Mirror matches between the Chilean twins, preserving arcade culture and Evo Moment 37. Also, how in the hell is it possible for people to react so quickly in fighting games? Join us for a conversation about the largest fighting game competition in the world, the Evolution Championship Series.
Mirror matches between the Chilean twins, preserving arcade culture and Evo Moment 37. Also, how in the hell is it possible for people to react so quickly in fighting games? Join us for a conversation about the largest fighting game competition in the world, the Evolution Championship Series.
In this episode, we discuss Evo 2023 and delve into the culture of the fighting game community. For over two decades, Evo has attracted the most elite fighting game players to compete in games like Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Tekken, and Super Smash Bros. Joseph talks about how he got interested in fighting game tournaments, mentions Evo Moment 37 and explains how Street Fighter 4 saved a dying community. Willie brings up the intricacies of frame data, asks questions about the brackets and structure of Evo, and talks about sinking time into playing Mortal Kombat 1. Taylor lightens the mood with a fight stick-skateboard crossover, notices how much blocking happens in fighting games at the elite level, and helps us rant about YouTube's resolution for 10 minutes. Shoryuken!
Here's the full transcript for this episode.
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00:00:00
[Alienated by ELFL plays in background]
Joseph: I don't think you have to do anything. I think you can just show up. Like we could. We could go to Evo and pay into the pot and then we could play in the pools for a chance at, you know, the world's best. And I think most tournaments are like that because they, it comes from arcade, arcade culture. Where if you're in an arcade, like all you had to do was walk up with a quarter, you know, and like you could play that person, right?
Willie: Right.
Joseph: You know, you could stay on the machine until you lost. So, I mean, if you go all the way back to the founding days of Evo, it was all about preserving arcade culture, because in the mid 90s, arcades started dying off in the U.S. and disappearing, you know? And like, places that had like a really big fighting game community, like Chinatown Fair and stuff like that were dying off, and there was no way to kind of preserve what was happening. That, that arcade culture that was happening.
You know, or the ability to play somebody one on one. So that's where this tournament was kind of, well, the fighting game community as a whole was kind of built from, and out of, by the players, right? By that community.
[Alienated by ELFL fades out]
[Intro theme plays - Tiger Tracks by Lexica]
00:01:16
Joseph: What's up? Welcome to Berries and Blades. Thanks for joining us for a casual conversation about video games. My name is Joseph and I'm here with my friends, Willie and Taylor, and we're just three regular guys wondering how many people have a YouTube premium account and can actually watch videos that look better than 720p, but I digress.
So how are y'all doing this week?
Taylor: My bank account says that I have a YouTube premium account and, uh, I'm happy with it. I don't like commercials, man. I don't like them. I don't like them at all. They really just make me mad. If I hear a commercial, I want to go ape. And, uh, we're going to cut to this ad from Charlie's house of horrors.
If you're not chopping at Charlie's, I don't know. No, no, no. Sorry. It's not an ad. It's not an ad.
Joseph: Then you ain't chopping.
Taylor: You ain't chopping.
Joseph: Do you really have a YouTube premium account?
Taylor: I think so. If that, is that what you have to have to not have ads?
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: Yeah, absolutely, man. Ad-solutely. [Willie and Joseph laugh]
[laughing] I have to. I truly, I can't stand them, honestly. Like, hey, for a decade now, I can't even listen to the radio. If anybody has a radio on. Something inside me dies, and it just says, why are they doing this? You know that you don't have to listen to these commercials.
Joseph: Willie, what about you? Do you have a premium account?
Willie: No, I don't. So I definitely watch a lot of ads. Cause I watch YouTube a lot. I mean, I don't know how much a lot is, but I definitely have a series of videos that I watch every single day on YouTube. Different creators that I watch, whatever their updates are for the day. So there's like always three to four videos that are like 30 minutes long and that happens every day so-
Joseph: Oh fuck!
Willie: -you know, so like...
Joseph: I'd say that's a lot .
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: At least it seems like a lot for the way I use YouTube. Which I feel like I'm on YouTube like once a day at least.
Taylor: Yeah, same.
Joseph: But I don't have, I guess I don't, I don't have those regular channels that I visit just to see what they're saying for the day. I like almost always go to YouTube with a specific purpose in mind.
Taylor: Interesting. You don't subscribe and watch people you subscribe to?
Joseph: I do, I just don't watch it on a regular basis. Like, I'll come back and check in and then watch like maybe four videos one day, but I don't constantly and consistently check in with those different channels.
Taylor: Yeah, I'll come back and I'll have 13 stacked up and just kind of scroll through and if one looks compelling, boom.
Joseph: Yeah, but the fucking ads, dude.
Taylor: Yeah, true.
Willie: There are just some things that I do watch, it's not like a story, but it is a, they're playing a game. And so, like, I'm watching their progress through the game.
Joseph: Oh, sure, sure, sure.
Willie: If I skip one day, then I'll just watch, you know, more the next day, but just to, like, catch up.
Joseph: But you can get behind on it.
Willie: Yeah, you could get behind on it. It's not like a news segment or something, or like a... I mean, I use it for other things too, like you're saying, but... the things that I'm watching most consistently have usually like these things happen in a row. So I just watch them as they come out.
Joseph: Yeah. I guess I don't watch any of those really. So I have less of a reason to watch things in a timely manner.
Willie: You know, some of those, those aren't the same videos every day, but there'll be staggered over a couple of days, but like different creators, like fall on different days with their, like, whatever they're making.
There's always something to watch. But I am curious about like what. You know, we talked about the YouTube premium thing the other day, which again, like I don't have, and maybe it is the thing that would make that experience even better. Cause I do watch a lot of ads and I hate them. There's some that are real bad right now.
Taylor: It's awful. And a lot of times they're repetitive. That's what gets to me was, that was what broke me, I think was earlier days of Youtu... or Hulu rather. Where they would literally show you the same ad every single time and it was-
Willie: And sometimes twice in a row.
Joseph: Oh, yeah. [chuckles]
Willie: It was sometimes literally like an ad and then a different commercial.
Taylor: I mean, ev... the whole show dude. And then you go to the new show and it would have the same ad and you have watched the exact same tide commercial. And I was like, in my head, I'm the type of person where that adds up. It all adds up, dude.
I cannot watch an ad and not think that. Okay, now when I watch 10 of these, that equals five minutes, and over a week or however much, you know, and then a year. Oh my God. I've watched seven days worth of advertising. Are you kidding me.
Joseph: The same ad.
Taylor: Or yeah, the same ad. And that way it broke my brain and I could not, I was like, I'm either. I'm either going to pay for no ads or I'm not going to watch the thing. And that was the choice I made and that I stand by that.
I still do it.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: Like I cannot watch if I'm at somebody's house and they're watching something with commercials, that's okay. I'm not like, I'm not mad at people for putting up with commercials. It's okay. I just can't do it. It hurts and breaks my brain.
00:05:47
Willie: I was curious about this because Joey, you mentioned it while you were watching that Kombat Kast, I think. I do think that the quality on that wasn't great. The content was good, but yeah, the, the way that they were streaming, it didn't look good. It looked pretty grainy every now and then, and it just wasn't good.
