Capcom vs SNK 2 was released in August of 2001. Street Fighter IV hit consoles in February of 2009. Between 2001 and 2009, Capcom gave us Hyper Street Fighter 2, SVC Chaos, Capcom Fighting Evolution, Street Fighter Alpha Anthology, and various handheld ports such as Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max and Darkstalkers Chronicle.
None of these titles made a significant mark on the competitive scene. None of them really mattered. Yet somehow the fighting game community survived for almost a decade without a new release worth supporting in tournament play.
We steadfastly, stubbornly stuck by MvC2, SF3:3S, CvS2, and SSF2T – somehow managing to help grow Evo attendance numbers each and every year. That’s because one of the most remarkable things about the fighting game community is that when a new version of Street Fighter is bad, we know to play the old one instead. Pretty cool, right?
In retrospect, this approach was nothing short of miraculous. SFA2 and SFA3 got us through the disappointment of the SF3 series. MvC2 kept the community strong through the debacle that was CvS1, until CvS2 repaired most of the damage done by CvS1. Then SF3:3S started becoming good and carrying its own weight. And Super Turbo was there all along.
Then we were given nothing for eight years. It would’ve been so easy to become disillusioned and quit, but enough of us stuck together to define our hobby on our own terms. Let’s not lose that culture of self-reliance now. We don’t have to keep playing Street Fighter X Tekken or any new game if it doesn’t meet our standards.
Don’t get me wrong – SFxT is still a great product for fans of the SF4 series. It’s all your favorite characters thrown into an entirely new setting, paired with awesome rivals from another franchise. That makes SFxT fun to explore in the same vein as CvS2 players enjoyed the chance to try Aegis Reflector combos with Guile in Capcom Fighting Evolution.
Unfortunately the reality is, it takes an extreme level of polish (and a huge dose of luck) to put out a solid tournament-quality fighting game. Personally i think it’s worth supporting Capcom for taking an honest stab at it. You should totally buy SFxT and try it out for a month or two!
However if the game simply can’t hold up to rigorous competitive play, there’s nothing wrong with shifting our attention back to the last version that passed the test. The SF4 series might have gone a little overboard with comeback mechanics and option select madness, but otherwise Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition Ver. 2012 is a truly legit tournament game.
So if you’re tired of SFxT’s gems and infinites, why not go back to SF4? Or try Skullgirls. Just remember, the choice is ours.
Lately i’ve been seeing a lot of complaints about SFxT posted on SRK and twitter. Guess it doesn’t seem like that big a deal to me. We can always go back and play a bunch of proven classic fighting games. You can’t expect Capcom to get it right every time, but it’s not the end of the world.
I’d like to believe that the FGC still has the ability to adapt and survive by supporting whichever game we actually want to be playing. I always thought that was one of the coolest things about this community. A lot of other player bases automatically migrate over to the newest releases just to chase after sponsored tournament pots or sparkly new graphics, even if the game is crap. Maybe i’m being nostalgic, but i hope that’s not our future.
I’ve actually been trying to tell people this. Brace yourself, apparently saying that you don’t have to play a game you don’t like gets everyone who’s hell bent on hating the game to label you as a “capcop”. I’m quicker to try and convince someone that MK Armageddon was a good game before I will SFxTK, but GameFAQs is convinced I defend Capcom to the grave. Quite amusing.
If someone wanted to accuse me of being partial to Capcom games, i doubt i could defend myself at this point. That ship sailed a long time ago.
But that’s not what this is about. To be absolutely clear, i’m not saying, “If you don’t like SFxT then we don’t want you here.”
I’m saying the exact opposite: If you don’t like SFxT, please stick around and play the last fighting game that you enjoyed – or learn to play UMvC3, or even try Super Turbo to see why the old-timers like it so much! I guarantee you’ll always be able to find good competition still playing “the classics.”
I just think it’s really cool that the FGC is defined by the players first, and the games second. I hope it stays that way.
I’m not saying there is anything wrong with being partial to Capcom games, and I’m not saying if they don’t like SFxTK they should leave forever either. I also have had my share of fun with SFxTK since it came out, and can enjoy a game even if I feel like its a competitive nightmare. I would like to think thats another cool thing about the REAL FGC (IE not GameFAQs). They took SSBM and turned it into an actual fighting game FFS, the FGC can do the same with SFxTK with its shenanigans.
i’m actually more surprised at the people who LOVE sfxt… from a perspective of a gamer who has been around the fighting game community and has seen the games evolve the past 15 years, it makes me sad that a fighting game the caliber of sfxt is still being released.
it’s a fun game, and i think it has huge potentials, but in it’s current form just not even close to being competitive.
the numbers speak for themselves – last tournament i went, sfxt had FOUR registrants.
making sfxt teams at evo is probably not helpful but regardless, i’m sure many many of them regret entering that game now. more to follow in the coming months for sure. :)
Whatever happens with SFxTK, it’ll be for the best. The more stuff the FGC finds out about it, the closer we’ll get to seeing if it can hold its own in this new age. And a little patching wouldn’t hurt, either. Has Kazuya’s restand infinite been patched out yet?
