Games Mario Will Never Look Cool
posted by on June 30 at 15:50 PM
I walked through the University of Washington campus on Saturday—past sunbathing co-eds, shirtless Frisbee boys, and a wedding procession—to get to Kane Hall. It was dark upon entry; some sunlight, but otherwise, the rods and cones had to swap. A few guys smacked packs of cigarettes against their palms as I climbed some stairs. A whiteboard ahead listed rules for a tournament. And when I finally reached the Walker-Ames room, I noticed a slight breeze coming from a door to the outside world. But it wasn’t enough to keep the current winner of a King of Fighters ‘98 match cool. He turned when I approached, almost whipping me with the sweat streaking his already-thinning head of chin-length hair, and asked if I want next.
This is not the way people are supposed to spend a beautiful Saturday afternoon. But my Street Fighter hankering had grown like crazy since I’d raved about the good ol’ days of corner arcades, so I couldn’t help but accept an invite to check out the Pacific Northwest Majors gaming tourney. Dozens of people with the same fighting-game jones as me? Social gaming? Awesome.
Er, sorta. There were bursts of my favorite arcade days, when a particularly good match drew a crowd to cheer on the fighters. But most of the time, everybody—mostly UW students, though out-of-towners from as far as Portland registered—was face-deep in a TV set, staring silently, hammering away at customized, arcade-quality controllers. I was only there for an hour or so, so maybe the social element exploded once I left, but there was little in the way of even a “good game” statement when I got my ass handed to me a number of times. Of course, this was an extreme slice of the gaming pie, a bunch of guys (all male, shocker) who troll Internet forums to talk strategies for E. Honda or M. Bison this many years after 1992.
My favorite of these hardcore players was a dude with a thick, curly mohawk, like Tunde Adebimpe from TV On The Radio, tearing people apart in Marvel Vs Capcom 2. He’d have his trio of fighters team up over and over, creating a seizure-worthy overload of lasers and explosions, to destroy his every foe. He got up a little later to jabber on the Bluetooth headset on his ear, and that’s when I saw his outfit—marijuana leaf proudly sewn into his jeans, and a long, drooping tee on which Super Mario was dressed to look ghetto-fab. Hate to break it to you, Marvel Vs. Capcom champ, but Mario will never look cool.
Admittedly, the only thing consistent with my nostalgia was the smell: nothing reeks like an arcade. In spite of that slight breeze, the air was stagnant, heavy with the odors of nicotine and Sun Chips. But mocking gaming addicts is easy, and in all honesty, the event was still pretty worthwhile. I’m all for open, public gaming exhibitions—even on nice days—and I’m surprised someone at UW hasn’t taken the initiative to get a monthly shindig going. Free play, a few competitions, some kiosks open with easier games for outsiders to get into… if this exists, someone please tip me.
anyone who wears a corporate entity on their clothing is undoubtedly a crappy person.
Says the corporate apologist.
I used to work for the large, monster-truck-owning corporation which this character calls home. All I can say is, those guys in Redmond hate this shit as much as the rest of us.
This is totally not licensed, but overweight 14 year olds with Princess Peach fetishes will eat this shit up.
tsk tsk.
I'll join any communist movement that will vow to burn down boss wear.
Yeah, it's kinda too bad it was such a nice day. And it goes without saying that none of the rooms at the UW are equipped to keep that many CRT televisions cool.
But, like you said - this is what it takes, sometimes, to really get the arcade feel at its best.
Anyway, glad you made it, and glad you got in a few casual matches. Too bad you didn't get to see any of the finals matches - some of those were very exciting.
NEEERRRRRDDDDDSSSSS!!!!!
I'll trade you that Mario shirt for the Che Guevara shirt my aunt gave me for my b-day. I can't wear that in public.
Yeah, that was Kenny in the mohawk - he's pretty hilarious.
We did have one player from California and one from Nevada - some of the top East Coast players had talked about attending but ended up going to the world (Super Battle Opera) qualifiers the week before.
Generally it takes a couple games before people introduce themselves and say hi - I try to make it a point to introduce myself to people I don't know. The first couple of games everybody is too busy scoping each other's play out to be friendly. =\
There were probably four girls there, but they were all girlfriends as far as I could tell. 'Twas indeed a sausagefest.
Thursday nights at Gameworks and my place 1st and 3rd Fridays are the only real open-ish shindigs I know of right now. On the Northwest shoryuken.com forums people often plan other ones though.
And yes, you did miss the social afterwards - a chunk of the Marvel crowd trawled the Ave until closing time. :)
I was kinda in your shoes there, stranger. I haven't played Street Fighter in almost a decade now. But in getting back into it I heard of this tourney so I went.
Except everyone was pretty damn cool. Despite my completely sucking the game up no one made me feel out of place and when not playing there was plenty of nice conversation to be had.
I didn't know what to expect, but I had a good time. Perhaps you should have given it more of a shot.
Glad you made it out. You should attend some social gatherings (contact zachd for one HELL of Party Crasher article).
It WAS hot. But I believe that was due to UW being on their spring semester and shutting down the AC for the room to accommodate cost.
The fighting game scene in the NW is booming right now...you should take some of your free time and spend it with the some of the people in the area who love this genre of game.
