New fighter-oriented arcade opened in SF

[Milk Thistle]

No, I don't play standing up at home, but that is the appeal of an arcade. I don't know how old you are, but I'm 27. I missed the original heyday of arcades (early 80s), but caught the SF2 boom. One of the greatest times of my life. Standing up to me is part of the arcade experience. It can also be intimidating (well it was for me as I was 7, lol) It's just what you do. If I wanted to sit down, I'd be at home. Would it kill people to stand up? At least they would burn more calories, lol. I haven't been into arcade games since 1998 or so and this is one of the reasons why. In 2009 I worked by an arcade in Koreatown in LA and would play SF3 3rd Strike on a sitdown cabinet. Completely sucked half the life out of the experience.

The last tournament I competed in was in 1996/7 (not sure) and it was awesome (speaking of which, if the guy I played against then would play now, I'm sure he would win EVO, I've never seen anyone use Adon like him, ever). It was also pure stand up. When I turned 16, I got into bodybuilding and stopped playing video games except for on my spare time. When I got injured in 2007, I picked up the games again.

I watched EVO last year and all of the fun that I remember about tournaments was pretty much gone. It looked like playing at a friend's house. Now, I realize for the sake of cost it is better to do things like that, but it doesn't appeal to me. Then again, a lot of the things about tournament play modern day turn me off (no taunting being one of them, WTF???).

I own balls, they suck. They suck because of the way I grip the joystick. There is nothing a person could change about the balls because of the way I grip the joystick. I refuse to change as I have been gripping this way since I was at least 5. When I play gripping the ball, I feel like I'm operating a robot, having to be very precise. When I grip a bat, it feels much LESS like that, which is a big difference for me.

I'm sure I could do better, I did so in Japan. But that was Japan, I expected it and again made it feel like I was the away team.

Lord Tariq is out there, still being UPTOWN BABY!

Yeah I hear you about the Japan thing. I spent a lot of time over there and it got me adjusted to the Japanese sticks (mostly sanwa).

When I got home to the US I started preferring Seimitsu stuff. Then the next time I went back to Japan most of the cabs have sanwa, which totally throws my rhythm off since it feels like loose crap compared to seimistu.

It's like you have the setup you prefer at home, and then whatever you encounter in the wild, just sucks when the majority of the machines don't have the hardware you're used too.

And that's just sticks. As far as buttons go, I hate the sanwas, you breath on them and they trigger. Doesn't help that pretty much every machine in Japan uses the damn things.

At this point whenever I play on Happ hardware, it just feels strange. But back in the day I preferred the Happ competitions and the convex buttons, I still have those sticks, but they're giant tanks compared to my Madcatz TEs.

BTW you aren't far off from my arcade days. I'd say 92-98 was the mecca for me where I lived. Multiple arcades who all had the newest fighters, and there was always someone to play. I remember selling Mortal Kombat II code sheets/move lists at Tilt in the mall for 50 cents each. I'd sell a gang of them too, I'd always go up there with a new stack of them. Amazing the stuff you could pull when you had the internet in those early days.