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: But you brought up this sort of premium thing. I don't understand your sentence here. Cause I'm just like wondering, like, are you saying that people who don't have a premium account can't even watch videos that are over 720p? Because...
Joseph: That's what it looks like.
Taylor: Huh.
Willie: There's been a lot of conversation on that's like, if you don't have a premium account, it will default to something less than 720p as you're like-
Taylor: Oh, it does that anyways.
Willie: We'll see the thing is I'm going to say all this because I've literally never had a problem with YouTube doing that to me.
Taylor: Huh.
Willie: Someone said that it will learn your habits if you like always default to something else. Like if you pick for like a week straight or something, pick a different resolution. It will be higher. It like learns what your preference is and always will be higher.
And I don't know if that's...
Taylor: And that's auto that would do that, right?
Willie: Well, no, like if you literally pick a different resolution instead of just doing auto, but then auto would do that.
Taylor: Ah no. No, no.
Willie: And I literally don't know because I've literally never had a problem-
Taylor: No mine has never done that.
Joseph: I wish it did that because I wouldn't be-
Willie: -where if 4K is available, it will show me 4K first. Always.
Joseph: Shit.
Taylor: I wonder if that's internet though cause-
Willie: So I don't know what's going on. I don't know why it's such a different experience from like, because if you even look online, you'll see people complaining about the same thing. It's like, I can't get it to be anything better than 720.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: Or like, mine is always like this. And it started like three to four months ago that it really became a problem. For some reason, I have never been affected by this. And I'm happy that I'm not. And it sucks, it sucks that other people are.
Joseph: That's strange, man.
Taylor: Well, I think that you've always been near really good internet, right? Like for at least the last decade, you've been near at least like 100 meg [Mbps] or more, maybe 200 megs. [Mbps]
Willie: I guess that's true, yeah.
Taylor: Like my internet can often be 20 megs [Mbps] to a 100 megs [Mbps] and maybe it... But I mean every single time, consistently any, I can pull up a video right now and it's going to be on audio... auto and it's going to be like halfway down. It's going to be like middle or medium. Is that a setting? I don't know why we're talking about YouTube this much right now. [laughs]
Joseph: Cause it's bullshit.
Taylor: Yeah, it is.
Willie: It is weird.
Taylor: It is bullshit.
Joseph: I'll go and I'll check the resolution right and it's already on 1080p, and it looks like shit. And like, okay, this fucking sucks. And then I go and I try to like re-select 1080. Like, I'm doing that like four times in the video playthrough. I'm like, what is going on? Maybe it's going to work this time.
Taylor: Exactly.
Joseph: Like, it's like insanity because I'm expecting this to fix itself, but it never does. The only channel I feel like I can go to and I can see a video that even if you set it to 4K, it even, it looks somewhat close to 4K is Marques Brownlee. That's the only channel I can go to and it actually looks sharp and high quality like most videos should look.
Willie: It's so weird that that experience is so messed up for so many people that it's like, can you please just get consistent.
Taylor: It really is.
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: Especially when we're watching video game trailers and stuff, it's like... oh, this looks cool, but it could be better. But it's like, is it the video or is it, is this just what it looks like?
Joseph: Mm-hmm. Yeah, man, like it's starting to gate a lot of things. We're watching new Mortal Kombat trailers. I need to fucking see the depth, bro. I need to see into that fucking detailed background.
Taylor: Deep.
Joseph: I need to see this-
Taylor: I need it deep.
Joseph: -stage design, all that kind of stuff. But anyway. Anyway, we can probably do a whole rant episode about YouTube, but it pisses me off to have to pay for it to get the resolution that we seem to have before they made changes like compression or whatever the hell they did.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Welcome to everything. Twitter is doing the same, like so many companies are doing that now. They're gating.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah.
Taylor: Pay gating the good stuff.
Joseph: And they're using quality as the thing to like-
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -as the gating mechanism, man, pisses me off.
Taylor: Yeah, that's, and Twitter is like, you're literally your engagement. How many people see you if you don't have the blue check and you're in a space that's a hundred or a thousand people. You get thrown all the way to the bottom with the plebs that don't have checks. And so basically you're invisible.
Joseph: This is how we end up in a fucking Black Mirror episode.
Taylor: Yeah, absolutely.
Joseph: Where like you can only buy things if you have a certain social status level or some ridiculousness like that.
Taylor: That was a great episode. That was one of the best.
00:10:07
Joseph: Anyway, uh, in today's episode, we're delving into the fighting game community and EVO 2023.
Taylor: Evo...
Joseph: Which at the time of this recording, happened just a few weeks ago. Evo, or Evolution Championship Series, is an annual eSports event that focuses exclusively on fighting games like Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Marvel vs. Capcom, and Super Smash Bros. Super Smash Bros? Is that one bros or brothers? I think...
Willie: I would still say brothers, but I don't know.
Joseph: Brothers, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, I'm going with brothers. During the Evo that just happened, I got a little carried away and I was blowing up our group chat with reactions to the tournament.
You know, we thought it would be interesting to dig into this topic a little bit. Willie, do you have anything that you want to add before we jump into it?
Willie: I think that I suggested that we talk about this just because, yeah, you clearly had a lot of thoughts on what was going on, and you know more than Taylor or I. I've watched a few tournaments before, but not, I don't think anything like what you've been watching, because even in this tournament, I only watched I watched a little bit of the MK11 stuff and like just randomly.
And I saw the the championship for MK11 and then I watched like the top six for Street Fighter and maybe something earlier in the day for that. But clearly you were like watching all day and you've been doing this for a while because we've talked about it before too. So that's kind of why I wanted to to get into it to see what you think, what you know, and like what, what I'm missing out on, and maybe what, you know, people are missing out on if they're not already watching.
Joseph: Find out what I think I know.
Willie: Yeah, sucka.
Joseph: Yeah, that's a good place to start for anybody brand new to the idea. I mean, there's plenty of content on YouTube. Like you can go back pretty far to different Evo years and watch, you know, just a grand finals set or watch the top six or the top eight, depending on the tournament.
There's a lot of stuff out there and a lot of fantastic videos, you can even find compilation videos, where it's like the greatest Evo moments of all time. That's essentially what I did. And now I've gotten to the point where I've just become so interested that I'll watch all three days, you know, like I'll watch some of the pool play.
I'm interested in how the commentators are breaking down the gameplay and talking about, you know, the strategies and stuff like that. But mostly because I've always been a fighting game fan, played them growing up, and I've been just kind of keeping up with certain, certain players and certain individuals in the fighting game community.
I think that's where I, how I kind of got where I am, at least in my level of interest.
Willie: Yeah. So how long have you been watching Evo? Or was Evo even the first thing you started at? Was it literally just watching those replays and stuff? Or were there other, I know you watch other fighting tournaments too.
Joseph: I definitely have watched CEO. I've watched Combo Breaker. And these are some of more of the major tournaments. Because they're like local tournaments, which you would find like locally in your city, like at an arcade, maybe, or some type of event center. And then there's regional tournaments, which are where people are basically traveling to.
And then there's like majors. And EVO would certainly be a major. EVO might even be like the, I mean, it's like the top of the mountain, right? It's like the apex of fighting game tournaments. There are thousands and thousands and thousands of people that are coming to this event and playing within these brackets to compete basically for the title of who's the best.
