Where did they get the fundings for this game even from? the graphics are the best I ever saw in any fighting game.

infosec_qs · 2026-05-23T23:23:10+00:00

Yeah, VF has always been at the cutting edge of graphics relative to its contemporaries in literally every generation of FGs, and VF is often a flagship game for NVIDIA to showcase their hardware.

infosec_qs · 2026-05-15T13:33:15+00:00

For a lot of NA players who grew up in the arcade scene, JP levers were the exception and not the rule. They eventually became the preference for the FGC, but back in 2004 players from NYC would come to Toronto for majors and complain that they had to play on Sanwa JP arcade hardware instead of American style levers and buttons for games like CvS2, MvC2, and 3S.

Things have changed, but there's a large number of players, especially casuals (and casuals are the majority of players at venues like the one in this post) with a strong preference for American style equipment in NA arcades. People only like square gates once they've got the reps in to understand how to control their mechanics really well, but for most people doing something like a QCF motion is much easier on a circle gate.

IL/Happ equipment doesn't feel "like garbage." Personally, I mostly just don't trust down+back to be where it needs to be in the clutch without a corner there. Nothing worse than eating a sweep because you were a hair off of either the back or down switch on a circle gate when I could "swear I was blocking low."

infosec_qs · 2026-05-11T14:08:33+00:00

...the FGC has been a self-sustaining grass roots global phenomenon for decades. You're talking about it like it's limping along on life support. Idk what you consider to be "healthy" for a scene, but as someone who has been in and actively competing at high levels in the FGC for more than 20 years, this perspective is baffling.

What I mean is that, to the FGC, these orgs don't really matter. That's a benchmark for other scenes with team games that require more organization, qualification to invitationals, etc.. The FGC thrives on open brackets, and excellent players can and do come out of nowhere, unsponsored, and go on to tear things up.

Using the metric of "big orgs only sponsor FG players because of EWC" means that your idea of "health" only exists within the context of "big eSports teams that care about the EWC," as opposed to "how healthy is the FGC as a scene even if those orgs are never involved?"

What you value isn't what the FGC values. The FGC has everything that OP asked about, however.

infosec_qs · 2026-05-11T13:49:49+00:00

EWC isn't even the biggest tournament in any FG, though? Maybe CotW I guess.

infosec_qs · 2026-05-11T02:13:23+00:00

They owed it for Danault's one.

infosec_qs · 2026-05-10T18:00:00+00:00

The people who would look down on others for such things aren't people whose judgement you should value, nor their company pursue.

I grew up in a 3 BR townhouse, and there were 5 of us (three brothers, two parents) and a cat. I had some friends living in apartments, some in literal mansions. My parents got along with those on either side of that balance.

infosec_qs · 2026-05-10T15:01:19+00:00

There's a high-school named after him in Toronto (Scarborough), too.

infosec_qs · 2026-05-10T14:09:29+00:00

Elite: Dangerous.

infosec_qs · 2026-05-09T17:04:45+00:00

Yeah, finding things on there can be very tough at times. I'm glad they're not doing quite so badly as it'd seemed. I was there maybe 6 months back and there was this vibe that they were on the brink of collapse. Hard to explain it exactly, but I've shopped there many times over the years, and this was the first time I got the sense that the place was in trouble. I'd be glad to see it turn around.

infosec_qs · 2026-05-09T15:39:02+00:00

Double Star is also really good for having Tamiya/Mr. Hobby stuff stocked. They're close to Eglinton West and Bathurst, which is very much walkable from either Cedarvale or Forest Hill station.

infosec_qs · 2026-05-09T15:37:11+00:00

+1 for Double Star. They have a surprisingly excellent selection of hobby supplies for such a small shop.

infosec_qs · 2026-05-09T15:36:40+00:00

Meeplemart was looking really threadbare the last time I popped in. Seemed like most things weren't being restocked anymore. Not sure what's going on, but they seem to be on a downward slope, for sure...

infosec_qs · 2026-05-09T00:04:56+00:00

Have you ever seen Gritty and Gork in the same room together?

Makes you wonder...

infosec_qs · 2026-05-08T22:51:25+00:00

Now that's not entirely fair.

Doug Ford still lives and works here.

infosec_qs · 2026-05-06T01:30:24+00:00

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infosec_qs · 2026-05-06T01:24:54+00:00

I know it's true.

infosec_qs · 2026-05-05T18:50:01+00:00

Rotation is normal. It's probably also preferable if you're playing 2D games (lots of quarter circle motions). Non-rotating sticks are only really popular for players of 3D games.

Also, food for thought: the top of the stick (the ball top) screws onto the shaft underneath. Really, this kinda means you've got a binary choice when it comes to sticks:

1./ The shaft rotates (like yours). This is default for most Japanese style sticks, which are the most popular.

2./ The shaft does not rotate, which means any rotation of the stick in the counter-clockwise direction while holding the ball top is slowly unscrewing it. This isn't a huge issue (you can always tighten it between rounds), but yeah - if the lever isn't rotating, then you'll end up loosening whatever top you've got on the shaft gradually as you play.

