Things That Took 3 Years to Catch On in Old Games Would Take 3 Days Now

[@SupermanSajam]

Also I tried to make it clear in the video, but as a note: I'm not blaming anybody back in the day for not learning or knowing things, but rather showing how incredibly challenging it was to connect with one another and make moments like this happen. The fascinating thing about these older games is watching moments like this, and realizing "oh my god this was years before even KZbin existed, let alone decades before Twitch, Discord, etc" It's so absolutely fascinating to consider how information travels between now and then, and I think this is just one of many cool examples.

[@IronKnee963]

While it sounds good and logical on paper, it's simply not true. Things in the past (before the internet) have traveled way faster than people make it out to be. Word of mouth was and still is the Number 1 marketing tool. As someone who moved a lot as a child in the 90's and early 2000's I can give you an example. Remember Pokemon Cards? Everybody collected them right. Well, in Germany we used to play a game with those cards called "Klatschen". You bend two useless cards ( like bending the brim of a hat) and lay them face down on the ground. The objective of the game was to turn over both cards at the same time without directly touching them. The most used technique was "clapping" (which means Klatschen in german) the ground. Some people also tried to wave their hands and flip them over with air. Whoever won got the agreed upon shiny. Anyway ... my point is, I then moved back to the US and noticed that kids were playing the same game there. When I went to France, Netherlands and even Brazil kids were doing it too. It's not like this game was published in any magazine or appeared on TV, it spread by word to mouth. Kids that traveled around showed other kids how to do it and it spread like a wildfire. That's just one of many examples, especially when it comes to Pokemon. I don't even want to start with all the glitches and stuff. The reason why it seems that people learn faster now in fighting games is because more people are playing fighting games. It has nothing to do with the learning curve or information spreading faster. It's just that more casuals now have easier access to those game and more people play video games in general because it's nothing new and more affordable in this day in age. Just look at the speed runner community and you'll understand what I'm saying. Fighting games was a hardcore niche back in the day and in this day and age you can make money by playing them, so of course you will have more casuals drawn to it and therefore have more people notice things like tricks and glitches by pure chance. So what I'm saying is, it's not the easier communication systems we have now, it's just that more people are interested in gaming since it's considered a basic need in this day and age.

[@malcovich_games]

@@IronKnee963 ​You are simply overestimating the speed of information spread in pre-internet or the early days of the internet. 1. If information spread that fast including across continents back then, how did the US players not know about Genei-jin and Aegis Reflector for 3 years? The "fewer players in the USA" while true, should not even matter for the purposes of the "information spread" argument, because the tech was already discovered "over there" why didn't it spread to the USA like your card game example? Because... 2. Other factors may have contributed to the card minigame being present in other countries. Perhaps the minigame was already done with previous other existing trading card systems like baseball cards or "paninis"? So the minigame and its spread could have been started very much older than you think. 3. "Word of mouth" today includes someone posting on twitter. And that was far more effective than classic word of mouth, and more effective than shoryuken/gamefaqs for sure.

[@strang7739]

@@IronKnee963 so many old fg players can tell you about this phenomenon, go ask aris when it came to sc2 where the whole gap between international and us was the information difference

[@IronKnee963]

@@strang7739 Or maybe they just like to make excuses. You guys don't understand what I wrote huh? The US Arcade Era was WAAAAAY different than the japanese one.

[@IronKnee963]

​@@malcovich_games It's really simple. Because Pokemon was a international HIT. Every single child on this planet had pokemon cards. Even in thirdworld countries you could find them. Arcade Culture was not global. It was miniscule (compared to Japan) in America and pretty much non-existant in europe. Especially fighting games. In the 90's you could go to the mall and find arcades in the US, in Germany the only chance you got to play arcades was at the amusement parks. We didn't have delis, laundry stations and arcade centers. Japan on the other hand was the leader in arcade culture. They didn't always require quarters to play. You had multiple payment options and even hourly rates. You didn't have the big kids hogging the machines like lowlifes. THAT'S WHY. Of course it didn't spread like a wildfire, when barely anybody was playing those games. The card game didn't appear beforehand with other cards. Because baseball cards and such were guarded and didn't even have the same ability to bend, because they were made out of cheaper materials. You can look into card scene yourself and see I'm saying the truth. No, word of mouth doesn't include the internet today. Word of mouth, is word of mouth.

[@LoudButtons]

"Knowledge checking entire continents" is the hardest sentence I've ever seen. It is a Genghis Khan level quote.

[@asterhogan1]

That's some "attacking russia in the winter" tech that for some reason gets forgotten a lot lol

[@gummyboots]

That Arslan Ash type shit

[@guilhermeberbert]

In Tokido's book he says something similar. Tokido said that back in the day, on a scale from 0 (scrub) to 100 (great player), it took a couple of years for a good player to hit 80+ points, which he considers to be a really high level; Then a new game would come out in the arcades and you'd restart everything. According to Tokido, nowadays, what used to take years, it only takes 6 months. And in 6 months a really good player already hit 90+ points

[@t00ncess]

Damn, take my like for correct punctuation.

[@luan.galaxy]

I hope FG Power Levels become the standard notation for the community

[@carlosaugusto9821]

That's why fg communities only started to properly mature when people started focusing on fgs. But that also came with a cost, in a way... In the 90s overall the 2d fg industry worked in a yearly basis, which was a big factor into that refreshing effect Tokido said. And that only changed more significantly in the 00s, when that release pace slowed down or even stopped in the case of dead franchises like SF. So it's like, the death of SF gave people a reason to dive deeper in 3S. The death of MvC gave people a reason to dive deeper in MvC2. And at least the rough quality of KoF 03 gave people a reason to go back and dive deeper in 02 and/or 98. And so on. And in my view that's what marked the growth of the fgc. Basically people stuck to certain games to learn them better, after the "distraction" of yearly releases ended.

[@dudethisusername7285]

Reading text without punctuation has always made cringe. It is not hard to use proper punctuation in text, it really helps the reader. Thank you for not hurting my brain due to a lack of punctuation

[@harrylane4]

@@t00ncess nah, dude said "and" after a period

[@imnot9923]

What I want from new fighting games thats in old games is those short matchup specific intros. Ryu and Ken fistbump, Elena vs Elena. Makoto vs Ibuki. But also old GG games had great intros.

