So I got back home to Norcal on Tuesday night, and today my brother and I went to Sunnyvale Golfland just to screw around, and to my surprise, John Choi, Ryan "Filipino Champ" Ramirez, and Seth Killian, among others were at the arcade too, turns out that the Sunnyvale Golfland arcade is one of like, the only 2 SSF4:AE arcades in norcal, and I was pretty shocked. I didn't say hi to them lol, they were busy playing MvC2, SSF4 and AE and I didn't want to intrude or whatever. I never had a problem approaching esports people at MLG events or anything, but something about seeing these guys in the arcade randomly, I was just like, in shock haha.
Most people don't really understand SSF4 I guess, Seth Killian is the community manager for Capcom, John Choi is a legend in the 2d fighting game community from the 90's and throughout this decade too, from Street fighter 2 onward, sick Ryu player. Filipino Champ is a polarizing figure, but he's the best Dhalsim around, and he's won a few tournaments recently, most notably Socal Regionals, the first time an American has won a major event when multiple Japanese players were in attendence (Daigo Tokido and I think Mago were at the event).
Was pretty crazy to see these 3 guys at the arcade lol, I hopped on SSF4 later for free play and got my ass handed to me, I've only really played on my keyboard before the inputs were easy, and on an actual arcade stick its so hard for me to nail the links lol, I was awful.
On December 24 2010 15:09 LazyMacro wrote: I like how's there's a little like, community for games, even those that don't really have much of a mainstream following.
All I ever knew about fighting games having a community is this video:
The Fighting game community is one of the largest, I'd say in terms of showing up to tournaments theres no doubt they're the strongest community in NA, the competition/hype that is involved is beyond anything starcraft ever gets.
I'm a big esports guy, I follow all of them, and the fighting game community is one of my favorites to watch, lately its been what I'm watching the most although I still associate the most with TL. The amount of skill and reactions and thought that goes into each match is pretty incredible. And like I said I was never really starstruck by any SC players, they were just like normal people I could shake hands with, ask for an autograph etc. But since I'm just a stream monster watching tournaments left and right, to see a guy like John Choi who's literally been a legend for like 15 years was just awesome to see.
EPT
