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.

Best of NZism: Wombo Combo!

NZism had several really great topics in its time, and I’m going to start highlighting them with a recurring feature called, imaginatively, the Best of NZism.

Feel free to contact me requesting certain topics, once they get enough interest (or I get desperate enough), I’ll probably whack it up for you :)

Note that while you can log into the forum with your old NZism account, and it looks very similar, you really can’t use it in any real fashion¹. No posts, no profile editing. It’s currently just a vehicle for this Best of series.

So, which thread is the first to feature? (I’m sure it’s no surprise to anyone):

Wombo Combo!

From the results of my incredibly lacklustre voting process, this 109 page behemoth of random images, stories, and videos is the thread most pined for. Started by Pinolicious with a fairly well known Smash Bros vid (which I still don’t understand at all), Wombo Combo quickly became the fastest moving, the most degenerate, and the most hilarious thread on the site. Unfortunately quite a few of the images and youtube vids have since disappeared, but what’s left is still a great way to waste some time.

Of course, it’s really just an archive of various amusing things the users found on the internet over the year and a half since Wombo Combo graced us with its presence (I checked, and it WAS on a Tuesday). Pretty much the only original content came from the inimitable Birry Wong, generally promoting the various new music videos by NZism’s notorious resident fan artist and part-time Nigerian rapper Samurai Black. He’s notorious because he’s black.

So, if you’ve ever got a few hours to waste, have a rifle through the pages of Wombo Combo and you’re sure to find something which amuses you. Or offends you. Either way, mission completed.

¹ While I’ve been getting quite a few requests to put NZism’s old forum back up, and I acknowledge I probably made the wrong decision taking NZism down as hastily as I did (how was I to know the forum implementation at standingfierce was missing some crucial features?), I’m really in two minds about whether to reinstate it and just let you guys back at it, or whether I should tell you just to stick with standingfierce until they get things sorted. If I get enough feedback demanding the old NZism forums back I’ll probably do it.

Future Power People

So after all that history, where to from here?

Well, I have lots of ideas for content, I just didn’t have the enthusiasm to write it for the old NZism any more. And I certainly didn’t get any invites from standing fiafierce to contribute to their site, so I’m going to post stuff here.

Expect fairly regular updates on all kinds of fighting game and NZ scene related topics. You may know me as a fellow who’s not afraid to voice his opinion, and you can expect that to continue, except this time I feel free and invigorated, and more positive than I have for a long time.

There’ll be videos, strategy, guides, art, long rambling opinion posts, nostalgia, all kinds of stuff. I think it’ll be a fairly interesting place to visit (or at least add to your RSS feeds) :) Obviously this design isn’t final, I’ve been itching to get writing things so have only put up the basics at the moment. The look and feel will evolve a lot over time.

And if anyone likes what they see and would like to contribute too in any way, flick me an email and we’ll get talking!

Viva la NZism!

edit

Oh, and some people have asked if I’m still going to be part of “the community”. Right now I don’t feel very welcome or inclined to participate in the new forums or community, and I think that’s probably best for both parties. I’m still keen to play games with people, mainly GGPO for some HF/ST/A2, and hopefully some MK if the netcode gets a good patch. I may show up to some events briefly, but I doubt I’ll be entering any comps, I just don’t get any match-up experience anywhere (since no-one plays the big games online) to make it worthwhile, and I don’t even know if I’d be welcome at after-tournament gatherings anymore. You can find me on IRCthough for sure.

History part two

So here I was very unhappy and not in a position to practically do anything.

Clearly something had to change, and I was willing to give up my stake in the site for the good of it. I made a post outlining my desire to find a replacement admin for NZism. I even got a few replies, which I replied to with reasonably positive feelings about the candidates. One said he’d talk to the Auckland crew to see how they felt.

This was, I believe, the gestation of the standing fierce site. I presume there was talk of whether it would be better to take over NZism, or make a separate entity to deal with the events side, so they could do all that they could have a more hands on approach with a site, and leave NZism to deal with the rest. After which they decided on the latter course, and the email referred to in my previous post was written.

Personally I would have thought the goodwill and clout that the name and spirit of NZism had (I had written several interviews and articles for websites and magazines, the name was definitely out there) would have made it at least somewhat attractive to take over. Apparently there were some issues with sponsorship under the title NZism due to some failed efforts previously, although seeing as they ALREADY had some sponsors using NZism as a cover I find that slightly hard to believe.

I do believe there was intention to contact me further about the two sites and how they would interact. At one point in the IRC channel at #NZism I made a flippant joke about “Aucklandism” and perhaps that got the relationship on the wrong foot, although from what I understand there was still intention to contact me even after this. Why this never happened I really don’t know. I assume they thought I would be too much hassle to deal with or something.

Due to all the dramas and dealings in the past, I didn’t particularly feel it was my place to push the issue. For all I knew it was still a pipe dream and the launch time frame was way off. Additionally I had no idea who was actually involved in the project, although I had some educated guesses. I even made some probing investigations with people I thought would know something, but they weren’t able to give me anything. So I shared the email with a close friend because I wanted someone else’s take on the whole thing.