[@leithaziz2716]

Happy Chaos Mirror Intro : ) (but yeah, I get it. Would love to see more like the example above)

[@Zetact_]

Bringing those sort of intros back would also probably make things easier on the development side, even though most people just skip the like 30 second intros that's currently in style.

[@roar104]

Also bring back character match up specific music like old GG had :c

[@fortidogi8620]

That stuffs in KOF XV.

[@BreezeEase]

GG had cool intros, but some were wack as hell, with like, damage on round start, or full tension

[@Zetact_]

Sajam just casually pointing out that Justin was prominent not just for being 37'd but also Aegis'd and Genei'd. Also of course Daigo would sleep on a table. Remember that Ryu's special talent is that he can sleep anywhere.

[@DairunCates]

Best fighting game player of all time. Top 8 in more games than most people will ever play... People just remember the times he gets bodied and shitposts with a joke choice mid-tourney.

[@jaykelley103]

@@DairunCates oh boohoo

[@SalamanderLights]

@@DairunCates Yeah, he's great. That's why he's a great player to showcase when discussing the difference between today's freedom of information and 2002's bottleneck.

[@topdamagewizard]

This is 100% true. I'm 40 years old. And can do half circles and DP's in my sleep since 1990 But have never been more than a button masher pre internet. As soon as tech started to drop online and I took the time to read, watch and lab I caught up quick and am now competitive. No more gate keeping. No more hidden knowledge. No more excuses. The internet is the equalizer.

[@co81385]

I think that KZbin, streaming, and access to high-level footage is also a great equalizer. It's easier to be exposed to what high level play looks like.

[@Felipera_]

I used to think I was hot shit because I knew how to counter my cousin spamming Dictator's sweep in SF2 lmao (yes, block low then sweep back) or counter honda's slaps with a firebal or blanka's shock with a sweep lmao

[@Manglet762]

There's minor gatekeeping if you can't do the motion inputs needed, but still.

[@muleyamwiinga3988]

Well, all this requires execution.. I guess this is the barrier the new Gen games are trying to brigde

[@dertbag3659]

Daigo made a point that tech that gets revealed online, is tech thats probably a little old, and doesnt always reflect the newest tech players discover. So its an equalizer to an extent.

[@KTSamurai1]

daigo used to be a cryptid to most people and that will always be funny to me

[@soleann8217]

So what I learned this video is that, before streaming, Daigo was the FGC’s version of a cryptid.

[@TonyTheTGR]

That hasn't changed at all

[@Crescent-Adam]

Another great example are the Aris videos talking about his SC2 win in France and how he 'saved it for nationals' and sandbagged with Yoshi when he had discovered answers with Voldo to Nightmare's offence and smoked the stunned French players.

[@graysonpokemoncollector8824]

Where can I find this

[@Ven_detta_]

do you remmeber the video name? All that comes up for me are 5-8 year old videos of the set, and I think the one you're talking about is a few months old

[@youngcrespo]

@@Ven_detta_ he mentions in both his rewatches of the sets vs DTN, it's in his channel

[@Copperhell144]

@@graysonpokemoncollector8824 WGC 2004 Winners Finals and Grand Finals, on Aris' own channel

[@Don_Porculio]

Aris also said that nobody used the word 'tech' back then.

[@mitzi3262]

We all want the same thing, to make modern fighting games be more emergent and fun the more we play them. But when this discussion is brought up you HAVE to talk about how scarce information was out back then and how easy it is to find optimized stuff or what's good now. I think people are too worried about "discovery period" and not talking about expression which is what really will make your game more fun.

[@Ace95616]

I think another thing to consider is the patch era. Developers patch out things that they view as emergent and not what they intended. Older games can't patch things out so emergent gameplay has the opportunity to happen years down the line.

[@garrettbok7499]

Games are so varied, you gotta respect that. I'm dying on my hill, trying to protect my own personal discovery period in elden ring. With fighting games, i will climb hills to have someone show me what they've discovered. I have a different goal with fighting games, which is to have enlightened experiences as often as possible. Discovery is still there, but it is very different

[@AaronRotenberg]

@@Ace95616 The best recent example I can think of for this is Oro's air grab momentum cancel in SFV. Would have been a staple character tech in the pre-patch days, but got patched out as a bug instead and everyone seemed really disappointed that they didn't leave it in.

[@Ace95616]

@@AaronRotenberg That was exactly what I was thinking of. They should have let it be but devs these days want total control over the vision of how their game should be played. It kills innovators wanting to even put in work because they feel like glorified bug testers.

[@thejunkmanlives]

@@AaronRotenberg you dont want unintentional bugs defining the game. in super turbo you have a bunch of weirdness. for example stored ochio throw. remember honda has no whiff animation in super turbo, so if you release a stored ochio it either activates cause your in range or nothing happens. the era of secret tech has been over for years, depth comes from decision making and reads not limited information.

[@Tinfoiltomcat]

Old math was so much harder than new math. It took them how many years to figure out how to solve for X? Now they're finding god particles in 1 day, shit is so casual now tbh

[@arachnofiend2859]

"Back in the good ol' days, Justin Wong could get knowledge checked at EVO"

[@antoniogiovanna9489]

“Can I turn the quality to 1080p” fucking killed me omg

[@BlazinTre]

I still remember getting roasted on the SRK forums for asking why don't the top players share their tech so everyone can grow. Good old NA FGC

[@PaygunFGC]

We ain’t called LAND OF THE FREE for nothing

[@TonyTheTGR]

Because back THEN, you sat on it so you could win and be one of THREE PEOPLE ON EARTH who could make a paycheck of tournament play

[@brainc0la-_-]

Save that shit for Nationals. GG.

