Bad Timing? Evo Downsizing and the New School

We have arrived. We have reached the point where even those who once justifiably complained of a lack of new blood in the fighting genre have no excuse to not play. With Arcana Heart FULL set to make its North American debut in April, the Samurai Shodown franchise reinventing itself to try its hand at carrying the banner seemingly abandoned by the SoulCalibur series, and Arc System Works bringing a pair of brand new fighting franchises to the table in BlazBlue and Sengoku Basara X, those looking for a new fight won't have to look far.

There's just one highly unfortunate problem: The turnout at Evolution has grown so immense that it's logistically impossible to run eight or nine tournaments as had been done in past years. The general consensus seems to be that the time has arrived to downsize, to focus only on a small handful of titles (say, two or three Capcom fighters, a Tekken, a Virtua Fighter, and maybe a Guilty Gear). Without Evo support, these new games might have a lot of trouble getting any traction on these shores.

What do you think? What needs to be done? Should Evo crunch its established games down even further (ie: STHD, T6, VF5, and either 3S or MvC2) to make way for the likes of Arcana Heart and Samurai Shodown Sen? Can the non-Evo majors like ECC and NEC, which have traditionally been more open to less-established games, get these series rolling enough to see success with or without Evo? Evo itself would be huge - Guilty Gear is proof of how much an Evo appearance can do for an unestablished franchise - but other possibilities have to be looked at to preserve these new titles.

See you in the arena,
Patrick aka Neobeast

A Place to Smash: Coming Soon to ProGam3r.com...

One of the biggest debates in fighting circles today is actually whether or not one particular game even belongs in the genre. When Super Smash Bros. Melee first arrived in 2001, the thought of it as a competitive game, let alone part of the fighting genre, wasn't even seriously considered. It was a party game - a really good, beautifully-developed party game, but a party game nonetheless, which had more connections to the platform genre than anything else. Unlike a lot of major releases around that time, its popularity never waned, and eventually a community of players emerged who wanted to build a competitive scene on the game's foundation.

Seemingly overnight, sentiment within Smash fandom changed completely from "it's something completely new, different, and impossible to define with existing labels" to "it's a fighting game through and through!" Such a blatant change of position is easily understood, albeit unrespectable, considering how much the fighting genre has to offer its most popular games. This has kicked off an ongoing debate in recent years regarding Smash's genre definition. The only way to really come to a truly objective conclusion is to go back to what defined Street Fighter II as a fighting game when it seperated itself and its kin from the "Action/Arcade" pack in 1991, as well as what all fighters had in common immediately after the movement got underway. When you look at it in that light, you'll find that Street Fighter II and Smash have a couple of things very much in common, and the players trying to pass Smash off as a fighting game could actually be selling it short.

"A Place to Smash" will basically be a comparison study. The results may not necessarily be what some want to hear, but the criteria used and the historical basis thereof is extremely well-founded. Whether you agree or disagree, I hope you find it to be a good read when it is finished.

See you in the arena,
Patrick aka Neobeast

Street Fighter IV: A Closer Look at the NEW ProGam3r.com!

So the new website has finally launched, and I couldn't be more excited. I've been working on this Street Fighter IV coverage for some time now, largely because I felt EGM/1Up's coverage was far too vague. I hope you guys enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it. There's a lot of potential in this fighting system, and yet it doesn't stray far at all from what has always been so great about Street Fighter, and I think that's what we'll all ultimately love about this game.

I also included in the Fight section a small library of great articles from past years that still have quite a lot to offer readers today. I particularly loved Javier Moreno's look back at the pre-Evo era of the Street Fighter community, since it can be so inspirational to players, even now. I also made a point to include as much entry-level material from David Sirlin and Seth Killian as I possibly could, because these guys have long been preaching the importance of having the right attitude, and have even found ways to teach it to new players. Both have been among my favorite fighting writers for years, and I'm really stoked to have the oppotunity to share that with a new audience here at PG3.

For now, Abe, Jarod, myself, and the rest of the Pro Gam3r crew are going to sit back, recharge our batteries, prepare for the next magazine issue to go to print on the 12th, and give you, the readers, a chance to go through all the content we've loaded the new site up with. In about a week, we'll be back at it, so until then, I hope you all enjoy the new website as much as we've enjoyed putting it together for you. Gaming is a Sport, and now, we're the ones to tell it.