There's money involved, but it's not anywhere on the level as like a Dota 2 tournament, or League of Legends, or Counter Strike, or any of those. Fortnite, any of those types of games, like the prize is not anywhere near the amounts of those tournaments, but there are prizes involved for winners. So I think I discovered Evo around 2019, or in between, it was in between MKX and MK11.
Which I think would have been like, uh, 2015 or 16 to like 2019. Because I remember the first videos I was watching were MKX. So it had to be before MK11 came out. And what happened is, I remember the person I saw, it was SonicFox, who is a furry. Always wore like a blue fox hat and a tail while they competed.
And it was just super interesting to me. And they were totally badass too, like wrecking shop. And then that led me to past Evo videos, and then I've kind of been watching since and keeping up with certain people ever since, but that's, that's kind of how it started.
Willie: I think that's the first person you and I talked about. I remember you talking about how good they were and just like needing to check out a couple of videos of them playing. And I'm pretty sure that was around that time. It was like, because I think it was MKX at the time.
00:14:49
Willie: So you're obviously still following SonicFox, but do you have any other, other favorites that you're watching right now? I mean, even especially after this tournament,
Joseph: I mean, a lot of people in the tournament, there were some people that like, um, there's a guy named Tekken master. He's definitely been in some grand finals with SonicFox. I haven't seen him in a while. I don't know if he just stopped playing or is not going to any of these major tournaments again, but Tekken Master, he's pretty awesome.
A Foxy Grandpa, he still competes.
[Taylor chuckles]
Joseph: He's probably the most consistent MK player that has ended up in the top eight of like every major MK 11 tournament that's happened in like the past four years.
Taylor: Damn.
Joseph: So he's like Mr. Consistent, but he hasn't won. He hasn't won Evo, you know, but he's always ending up in the top eight.
Like he always finishes like fourth or fifth.
Taylor: I almost searched that in Google. Hahaha.. [Joseph laughs] You almost got me, buddy. Haha. You almost got me. I'm not searching that.
Joseph: But he's, he's pretty solid, uh, Rewind. There's a guy named Rewind. And then there are two Chilean twins that are kind of like the hot stuff right now, Scorpionprocs and Nicolas.
Taylor: Oh, my God. Do they have to play against each other-
Joseph: Yeah, they do. They do.
Taylor: -in the final tournament as Scorpion and Sub Zero? Oh, my God.
Joseph: They do quite often, but they always play a mirror match where both brothers are picking the same character and playing against each other as the same character.
Taylor: Oh, that's crazy. Huh?
Joseph: I guess it's like a pact they have with each other to, I guess, determine who actually is the best.
Willie: Who's better, yeah.
Taylor: Oh, so that there's no advantage based on different character. Wow. That's competitiveness right there.
Joseph: Yeah, they've been dominating.
Willie: I only knew of them because you mentioned them. And I, I like quickly found out that, yeah, they're like, they're the shit right now.
Seeing them not be... I don't know how far they both made it in the tournament, but one of the brothers made it to like, Top 6, right? Or Top 8, or whatever it was.
Joseph: They both did. And Ninjakilla, who's the winner of Evo 23 this year, he went through both of them.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: To win Evo, he played Scorpionprocs in the Losers Finals. And then he played against Nicolas in the Grand Finals.
Willie: I guess I don't think I watched the, I don't think I watched the Losers Finals in that one. I can't remember exactly what I saw now.
Joseph: Yeah, it was essentially the match right before the Grand Final.
Willie: Mm-hmm.
Joseph: So like he went through the brothers back to back. Like me saying Losers Finals and Winners Finals and Grand Finals, if that doesn't make any sense. The way Evo has always been set up. It's a bracket tournament. You always have pools that you play in to get into the brackets. So you start with a bunch of people and then you play in different groups. It's like the World Cup.
You know, like all these different group stages that you have to get through and then you get into like the top 96 and then after you make it through that bracket, you get into the top 24 and then you get into the top 8 or the top 6. So the bracket itself is, it's double elimination tournaments. So once you lose, you get pushed from the winner's side or the winner's half of the bracket into the loser's half.
And then you basically have to play. Other people who have gotten pushed into the loser's bracket all the way up until the Losers Final. And then the person that wins the entire loser's side of the bracket in the Losers Final gets pushed back up into the Grand Finals. And that person faces off against the winner of the winner's side.
So the person that got to the Winners Final and won the Winners Final finds themselves in the Grand Finals, and they play the person that won the Losers Final. But what happens once you get into that bracket, is the person that is coming from the loser's side, they have already lost. So that means they have to beat the person that did not lose, who got all the way through the winner's bracket.
They have to beat them twice. Once, you reset the bracket, and that makes an evil, an evil... [Taylor laughs] that makes a level playing field.
Taylor: Evil Trio.
Joseph: So you basically have to beat them once to reset the bracket so it's even, and then you play again to determine who actually is the winner of the entire tournament.
Taylor: Hmm. Makes sense.
Joseph: And it's been like that since like the very first Evo, as far as I know, or even back before Evo when it was like Battle of the Bay* and like the B, the B tournament series, uh, B3, B4, all that stuff.
Willie: Is every, um, bracket prior to the top six, top eight, also double elimination or is it just the like top eight?
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: Okay.
Joseph: The whole tournament, like even in the pools, even in the pools, there's a winner's and a loser's bracket.
Willie: Okay.
Joseph: Everybody gets a second life essentially.
00:19:09
Willie: So within that, what's the correct... Just so I remember, what's the correct terminology for, like it's not like game set match, right? Like there are rounds and sets...
Joseph: It's rounds and then I think either game or match and then a set.
Willie: So like literally each time you see the like countdown and you start, you see the Fight, that's a round, right?
Joseph: That's a round, yep.
Willie: And you have to win two rounds to get a, what you said was maybe a game, right?
Joseph: Yeah. Or a match-
Willie: Or a match.
Joseph: -Yeah to win a match.
Willie: You get a match. And you gotta win, you gotta win 2 matches to-
Joseph: 2 out of 3-
Willie: -2 out of 3 matches-
Joseph: -to win a set.
Willie: -to move on. To win a set.
Joseph: And some, sometimes it's 3 out of 5.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Like later in the tournament, like in the pools, it's 2 out of 3. But once you get into like the Top 6 and then like further, it becomes like 3 out of 5.
Willie: There's a couple things that came up that I'm curious about. A while back you mentioned like, yeah, this is sort of like, this is the big deal every year in fighting games. Besides that round, that pool round, what are the, what are the requirements for someone to go?
Do you have to qualify to even show up at the pools? Or do people just get to sign up? Because I know there was a really huge tournament for Street Fighter this year, but how does that come about?
Joseph: Yeah, like over 7, 000 people in the Street Fighter bracket, which is a record for Evo.
Taylor: Damn.
Joseph: I think a record for like any fighting game tournament period, you know, for a single game, it was like over 7, 000 people, which is wild.
Taylor: That is wild.
Joseph: I don't think you have to do anything. I think you can just show up. Like we could. We could go to Evo and pay into the pot and then we could play in the pools for a chance at, you know, the world's best. And I think most tournaments are like that because they, it comes from arcade, arcade culture. Where if you're in an arcade, like all you had to do was walk up with a quarter, you know, and like you could play that person, right?