[@jojoreferences7766]

I want a compilation of people telling stories of the weird shit Daigo does now

[@ms08gouf]

That's all anyone ever wants, look up wasted world warrior

[@lintecassidy206]

this really put a lot of things in perspective for me. I always got that people weren't actually really nostalgic for old games because they usually didn't seem to know what they were talking about or have ever played them, but now I feel like I get what they were actually talking about--something about the wild west era of fighting games, or at least the aesthetic of it, really appealed to them and they wanted more of it. And talking about how the old games were better is sort of just beast blaming, right, it's pinning a product of the times onto the games themselves in order to say, "we could have this again and it's someone's fault that it isn't happening," instead of recognizing and coming to terms with the fact that an era has passed. And I suppose I kind of get it. There's something sort of magical about seeing a figure like jwong getting twerked on by a tech nobody had ever seen before on the big stage. It reminds me of the romanticism we hold in world culture towards the old martial arts schools in an era where we have MMA, and only the optimal stuff survives, and everybody sort of knows it and the meta centers on the fact that people have all that knowledge. Maybe this is going tinfoil hat-y, but the same way fighting games are able to capture the spirit of martial arts styles that don't actually really work IRL, I wonder if there'll be some new genre in the future that captures the appeal of finding new and undiscovered tech. IDK. This video has given me a lot to think about. Good stuff.

[@shman5000o]

Wooooow, the old school romanticized irl hyper specific martial arts vs optimized modern MMA comparison to this particular FGC "problem" is hella good. I think it's the most effective and succinct way of putting into perspective this particular perceived "problem" with modern FGs. Gonna keep that in mind for sure from now on.

[@shadowflash0]

You have a really good post here and all that, but I couldn't help but laugh when you said "beast blaming" lol

[@firstlast-wg2on]

I think the players that prevail are never the ones with crazy tech discoveries, it’s always those with a beautiful spiderweb of flowcharts and pristine neutral.

[@TonyTheTGR]

There's also this kind of weird romanticism in that "undiscovered tech" can STILL be anywhere, in any game, anytime, until it's discovered. I mean, how long was SMB3 around before people knew they could directly Fake Warp to Peach's Room and bypass World 8 altogether?

[@syrelian]

@@firstlast-wg2on Your neutral doesn't really need to be "clean" or "pristine" to be terrifyingly good, but yeah, the masters these days are usually the ones who can take Ideas and apply them to the field, rather than the people who take Concepts and turn them into playable Ideas, many are to some degree both, but the loss of secrecy and mystery means that the latter usually do not supplant the former off a couple secret weapons anymore

[@larsattack]

Similar footage exist in smash bros with Armada playing peach. He came from Sweden to play genesis 1 in I think 08. The crowd and commentators are going crazy over what today would be simple edge guards.

[@ameersher]

Amsa's Yoshi as well. Characters that didn't seem viable till someone from another region visited

[@VannTango]

'08, huh? I believe that was 7 years after the game out, correct? Damn, sounds about right. Melee has more obscure tech than any other game I've ever seen. They were still discovering new mechanics a full decade after the game came out.

[@Synecdoche09]

@@VannTango they actually discovered 2 new option selects in certain matchups in just the past few months and explained them, and as always in melee, there’s footage from 07 of random good player using one of them in tournament

[@NoodleIncidental]

What's funny is that even today Amsa has brand new Yoshi stuff every time he comes over to the US... unfortunately, it's still all attached to such a bad character, that it doesn't always make the difference Lately he's been finding ways to make "useless moves" like neutral b actually hit in certain matchups, for example. His combo and edgeguard tree gets some changes every time, too

[@VannTango]

Hearing about old fighting games that don't have a training mode is absolutely insane as a newer player. It sounds like a completely different genre of multiplayer game from what we play now.

[@malcovich_games]

Today's fighting games in the Japanese arcade actually had training mode with a timer based on how much money ya put in tho. But in the old days, training mode was fighting the computer in "arcade mode", and hoping that no challengers appear in the meantime.

[@MrOzzification]

And now people bitch about labbing matchups. Devs actually never intended for that. It was the players who demanded a training mode to get better at the game.

[@SlickRick4EVER]

BACK IN MY YOUTHFUL DAYS IN THE ARCADE in the 1990s… LOL… our “training mode” was practically get in line, play the next opponent on a versus battle, and try to cusp your skills on the moment you play that opponent “on the fly”. If you win, you stay. If you lose, then tough shit… get back in line and wait your turn! You new age 09ers and 16ers are damn lucky to have such advances. I cannot lie, it is beneficial.

[@VannTango]

@@SlickRick4EVER So how did new players learn the game? What kept you coming back when you get destroyed and sent to the back of the line?

[@malcovich_games]

@@VannTango Pride, the desire to win, watching better players, better players mentoring new players. And also, battling the CPU during offpeak hours. You may think fighting the computer creates bad habits-that’s true, but there’s little choice. If nothing at least it helps with combo muscle memory.

[@blckmarvl5652]

Hello, Old man here who was active for all of 3s including attending that evo. That was the first evo and they invited the best of the best to play all the old games. At the time nobody was playing 3s/A3 1. Marvel 2 exploded: Jwong using prev unseen tridashes dethroning Valle/Duc 2. First year for CvS2 w Roll Cancelling still being hotly debated. 3. Guilty Gear XX had just come out and nobody knew how to play it lol. 4. Tekken/Soul Calibur regionals/nationals were going on. We had skillsmith/Gamest vids and folks travelling to japan to play so everyone was well versed in 3s, it was just dead at the time. If im not mistaken we had problems securing the 5 spots and thats how jwong got on the team when he didnt even play the game at the time. That was a very big shift in the fgc that year,

[@GenericSoda]

There's an interview with Justin post SBO in I want to say 2004 after he lost to Q. Justin freely admits that he only knew the Chun-Li mirror match and Chun-Li v Ken matchup. Think about that happening today; there's always going to be some blind spots in matchup knowledge but a top player only knowing two matchups is unthinkable. Admittedly there's reasons for that (Chun-Li can just out-neutral most characters, lack of info) but it's so informative on how that lack of info shaped everything.

[@Kool212]

I'm still miffed about Kuroda. Dude had a godlike Q.

[@capefeather]

One thing about old fighting game footage, and really old Japanese gamer footage in general, is that I feel like people generally came to the conclusion that Japanese people were some kind of genetically superior god gamers. And then GDQ came along lol. But anyway I kind of like Ken vs Bombsoldier as an example of this phenomenon, because that set was *both* players each having tech that the other player's country had never seen before.

