”

6) Taskmaster

Can’t even come up with his own moves! Has to carry a sword and shield because he can’t even fight unarmed!

7) Deadpool

Gun supers go on too damn long!

8) Dante

Gun supers go on too damn long!

9) Spider-man

Got his uncle killed through being a self absorbed ass!

10) Ryu

Just plain sucks! Drop him already, Darren!

Hopefully this will guide you into making a far less hateable team!

Best of NZism: IRC Quotes thread

Coming as no surprise to anyone, here’s the second entry in the Best of NZism series.

While Wombo Combo may have been the most eagerly requested, IRC Quotes has been voted “Better” and “More funny” than Wombo Combo by all people who know a good thread when they see one. It also contains more fast food references, which as we all know is the true measure of success for any NZism discussion.

IRC Quotes Thread

And yes, the IRC channel is still around, EFnet #NZism

Funny stuff still happens there, and even some fighting game discussion. Feel free to join us. There are several web chat clients such as EFnet chat or Webchat

On Pricing Structure

In a competitive community, there are a couple of issues you can focus on: being inclusive and encouraging the less skilled players to have a go, or being exclusive and just trying to benefit the people already competitive.

To that end, let’s think about event pricing.

There are generally two fees that a player pays when attending an event: Entry fee and game fee. Game fee you pay to compete in a game, with the money from each competitor going into a total prize pot which is redistributed to some small portion of the best players. Entry fee allows you to compete in the first place.

Obviously there’s not a lot of tweaking that needs to be done for game fee. Price each game low, and you encourage entry into more games by more people, of a wider skill level. Encourage enough people and you get a large prize pot, at the expense of the time required to run the tournament bracket itself (which of course can be mitigated in several ways with a little planning and effort). Some matchups will be very lopsided, but players of lower skill levels will gain experience and not be too worried by the loss due to not having thrown much money into it. You might even pick up some new players who just entered on a whim.

Alternatively, price each game high, and people will only enter games they think they have a decent chance at. Lower skill level players will not enter many (or even any) games because the stakes are too high. They will not gain the experience of being forced to play under tournament pressure, or of facing stronger opponents. Why price the games high then? Perhaps you want fewer entrants because you can’t afford the time to play out larger brackets, and so only want people that are serious. Maybe you want a big prize pot and think enough people will still enter to achieve your target. Maybe you only want ‘good’ matches. Maybe you want the entrants to play their hardest because there’s more on the line. Maybe you simply don’t want weak people. Are any of these reasons good enough to lessen the number of people entering each game, and discourage less skilled players?

Also, if an event is running relatively niche games that fewer people play in the first place, and charging the same rate as everything else, don’t expect that game to have a good turnout. Sure, you’ll get the dedicated fans playing, but not dabblers or people only interested in picking it up.

Note that the game fee does not (or at least SHOULD not) have bearing on any other values than the prize pot for that game. If there’s a minimum prize pool, either it’s being sponsored (which you’ll likely know about!) or the money is being siphoned from some other source, which you’ll probably be unaware of. Maybe it’s from excess entry fees. Or from some other game’s prize pot. You don’t really know. Hopefully you trust your tournament organisers.

On to entry fees. What is your entry fee supposed to go towards?

This is effectively your ‘entertainment cost’. If you go to a movie, you spend $16 or so for the 2 hours of the film as an entertainment cost. Obviously this money goes to the theatre for rent, staff wages, electricity usage, maintenance, and further back, to the distributors, publishers, studio and creators of the movie itself, to itemise even a small list. That’s quite a distribution split of your $16, and sometimes you think it’s a waste, sometimes a fantastic use of that money.

So let’s say you pay $10 to the venue fee of a small tournament. Your ‘entertainment cost’ covers you for the hours of the tournament, which generally are much longer than that of a movie. You get to watch the matches, interact with the people, use the venue facilities and have a good time if you so choose. Of course, a spectator pretty much get all this too, so what else? Usually you’ll be allowed to play on casual setups if time and equipment allows, and of course the ability to actually enter the tournaments of your choice. Generally, you’re showing support for the event.

The naive assumption is that this money is what goes towards venue cost. So if 50 people turn up, there’s $500 straight up from entry fees. This money pool may or may not cover the venue cost outright, depending on swankiness of venue, whether they charge for various extras like electricity or tables, etc. Maybe if the venue only cost $300 then the organisers would put the extra back into the pot. Maybe it will be put aside to offset some later event’s venue fee, so the entry fees can be reduced. Maybe they wouldn’t, it’s entirely up to them.