See you in the arena,
Patrick aka Neobeast

It's Monday

Probably obvious now by the fact that it's Saturday and there still hasn't been any change to the Pro Gam3r website.

Having been in the loop throughout the latter part of development, I have to say it will be awesome. I personally have been working with Jarod on getting a good fighting section together for the launch. While I have only had time to contribute one article of my own, I went out and compiled a solid list of external links to what I felt were some of the best fighting game articles and columns on the Internet. I reached way back for some of them, partially because it's material I felt every fighting gamer should read, and partially because there's just an overall lack of good fighting game coverage out there compared to the rest of the eSports world. I got some of the best writers in the genre in there, however. David Sirlin, Javier Moreno, and Seth Killian have written some of the best pieces on fighting games ever, both historical and instructional, so I felt their work was perfect for this setting, where I approached it as a likely first-exposure for many potential competitive players outside the community. Think of it as a companion database of sorts to my "Fighting 101: A Comprehensive Introduction to the Original eSport" feature in the upcoming issue #3 (which will be on sale in a couple weeks, FYI). I even included one of my Gamer 2.0 articles from 2006 in which I defended Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 as a game that should be considered for major tournament play!

I will continue to support the section with new material of my own, and will also drop external links in there any time I find good articles by other writers in the genre. I'm doing this in hopes that we might see a sharp rise in fighting coverage in general across the Internet. While this project gives me the chance to introduce readers to some of the best fighting articles ever written, it's depressing to think that part of the reason was simply that there wasn't enough recent relevant material available to build such a list around. A more explicit call to arms is forthcoming, I assure you. For now, I hope you all enjoy what I've put together when the site launches Monday.

See you in the arena,
Patrick aka Neobeast

1/12/08 VF5/HF Tournament Videos

Virtua Fighter 5 Winners Semifinals:
THE_WALL (WO) vs Neobeast (GO) game 1 (no video available)
THE_WALL (WO) vs Neobeast (GO) game 2
Brody (JE) vs Gallows (EI) game 1
Brody (JE) vs Gallows (VA) game 2

Virtua Fighter 5 Winners Finals:
Brody (JE) vs Neobeast (GO) game 1
Brody (JE) vs Neobeast (GO) game 2

Virtua Fighter 5 Losers Semifinals:
THE_WALL (WO) vs Gallows (VA) game 1
THE_WALL (WO) vs Gallows (VA) game 2 (no video available)
THE_WALL (WO) vs Gallows (VA) game 3

Virtua Fighter 5 Losers Finals:
Neobeast (GO) vs Gallows (VA) game 1
Neobeast (GO) vs Gallows (VA) game 2

Virtua Fighter 5 Grand Finals:
Neobeast (GO) vs Brody (JE) game 1
Neobeast (GO) vs Brody (JE) game 2
Neobeast (GO) vs Brody (JE) game 3

Virtua Fighter 5 Bonus Matches:
Neobeast (GO) vs Brody (SH) game 1
Neobeast (GO) vs Brody (SH) game 2
THE_WALL (WO) vs Brody (JA)

Street Fighter II` Hyper Fighting Grand Finals:
Neobeast (Ryu) vs THE_WALL (Ken)

Enjoy the matches.

See you in the arena,
Patrick aka Neobeast

ProGam3r.com

The new Pro Gam3r Magazine website is launching Friday (tentatively, could fall to next week). Included will be a new article by yours truly, "Street Fighter IV: A Closer Look".

Just a heads-up.

See you in the arena,
Patrick aka Neobeast

The Future of Fightstock

It appears Fightstock as we know it may have just been a short-term experiment. As it stands, I will be heading the fighting genre section for Pro Gam3r's full-scale website, which is launching shortly. All content I produce that would have ended up here will instead be used to bolster PG3's library of fighting articles/columns.

I will continue to support this blog one way or another, though the content will be a bit different than before. The least-jarring change would be if I were to replace blog entries with links to PG3 fighting articles should the site not have a discussion feature, so we can come back here to Fightstock and talk about the content of the articles.

Just a heads-up.

See you in the arena,
Patrick aka Neobeast