From: maestas@cs.arizona.edu (Mark Maestas)
Newsgroups: alt.games.sf2
Subject: Re: SFII Tournaments
Keywords: SFII
Date: 12 Jan 93 07:31:56 GMT
Organization: U of Arizona CS Dept, Tucson

In article <1993Jan11.235155.18033@leland.Stanford.EDU> inkblot@leland.Stanford.EDU (Thomas Calvin Cannon) writes:
>
>As far as I know....THERE IS NO (and has never been) a NATIONWIDE
>SFII TOURNAMENT. =)
>
>The biggest US tournament (that i've heard of) was the California State 
>championships, sponsored by CAPCOM USA.  There were two regional tournaments 
>(one for northern CA and one for southern CA) and the top four from each 
>of these met (in LA?) in the finals.
>
>---
>Tom Cannon

The southern CA tourney was in San Diego at a Yellow Brick Road arcade (the
ones owned by Capcom).  A friend and I read about it in EGM 2 days before
it took place and with a little coaxing of our parents we made a road trip
to San Diego.  After about an hour of searching in the rain, we found the
Yellow Brick Road arcade (Haaa-le-lu-ia!).  Unfortunately, it was the wrong
one.  So we set off to see what kind of competition we were up against.
We arrived at the arcade the night before the tourney, and, of course, there
were many people practicing there.  Looking back, I remember wondering
"What the hell's a four-hit redizzy combo?" (hahhahaha, can you say "Don't
stand a chance of winning?").  Well, we entered anyway and after the arcade
closed, we set off to find a place to park and promptly slept in my car 
(which I don't advise unless you have a luxury car).  The next morning,
we went off to play for victory (or death would be more appropriate).
The setup was pretty cool -- there were 10 monitors hooked up to the
10 games in the back and some rows of chairs for the spectators to see
all of the matches.  To make a long story short, I lost my first fight,
won my second, and had to wait for an annoying three 'byes' for my next fight
(which I lost).  I had lost (and due to the stupid 'byes' that I had, I
was too far up the ladder to be able to participate in the beginner's
tournament -- AAARRGGG!!).  (Un)forunately, i couldn't stay for the finals 
there the next day due to a shortage of funds, so we headed home, discussing 
our new insights into SFII (and we got to drive through a cloud when we were
going through the Rockies!).  Well, at least I got a T-Shirt (with crappy 
artwork) and a poster (with cool Japanimation artwork on the front, but it
had crappy artwork on the back to make up for it-- Ryu looked like he was 
retaining water and Guile had this teeny little head).  But most importantly, 
I learned a lot more about the game and got to fight some real competition 
(Phoenix was beggining to evolve into a good area to play Street Fighter, but 
it wasn't quite there yet).

     Since then I have gotten a lot better and have learned quite a bit both
on my own and from the net.  After all those years (it seemed so long ago),
I still think that Street Fighter (Hyper Fighting) is number one.  It's
kind of funny how a game that started as a choppy fighting game (with cool
pads that you could hit harder to do more damage) has become what it is today.
Always imitated, but never duplicated...

     Side note:  The one time I actually got to Sagat on SFI, I couldn't beat
him because I was too tired from beating the pads trying to beat the other
9 fighters.  Needless to say, the side of my hand was pretty numb (maybe
it was Capcom's way of giving me a "Karate Kid" lesson on doing karate chops
and palm-heel strikes). 

     Anyway, It's been so long since I've had a chance to post here... I'm
glad I'm back.

                                Mark "Terminator" Maestas 
                                maestas@cs.arizona.edu
 "Hasta la vista, baby." - [8^! 
Newsgroups: alt.games.sf2