« Out of Nowhere: SF2: CE tournament »

There have been a lot of fighting game tournaments in the Bay Area over the past few months and it seems like more are announced every couple of days. While most of these tournaments are focusing on the big, mainstream titles like SFIV and HD Remix occasionally something unusual pops up. This past Friday, July 24th, I had the opportunity to attend a small, 16 man, Street Fighter 2: Championship Edition tourney. The setup was a genuine old school CE cab planted right in the middle of a Berkeley resident's front yard. 

Pizza, soda, beer and the usual Street Fighter chat were going around, but the focus was all on that glowing CRT monitor. I had somehow forgotten how good the older games actually looked on their intended displays. The colors were bold and the chunky pixels took me back to the arcades I frequented in elementary and middle school. The controls had a familiar clunkiness and bad spots with one side being favorable to the other. When it came down to the start of the tournament it was more than obvious that some in attendance really knew their championship edition. These weren't just SFIV noobs coming out of the closet to try something old, these were people that practice CE to this day on GGPO and come from Super Turbo to represent older, stronger versions of the cast in all their two or three move glory. Guile and Bison were definitely the top tier here, though I did feel like my CE Vega could have stood a better chance with just a bit more practice.

Results:

1. The Unknown (Ryu)
2. Battosai (Guile)
3. Jarrod (Guile and Dictator)

Overall it was a refreshing break from the usual tournament atmosphere and made me wish all video games could be played on authentic hardware in the cool, summer breeze.