[@noticeme6412]

they weren't gods, they just communicated with each other to help all of the scene grow

[@GenericSoda]

@@noticeme6412 Japan's arcade scene is totally different from anything from the US, even in its peak. Japan is a very transit heavy culture, and train stations are just populated with arcades where you can kill 10-30 minutes until your next train. It's super easy for arcade communities to grow in this type environment. Compare that with the existence of arcades in the US being something you actively had to seek out. I never had a proper arcade in my area growing up, and what I did have didn't have any fighting games.

[@noticeme6412]

@@GenericSoda makes sense.

[@MrOzzification]

@@GenericSoda Also Japan had a culture of sharing tech well before the social media age made it impossible to hoard information. The "save that shit for nationals" attitude wasn't as prevalent or at least phased out quicker there than in the US. And its become abundantly clear now that sharing helps the whole scene learn and improve faster.

[@AMVaddictionist]

@@MrOzzification But I remember watching videos where jp pro players say that the west is better at sharing tech... I couldn't tell you where I saw it so maybe it's just in my head.

[@internetmovieguy]

A big difference between then and now: playing sf4 my opponent would shenanigan me over and over with something I never saw before. And when I would ask after the match “how do I beat that?” I wouldn’t get an answer. Heck, Diago used to request to not be on stream so that he could save his tech for the big events. Now a days: people will tell me exactly how to beat something. And if neither of us know what to do often they will help me figure it out. Even when playing old games.

[@LordKnightfgc]

I got 240p glasses to sell you 🕶️

[@darkwalker269]

The epilogue Daigo story makes him sound more like a living Ryu than ever lmao

[@bazookabadger7936]

I had a pen pal that would send me fatalities for mortal kombat 2 because he had internet but I didn't. So he would send me all the fatalities and the inputs in one of his letters to me. I wonder if anyone used the pen pal tech for combos or general strategies for fighting games back in the day.

[@keithsimpson2150]

I definitely wrote Street fighter moves from the manual at home and brought it to the arcade in a spiral notebook. Camelot games near Santa Barbara California

[@AndrewRogue]

As a TCG player: this. Like, you know how I found out about the concept of a mana curve back in the 90s? It was because some dude created Sligh (which pioneered that concept) and I happened to pick up the issue of Duelist magazine that had an article talking about it. And this is for a concept that is now essentially part of the backbone of many TCGs. You got to see new and surprising decks because your knowledge was your local playgroup and what y'all were testing, not literally the entire global community testing and iterating nonstop for weeks on end.

[@MrOzzification]

Its become a known phenomenon for devs. That for any game released now, they must be prepared for players to optimize the fun out of the game, very quickly. While it is the mark of excellent design for a game to still be fun once fully optimised, a lot people find the most joy in the discovery period. The excitement of finding something game changing that came by their hands, not the devs. And that can be pretty hard to design for deliberately. But that's just how it is in the Information Age

[@RinaShinomiyaVal]

YGO dont got mana :)

[@cenncenn9765]

@@RinaShinomiyaVal yeah, which is a bad design in general

[@joplin4434]

@@RinaShinomiyaVal ygo went through similar phases, if you watch History of Yugioh it becomes clear how deck building changed massively once it got popular online and you didn't have to rely on magazines for decklists. It wasn't until infernity that we switched to our more modern outlook and well into the 2010s you still had things like being allergic to playing three copies of cards.

[@RinaShinomiyaVal]

@@cenncenn9765 I dont see how being forced to main deck 1/5 of a brick is "bad game design". if anything MTG seems like it is as all it does is increase forced varience ie better player will win less

[@sirreginaldfishingtonxvii6149]

And even more crazy, those old matches wasn't even _that_ long ago. Not at all. Information distribution and accessibility has changed so drastically in the last like 15 years it's insane.

[@JanusIIV]

As someone from the late 2010s, this is true but also overstating how quickly people are willing to adapt. In UMVC3, I remember seeing stuff like Mazio loops with Doom months before people picked it up in the mainstream; same thing with TAC loops at first, or Spencer zip loop, and all sorts of random stuff. It's on the order of months, maybe weeks - but it's still way faster than it used to be.

[@sjohntube]

Marvel3 had an interesting cultural cross pollination. You had old mvc2 heads trying the old attitude not realizing how different the game would develop. You had sf4 and other new guard players with the new attitude of sharing. The new attitude skilled up and showed the old style what for. Viscant literally put out a 'how to play my phoenix team' tutorial that top players didn't watch, before he won EVO. Viscant being an exception where he knew his knowledge was his Trump card but he put it out there anyway. Truly a gem old schooler. They were Good times.

[@MagicManCM]

To add on to this a bit, Strive was the first game I got into and actively played online while it was still fresh so I was able to learn *with* everyone as opposed to just trying to sift through a ton of information myself or trying to just figure stuff out with no knowledge from others. It made it a lot easier to digest as the knowledge about the game grew in the online communities rather than after the fact.

[@isaiahtorok7079]

I recommend giving kof a shot! 15 is really fun with a lot of room for learning still and solid systems. I feel like I'm learning new stuff all the time just by playing! It takes a couple hours to get used to but it has great neutral, but watch a video about the neutral and play for a bit and you'll be ready in no time

[@GG100Proof]

While I agree with Sajam's basic principle (people learn games incredibly fast now because social media and the sharing of tech and information), 3S is kind of a bad example. America quit 3S after a year... there were almost no regional or national tournaments for it and the meta early on was incredibly boring so the game just died. The reason we didn't know all of that high-level stuff (Genei Jin combos, Urien unblockables, Twelve rushdown) was because virtually no one was playing the game. Between the 2002 Evo exhibition, CvS2 being a boring tournament game and Capcom not releasing anything else, people gradually moved back to 3S because there was nothing better to play.

[@CanalBillCast]

To be honest, there was something better to play, but people refused to play anything that wasn't Capcom related...

[@GG100Proof]

@@CanalBillCast Ignoring that "better" is subjective, there were no active scenes in America for anything else besides Tekken Tag in '00/'01. Small pockets of a couple of other games but they'd get like 15 or 20 people at regional tournaments at most. So if the choice back then was "go play Marvel 2 or CvS2 which had round-the-clock competition in arcades and 100+ people at regional tournaments" or sit in a corner playing some other game with no scene and no interest by yourself, the choice became clear pretty quickly. It didn't hurt that Marvel 2 was also an incredible game and that CvS2 was really fun if not a great tournament game (it took way too long).