Willie: Right.
Joseph: You know, you could stay on the machine until you lost. So, I mean, if you go all the way back to the founding days of Evo, it was all about preserving arcade culture, because in the mid 90s, arcades started dying off in the U.S. and disappearing, you know? And like, places that had like a really big fighting game community, like Chinatown Fair and stuff like that were dying off, and there was no way to kind of preserve what was happening. That, that arcade culture that was happening.
You know, or the ability to play somebody one on one. So that's where this tournament was kind of, well, the fighting game community as a whole was kind of built from, and out of, by the players, right? By that community.
Willie: And you were talking about the two brothers playing each other in a mirror match and that made me, I thought of a couple things because of that.
One, I know a lot of people don't even, there are some people who just don't enjoy watching mirror matches. They're just like, I don't, it sucks to watch the same two people like, you know, do the same thing over and over again or whatever. But however, whatever their views are, they just, it doesn't seem interesting to them.
So that's part of the question is like, do you actually enjoy mirror matches? But also, how many characters can a person switch to? Because we saw a couple of change ups in the, in the Street Fighter tournament for sure. Do you know, are there certain limitations on how many characters you can have in your roster of people you pull from?
Joseph: You can choose as many as you wanted. Like however you want to strategize, and like do character changes. Like basically after each match, after each game, you can go to the character selection screen. And when you don't see people go to the character selection screen, it's usually because they want to keep the same character.
But if you watch enough, enough video of people playing, or watch enough offline tournaments happen. You'll see the players check in with each other. You know, like sometimes they'll take their headphone off and they'll talk to each other or give people thumbs up or, you know, they'll, they'll somehow give each other a message that they want to jump into the next match without going to the character selection screen.
So there's no, the only limit is how many characters you can play with at a high level. But there are some games that also offer a roster of fighters, you know, where you have like a team of three fighters, and then you can choose between those three in the middle of a game or in the middle of a round.
And that's kind of different from something like Street Fighter, MK, where it's just like one character. It's a one on one competition. And like, that's what it's about until the rounds are done.
00:23:13
Joseph: But Taylor, you, you sounded like you were interested in seeing mirror matches, at least when we're talking about the twins play each other.
Taylor: I don't know that I have ever sat through watching any, like, fighting game or anything like that. I've seen a highlight here or there, um, in my lifetime, but... I don't know. It's not something that I've ever been too interested in as far as entertainment value. Like, I do find the stories of it that are kind of behind all of, all of Evo and those kind of events. I find those to be a lot more entertaining than even watching the fighting itself.
Joseph: Yeah. What about the concept of a mirror match? Like two people going head to head and they're choosing the same characters.
Taylor: Yeah. Um, I don't know. I, I mean, I find that to be actually, I found that to be a really logical way for those guys to work that out. I can see that, especially if you grew up playing the same stuff and you were the same, um, basically the same skill level, you know, so that if you were playing, one of you would win, one of you would win the next time or something like-
Joseph: Uh-huh.
Taylor: -You were that evenly matched, then yeah, you really got to get creative.
Joseph: Yeah, I think it's interesting with, uh, what you asked, Willie, I think you asked me about mirror matches, right? Like whether-
Willie: Yeah, is that something you enjoy watching. I know a lot of people don't.
Joseph: Actually, I don't mind anything at like the highest level of play. So like top 24, Top Six. Like once you're into that point, I'm just like totally fixated on what's happening and I don't mind it at all. But there are some times where like people can be a little annoying with the way they play a certain character.
Taylor: Right. There's so much blocking. I was just watching a couple videos, [Taylor and Joseph laugh]
Joseph: So much blocking.
Taylor: And man, so much blocking he's like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, block. Like both of them make their, their health. Like they, they may just make it last so long.
I'm used to a match. Where I go in, I do three of the lower roundhouse sweeps-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -and then I sweep the leg, sweep the leg, four to six, maybe eight times in a row.
Joseph: Uppercut!
Taylor: And then, yeah. And then the, [gibberish that is supposed to sound like Ken and Ryu's Tatsumaki Senpuu Kyaku] I'm pretty sure that's, [Joseph laughs] that's what he says, but I didn't know that people block that much ever.
Joseph: Yeah, man, you have to, you have to that level.
Taylor: Oh, absolutely.
Joseph: There are totally rounds that will timeout, you know, like after 90 seconds,
Taylor: What!?
Joseph: Like there won't be a winner, like on that level of competition.
Taylor: Wow.
Joseph: Like there can, not be a winner of around before the timer runs out, which is kind of wild.
Taylor: That's wild.
Joseph: But when you see it right, if you never, if you never watched that level of gameplay in a fighting game. When you do see it, you start to understand like how it's different from the way you played it growing up or how we would play it as amateurs. Like you can see how they play footsies with each other and you can see how they're managing the space between the two characters and like they're taking their time.
Taylor: Uh-huh.
Joseph: They're being very strategic. You can see it in the gameplay because it looks different. Sometimes it even looks a little weird and awkward because you're like, why, what's going on here? But if you watch enough of it, like you understand, like, they have an extremely large knowledge of these games and understand the exact distances you need to be from your opponent so that you can actually hit and strike with certain moves and stuff like that.
00:26:22
Taylor: It looks intense. And I, I was noticing, I'm not sure which Street Fighter it was. I think it was the tournament. I want to say the year said 2004 or 2005, but it, it had some, it, the guy was doing stuff that I didn't even know was possible. I think it was using Ken and he was, he was doing like an uppercut and also getting like multiple hits within the uppercut.
Using like some interesting kind of frame blending or something that was going on. This was a final moment when he took somebody's half their health bar down [Joseph chuckles] from Chun Li in a final tournament. And I do remember looking at that thinking, wow, that's, he seems like he's bending the game right now in some ways that I had never seen from those early ones.
Joseph: He was blocking, right? You're talking about somebody blocking.
Taylor: She was blocking and he was like forcing through the block with, uh, with like a rising uppercut and then maybe like a knee or something. It was some, like I say, it was some interesting blending of the frames and the move set or something. You know what I mean? How people will use, I forget what it's called, but they'll use those like in between frames or something to manifest craziness.
Willie: I've watched enough to, like, appreciate the high level play, but also not quite under, not enough to understand what Joey was talking about as far as, like, when I'm watching it on screen, like, I can't tell exactly what they're waiting for or what moment they're, like, you know, trying to push, I understand some of the terminology enough to like, again, appreciate it.
What I guess what I mean is, I don't know that I could ever learn it well enough.
Taylor: Oh, no.
Willie: Because I feel like the level at which they are executing their hits, and their blocks, and the like, being able to see, someone else is about to shoot a fireball, or see someone's about to do an uppercut in this particular, for this particular character, right?
They know what it looks like when the character is about to do something and they can react fast enough to do something in between it. That's one of the only two moves or something that can actually stop that from happening. I don't know if I could ever spend enough time to get to that level.
Taylor: It turns into master chess.
Joseph: Mm hmm.
