Ranking battles commences

With the cabinet now fully operational at MCH, the 3rd Strike community had an ambitious plan to send someone to Japan to attend the last chance qualifiers for SBO. With that goal in mind, we held weekly tournaments called ranking battles (ranbats) and pooled the entry fees towards the cost of the air tickets to Japan.

For the 1st ranbat, we had just 7 people show up. Pretty pathetic after all our efforts at trying to lift the arcade scene, but we still persisted in hope of getting the community to recognise that a revival is possible.

archived ozhadou threads:
Announcement
Post-tourny talk

Visitor from Hong Kong - Edward

We had a Hong Kong player visiting us while on a debating tour. He plays Hugo and we had fun playing him at the new location MCH.

archived ozhadou thread:
http://www.ozhadou.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1407

The arrival of TSC

With the death of Playtime Sydney, the Sydney arcade community faltered. There was no more incentive to meet up and have some games. Although a few arcades around the city still provide revenues for fighting games, many of them are poorly maintained with shit sticks and controls. Jack was homeless and he had to do something. He got to know TSC from the ozhadou forums and they went about planning to revive the scene.

As Street Fighter 3rd strike is the only game in which they can play the initial consensus was to get a true arcade Versus cabinet with 3S and have it in a location which is accessible to everyone in Sydney.

Solidsnake hooked them up in a spot in Chinatown, a shop called May Chan Hiong (MCH). I felt like I was in a parellel universe because this shop is the famous pork floss (bakwa) brand 美珍香 in Singapore.

The 3rd Strike community was to a certain extent, struggling to revive the Playtime times, but we finally had a platform to start with. In addition to sourcing for the machines and game boards, TSC has repeatedly liase with foreign counterparts such as Tougeki SBO president Yamamoto in Japan. His selfless acts and sacrifices till this day amazes me to no end.

Thank you Daine, Tian and Jack.

archived ozhadou thread:
http://www.ozhadou.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1371

shaaaaa Osaka report

shaaaaaa hooked up with Oriku, a fellow Australian player and adversesolutions (American player) in Osaka , Japan. We are going global, I swear. To recap the first sentence, a Singapore player wrote this report about a Taiwan player in Australia who met with an Australian player in Japan together with an American player

Read up on his report about the arcades such as a-cho.

archived ozhadou thread:
http://www.ozhadou.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1293

Going console at OHN4

With Playtime no longer around, the organisers had to find a suitable venue and setup for hosting the Nationals. Games became a crictical issue as a traditional arcade was no longer available. Going console was the only logical but lamented choice the organisers had to make.

Controversy ensured. A lot of gamers got turned off by the idea of going console, arguing about the differences between arcade and console versions of various games. Some fighting games ported over to console versions deviate so much from their arcade version that they affect gameplay. For that reason alone, OHN4 had many prominent attendees missing from past years.

However, going console meant that now organisers had incredible flexbility to plan and execute tournaments. From the previous year of 4 available games to participate, OHN4 was bumped up to 9 games and Tekken 5 had a very strong showing.

archived ozhadou thread:
http://www.ozhadou.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1256
http://www.ozhadou.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1336

Taiwan 3rd Strike

Being a scheming Chinese, I got the travel agent to include a bonus round trip to Taiwan together with my Singapore air ticket. Wheeeeee 2 trips in 1. Although gaming wasn’t a priority I still somehow managed to locate where their local 3rd Strike scene was.

It was as though some divine being led me to that spot.

This place was called ‘GM’ which is located in an underground mall/subway called the Taipei City Mall. This place is a freaking maze I kid you not. In fact I spent one whole day wandering aimlessly around and stuffing myself full of Taiwan delicacies.

GM as it is affectionately known, is a shop that sells gaming merchandise such as magazines and music. Their 3S setup was basically superguns with console controllers at a corner of the shop. You can see someone playing a mile away if you are walking towards the shop as the players are seated outside. First up I met DA who was using Dudley. I casually asked whether the game is free to play since I see no coin slots and such. DA was very friendly and we got talking after a few games when he realised he’s not playing with a passer-by scrub.

The next few trips I got to meet many of Taiwan’s 3S players and I have to say I was very impressed with their standard of play. As I was able to speak mandarin, there was no language barrier and I thoroughly enjoyed their hospitality. 3 players stood out in my opinion, Larry(CH) ylc(HU) and Kasumi(YU). At the time my knowledge and comprehension of the game was still lacking, so my judgement might be flawed. One characteristic I notice their players had was eagerness to learn. Closely-knitted was the term best to describe their community. In one instance I witness their Ibuki player lost a close match bcos she fucked up a command dash -> supercancel jump into kunai super, then went to practise that very move in the other supergun setup. The winner actually went over and discussed the proper execution techniques and became the test dummy. 3rd Strike mooks (The 3S bible) was also glanced over after matches to check on frame data etc.

I didn’t impressed much as I lost a lot, but overall I was extremely happy I found their scene as I was able to share and learn some tips which I still apply today. Mayy (DU, UR) thank me profusely for sharing Urien tips and although it wasn’t much it was my way of thanking them for being such gracious hosts. I was also informed that I wasn’t the first overseas guest they had at GM, apparently a fellow Singaporean visited about 4 months before me … none other than Tin

Through some googling I finally found my Taiwan friends again and their 3S scene is alive and kicking. Check out http://nlp.cs.ntou.edu.tw/sf33rb/ for their ranking battle news and videos. If you can’t read Chinese just leave me some comments and I will translate it for you. The blurb below is for them:

台湾的朋友你们还好吗？谢谢您在2005年的热情接待,我是那个Urien跟Dudley的菜鸟，来自新加坡的建达(Cody)。这是我个人的日记，描述新加坡跟澳洲雪梨的3.3玩家。希望你们有很好的成绩，有缘再碰面玩3.3。