Orochinagi: The King of Fighters

What follows is a few observations that came to mind after attending a few XII sessions in London, ultimately a commentary on the utility of a fighting game community.

YOU’RE ONLY AS GOOD AS THE PEOPLE YOU PLAY

NeoEmpire staged two XII sessions about a month apart, with good turnouts, a few PS3 setups and custom stick mayhem.  More importantly we saw new people playing the game for the first time; those who returned for the second session had definitely improved. As the saying goes: You’re only as good as the people you play.  With poor netcode, our players can only get better by meeting physically, and this takes time and expense.  With a lot of the older players who have jobs and personal lives to juggle, this makes things even more difficult and keeps our overall level down.  Looking at the difference in performance between the two NE sessions, with players like Aion and Rory making large jumps in prowess, the importance of constant match ups is obvious.

Playing the CPU will not prepare you for fighting a human opponent, and playing online with lag certainly is no subsitute for the training of reflexes needed to handle Iori hopping all over your face in real time.  If you want to get good, you need to organise meetings at Goodge St or at whoever’s home will accomodate.  Swap telephone numbers, even PSN/Xbox live IDs, as any human play is better than none.  Brits can be a bit embarrassed to go these lengths, but the cost to their ability is more of a shame, in my opinion.

I’ve been organising a few sessions at my college with a much younger crowd (17+).  No matter how much they pleaded, SFIV was banned.  I introduced XII; it went down quite well, although 90% in attendance could barely throw a fireball.  When I thought back to myself at that level, I remember how long it took to get the hang of performing fwd, dwn, dwn-fwd.  I was about 17 and it took many days and coins to get anywhere near proficient.  I was at the arcade daily.  I would practice on my Megadrive 3 button stick before the game was even announced for that console.  I’d say it took at least a year to get anywhere near competitive level, and a whole load of coins.

Come to skool to learn KOF!

I fear this generation, with the multitude of distractions that consoles offer, will not put that time into a game unless there’s a definite reward, but why bother when they could play any of the other billion button mashing games that could be thrown away after five minutes before settling on football or GTA?  The reward can only be found in community recognition, again reinforcing its value.

I loaned XII to one student, who brought it back after the weekend and didn’t want it back, not because of the game, but because of the lack of opponents online.  I’m not even going to point the finger here.  I remember hunting down challenges in my area, looking for new tactics which I could then bring back to my locality (for the advantage!).  Forums weren’t around at this point but the fact remains, online or not, without a community to support a game, it will certainly die.

The task I’m faced with now is trying to close the gap between two different generations and communities.  There are a few players at college that I’d like to coach, but I’m not sure I can come up with a good incentive… As for Orochinagi.com, it was a fine meeting of east and west, with fans from Singapore, Pakistan, France, Sweden and of course the US coming to discuss KOF, only problem was a physical or online match was not exactly easy to organise.

PLAY YOUR OPPONENT, NOT YOURSELF

Back at college, we were using the department’s 360.  The pads were atrocious.  To keep the queue busy, 98 had been set up on a ps2, and obviously with my sticks in place and ps2 pads, there were no complaints.  Interestingly, many of the 98 cast were recognisable to the players due to MUGEN…!

Mugen surely has its good points but the problem is that many kids want to make some uber powerful character which only needs to do QCF + P to win the game, leading to spamfests and a lack of any learning of how to actually play a fighting game.  Pretty laser beams yes, quick thrills, yes, skills, no.

There is a fury or panic that takes over when I play (badly), encompassing either an urge to completely obliterate the opponent or in the other extreme, try to block in the right direction.  These two states of mind are the ones that your opponent want you to be in.  Games that allow button bashing to win only encourage these mentalities, which in turn create low level players.

The player that wants to be good has to stop thinking about the kick that they want to land in the opponents face and consider when there will actually be an opening to do so.  To do this, you need to be trying to predict what the opponent will do next.  This is obvious to any veteran, but to a young noob, probably having enough battles with ADHD, their self esteem etc… it’s probably an alien concept.  I was probably the same.  I have more detailed notes on this but I think you get the point.  I can only stress, a community that has older players to pass on advice, with youngsters that are willing to listen, will flourish and increase the overall level.

Another thing I noted with physical meetings (with mature players) is that you can have a proper conversation about the technical aspect of the game.  Online fighting games can be just as good with a lobby area with spectator features so that players can actually discuss matters, but the problem is that the Internet is full of retards and quick thrill-seeking adolescents.  We can only sort this out with a tight community, with regulated rooms and so forth.  Physical meetings are generally better, considering that little shit will think twice about calling you various names just because you beat him, when all your friends are standing around.

What does the future hold for the new skool?  Only a cohesive intelligent community will bring their level out of the button bashing dirt.  Divided, we might as well be conquered.  The old skool, with a sprinkling of new blood, is seeing their community become stronger and stronger.  If you really want to level up, find yours.