Taylor: Master class chess, you're straight up, you know, oh, I saw him go back for two seconds as Guile so I know that that, that sonic boom is coming this way or down two seconds. Cause a lot of those, I guess, I guess they are pretty easy tells, but in any easy tell you can also use that as a fake out. So you can do your two seconds down and hey, instead of doing your rising, uh, what's the spinning leg kick that he does or whatever, you know, you're, you're actually dropping a leg sweep.
Willie: Oh, for Guile, the Flash Kick.
Yeah. Guile. Sorry.
Yeah, the Flash Kick.
Taylor: Yeah, I thought that we were, [all chuckle] it was just understood that we're still talking about JCVD.
Joseph: I actually thought you were talking about Ryu and Ken and like the Tatsu, the Hurricane Kick.
Taylor: Oh yeah, yeah.
Willie: That's what I thought it could be. That's why I clarified.
Taylor: That's what would get me is the, the moves like the Hurricane Kick and the fireball. And, and I guess the rising uppercuts, the ones that you can do, you don't have to wait two seconds. It's just, you can do it anytime. And man, you, you really are so dependent on your hit boxes, your, all of that science behind it.
Joseph: Mm-huh..
Taylor: And just knowing that, okay, we're, I'm in this position, he may come at me with this, I better duck or whatever. It's definitely gives me a, uh, already gives me more appreciation for it.
00:29:51
Joseph: I want to go back to something Willie said about just this, like overwhelming feeling that there's like no possible way I could [Taylor laughing-Yeah] like learn what everything looks like visually and then be able to react to it, in the time it takes to react to it.
And that's one of the most fascinating things about the high level play is that it seems like this is a real fight. They block so efficiently and they can read the move that's about to happen so efficiently that it seems like it's a real fight, like you can see the punch coming. Which is, I mean, I think why there's a lot of young players is because they still have the ability to react that quickly and that fast.
But there's a lot of old G's that are still in the game too. One of the best Street Fighters in the world is Daigo and he's like been around forever, like since the beginning.
Taylor: I think that's the person that I watched that, uh, tournament, the 2004, 2005 tournament.
Joseph: Oh, it might've been him versus, uh, versus Justin Wong.
Taylor: That sounds right.
Joseph: That's a really famous moment called Evo, Evo Moment 37.
Taylor: Yeah. I mean, he, he, it was like, they classically are where, okay, hey, they both have the same amount of health halfway. They're good to go. And yeah, he just started putting it on some serious aggression. Yeah. It was pretty cool.
Joseph: When Willie was like... I, I feel that way too. I'm like, how is it that they can react?
Taylor: Oh man.
Joseph: Like, how do you know? Like, I don't really understand it. And what I've learned through just watching a lot of tournaments is that it comes with knowledge of the game, knowledge of the characters. So if you, if you're playing against Guile, you understand what Guile even has as a move set, as the options that he can even throw out, and then you combine that with the idea of what can be blocked successfully, safely.
And then what is actually punishable, you know? So what happens is you get to the point where you're baiting moves from your opponent to try and get them to miss or whiff. You're baiting them playing head games.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: Jockeying for position on the screen and trying to bait out mistakes, and then you understand exactly how you're going to punish those mistakes when they happen.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: That's part of it. The other part is understanding which moves require more frames on like the startup, like which moves in the move set take longer to actually hit or which ones are faster than others. And then you basically choose the best move for the counterattack and stuff like that. A lot of that, all grouped together and that knowledge of the game is what's making it possible for people to react in like those milliseconds.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: And then the other part of it is just guessing, you know, which is why people make mistakes in a round, you know, and they get hit. Or they, they jump in and they get anti aired, you know? Or they get uppercut or, you know, they, you know, they get blocked in some way is because they're guessing wrong a lot of the time too, because sometimes it is about just guessing what your opponent is going to do based on their type of play.
You know, whether or not they're defensive or they're like a rush down player where they want to like apply a lot of pressure at you and stuff like that.
Taylor: Right.
Joseph: So it's like all those things combined is how I've made it, I guess a little bit more understandable for me as to how they can play at this incredible level.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Because it's wild to watch and it's like almost impossible to understand if you don't have all of that context surrounding it.
Willie: Yeah. And that's why I think I said, like, I have enough understanding of it to appreciate it, but also not enough to quite get it or to feel like I could ever do it. Because even especially recently, we were looking, we were playing MK11 and like, there's a section in there where you can go play and like observe the frame data. It shows you what's going on with that-
Taylor: Interesting.
Willie: -and that's the part that's weird to me that you sort of brought up but like... For anyone who doesn't know like there's people have charted every single like move and how long it does take to start up the move and how long how many frames it takes to start the move, how many it's active for, and how long it takes you to recover from that move. And that's only like the smallest subsection of the data that people know.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: And they're like well I know that if this takes two frames to do but this other move can fit within that you, that's how I find my opening. Like this is the move that could possibly, like and that's what I meant earlier when it's like, oh, there are only a couple moves that could fit in between those two moves that are happening on the other side of the screen.
And it's just because they, people have all charted all the frame data to know exactly how long each attack takes, like, from start to finish.
Taylor: Well, once you know that, that's crazy knowledge.
Willie: Right.
Joseph: Exactly, man.
Willie: What I don't know, is like, how you keep that all in your head for every fight, right?
Joseph: Fucking, just hours and hours of playing, man.
Willie: At some point, you get to somebody who, like, you're not as familiar with. And that's when you lose because you're like, I know some of their moveset, but I don't know all of it to the level that I know. Like, I know all of Guile's, but I don't know all of Chun Li's. So now I'm like fucked, you know?
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: Cause I come up to somebody who like switches characters on me.
Taylor: And maybe they know that you haven't ever played that person. Or like sports, they've been watching your videos and watching what you do-
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Taylor: -and who you always choose and all that. How you hold your fight stick.
Joseph: Right, and you can go and watch tape, man. Like you can pull it up on YouTube and watch people that you might play against on tape.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: You know, and not to mention that a lot of elite fighters have YouTube channels, and they stream on Twitch. So like, you can literally just go watch them all the freaking time.
Taylor: Right, right. That's true, that's a really good point.
Joseph: And they're all friends too, right? They're all friends. They play each other offline outside of tournaments. They play each other online. So like, you, you know, like each other's weaknesses and strengths and stuff like that. You have an idea of how someone's going to play.
Taylor: Man.
Joseph: But not necessarily at like a tournament with 7, 000 people, right?
Taylor: Yeah.
Joseph: And you need to get through the pools, you know, you have to play a lot of matches to even get into the final brackets. You're going to play a lot of people that have different techniques and different strategies. And it essentially means, if you want to play in the Top 6 level, you have to be able to fight against any character in the roster, which means you need to basically play this game as a fucking living, which is like what these people are doing.
Taylor: You gotta be a badass.
00:35:47
Willie: I was gonna ask about that, like, when people play like this, what I guess you would call professionally, like, do they, is this literally all they're doing? Do they have other sources of income? Are they just like, going to tournaments all the time? Because you said like, the prize pool is, you know, it's a decent prize pool, but only for the people who are at the top, and also it's not that much.
Joseph: Yeah, it depends. There are a lot of tournaments too.
Willie: Right.
Joseph: Right they're, like outside of Evo, like that's the, you know, it's the grandmaster of the fighting game tournaments. But there are a lot of smaller tournaments that you can win prizes at.
