It was really disappointing after hearing the credible allegations against said fighting game player to see several company tweets congratulating the bastard.
Guess that’s the sorry state of it, letting an abuser into the public eye and celebrating a “triumphant return”.
On a brighter note DBFZ was a joy to watch and both SonicFox and Goichi clashing back and forth was hype.
Also these all sound like JoJo stands.
I have a feeling it’s going to #EmbraceDeath and not be around again. Check out the EVO Japan announcement, even Street Fighter 5 has been reduced to “and many more!” instead of even being named in the announcement. 
They seem to be really pushing Soul Calibur 6 as IIRC besides the DLC characters it’s going to be getting some kind of substantial balance/update to its systems also. That surprised me though as I didn’t think it had a lot of momentum in general but hey.
Arslan Ash is amazing, you had top pro players talking about how 10AM is just too early to play fighting games at peak level and this kid basically just stepped off the plane and dominated Tekken. I’m actually not a big Tekken fan myself but those matches were great made me interested in finally getting Tekken 7 (besides that and it having Geese Howard i.e. One Weird Trick To Make Me Interested In Tekken).
Speaking of which, for PS4 players I notice Tekken 7 and Soul Calibur 6 are both on sale on the PSN.
The scene’s always been really bad yeah, I have to agree that everything around it has gotten slightly better with the FGC being slowly dragged along with it, though it’s always been insanely toxic and will continue to be for a long time, probably forever.
I fucking love fighting games. I first played Street Fighter II at one of the arcades on Coney Island when it first came out. And from that point on I loved fighting games more than like anything else on planet earth and I used to play in arcades whenever I got a chance and do whatever I could to get like every single one on consoles/that got ported/whatever ASAP throughout the 90s and would always try to get my friends to see how awesome they are. I got into importing games just for fighting games so I could get them earlier at home (or at all in the early 00s).
My wife and I first met over King of Fighters '99 in Chinatown Fair because she was super passionate about them too. At the same time in the late 90s and early 00s besides playing in arcades often we were both coincidentally on the SRK/Orochinagi/etc. forums pretty regularly, And like, seeing all of that toxicity of the “community” and some of the major players not only just as someone talking shit in the heat of the moment but at that level where someone typed it out, looked at it, and pressed post, was always a little off to me in ways I wasn’t really mature enough to understand why at the time.
And, all online spaces are and all communities are going to have some assholes but it really turned me off over the years and I basically don’t go to arcades anymore and I barely ever even play them online at all.
I still can’t resist getting any SNK game ASAP though, I have such a massive attachment to that company’s games, even before the Neo Geo was a thing.
So, uh, remember when everyone thought they teased Snake for Tekken 7?
Not only was that not the case, but, uh, EVO forgot to contact Konami or David Hayter, who’s voice they used. And he’s understandably upset.
The production was pretty bad in general (even just for the stream quality for the ads and stuff like they were running them off someone’s cell phone or something) so that doesn’t surprise me.
So much of the FGC basically boils down to “does the people who are in charge of your local scene actually give a shit about the people in it, not just white cis men”. The whole FGC is just a sum of all those parts, so, yeah, the toxicity will continue as long as there is a rotten scene to spoil the bunch.
And there are a lot of rotten scenes.
I’m lucky to have a local scene that is pretty good, but that’s mostly because I spent a lot of blood, sweat, and tears building it myself from nothing. I had a lot harsher rules for harassment than most places, actively banned some regulars, and I did my best to make it a LGBTQ+ positive space. I like to think I did a good job, with a few dozen people regularly attending tournaments, including people of all genders, races, and sexualities.
Cutting all ties with the local Smash community certainly helped a lot too.
Too bad the owner of the bar I was running it out of turned out to be a giant racist and chauvinist and was just good at hiding it while sober. I no longer had a place to run tournaments, never found another one, and the scene shifted to the local college that I’m not a student at, so I was no longer in charge.
Also SFV scene had dried up and I had no interest in any other of the games at the time so I kinda fell out of it.
It’s a pretty good scene today from what I hear (except for the fact that they’re starting to run events with the local Smash scene again which is… yikes), but even in that group, there was one guy who tried to defend Infiltration pretty hard in the discord so blegh (luckily the current head of the community jumped down his throat for it). Keeping your scene clean requires constant work…
What I think is a bummer about a lot of fighting games is that, for me, I really need a buddy. And I’m not gonna be able to talk any of my friends who are nominally gamers into Samurai Showdown. Which is why it’s Smash til I die baby. Still really like watching other games though, and I found Tekken particularly riveting at this Evo.
Also the Snake “prank” is so dumb Evo, c’mon
I’m really glad to hear you put so much effort into this. I was never able to find a group I could fit into myself but it’s cool to hear that folks were able to carve out a niche.
Might be worth a shot, slower pacing and the way like everything is unsafe and has a way longer recovery than other fighting games kind of makes it like an ideal “here are the fundamentals of how fighting games work” kind of game. Samurai Shodown V Special is a great game and is much cheaper and is on PS and PS4 if you play on one of those.
One important thing about Tekken is that I’m not embarrassed to watch it or play it. There’s nothing inherently wrong with Laura’s bikini outfit in SFV, but you know it only exists cause creeps love it. (and it’s weird how much lighter skinned she is than Sean who isn’t even that dark but is obviously black). The entire character design has major skeeve vibes when strangers walk through and see it. There were a few other games this weekend where the spouse walked through the room and was like “nah.” Lara was the worst offender though.
But Tekken was safe.
I empathize with the not having friends to play with thing. To really get the most out of fighting games, even casually, you have to really be invested in them. And I can’t get people to come over and really invest the time to not suck with anything other than Smash Bros. I’m not going to get the crew together to spend a weekend playing King of Fighters like I did a few weekends ago with Ultimate Alliance 3.
There seems to be a small community locally but they’re bad. It’s a lot of the anime nerds from the college and they are an insufferable lot.
I do miss the local arcade scene growing up. It was also bad, but I was 14 so I didn’t really know how bad it was.
Uhhh I mean let’s be honest, Katarina is Laura with a shawl and if you click a couple menus deep you can put her in a bikini for free.
I’m glad to hear that it has interesting fundamentals. Maybe I could talk my brother into it with that info, thanks.