Let’s assume this event is one of a string of events, and that there is some money put aside from previous events. Let’s also assume the entry fee for the next event is decreased because some of that money is used to lessen the blow from the venue hire. What would you think the outcome of this to be? Perhaps you’ll get a few more people coming along because it’s easier financially to justify. Maybe more people of a lower skill level, or even new people, who have no hope of winning any prizes but are still interested in giving it a go at the right price. People coming along for casuals, or just to check things out. Now instead consider the effects if the entry cost were the same, or even GREATER than previous events. What kind of message is being sent in each of these scenarios? How do the greater effects of these decisions affect how hard it is for a new player interested in starting, but not very sure of themselves?

There are of course alternative ways of benefitting the event itself with the same money. You could for instance put the money back in as prizes, while leaving the entry fees at the original level. What kind of people is this more appealing to, compared with the approach of lowering the entry costs? Who will it benefit more? And how large a percentage of the players that attend? Again, what kind of message does this scenario send?

Clearly, there’s a sliding scale with the sweet spot somewhere between fees-so-cheap-you-lose-money and fees-so-high-you-have-money-to-burn, between attractive to new players, or competitive elitism. It’s really a philosophical standpoint: Would you rather foster a community with a large number of players with a wider skill set, or are you happy with fewer players who are considered ‘more competitive’? How much are you able to push the scale until numbers drop off, and how far are you willing to try?

Obviously there are compromises, usually based on time and money. But in general it comes down to the organisers’ time, and YOUR money. I suggest you make your opinions heard if you’d prefer some changes – if you’d really like to enter several games at some event but the game fee is putting you off, TELL the organisers. Then next time maybe there’ll be changes and you can play more of the games you want. Or if you’re put off coming to the event at ALL because of the cost, SAY THAT! It’s not a big effort, and could actually have pretty big changes as a result.

Discouraging lesser skilled players from even a major event with high pricing structure or any other method is like not allowing Equatorial Guinea to have an entrant in the Olympic Games; sure you’ll still get the Michael Phelpses of the world at your event, but you deny an Eric The Eel the experience of a lifetime, the inclusive community, and what I would argue is the TRUE essence of competition.

Fav Vids: #1 - 3s: Tokido vs Justin Wong, Evo 2k2

Game: Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike
Date: August 2002
Location: Los Angeles, USA
Players: Tokido, Justin Wong
Source: Evolution 2002 DVD

3s is an interesting game. Originally released mid 1999, after 2 fairly lukewarm prior entries in the Street Fighter 3 series, saying it was not initially well loved by the American audience would be an understatement. Even when I picked up a Dreamcast and a copy of the game in 2001 or so, the consensus on English speaking forums was that everyone hated the game. Personally, I really enjoyed it. It’s challenging in different ways that the Street Fighter 2 that I was used to, and has some interesting characters (although certainly there is a high proportion of freaks).

The general dislike for the game at that time can be seen in the 3 featured games for Evolution 2002: Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, Marvel vs Capcom 2, and Capcom vs SNK 2. No 3s in that lineup. However, as a side event, we were treated to a 5 on 5 exhibition match between 5 of the best competitors that the US could conjure up, and whoever from Japan had come along. The results were fairly unsurprising, the Americans got smashed. But to me, there was one match that particularly stood out from the rest. A match which opened my eyes as to what was possible with this game. Showed me the potential of a character that is now one of my favourite characters in Street Fighter.

Showed me Urien. Showed me the Aegis Reflector.

Chun Li was already obviously one of the best chars in the game, Justin had been using her to pretty good success in the US events he had entered with her. Amazing normals and one of the best supers in the game. She’s an absolute powerhouse.

Tokido made her look like a rag doll.

As far as I’m aware, this was the first time people in the west were really exposed to Urien’s unblockables. Certainly this setup was known as “The Tokido Setup” for a long time after this video. I know I had never seen it before, and most of the talk from the forums was of amazement. You can hear the reaction for yourself in the video.

Highlights:

0:04 – What the game is all about, really: meter building.
0:40 – It begins.
2:04 – A predictive EX Aegis which leads into tackles. Many tackles. And an unblockable. Oh, and death.

Short but sweet. I can’t imagine a better result from an exhibition match: showing an entire crowd something they’d never seen before, and knocking their socks off. Thanks, Tokido.