(BTW, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Kazuya usually a broken character in Tekken? If so, then we all should have seen that one coming >_>)
I think Kazuya is always really good in Tekken for the same reason Ryu is always really good (minus a few games here and there, but even in CvS2 in the right hands Ryu with a run groove was great), its the base character design combined with how long they’ve been around. Capcom and Namco know how to make that character.
@N00b_Saib0t
I’m only a casual Tekken player, but I’m pretty sure he’s nowhere near top tier in T6:BR.
And Ryu is nowhere near top tier in several of the games he’s in. I wasn’t trying to say they’re always godly, just that they’re never really bad, and why I think it happens that way.
I don’t know how related this question is, but I’ve been wondering something that just came to mind while reading this article about new and old games. I’m, what most would call, an “09er”, in that I started getting even remotely competitive with the advent of SFIV, and I played it almost completely exclusively for a very long time.
But last year, I finally decided I should try other games out, and now I enjoy playing a huge list of games, including SFxT, ST, 3s, Soul Calibur 5, SFIV still, and probably most of all, Skullgirls. And while the games are all extremely different, I feel like, as I improve in one game, I somehow start to play better in other games, but in different ways. Like, right now, I play Skullgirls the most, and I would say it’s the most taxing game for me, in general, both mechanically and mentally. But I went back to AE the other day, after months of not playing it, and I was somehow able to beat people I couldn’t beat before, and in ways I never played AE before, reacting to the fastest moves in a different way than I ever used to before. So I was wondering, do you think it’s a good idea for a player to play a lot of different games at once? I know different people have different viewpoints on this matter, so I’d like to hear what you think on it.
Also, great articles, man! I went back and read a lot of them! It’s like I just discovered the philosopher’s stone of fighting games or something lol.
I’d say that’s true for basically everyone except maybe top players. Fighting games share a lot of fundamental concepts like spacing, footsies, offensive timing, defensive composure, pattern building, pattern recognition, lifebar management, meter management, clock management, matchup analysis, etc. There’s also a great deal of competitive psychology that you have to learn in order to accurately identify player tendencies and read their state of mind.
Unfortunately what tends to happen is that if you play the same game for too long, it’s easy to get stuck in a rut. You can sink into a routine and stop looking at the game with an open mind. (This happens in all creative endeavors.)
Sometimes you just need a change of scenery to keep your mind fresh. To me, that’s the biggest advantage of playing multiple games – or even temporarily switching to a new game every once in a while.
It really doesn’t matter whether you learn to predict tick-throws in SSF4AE2012 or SSF2T or Skullgirls, right? Once you figure it out, that concept will be with you forever. If you’re having trouble defending against throws in your “main” game, it might be easier to pick up another game and start fresh from a different angle.
Plus, each game emphasizes a few specific areas of the fighting game spectrum. For example, SF4 kind of does a bad job of teaching defensive composure, because you can option select your way out of so many tough situations. You don’t really have to think too hard about what your opponent is trying to do.
If you play MvC3 or Skullgirls, it’s a completely different feeling because you’re kind of terrified of resets/mixups all the time. It forces you to face that challenge and become comfortable with it on a much tougher level.
Then you can go back to SF4 and those same mixups won’t seem so scary, which allows you to see your opponent’s intentions to a much greater degree of nuance. Instead of thinking “Damn he’s right next to me, i gotta mash throw tech” you’ll start thinking “This guy always throws after two low jabs, so next time i should be ready to uppercut!”
So i’d say it always helps to learn a second game. Think of it as learning a second language; helps expand your horizons.
The only time this might change is if you become an Evo top 8 class player, in which case you might want to spend all your time learning every technical details of a single game. But i don’t even think that’s true anymore, because all those dudes play multiple games now.
@Maj
Cool, thanks for that insight! I don’t feel so bad for dabbling in so many games anymore.
I assume the same could hold true in trying out different characters outside your “main” once in a while? In an interview, I read (or heard? I can’t remember) that whenever Pyrolee was on a bit of a rut in his 3s gameplay, he’d switch to a different character for a little while, then go back to Yun and start dominating it again.
Yup, switching characters works too. When i start to zone out after an hour of playing Super Turbo, sometimes i’ll pick a random character like Fei Long or T.Hawk just to give myself (and my opponent) something different to think about.
Street Fighter X Tekken is not a tournament game? i don’t know and personally i don’t care. The thing that matters to me is fun and Street Fighter X Tekken is ridiculously fun imo. Kind of reminds me of the day i bought Megaman X for the SNES- a guy told me that “it is just shooting enemies”. I been playing videogames for 27 years now and a lot of times i hear complains about graphics, mechanics, how hard to play is X game, or just people hating something for being mainstream, but no one talks about fun.
Sure, if you’re still having fun with SFxT, keep doing what you’re doing. It’s a little harder to maintain that enthusiasm in a competitive setting when the game mechanics or balance aren’t holding up their end of the bargain. Losing to the same dumb thing every day can get old after a while.
But there’s always people who fall in love with virtually every random game and try to keep it alive long after everyone else has decided to move on. If you’re one of those people and you don’t mind your favorite game losing tournament support and not being represented at Evo, then more power to you. By all means, keep playing whatever you enjoy.