You'd be surprised at how sociable we really are.
wow dude first of all fuck you how are YOU gonna be salty that youre trash and got your ASS handed to you when you dont even practice? thats your own fault. oh yea you know how to do a few moves but youre choppin people that play the game seriously at a tournament and smash you cuz youre a scrub? get the fuck outta here.
kenny is good people and if i knew who the fuck you were, OR IF I EVEN CARED i would beat your ass. im faceless on the internet talkin shit right now, but dont let me find out who you really are and catch you on the street. kenny is my nigga and you can bash him on the net but say that shit to his face and i guarantee he'll give you more than a "rocket-punch" and if im there you'll catch it from me too.
youre a bitch. do you expect females to want to be up in there? if you expect to meet hoes at a video game tournament youre retarded. you must be a metro sexual hipster type college art student photography major beer drinkin frat boy faggot that thinks hes hot shit cuz you can do a qcf+p. I HOPE YOU FIND OUT WHO I AM AND SEE ME ON THE STREET, i will rip that ass up NO HOMO and you can quote me on that shit.
youre fuckin corny and thats all there is to it. go download some net porn you fuckin dick beater and stay the fuck out of the scene if you dont have anything positive to say about some nerd shit
Oh wow yeah kenny is my roomate and he IS good people. And just like portlandpeopleeat said, ROCKET PUNCH!
Wow. Can I talk my shit again! (We Major)
I caught on to this and had to say a couple of things. A hometown newspaper, talking about me. That's pretty bomb.
My Mario shirt wasn't cool.
But then again in the last part of this article you talk about me wearing the shirt.
Why are you watching me? Lol!
Couple questions,
Come on man! Did you have to say I look like Tunde Adebimpe? The man looks foul. I don't look foul. I can't even say his damn name right, let alone look like him. It's a first for me.
I do look funny in glasses.
You guys are lucky, I didn't even come through with the smoked out Spongebob shirt that I had in mind.. I would've done it but I had to rep NW to the fullest. So I thought a videogame character that is local would've made it perfect IMO.
Sasuagefest! HA! WTF are you guys talking about. It's UW! Girls were everywhere. Lovin on the mohawk. The only girl i seen there that was worth talking to was my homies girl from Portland (in the event). Other than that, some asian girls came and watch for alittle bit. So yeah there was some girl action. Slightly. I bet if people actually took the time to sit down and figure out what water/soap/deodorant/cologne
does for the human body it would've made things alot easier, Ya think?
Like Jetay said "Niggas need to have sex with a bar soap"
Shit was foul though. I wish I was around Frank. Just to see what he had to say about the smell.
Plus the fact that It was scorching on Saturday. Which didn't help the smellyness at all.
If you were trying to find a girl at this event. I'm sorry you didn't look hard enough because I was with my crew,walking around campus (the ave too) looking at all the goodies walking around.
Because seriously how many IRL gaming girls you know that play Marvel.
Overall good event. Hey at least I got recognized.
Better yet the whole damn scene got recognized.
WHICH IS BOMB PERIOD!
Sam M. Thank you for showing up the event and making us known.
Publicity is always plus, good or bad.
So to end this.
More than Rocket Punch HA!
Beam, rocket punch, drones, launch, short, jab fastfly assist ROCKET PUNCH!
I realized how long this really was.
Tempest253, NW's Reign Man.Later,
ok, well, i guess i could be glad that the event got recognition, but there really was no point in callin niggas out on their outfits. i mean seriously, there were dudes with with pink pony-tails and karate kid head bands there. and i thought kennys outfit was dope. i think its funny how he came through got his ass kicked and didnt even say he was from a newspaper. he shouldve interviewed brent or anyone else running shit and got a better article than, "hot room of smelly sweaty nerds and no broads."
ive done it before to people IRL for less than talking shit: f, f, 2 Bryan but i know people who would fp, fp, fp cable.... if you know what i mean.
Hey Sam,
Thanks for showing up. Sorry if you didn't feel welcome, but if you had stayed for a little while longer I think you would have met a lot of cool people and seen how great the Seattle fighting game scene is. We are actually pretty unique in that everybody in the scene is open and friendly. We are pretty tight with Portland too, which has a great scene.
The level of play in Seattle is also really high, so to be good at fighting games here, you need to put in a lot of practice and really know your game.
To make a correction to your article, there were about 116 people who entered the tournament, and only about 10 of them were UW students. There were about 150 people overall including the spectators. A lot of them were from out of town.
Thanks,
Brent
Typical Stranger article. Let me guess, the author of this article can't live a day without a cup of Vivace and refuses to wear clothing with logos on it. Yeah, I expect no less from these motherfuckers.
This opinion piece disappoints me greatly. As silly as it may appear, this is a competitive environment. However, unlike other competitive scenes we do not consist of unsociable pricks. A lot of us have met and know each other quite well, it is just that the game takes precedence over everything.
Next time, instead of writing a piece dedicated to some dude with a goofy shirt, please try to get in touch with the organizers. I know you guys like to some off as incognito but in this case you come off as pretentious and snide, achieving absolutely nothing.
Typical Stranger article. Let me guess, the author of this article can't live a day without a cup of Vivace and refuses to wear clothing with logos on it. Yeah, I expect no less from these motherfuckers.
This opinion piece disappoints me greatly. As silly as it may appear, this is a competitive environment. However, unlike other competitive scenes we do not consist of unsociable pricks. A lot of us have met and know each other quite well, it is just that the game takes precedence over everything.
Next time, instead of writing a piece dedicated to some dude with a goofy shirt, please try to get in touch with the organizers. I know you guys like to some off as incognito but in this case you come off as pretentious and snide, achieving absolutely nothing.
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