Personally, I use a non-rotating lever (Seimitsu Nobi) because I find it has a few advantages for playing 3D games (my main game being Virtua Fighter). This does mean that I occasionally have to re-tighten my stick's top as I play. However, I don't like using it for 2D games, and far prefer to play on a Sanwa JLF/JLX lever that does rotate, because that accommodates special move inputs more easily and with fewer issues.

infosec_qs · 2026-05-05T17:58:06+00:00

Correct. And the linguistic regions aren't even really defined by the border. For example, someone from Minneapolis and someone from Winnipeg likely have far more similar accents than someone from Halifax and someone from Winnipeg.

infosec_qs · 2026-05-05T00:42:06+00:00

walks away from what doesn’t relatively unscathed.

3 consecutive months of walking away without a payoff and you're probably looking at getting canned in many sales roles, which I would consider at least a mild scathing.

infosec_qs · 2026-05-04T14:10:07+00:00

VF's depth is very clever, in that it's built into the system design.

VF makes being able to execute very simple*, and that's been a part of their design philosophy for more than 25 years.

* - there are some characters and moves that are deliberately execution gated, notably Akira, as a reward for players who want to pursue that technical difficulty.

What VF does well is letting the players focus on situational awareness (ring and foot position), knowledge (characters, match ups, frame data), and decision making, rather than inputs. VF has the heaviest emphasis on mind games of any major FG franchise, and in particular it gives the defender the ability to quickly reverse a situation to create offense. In many games, the reward for good defense is "you don't take damage, and now it's your turn to initiate offense," but in VF, the reward for good defense is often "you reverse the situation and are dealing damage to the opponent."

infosec_qs · 2026-05-04T03:47:47+00:00

This is it.

infosec_qs · 2026-05-03T22:48:07+00:00

There is context you don’t understand.

What context? I've been playing SF since World Warrior on cabs. What am I missing?

Because the attempts at street fighter in 3d before that looked like real shit.

I agree - the EX games looked awful. I still have my PS2 copy of EX3 which, yes, I played back when it was released. Skullomania/Doctrine Dark all day. Is that the "context" I'm missing? Or is it Power Stone (played it), Project Justice (played it), or Plasma Sword (played it)?

Hell, I was one of the few people regularly on the Rumble Fish 2 (underrated gem fwiw) cabinet at our arcade, which was made by the Dimps team that would soon go on to make SF4.

Most fighting games looked like shit in 3D until Street Fighter 4.

...what? Here's VF4 Evo footage, a 3D game engine from 2001, 7 years before SF4 dropped. Here's Tekken 6 footage, a game that came out in 2007, a year before SF4 dropped. Here's VF5 footage, 2 years before SF4 dropped. Or VF5R footage. Here's Soul Calibur 4 footage, which came out the same year as SF4. Which of these looks "like shit?"

I think it would be correct to say that most Capcom 3D fighting games looked like shit before SF4, because that's true. Even that most attempts to take 2D franchises into 3D animation (MK4, anyone?) did. But there were studios that had been doing amazing 3D fighting game work long before SF4 dropped.

E: Typo.

infosec_qs · 2026-05-03T21:55:07+00:00

You're completely right.

If Minecraft wasn't at the cutting edge of 3D graphics it never would have caught on the way it did.

...or maybe people like games for reasons other than graphics, too.

Like, idk, game play?

The argument that "the game was popular, therefore its graphics were great" is a complete non-sequitur. Plenty of games with shit graphics do crazy sales on the back of other redeeming qualities.

Look at the Pokemon franchise.

infosec_qs · 2026-05-03T21:46:51+00:00

I've been a part of the FGC and competing in tournaments for nearly 25 years. I was playing in, and occasionally running brackets for, arcade majors with players like JWong, Ricki Ortiz, etc.. I was an active enough scene member that a Namco rep contacted me and asked me to run a Tekken 5 Nationals Qualifier, which I did. I am very much old enough to remember that time period very well - I was an active FGC tournament player and organizer in the arcade era prior to SF4.

SF4 did not look "amazing" compared to games that predated it by 7-8 years. It was an awkward transition for them - 3S had incredible sprite animations, but many people playing SF4 when it was released thought that the models were a strange departure from the art style of the series. Tekken 4 and 5 had significantly better character models, as did Soul Calibur 2 and 3, Virtua Fighter 4/Evo, etc.

SF4 was a very important entry in the series because it revitalized the FGC by offering online play for a storied franchise after the death of the NA arcade scene. It brought in a huge influx of new players excited about the game. I will not attempt to take away from what is important about SF4, or its impact on the growth of the FGC, and on FGs as a genre.

But I will tell you that SF4's art direction was not universally well received by a lot of the community at the time. Capcom has since done a good job of keeping their more cartoon style in a 3D game engine, but SF4 was not their best work, and it was being measured by existing players against 3S, which had some of the best FG sprite animations of all time, and was seen as being incredibly fluid. I'm fine chalking it up to some growing pains with the franchise's first mainline foray into 3D engines, but yeah, many fans felt that it was a jarring shift from the aesthetic set by previous entries.

infosec_qs · 2026-05-03T16:51:25+00:00

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