17 Mar
This weekend I met up with a friend I play on X-Box Live who is located in Maryland, specifically so that we could both travel to Round 3 of the Gamestop Street Fighter IV tournament. He was kind enough to give me the lay of the land in that particular part of Maryland, though I’m not sure I’ll be able to take advantage of it in the future. A story for another time. I arrived at his home at around 11:16am, we talked over a few trivialities and I had a few warm up rounds before heading to the tournament location around 12:30pm.
When we arrived at the store, there was a video game music cover band tuning/warming up outside. They would be neglected for the better part of the day and they packed up rather quickly after the event ended. I imagine they were told to show up to spruce up the event, though that’s a rather meaningless gesture given the overall setup of the store and tournament. Specifically it being small and crammed with 32 people concerned with getting a free 150 dollar arcade stick and a free trip to San Fransisco. I liked their rendition of Mega Man music, though I’m not sure vg cover music is something I can really appreciate these days.
Walking past them, I located the tournament organizer/store manager and got the details of the tournament. The only important information obtained, other than the start time speculated as being about half an hour later than the scheduled time of 2:00pm, was that the tournament was going to be played on the 360 pad. With a feeling of disgust in the face of that prospect, I just resigned myself to the fact that I’d have to do my best. I had played on an arcade stick for the past 2 weeks. That was “I’m a sucker” moment number 1 for the day. After we were told there would be catered food was when “I’m a sucker: Part 2″ quickly debuted.
The sequel was better than the original in this case.
1 Mar
The location for Round 2 of the Gamestop Tournament was at the Mall here in Fredericksburg. It’s a location I was not familiar with until today. Thankfully, no one was in a rush to show up 30 minutes early, so I found myself waiting as the 4 other opponents I would play slowly trickled in. The only one to really catch my attention was the guy talking about how he’d been playing Street Fighter for 20 years. The competitive sort that I’ve met aren’t exactly ones to go announcing how long they’ve been in the scene and who they’re going to play as, nor do I know any who really mince details about Capcom having made a game “That was only released in Japan where they fought some other company.”
I don’t think they ever decided on whether it was Marvel vs Capcom, Capcom vs SNK, or Tatsunoko vs Capcom. At that point I really didn’t care about the details of what it was, I was just irritated. I wanted to play and see what I was up against or at least hear something as to what the guy was capable of other than “He’s really good!” Something the store manager told me with staunch enthusiasm. 20 Year Street Fighter Vet was apparently a local video game hero or some shit, at least that’s the vibe I was getting from everyone who pointed him out to me after I showed my certificate to participate and was identified as a round 1 qualifier.