And then there are other different just online tournaments that you can play or online seasons for different organizations that you can win money from. All the people we're talking about, they're pretty much playing for a living.
Willie: Yeah. And they all have sponsors too, right? Like, cause I saw like...
Joseph: And there are teams too.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Yeah, you can get signed to a team with a contract like other esports teams, you know, like, like Dota 2 or, you know, any of those really big, big team play games like Halo and Counter Strike or Fortnite, like whatever it may be.
So you can find information about different players winnings. There are websites that break down like, hey. I've came across one where you can literally filter by that person's age.
Taylor: Huh.
Joseph: So at like 16 years old, this is how much money they made in that year and from the tournaments they were paid from. Or you can break it down by game because a lot of these fighters play a whole bunch of different games.
You might play Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter and, Marvel three or Marvel two or something like that.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: So I guess it just depends on how good you are-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -is going to determine like whether or not you can just straight up do it for a living as your only source of income.
Taylor: Yeah. [chuckling]
Joseph: Uh, somebody like SonicFox, I was looking through their winnings online at some point. And I can remember seeing years where they were like super dominant and they were winning like 230, 000 in that single year.
Taylor: Whoo.
Joseph: And then the previous year they won like 150, 000. And then it might've been like 40, 000 another year.
Taylor: Wow.
Joseph: Definitely depends on whether or not you win-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -some of those major tournaments and just like how consistent your play is. But there are certainly people that, you know, can do it for a living.
Willie: Taylor reminded me of something that I wanted to ask, which he talked about, uh, he talked about fight sticks. And one of the things about the tournament-
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: -is everybody like has their controller, right? That they bring up and plug in. I assume there's like all kinds of like, again, we're talking about sponsorships and stuff.
People probably have like sponsored controllers and shit too, right? They're like, I play with this because they pay me to play with this thing. And it also works really well.
[Taylor laughs]
00:38:14
Joseph: I don't know a ton about that, but the tournaments are essentially like BYOC, like bring your own controller, you know, bring your own sticks, which is pretty cool because you can use something that you enjoy, you know, whether you want to use like a joystick and buttons versus a PlayStation or Xbox controller.
That sort of thing. But if you watch videos, you'll see people like plug in their, you know, their controller pad or like unplug it and take it with them and stuff like that.
Taylor: If anybody who competes in these, if you hear this and this answer is a no, you should absolutely do this. So has anyone ever turned their fight stick into a skateboard?
So that they can skateboard on their fight stick into the arena and then skateboard out after? If not, I'm extremely disappointed in the sport as a whole until that's done. [laughs]
Joseph: I haven't seen anything close to that happening.
Taylor: Fuck. Oh man, missing out. Missing out because those things are the perfect size. I saw, I think the 2020, one of the tournament, tournament moments I saw was a guy with a, with a little like, you know, just a controller playing and he beat a guy with this big ass fight stick.
And to me, for some reason, that was funny. Even though it has very little to do with anything. I'm just like, yeah, the guy with the little controller beat the guy with that big old controller. But if the guy with the big fight stick would have laid that down and then skateboarded out of there on it, that would have been, he won.
He didn't lose, you know, even at the end, he wins.
Willie: I saw during, was it the Street Fighter tournament, I guess, where the uh, yeah it was. Dude's controller was like having an issue for one of those games. It just like, disconnected.
Joseph: It disconnected in the middle of the round.
Taylor: Aw, no way.
Joseph: I mentioned like, I've never seen this happen. I think I might have mentioned that to you.
Willie: I think you did, I think you did.
Joseph: Yeah, I was like, I've never seen this happen. Well actually, between then and now, I did find a video from like the old days. Where that happened in the middle of a game on Xbox 360-
Taylor: Ooh.
Joseph: -where the controller just disconnected. And they, it pauses the game when it happens, but they ended up finishing the match.
Taylor: Oh, okay.
Joseph: And it was a fighter, it was a Street Fighter, and it was a guy named Momochi. And, um, he, it happened to him and he ended up still winning the mat... the set, which was awesome.
Taylor: Cheater. [laughing] He cheated. Oh, man. That's crazy.
Willie: That would suck if you're in the middle of like a tournament for money, you're in the fucking finals and your controller just fucking disconnects.
Joseph: Yeah. Are they plugged in?
Willie: Yeah, I think they were all plugged in, right?.
Joseph: Yeah. Yeah, they are.
Taylor: I assume so. Okay.
Willie: I was wondering, like, that controller's, like, for some reason just dead. It just won't hold a charge or something anymore. Like, do people just have backup controllers in their backpack and they're just like, all right, I gotta switch to this one now.
Joseph: I assume so, because when I was watching that video with Momochi, it sounded like the stick broke. [Willie chuckles]
Taylor: Oh, wow.
Joseph: It was kind of like a highlight video, so it didn't really go into all the details, like, around how they fixed it or whether or not it needed to be swapped out. I think the commentators made it sound like the actual joystick broke, which is wild.
Taylor: I could believe it. I've gotten pretty crunk on some controllers in my days, especially doing competitive stuff.
00:41:19
Willie: When we started thinking about this, I was sort of wondering, I think I know the answer now, but I was sort of wondering if watching fighting tournaments had any influence on you, like, wanting to put together tournaments, like, in the past. But back in Austin, you had put together a couple of, like, tournaments, but that was prior to you even really, like, getting into EVO, wasn't it?
Joseph: Yeah, I would say it was before, like, really becoming a fan of the tournaments and watching tournament play often. It would have been before 2016. But yeah, we did a Super Mario Kart tournament, and then we did a Super Mario Brother? Super Mario Kart. And then, what's the first Mario Brothers game? Just Mario Brothers?
Willie: Yeah, Super Mario Brothers, right?
Joseph: Super Mario? I don't know why I'm forgetting what that is.
Taylor: Why do we always... Why do we always get into this conversation?
[Willie and Joseph laugh]
Taylor: [chuckling] Everytime.
Joseph: But it was like the smash, the game that Taylor doesn't like.
Willie: Oh, right, right. That game. It's just Mario Brothers, right?
Joseph: Mario Brothers. Yeah.
Taylor: Oh, old school. Yeah. I'm not mad at it. It's just a little boring. It's okay.
Joseph: I think we stopped because we did one that like zero people came to and we were like, okay, maybe we don't know what the fuck we're doing. [Joseph and Taylor laugh] Well, actually we knew, we knew we didn't know what we were doing when we started it.
Taylor: That's usually a good sign.
Joseph: Yeah, there wasn't a ton of incentives to keep it going. It was called B3, which is interesting because that's what Evo was called like back in the day, didn't know that at the time.
Willie: And you didn't even know at the time.
Joseph: Yeah, but we called it B3. It was shorthand for bits, brews, and buttons. [Taylor - pfft] I think it was like the combination of those three words is where we got B3 from.
Taylor: Nice. I'm not mad at it.
Willie: I, I went to, I guess, two of those. That's one of the like first things I remember doing. Like when we first started hanging out was going to a couple of those.
Joseph: Oh, really?
Willie: Yeah, I feel like it. At least the first one.
Taylor: That's cool.
Willie: I feel like for the first one, we weren't even like playing skeeball or anything together, but maybe we were and I didn't even know.
