The Decision: Entering A Super Street Fighter IV Tournament?

My girlfriend and I will be attending FanExpo this year. Neither of us have ever gone to a convention before (or done anything this nerdy before) but between the two of us, there is enough cool stuff to see and do there for that whole weekend. We’re both really excited to be a part of the experience.

One of those experiences includes a few game tournaments. I know I have no business in the Modern Warfare 2 tournament and the existence of a competitive Smash Bros. scene still baffles me. However, I’m heavily debating in my head whether or not I should throw my name in the hat for the Super Street Fighter IV tourney. Maybe by writing down my thought process I’ll come to a decision.

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Early Impressions on the Hori Tekken 6 Stick

Hori has been known as a top name in the arcade fight stick scene for a while now. Unfortunately, my first experience with Hori products was awful. My Hori EX 2 broke within an hour of owning it, which I fully documented on this very blog.

So it was fair that I was a bit hesitant in picking up this limited edition Tekken 6 bundle that comes with a Hori stick. If I wasn’t able to buy this for 60% off the original price, I probably wouldn’t have given this a shot.

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Pick Up Post: Tekken 6 Limited Edition

Up until the rumored announcement of a Namco and Capcom, I didn’t think I would ever own Tekken anything. From my few times playing Tekken games, the gameplay just didn’t appeal to me.

With that said, I now have the limited edition Tekken 6 bundle with fight stick in my house. Huh?
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Pick Up Post: Jam TE

My birthday just passed yesterday. While I’m past the point of gift-hording from everyone I know, my girlfriend was wonderful enough to spoil me on my special day. I got a few CDs, a 13-month subscription to XBOX Live and the piece of awesome picture above that you can read about if you hit the link.

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Hori EX 2 Was An Epic Fail

I’m not new to this whole video game hardware failure thing. It’s frustrating every single time. Going into this, I knew I was getting an entry-level arcade joystick, but the relatively positive reviews and the trusted Hori brand name led me to believe that I was getting a “good enough” joystick to start with.

So much for that thought.

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Pick Up Post: I Got The Magic Stick

After months of deliberation, I have finally decided to purchase an arcade joystick. With the release of Super Street Fighter IV happening in a few days (and Marvel vs. Capcom 3 having just been announced), I figured now would be the right time to finally give this arcade joystick thing a shot. As a long-time pad player who has always struggled with joysticks in the arcade, this is a bit of a risky investment. The market for joysticks varies wildly, as the prices can go as low as $30 and as high as $200 for products that do the exact same thing. All of the joysticks also vary wildly in features, build quality and the ability to fix/mod the joystick yourself.

As much as I would like to immediately jump to the top-of-the-line MadCatz TE stick, I’m not ready to invest $200 on a controller that I may never find as comfortable as a regular controller. With everything taken into consideration, I ended up putting down the money on this arcade joystick.

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I (Don’t) Like To Move It

Yesterday at the Game Developer Conference, Sony finally announced the name and some more details about their new motion controller. The controller (and sub-controller) are now known as the Playstation Move. I’m not going to go into details about how the thing works, or what games were just announced to support it, but I’ll be happy to direct you to places that have that type of information.

What I wanted to do is use this announcement as a jump-off point for my current perceptions of motion control. Back in 2006, I was all aboard the motion control train. With Nintendo – my favourite game company – backing this technology, there was nothing that could go wrong, right? Wrong.
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Lost In Translation

Over the weekend, I was out with my girlfriend on a date that partially consisted of a trip to the local…I’m hesitant to call it an “arcade”, cause it’s more of an amusement place with lots of arcade games in it. Semantics aside, they had a Street Fighter IV arcade machine there. This is significant because Capcom never made a North American arcade version, so this place actually imported a machine (not the one above, but something like it). I didn’t think this place in particular would do that, but there it was and I had to give it a go.