[@DuoMaxwellDS]

But I think that proving his point to an extend. The boring meta was the result of lacking of information sharing method and people mostly just follow their own local's "meta".

[@CanalBillCast]

@@GG100Proof so... You just kinda proved my point. Other fighting games stayed small and didn't growth because people in that time turn their backs to everything else and stayed with Capcom titles.

[@GG100Proof]

​@@DuoMaxwellDS You could say 3S may not have died so quickly if the meta had evolved faster but that wasn't really the point Sajam was trying to make in using that footage. Plus there were a number of factors that contributed to 3S disappearing in the US (prominent tournament organizers not running it, NG/2I being terrible competitive games pre-disposing people to not give it a chance, other games grabbing people's interest). Allow me to use another example from the same time period to make my point. There was a Marvel 2 exhibition held around the same time (might've actually been at Evo 2002 but I can't remember... there was an A3 one as well) where we pretty much did the same thing to Japan. We beat them like 23-2 or 24-1. Completely took their lunch money. It wasn't because Japan wasn't able to share information or tech. They just never particularly cared about Marvel games and MvC2 was the biggest tournament game in America for several years.

[@plutoburn]

I remember back when a group of my friends were playing 3S competitively in the early 2000s, we have to travel to get new competition and frame data is a luxury for people who bought oversea Japanese guides, and you have to get good fast or you run out of money. In the arcade environment, it makes learning a new character or practice new tech difficult because you don't want to take a temporary dive in skill because if you lose, you lose your quarters and you have to wait your turn.

[@shman5000o]

Ya know, now that you mention it, I do find it kinda odd how US players didn't really bother with Yun's Genei Jin super as much. Or even ponder on its potentia as much even though they've already been exposed prior to SF3 to a similar mechanic in Alpha 2 and 3. But I guess that's hindsight for ya...

[@DemonBlanka]

They don't call it the land of the free for nothing

[@shman5000o]

@@DemonBlanka D a m n Good one lol

[@DynoDunes]

People just assumed it was too hard, and sf3's reception (in the west coast, at least) was poor prior to this. New gen and 2nd impact were more east coast games, and people thought the game was just about chun.

[@shman5000o]

@@DynoDunes shit....you right. Can't believe myself that I forgot how much of an "outsider" game SF3 as a whole was perceived still back then amongst the FGC in the grand scheme of things. And how long it took to be seen as a "hardcore" big league staple game lol. Heck I was even there to witness around the late 00's(2009-10) how it eventually became the "hip" thing to like and I still somehow took for granted how it's widely accepted and popular now a days haha

[@hugensmugen]

Americas approach to fightinggames have always been to find the easy + busted shit and abuse that, you see it across all fightinggames over the years. So with that in mind its not that odd that a highly technical character like yun was left in the sidelines.

[@JPROP-vb7sv]

I can remember being in high school and going to different arcades. Every arcade you went to, people had different setups. I miss those days

[@chrismiller9333]

Even in the 2010s info was hard to come by, which is why we all should appreciate Jourdal's hard work on getting the JPN content on anime games for a long time.

[@guilhermeberbert]

jourdal's videos were the reason why i fell in love with blazblue

[@Adclif]

If you watch from that same exhibition it works the opposite was with MvC2 japanese players have no idea wtf is going on and its 24-1 out of 25 matches. Definitely youtube etc sharing helps. SRK was definitely only way to share this kind of info.

[@ajrey88]

My cousin gave me a burned CD with the 3rd strike tournament mentioned at the beginning of the video. It also had a collection of MvC2 combo videos from various regions. That shit blew my mind back then.

[@neverendingstory7250]

comparing melee from 2006, where the game was already out for 4 years, to now is also pretty crazy. the meta developed so much and the game seemingly got twice as fast

[@sozestone6469]

Damn this brings me back to the arcade days. I learned Raging Demon in 3rd Strike this way, dude kept destroying me, and I rematched him until he showed me the tech. When he left, I bullied everyone that came in because noone even knew what RD was let alone how to counter it. It was good times.

[@MasterChibi]

Same thing happened when roll canceling was brought to light at Evo, the forums were *bonkers* for months.

[@imoj]

I knew it was the tokido Aegis unblockable when he mentioned 3rd strike.

[@EarthLordCJ]

That last story about Daigo is akin to waking up an Imperium Dreadnought when it’s time for glorious battle, lmao.

[@alistermatthew9407]

I appreciate this because my friends started playing sfv recently, and one friend was looking up the ken vs Necalli matchup because I started playing Necalli, and it was hard for him to deal with cause he never played against the charcter. Another friend called him a sweaty tryhard for that and I hjust felt that was really wrong. I'm so happy there's so many tools now to help people get good quicker, cause it feels like we have the rest of the fighting game community to catch up with

[@chubbytwist9434]

DnF Duel was a fun experience since everyone had to come up with new tech or answers in match. It really felt like losing didn't matter, learning did. And I know that's how people should approach fighting games but with the abundance of information right now everyone feel like they deserve to win. Dunno, a part of me misses the old times

[@leoade6101]

DNF duel was the most fun I had with gaming before or since, god I miss that weekend

[@TakashiHankuro]

I loved dnf duel beta so much. When I was doing random shit with ranger and found out what moves connected with each other I felt something I haven’t since I first played sf4 in the arcade. A lot of nostalgia back then.

[@red6775]

I remember like day one ran into a crusader and beat him like 7 - 0 and day 2 or 3 I was getting hit for about 60% off of wall

[@hijanks]

@@leoade6101 this hits too close to home…grand balance patch is sick but never gonna get the magic back. What a beautiful, transient community that was

[@androtaz2621]

Denjin arcade's little blog page and random SRK ftps were the best places to find any Japanese (or otherwise) tech/match footage for years even after youtube.

[@saado99]

niconicodouga also.

[@tgr3423]

It's like the early days of Melee, where entire continents would be privy to tech that others were unaware of. Nowadays, people are learning to ledge dash in the first day LMAO. The availability of knowledge is accelerating the player base to absurd heights.