I also believe the initial intention of having the two sites coexist was truthful. Obviously however this changed as time went on, I don’t really have any guesses as to why. Maybe because if they were going as far as they were, might as well go the rest of the way too. Maybe they simply didn’t want to deal with me at all anymore (which certainly fits with other evidence about general communication).

So, when the site appeared, taking all this into account I redirected NZism to standingfierce and people were surprised. I hope these longwinded diatribes give people some insight into why it happened.

I’m sorry to the people that aren’t particularly enthusiastic about signing up to a new site, or having to start new threads to make up for the old ones, or having their content disappear. On the last part at least I have some plans that might make you less unhappy. The others I suppose you have to weigh that up yourself. In time I’m sure standingfierce will be enticing enough member wise, feature wise, or thread wise that you will just decide to join anyway. It’s not really that big an effort, and it’s a community of people you already know.

Seeing people ask why the NZism posts weren’t migrated across was both cute and a bit sad. However, it would have undoubtedly been too much work, and clearly no-one asked me about it anyway. The posts responding to what happened (including in the NZism thread) are kind of amusing. Its a bit hard to read some of them with a straight face.

Looking back on it all, I can’t help but feel very sad. Knowing the difference between the enthusiasm and positivity I felt at the start, to the exact opposite I was feeling by the end, is truly depressing. I’m also very sad at how things ended, some people I considered pretty good friends seem to have left me in the dust, but perhaps I brought that upon myself.

To anyone that I had personal problems with at some point, think back to whenever we first met and how I behaved then. I am always inclusive and friendly with people until they give me reason to be otherwise. And it wasn’t just a me-vs-them thing, other people have problems with them too. Sometimes it was personality, sometimes lack of insight into the community while strangely being in an elevated position of power, or even both. All I can say is I wasn’t alone in the way I felt about certain people. There’s only really one person who I have any beef with now though.

Of course, sometimes I had little disagreements and quibbles with various people. This is completely to be expected when people are passionate about a subject, but I think some people got the wrong idea because of the impersonal nature of the internet, the lack of ability to meet up and sort things out really hurt. I also have no problem apologizing after a debate or whatever when I feel it necessary, I think that’s an important part of clearing the air, and I did it several times.

With all that in mind, I would like to thank a few people.

Andy, for running that first tournament and starting it all off. It provided the kick start that the community really needed, and I’m not sure anyone else would have stepped up to actually do it.

Lenny, for keeping things going, and producing the period I consider NZism’s golden era, with interesting, useful, and popular events that were run regularly and well.

Cpt Munta, for showing that NZ isn’t just Auckland and nothing else. I honestly think that in NZ you have the best philosophy on how to run a community and events. I’ll expand on this in a later article, but just know you have my full support.

And thanks to the people that supported the events and showed up, and was active in the community. That’s what it’s all about really.

next: the future

History part one

Here’s a much more personal account of the history of NZism. First off, if you haven’t read the previous post explaining the facts about NZism’s demise, go read them here. That was a factual account. This one is going to have a lot more presumption and ‘feeling’ in it. So take that into account, because I’m sure some of it is wrong, but I have no reason currently to suppose otherwise.

Here’s me in 2007. I’d been intently following the fighting game scene for a decade and been interested in them for most of my life. I’d been aware of OzHadou for a good while and thought that there was absolutely no reason why something similar couldn’t work in NZ as well, so I decided to use my enthusiasm, technical know-how and obsession to mimic it. I really had no particular outcome in mind, and was perfectly happy to simply let it evolve as slowly and for as long as I still had interest, which I certainly didn’t see ending for a very long time indeed.

Uptake was pretty slow, but I was fine with that. The people that joined the site were mainly MvC2 enthusiasts and that was a game with plenty to talk about.

A couple of years later Street Fighter 4 was released and that really kicked things off, the world over and for NZism also. Andy (Zosla), with some assistance from NZism, ran the first SF4 tournament in Auckland and that showed me that things were getting real, and that the community could be something big with some effort. I don’t live in Auckland so it was necessary for some local people up there to organise the events and do some foot work, but I was highly involved in the tournaments themselves. My goal was always to have simple, player focussed events, with all the money going back into the event itself. Several times I paid part of the venue fee myself just so the pot was a bit bigger.

A year and a half or so after that and things were a little different, the excellent venue we were at previously (RvB, R.I.P.) was gone, some personal problems around the site/community arose and my spirits weren’t quite as high as they once were. Lenny was holding down the fort, although I helped out wherever possible.

After a while Lenny couldn’t devote as much time to running things up in Auckland and so some other people got involved to help out/take over. This is where I personally lost touch, because they obviously could have meetings in person and nut details out, but I couldn’t possibly attend.