Joseph: Maybe we did two Mario Kart tournaments. I think we might've done two Mario Kart and then the third one was Mario Brothers.
Willie: I guess what I mean is I just remember them being earlier, at least the first one being earlier in our friendship.
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: Like I didn't really know you that well. And so this was a cool way to go hang out. You know, see what's going on with everybody that I kind of didn't really feel like I knew that well.
Joseph: It very easily was in the range of 2014 to 2016. Yeah. Which is right around the time we were like beginning to hang out and then eventually started playing skee-ball together and stuff like that.
Willie: I've been thinking about this conversation a lot just because I'm, I'm excited about Mortal Kombat and to see what that, I don't think in no way, shape or form do I think I could ever be good enough to play in a tournament. But I do want to sink some time into Mortal Kombat 1 when it comes out just to like, get good at it because it's been a while since I've played a fighting game in a way that, in a way that like I feel like I could be competitive.
Joseph: I've never really tried, so I, I feel like I'm in the same boat. I'm like, it's a fresh game.
Taylor: Yep.
Joseph: I don't need to go and win Evo, but it would be nice to be able to play in a tournament and maybe, like, not lose in the first match.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: You know, like, that would be awesome, or even just to win matches online and not get just totally wrecked every single time I play somebody online.
Willie: Yeah, you were getting destroyed when you and I played, for sure. [Joseph chuckles]
Taylor: Oh, snap.
Willie: I mean, that's on the internet, people can go see it.
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: If you want to go see it-
Joseph: Was it, yeah?
Willie: -I think it's on our, yeah, it's on our highlights on Twitch. Pretty sure. Yeah. We played some MK11.
Taylor: You haven't seen me get my ass whooped yet.
Willie: That was like your first, uh, really your first time playing MK11, wasn't it? Cause you said you didn't really play that much.
Joseph: I had played through the campaign maybe a month before. Maybe not even that long, but yeah, like a month before. And then, yeah, they were the first matches I played against anybody in MK11 period. Actually in a long time for any Mortal Kombat game.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Because recently it was just, just playing the story.
Willie: Yeah. That was the same for me. Like, I had only been, only been playing the story stuff. And then I, I just installed MK11 that day, but like, it was easy to pick back up. Like I said, I played nine more than any of those. And then 10 a lot, 11 got tricky with all of the like outfits and stuff, which even in the tournament that we're watching, you could see like how they...
00:45:23
Willie: They're able to like make custom characters, right, for that tournament. I don't know exactly how all that works, but they, it's more than just the outfits, right? It's the moveset. Like each, each character has a variation on their movesets.
Taylor: Wow.
Joseph: So the movesets are the things that can be customized, and then the outfits are just kind of purely cosmetic.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Like you can, choose different outfits to assign to those different variations and stuff like that. It almost like you can save presets, but in the tournament play, like you can choose the different special moves or like, you know, different variations of that character. So like, you can decide how you want to combine them, which makes the tournament play pretty interesting
Willie: Again. It makes it even more difficult for me to understand, like someone who's on the opposite side of that, right? You're fighting someone else and you're like, what the fuck did they put together for their custom set?
The level at which they play is, I think you said it best, it's like, some of it is like knowing all that frame stuff, some of it is also just getting lucky and waiting for the other person to make a mistake that you can capitalize on, and that you can punish them for, and like.
Joseph: Exactly. And some of it is just execution. Being able to input the commands efficiently, and be able to chain or string together different combos, and like, not mess that up in the middle of the sequence-
Taylor: Right. [chuckles]
Joseph: So that you avoid getting punished as much as possible.
Willie: Right.
Taylor: That's what it comes down to in so many sports and stuff when people are such high level.
Willie: Right.
Joseph: Yeah.
Taylor: I mean, if you imagine like, just as the perfect kind of visual example is like these ping pong players, right? Where like, they're just fucking insane. We're it's like [mimicking the sounds of a ping pong match] da-da, da-da, da-da, da-da, da-da, da-da, da-da. And you're like, normal people are just like, what is even happening?
It's so, even beyond tennis, because it's so fast that at some point they're so good that all you're doing is waiting for somebody to, you know, miss one. To like finally give in and just the brain kicks in, or fatigue kicks in, and misses, and the other person is the better for it. It's wild.
Joseph: And that happens in fighting game rounds too, where you're just pretty balanced, pretty even, you're trading back and forth, but it's the person that makes one more mistake that ends up getting punished and then loses the round, [Taylor-phew] just like in any other kind of elite sport.
Taylor: And the exploits look nasty [Joseph laughs] when they do make that mistake, too-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Yeah, they're amazing.
Taylor: -because it's not just like a single punch gets put in. No, it's, you know-
Joseph: Full combo.
Taylor: -the hurricane kick and then a fucking uppercut, yeah dude-
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: -awful.
Willie: And then a juggle in the air for a few seconds. And then-
Joseph: Uh-huh.
Taylor: [laughing] Yeah, yeah.
Willie: And then they drop to the ground in the last, the last bit of health goes when they hit the ground and then they're dead. [Willie chuckles, Joseph laughs]
Taylor: Yeah. And if you're super unlucky, you're playing Mortal Kombat. And then that final hit just is like a finish him moment-
Willie: Right.
Taylor: -where they immediately rip your brain out of your fricking skull through your nose.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: Yeah, I will say, yeah, if you haven't ever seen any of the, it is worth going to watch some highlights, of like some of those big moments to see. Because there were, even in this last tournament that I did watch some of, there were some good ones, just like people were perfectly matched and it came down to the last few hits.
There were some like very exciting, tense moments where it's like somebody who's, anybody could win this. Whoever gets this next combo off is going to win this match right now-
Taylor: Sick.
Willie: -in like the next seven seconds, you know?
Joseph: Very tense matches-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -and down to the wire, right? Like where, like Willie's saying, it's like the last little bit, like the 20% left on both of your health bars. What's going to happen? Who's going to win? But regardless, it's such a close battle that it literally is anybody's game right now.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Huh.
Joseph: The Street Fighter 6 is a good place to start, you know, or like Street Fighter 5, like if you're going to go out and like look for something on YouTube to get some visual context for the crap we're talking about. Look up like the Street Fighter 6 Grand Finals from Evo 20, uh, 2023, and that would bring up AngryBird versus MenaRD.
Great, great matchup. And that's a good starting point. Street Fighter is also the, like, it's the cream of the crop. That's the top of the fighting game pyramid in terms of where are the most people competing. And that's just because that's how this whole thing started back in the mid-nineties.
Taylor: Just don't go watch 4. [Willie and Joseph chuckle] You'll be looking at the worst looking Street Fighter of them all.
Joseph: Oh, the game itself.
Taylor: Literally any other ones. Yeah. Yeah. Literally any other Street Fighter looks five times better. [Willie chuckles]
Joseph: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Start with 6 or go to 5 or something like that.
Willie: Yeah.
Taylor: Six is beautiful. Six is amazing.
Willie: Yeah. It really does.
[00:49:47] Marker
Joseph: There were some pretty amazing moments around Street Fighter 4, at least in the fighting game community. Cause that game, when it came out, literally saved like the entire, the entire community, because it was like getting very burned out. There was nothing from Capcom that happened. It had been like 10 years since like the last numbered Street Fighter, Street Fighter 3.