[@pauldaulby260]

A while back I was into an alpha of a fighting game, and blocking was terrible, so they buffed it. I did an analysis of the relevant options out of block, and realised while the new block was definitely better, there were a few options you could choose vs block that got you a combo 80% of the time, and was safe the remaining 20% of the time. I showed this, and people were still like "nah, anecdotally i did a block and it worked out for me, block seems good now" and then it took half a year for other people to start doing what I'd said, and the consensus eventually became that blocking needed to be changed again. its not surprising that little metas based around incomplete knowledge would pop up in the past giving a false appearance of depth that wasn't really there. people were truly convinced that blocking was good because they'd been playing against people who weren't taking advantages of its weaknesses, and to them the game seemed more deep and well rounded than it really was.

[@firewaffle222]

What's the game

[@GoldDounuts]

@@firewaffle222 based off the context he is probably talking about 3s parries

[@Sakaki98]

@@GoldDounuts Doubt it

[@WaxxyVanderquail]

@@GoldDounuts literally what about this context made you think about Third Strike?

[@isaiahtorok7079]

@@firewaffle222 I'm interested too

[@AaronRotenberg]

6:18 Forget asking people for inputs - with SFV online tournaments, you can look up the player's CFN ID, download the replay, and watch it frame by frame with all the inputs on your own copy. I think you can do that in Strive too.

[@VerbalLearning]

With how fast information is shared these days i'm honestly surprised by how slowly i feel like characters develop in a game like Smash Ultimate. Obviously the game has a shit ton of characters, and a lot of them don't have many players repping them but with just how massively popular smash is i honestly would've thought even mostly overlooked or underplayed characters would have extremely developed tech, neutral and combos etc which a lot of them don't or it's just coming to light now several years after the games release.

[@gspandem1204]

Thing is, Smash Ultimate has a lot of more subtle tech compared to Melee. Small little things that can change how people view who's viable or not.

[@tokuyou3811]

do you think the realization of tech and exploration of it is also hampered by patches? this could be said of any modern fighting game, but in comparison to smash ultimate's older brother melee, which practically had no balance changes, left people to jusr find shit rather then let the devs touch it and tweak it for balance

[@qedsoku849]

Soku is 12 years old but has a lot of fanmade tools that let us really pick apart the game, even with all that time we’re still finding new things. I found a setup for an 80 frame unblockable super against 1 character about a month ago and now it’s the new meta vs that character.

[@the0pizza0guy]

This topic of discussion perfectly clears up and punctuates what people very commonly misunderstand about "older fighting games" (even the term I feel is a bit derogatory). I tend to see a lot of people use the statement: "This game is old, therefore its hard", which I don't believe is the case. I believe that older games are seen as "harder" due to the fact that a large majority of them have been so fine-tuned over the course of their lifespan (i.e. SF2, GGXX, MMAACC; maybe BBCF or Skullgirls to a lesser extent) or just so happen to be quite overwhelming due to the amount of information they present at a glance (CVS2, KOF'98/'02UM). The statement presented at 8:17 is such a perfect way of summarizing this commonly misunderstood topic that I could not have put in any other way.

[@supermarty564]

I even feel back then we would give up on new tech so easily. We'd find something and be like "3 frame window?? way too hard to do". Nowadays we're like "oh shit 3 frame window? that's so easy!"

[@Trigun_Bebop]

So what I hear is, disable fighting games and footage from the internet in all formats, so we can have emergent long lasting slowly evolving gameplay.

[@DragynFyre12]

With all the FGCheads talking about emergent gameplay I really want to see someone talk about Melee lol. I still think to this day, despite the community having reversed engineered the games code and all the tech being shared around, the gameplay is still so varied and I can still recognize top players by their gameplay alone. Also that Yun clip is hilarious because I can't even image someone trying to comprehend what Genei Jin does on the fly mid match

[@suaveernest]

Reminds me of Wesker as the US main anchor compared to JP picking Vergil for UMVC3.

[@SuzakuX]

Man, it wasn't even that long ago that I was digging for bootleg offscreen loke test videos on Japanese file hosting sites for and translating GGXrd impressions posted on ni channel for Dustloop. The first video I ever uploaded was an offscreen video of Order-Sol's instant kill.

[@mattb6616]

its crazy that nobody knew this stuff. how do you have a character with a super thats a giant projectile that just hangs out on screen forever and not like immediately instinctively try to practice unblockable setups

[@alexpimentel7170]

Similar stuff came up in the magic community. go back 20 years and finding information on decks was a crapshoot at best. I remember seeing some deck (I think it was Titania's Balance) just smoking people, but couldn't talk to the guy with the deck, so i had to just take what i remembered and what info i could get from other folks at the event to try and cobble something together. Ubiquitous access to the internet now means that information is everywhere. Stuff that we take for granted now was incredibly innovative back in the day.

[@ckenshin3841]

What's funny is that Urien was considered low tier in the US and the mirror was a gimmick super

[@saado99]

They were like.. why would a reflect fireballs with a super when I can just parry it?

[@JM-ou5ro]

It depended on the arcade. At mine, we all knew Urien was top tier and that Aegis was borderline broken.

[@johnbarry5036]

i remember playing SF2 when it first came out, nobody knew how to do the flash kick, uppercut, SPD, etc. It was just accidents that happened and you're like... what?! I remember the first time flash kick was first figured out, this guy would get his friends to crowd his side and back so nobody could see his joystick movements. Thats how you learned back then.

[@KaitouKaiju]

Right! It's crazy how different things are even for casuals. There were no moves lists without buying a strategy guide or magazine

[@syrelian]

@@KaitouKaiju I didn't even live that era and I know it, if you find an SF2 cab in one of the few NA arcades around still, you're lucky if it has like, Fireball, DP, Tatsu listed on an infographic, so many of them don't even give you motions they just list some names for each character

[@amn1088]

I remember trying to learn MvC2 back in 2008. That was crazy, I had to go through so many threads on SRK it wasn't even funny and even then most of the information was incredibly basic because high level players werent really bothering to share how to do so many things. I remember after spending a week practicing Ironman infinites literally for hours probably 10 or so because I could play at work all day, I finally found a post where someone explained the timing in text form. After that I could do it easily. Now I have come across so many videos of people just explaining the timing of combos verbally so you have no issue repeating them, but 14 years ago that just wasn't a thing.