I didn’t really handle that very well. I put a lot of myself into NZism over the years, and losing control of the direction it was taking was very hard for me. Several reasonably fundamental differences in approach were implemented that didn’t sit with my vision of the site and community, and there wasn’t really much I could do about it other than pitch my opinion in, which was generally worded poorly due to my reaction to the position I was in. Suffice to say it didn’t improve things, which kind of made me resent the situation even more.

It got to the point where I even felt the need to make an alternate account so that random new people didn’t the the idea that the admin was just some grumpy hater that argued with everyone. Switching accounts like that helped a good deal.

What most of you won’t know is that I had planned to considerably overhaul the website for about a year by this point, however it all hinged on getting an updated logo. This turned out to be a much bigger task than I thought possible, considering the number of artists and graphic designers in the community. After roughly a year and a half I had 4 concepts, but the art guys were busy so I couldn’t really get any further. I’m not blaming anyone here, but I feel that being unable to finalise the logo held the site back a great deal, as I was loathe to put much effort into the site when I was intending to change everything anyway.

Meanwhile, further disagreements were occurring between myself and the admin team, including about events sponsorship, which I had no part in and didn’t see the point of. The turning point of everything as I see it is when I made a post under my alternate account detailing a really good deal from a NZ online store, as a service to the users. I was told that as an admin, regardless of which account I was using, I was not to post anything about competitors to the sponsor. Note that the sponsor was never associated with the site itself, there was no sponsor advertising on the site, and no agreement by myself with the sponsor whatsoever. I saw this as an absolute affront, as lack of censorship was one of my guidelines for NZism, but by this time my influence was weak enough and there had been enough drama over the months that I decided to remove my own ability to even read the events admin forum and just leave them to it. It was that or become increasingly angry every time I read something due to feeling unable to speak my mind without causing yet another a crapstorm.

It’s pretty hard for a organisation/site team to continue in that fashion. Clearly something had to change.

next: the continued history, the future

The End of Days

Right.

So I’m sure a few of you are wondering what happened to NZism, or at least why it disappeared so abruptly.

This account is going to be entirely factual, I’ll leave the expanded version with a bit more emotion and drama for a slightly later post.

For a year or so the events up in Auckland have been run under the NZism banner by a group of people with little to no input from me, due to various reasons. While that is perfectly fine (and for them was no doubt even beneficial), as admin and the founder of NZism, the lack of involvement and even communication seriously impacted on the intended utility of the site, and didn’t do justice to their events either.

A month and a half ago I received an email stating that the former NZism tournament organisers were going to split off a website with the intention of making things easier for the both of us. In particular, sponsorship and autonomy for them (and the liability it entails), and lack of sponsorship (and lack of liability) for NZism. I was assured that the sites would be complementary, their site specific to their events and articles, and NZism for maintaining the ‘community aspect’.

Since then, I have not been contacted further about any aspects whatsoever of the new site, or its possible interaction with NZism, even to this moment in time. I had been proceeding with the intention of ‘rebooting’ NZism in the near future when the new version of the forum software it ran on was released, with many new features, blogs, media integration, social networking integration, like/dislike etc. And likely a complete forum wipe too, because there was a LOT of cruft, and a fresh start would have been nice (although the membership would have carried across so you wouldn’t have had to sign up again).

This past weekend saw the Random Ultra tournament event run by the same group of organisers. You may notice a lack of any NZism logo on the poster, only a text URL for further details, which I have no complaints about, but it shows the direction and fracture between the two parties. No front page news post was made on NZism either, which is usually something done for events by the organisers (although I’ll be the first to admit that the front page was sorely in need of overhaul and regular updates). So the link presented on the poster didn’t actually lead to any obvious further details anyway.

After a tournament has finished, generally a post is made with results and feedback. This did not occur, and I was a little surprised. Through a friend, I knew that the website under development was to be at standingfierce.com, so I thought “wonder what they’ve gotten up to”, expecting to find a password protected page.

What I found was a site with much larger ambitions than I was informed of.

Blogs and articles is one thing, although some of what I saw contents wise surprised me. Social networking integration is hardly rocket science for people trying to gain awareness of events. Google calendar integration is equally obvious, and something NZism had for years. A forum was mentioned in the email solely as a place to comment on their content. It was certainly not described as a practical carbon copy of the NZism forums (even to the point of restarting several of the more popular posts), which is what I saw. The intention and vision of the site was blatantly obvious, and equally obvious was that a group of people working together were serious about the site and organisation (for want of a better term). Which had not been happening with NZism for many many months.

I had had enough. Clearly there was no point in doing the NZism reboot that I was planning. So, rather than continue supporting NZism while the users slowly join standingfierce (which is absolutely inevitable), forcing unnecessary effort on both the admin staff on each site AND the users, I decided to simply close NZism and redirect to standingfierce, forcing users to switch and get used to the change. This was done with as much communication as had been afforded me, i.e. none, which is why the standingfierce admins were as surprised as NZism users were.

So that was the end of four and a half years of NZism as a community site.

next: Emotions, The Future.