Between that and Street Fighter 4, there was like 10 years that went by and like, people were like stopping. They were starting to not go to these tournaments anymore. And then Street Fighter 4 came along and just like totally blew everybody out of the water. And then like, it was full steam ahead since then.
Taylor: That's cool.
Joseph: That was like the turning point in the history of Evo at least for sure
Willie: That's cool.
Joseph: Obviously Evo is a big part of the fighting game community and that was like what turned everything around and that was like right around like 2009, 2008 - 2009 is when Street Fighter 4 came out and kind of changed everything. And a big reason why is because Capcom, Capcom designed Street Fighter 4 to be more like Street Fighter 2.
Taylor: Mm. That makes sense. That was a strong fighting system.
Joseph: It brought back all the people from where this started, which is with Street Fighter 2. Like in 1996, when like the first the Battle of the Bay* happened was like around Street Fighter 2 Turbo.
They designed Street Fighter 4 to be more like that game. So they're like speaking directly to this crowd, this audience. And now, now these, like Capcom and Netherrealm studios, like they're now using Evo as a platform to announce new characters and DLCs and new games in general. So it's like kind of come around full circle.
Taylor: Hmm.
Willie: Yeah. They know who their audience is and are definitely like-
Joseph: Yeah.
Willie: -making sure that those people are going to enjoy this game and it's going to be the next thing that's played at tournaments.
Joseph: Exactly. And it's, and like, you want your game at Evo. You want your game to be on the main stage at Evo because there's 20,000 people going to Evo.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: You know, and like, that is like, that's the diehard fan and, you know, the diehard crowd.
00:51:35
Joseph: And Willie, you briefly mentioned frame data earlier, like. A game like MK11, the game provides the frame data.
Willie: Right. Yeah, yeah. That's the part that was overwhelming to me-
Taylor: That's crazy.
Willie: -whenever you and I got on that day was like, looking at that section and being like, oh shit, they definitely built this game for people who are going to be playing competitively.
Joseph: Exactly.
Taylor: So that's in the settings.
Joseph: Yeah, it's like part of the tutorial.
Willie: Part of the tutorial. Part of the tutorials-
Taylor: Wow.
Willie: -you can pick to go to a section that like tells you what the frame data is and like it'll be on screen while your inputs are on screen so you can tell what's happening.
Taylor: That's crazy.
Joseph: And so you can do the math and kind of figure out like what's fast, what's, you know, what's slow, what's likely going to get me punished because it's slower than other moves of a different character, all that kind of stuff.
And it's just like an amazing level of detail. And we're talking frame by frame data, right?
Taylor: Huh.
Joseph: Like when you're in these fighting games, like those frames matter.
Taylor: I love that.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: It's like, it's the baking of video games.
Taylor: That's amazing.
Joseph: It's so technical.
Willie: And to your point, Joey. Yeah, it's in there because they're like, we know who's playing this game. We want to see it on a fighting stage. We want to see it.
Joseph: And they're like, it's like they're finally taking care of that core audience, you know?
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: And they're designing the game with features in mind for specifically competitive gameplay.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: Also, just in general, like the fighting game community, there's no other kind of tournament like it because it's always one on one.
Willie: Yeah, that's definitely different than any other stuff that I've watched because I've only ever been into, I can't say I was ever like super into it, but yeah, I watched a lot of Halo 2, like MLG stuff when that was the big thing.
Joseph: Mm-hmm.
Willie: Cool. Well, I think that's a good primer on what Evo is and what fighting game tournaments are like and that whole, I mean, there's so much more to talk about there, but I feel like that's a, probably a good place to wrap for now. Is there any other things you wanted to, that we didn't touch on Joey, that you want to say?
Joseph: Uh, not really. Nah, I think it's like, I mean, this is so far beyond just scratching the surface-
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: -like I can't even put into words how much there is to learn and how much there is to discover. Regardless, it's still fun to watch and it's still fun to hear the commentators talk about, you know? And if you watch, you'll, you'll pick up on some of the terminology and it'll become more familiar, and you'll just kind of have fun watching the, the intense, you know, back and forth and the, the strategy involved in high level, fighting game competition.
00:53:44
Joseph: Yeah, and that's it. If you want to see something really spectacular, a defining moment in the fighting game community, look up EVO Moment 37. It's a match between Daigo Umehara and Justin Wong. It might have been what Taylor was watching earlier. It's a Street Fighter battle between Chun Li and Ken.
And it's like one of the defining moments of the fighting game community where Daigo just did something like unbelievable and what people just figured was impossible at the time.
Willie: I pulled it up, so I will definitely watch that in a little bit. And it's funny because that name, even having not, never super been into it, like that name is obviously familiar to me. It's one that I've always known.
Joseph: Daigo?
Willie: Yeah, yeah.
Joseph: It's the one that you could catch wind of probably the easiest.
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: But Justin Wong is a total badass too. Like he won like, Marvel vs. Capcom 2 for like four years in a row at Evo, and then lost and then came back and won like two more.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: And like he's the, he's won the most EVO tournaments and, but there's other people like Tokido, and Haitani, and Momochi. I mentioned MenaRD. A guy named Punk. Gamer Bee.
Taylor: Hmm.
Joseph: Nuki. Those are all like strictly Street Fighter players, right?
Willie: Yeah.
Joseph: So everybody I mentioned earlier was like almost strictly Mortal Kombat. And like that whole list I just talked about, it was like a bunch of people you could look up specifically about Street Fighter. But yeah, this was awesome, man. I could talk about this shit for days.
Willie: Yeah, I figured. That's why I feel like we should just get a little primer going now and maybe come back to it, especially after we get into some MK1 and everybody's had some time with it, just to see what's going on in that world. But yeah.
Joseph: Yeah, that sounds good.
[Outro theme begins to fade in - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
Willie: Thanks everybody for uh, joining us for another episode of Berries and Blades. I've mentioned a couple of times on here before, but we have started streaming stuff. It's not that often yet, but hopefully it will be soon. If you check us out on Twitch at BerriesandBlades, we also do some Dungeons and Dragons there on Wednesdays at eight central, actually nine central now.
But yeah, thank you for watching. Thank you for listening.
Joseph: Thanks everybody.
Taylor: Get your thumbs on those sticks.
[Outro theme continues - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
00:55:40
Joseph: Berries and Blades is an independent podcast created by Joseph Bullard, Willie Garza, and Taylor Garratt. Thanks for tuning in, and consider subscribing if you enjoyed listening to this episode. You can also support us by telling your friends about the show, and we hope to see you in the next episode of Berries and Blades. Until then, thanks again.
[Outro theme fades out - Caribbean Arcade by Christian Nanzell]
Willie: It's just funny how often we go, not we, but in general the public goes through this like, what the fuck is that song called? [chuckling] [Joseph laughs] Like, no one knows actually-
Taylor: Yeah.
Willie: -and every time people are like, no, I don't think, it's like, because it's something you don't expect.
Joseph: Right.
Willie: It's one of those words, yeah, it's called Inside Out.
Joseph: Yeah, yeah. [Joseph and Taylor laugh]
Willie: And it's like-
Taylor: That's it.
Willie: -it's none of those things.
Notes:
*The original name is actually B3:Battle by the Bay.