[@YouGuessIGuess]

Thank you for saying this. I remember scouring the internet for Third Strike footage and being simultaneously confused and blown away by what that game could actually look like when played with tech.

[@walterburdzy5408]

This is a big part of a lot of competitve scenes, fighting games are far from only genre to be affected by rate of play and information spread. New standard formats for MTG feel like they're solved before prerelease weekend sometimes. It's just the nature of the beast. This doesn't mean innovators can't exist and break new ground of course, but it is much rarer to do. This shift in paradigm affects development as much as it does the players. It means they really have to define the existence of a card, move etc. Useless stuff is phased out REALLY quickly and busted stuff is discovered almost instantly. It's why fighting games nowadays tend to have less bad buttons you'd never press and card games have less undraftable chaff. I still think the teams do a much better job now than they used to though in all these genres. We get a lot less Okos and Meta Knights than we used to. We still get some though...

[@syrelian]

Absolutely true, I think relatedly, as a casual Yugioh player myself who watchs the same phenomena occur, that the advent of strong themes and archetypes also impacted how much "pack filler" is printed, its a lot easier to go "your deck only gets actually useful things about 1/4 of the time" when the other 3/4s can be useful to other players without too much likely hood of violently leaking over boundaries, instead of just, shitty over-priced understatted monster #72 And people absolutely go mad with innovation despite the cutting edge top-tiers getting solved early and refined slowly, mid-tiers and our lack of rotation means every week someone has decided to do lunacy with some absurd combo thats really not competitively viable but still looks cool, is fun, and wins game, and somehow uses a card or ten from 2011

[@andrewwestfall65]

I feel like it's a few things combining. Part of it is that the games are learning what mechanics work and are good to implement, but then people are able to carry some of that knowledge over. Even if you completely changed the inputs for the mirrors, you already have some knowledge on how to put them into play. Games are also a lot better about communicating these things than they used to be, so it's easier to learn it because there's just less hidden to the player. Finally, it's not just you and your 5 friends trying to get good at the game, with online play and resources it's far easier to find other people to test the game with and also you're able to see what other people have already discovered. Also, they aren't just discovering the game by playing it, but by breaking down code and seeing what's going on under the hood

[@Wanna_Be_Desu]

It's applicable to modern gaming in general. You get guides on youtube 10 days before the game is even out. Need any build for any character, with explanations and even skill calculator? Reddit got you covered. Like, a super complex RPG comes out, full of math that takes hours to just read through the rules and some random nerds figure out 90% optimal stuff in a week and post a 10 page document on it. MMOs like WoW get addons powered by AI or some shi, which solves raid bosses the day dungeon comes out and communicates information between users of said addons in real time. Sometimes a person doesn't even need to have played the game to know it well, because their favorite streamer just did a full 60 hours walkthrough of it. I'm really curious to hear what developers think about information spread and how it affects their design.

[@DiegoDeschain]

This is absolutely true. Anyone familiar with competitive TCGs will be familiar with this already. It's the exact same thing, back in the 90's or early 00's, people would show up in tournaments and face some cool tech that they've never even heard of, hell, even entire decks they've never seen. These days, a new set is released, and a few weeks later the format is for the most part solved and stale for the remainder of the season, because everyone has immediate access to everything through the internet. Same thing.

[@victornguyen1175]

Sajam feels like one of the only people that make sense these days. It doesn't really matter if you agree with how he feels or not, he's got proof. I love the fact that he backs up just about everything he says with real life scenarios and historic evidence. Helps you relate and connect information, but also makes it really enjoyable just to listen.

[@IchinShek]

Getting match and combo videos back in the day was incredibly hard. It wasn't just USA vs Japan that had dramatically different tech, it was also East vs West coast USA. FFA vs CTF had very different schools of play.

[@Walpurgisnackt]

I literally couldn't find information on how to start the Ram wall splat vortex in rev2 so I just stopped playing the game

[@AndrewRKenny]

I love the progression of older games. It's really remarkable how smart and innovative some of those players were.

[@FloydianHate]

there's a lot that's interesting here but one thing that jumped out at me was that of COURSE jwong just stood there wiffing normals, he loves to just hit one button over and over again, he'll do that all day if you let him (and then obviously the instant you challenge him you'll find out why)

[@matrix3509]

While yes, a lot of it was based on ignorance, it hard to understate how magical these 3s moments were if you were there watching it. Every single one of them were like the Tim & Eric mind explosion meme come to life for the people witnessing them. I understand why those moments don't really happen anymore, and that it leads to higher level play more quickly, but I still miss the feeling. Also having those moments in private, by yourself just isn't the same having them in a crowd that is also having their minds blown at the same time as you. Its hard to appreciate the sudden acquisition of knowledge unless you've spent time in ignorance.

[@Tombos]

There's kind of a similar ramp up in information around the UMVC3/SFIV Era (arguably earlier I'd imagine) where more and more people are using KZbin and capture devices are being used more to record footage but the cost of entry was significant enough that having the money or time to make high quality stuff was unlikely. And if you did upload stuff you'd have to face the "concequences" of putting your tech out there in the world too where your opponents could look up your handle and study on your tech beforehand. Nowadays if you have a PC and an Nvidia graphics card you can record and upload anything at anytime and there's so much content to look through that it can get buried under other things.

[@piwithatsme]

The stuff that tokido is doing is hard, i cant understate this.

[@e.a.g6329]

I could not imagine marvel without its infinites and shenanigans but it took a while for them make them. Now we find cap in every second of the game. People find things way too fast these days.

[@I2ed3ye]

I'd also like to add how big print was back in the day. I remember getting so excited when a new magazine would come out and there'd be an article about whatever game and if you were lucky they did an interview and dropped some kind of tip that wasn't wrong

[@GuyWithAnAmazingHat]

This is like the Parkistani arc of Tekken when Arslan Ash appeared like a secret boss to trash everyone at Tekken7

[@celeschan90]

I remember a channel called YogaFlame24 or something? That posted a lot of SF4 footage back in the day. It was quite helpful.

[@ckenshin3841]

The thing is that I think people do want this slower discovery process. Do you hear that crowd? That "what the heck is he doing?" Everyone was there to see that discovery at the same time.

[@saado99]

Marvel 3 brought back some of it, just because it was such an open game. Morrigan, Vergil weren't top tier at one point, everyone thought wesker was top tier, no one had answers to dark phoenix. It was kind of exciting seeing new tournaments and seeing what kind of new tricks people had. I remember when Kusoru first hit the Frank West super on phoenix to prevent dark phoenix.

[@fightinggamesexplained453]

THANK YOU for providing this valuable perspective for those that are relatively new to the scene. People think the FGC is grassroots nowadays, but it isn't until you see the time before youtube, before there was a stream at every event, before smart phones, and before the internet was even considered mainstream. We had notepads and shit. Word of mouth and IRC chat was your best bet. Uphill both ways etc etc.

[@Finicky9]

Maybe it was the old fgc that was loose not the old fighting games

[@NeoBoneGirl]

It was both. Aegis Reflector is clearly not intended to be used for unblockable setups, and if Third Strike were a modern game and it was discovered, devs would patch it out instantly because Urien isn't "supposed" to be able to do that. I haven't ever been through the discovery period of my favorite games, so I think trying to say that games are designed the same exact way they were years ago and it's just that people know how to play them better and share info so that's why they're more limited is like. Provably false.

[@Athenya]

@@NeoBoneGirl Pretty sure there is an arcade version with it fixed

[@SlickRick4EVER]

As I have come to learn about Tomo Ohira, it offered me so much respect on why he was one of the best SF players of his time. I know what it was like playing arcades in the 1990s. Sajam, thank you for acknowledging this!

[@chrisschuber9149]

Loved watching old tourney videos at the time to learn CvS2 when it came out on Xbox. Good times.

[@ChojinLove]

Wish streaming for video games wasnt as big as it is now. Back then, it was crazy exciting seeing all these new tech in random tournaments throughout the years. Nowadays, you can see everything already in week 1.

[@kevl0rneswath]

Some people just have golden age delusions and take for granted all the convenience that they have today.

[@Mario_bland]

This reminds me when i used to watch cvs2 in an arcade live, and saw rock roll cancel run through a fireball. For years of my life i thought this was a property of run then id get smoked when trying it lol

[@Synecdoche09]

Just look at classic wow (obv any fighting game is harder than wow, point remains) when molten core released a lot of the player base thought it would be easy but in the first week people were clearing a 40 man lvl 60 raid with less than 30 people most of whom were not 60. As a culture we have all collectively gotten better at gaming and the internet is 100% of that

[@semantik95]

This is why history is important kids.

[@keybladelovers]

As someone who got into fgs retro activly from smash its astonishing how little content there is in comparison to most fgs in smash stuff spreads so fast even back in the day stuff was documented on things like smashboards so there was always a place for information gathering

[@YangyChaddyDad]

I was thinking the same thing, smash has so many content creators and shit. Going into strive I was lucky to play the same character as sajam so I can just steal his shit

[@Hotobu]

The fact that this video even exists is so ridiculous to me. It's basically 10 minutes explaining that "information spreads faster with the internet." It's absolutely BAFFLING that people needed examples detailing why this is true.

[@luan.galaxy]

Every time a Twitch streamer posts a video discussing any subject it makes me think their chat is littered with absolute morons. This video is ok though, because he showed those matches as examples. Also twitch streamers don't post essays, they post conversations, which are generally casual. I wish they'd stop giving them clickbait Essay titles, but that brings in the views and money.

[@keithsimpson2150]

More players playing more systematically and sharing more info is an exponentially faster solve rate for games not that they can be truly solved in most cases

[@ivansotelo4622]

Cool video sajam, interesting comparison and reflection

[@ThatWolfArrow]

I think it's less important that there are things to discover and instead that game's mechanics and character designs let you have a variety of possible choices and decisions to make in a variety of situations. It's one of the big reasons why I love KI and Rivals of Aether.

[@YukonJack]

Emergent gameplay urgently emerges emergently sea urchinly during emergencies, if you catch my drift.

[@Apollo3p]

I remember the feeling of seeing the JP bbtag players play the game once the sandwich stuff got figured out. It felt like watching a totally different game out of no where.

[@marcelo55869]

It's good to hear the old man rambling about the old times...

[@ZzigZaG00NIN]

It’s so crazy to see people hype about urien aegis like that AND GENEI JIN😭

[@phantomspaceman]

It's pretty hard to believe that they put a V-ism super in the game and Alpha players didn't think to use it for years.

[@syrelian]

3S was an almost dead game for various reasons, which stunted growth and learning, and because of limited communication, that stunted growth was not bolstered much by the JP sides advanced knowledge

[@vonschuhart]

I feel like that was a large part of the reason Japan, and east asia in general, had a leg up on other countries (and in many ways still does). Because arcades are still so prevalent there, and because most of the country's FGC is packed into one area like 1/5th the size of the U.S., they shared information at a way faster rate. If you were an up-and-coming Japanese FGC player in the 2000s, you could go to the same arcade that Daigo, Tokido, and half of Japan's top players frequent, and just watch them do their work. Meanwhile an American might have to travel 6,000 miles from the East Coast to Cali just to see Alex Valle, and even then a lot of our other top players are spread across different states and cities. Also, on a secondary note, modern fighting games have their own knowledge-related challenges. People may learn at a way faster rate, but they need to keep learning just as quickly. Not just because players are always developing new strategies, but because the devs keep changing the fucking game. Why should I learn this broken unblockable setup when it won't even exist in 6 months? Why should I learn any playstyle except the one the devs intended when they're just going to brute force their characters into that playstyle after the game is already out? It's a pain in the ass.

[@Br0k3nS41nt]

Sajam is the wisest dude in the fgc. Cuts though all the bullshit discussion to get at the core of the issue.

[@Ika02]

I’ll say this the exhibition during 2001 japan v usa in Japan showcased Mester Genei Jin. 2003 just made it so we all saw it up close and personal. But we all know who played during that era that it’s nicer now because there’s more information readily available for everyone since yt and twitch exists unlike before