You say elitism I say purism!

Sagat06

All this recent dialogue on the merits of pads, button binding, scrubby pad players, elitist stick players etc got me thinking

I am willing to bet I'm a bit older than most of the people in this fighting game community... not that I'm old and decrepit or anything but I was in my teens when the original SF2 hit the arcades! I grew up playing these games in their original format, standing in arcades with crowds watching you play :cool:

When I look at the comments I make and the opinions I have formed I suppose I do come across as somewhat of an elitist, but it stems directly from this time in the arcades.

Yes I have an arcade stick, but only because it is common knowledge that it's one of the finest piece's of hardware available for this type of game. I choose not to button bind or use turbo because when I was growing up with these types of games anything like this was considered cheating - no exceptions. I'm not saying thats what I think now but thats where my attitude stems from.

Now I concede that we have to give a little to make the game and genre more accessible and cannot expect to see people going out and buying new hardware ie joystick, so they can play the game - it's their choice.

Now there is conceding a little and bending over backwards and I'm afraid turbo :mad: is my sticking point. The reasons for and against are well documented in several threads at the moment. But again my opinion stems back and has never changed - A friend of mine bought a turbo pad when sf2 came out on the snes and completely destroyed us with it. tick throw tick throw tick throw :mad: bad memories. I do though accept button binding as part of the game because having used the pad for HD remix I know that some of the SF4 moves would be difficult for a chubby finger fella like me!

My 2 cents :P

What I do wonder, is this elitist attitude from an arcade generation, is it because people have spent big bucks on sticks or am I missing the point completely?

L31mr0d

This argument is no different to the pad versus keyboard for FPS, pad versus joystick for Flight games or pad versus steering wheel for driving games.

The gamepad is the jack of all trades. No one is saying it is the BEST device for any one particular game, but it does the job.

I would not view it as elitist to hold the opinion that for fighters a stick is better than a gamepad, the same way I know I could be a lot better with driving games if I invested in a steering wheel setup.

bush

Im in the same boat as you, an old bastard :pac:
I played SF2 in the arcades too and thinking back on it at the time I went between playing in the arcade and playing on the mega drive 6 button pad and never felt like there was a difference.
When the arcades died I more or less stopped playing SF and didnt get back into untill HDR and I used a pad untill recently. I think the pad is fine for HDR and older games but its a nightmare for SF4 cos of the shortcuts I get moves coming out when I dont want em.
Did they put in the shortcuts to help pad players? I dont think it helps at all.

A-Trak

Sagat06 wrote: »

A friend of mine bought a turbo pad when sf2 came out on the snes and completely destroyed us with it. tick throw tick throw tick throw :mad: bad memories.

I grew up playing SF2 in arcades too, and tick throwing where I played would, literally, get you beaten up!

Placebo

when everyone gets enough practice in, at the end of the day it wont matter about your hardware or button setup, the better player will win.

take 3S for example, i good player would be able to adapt to a keyboard and still win etc etc etc etc etc etc

chopperbyrne

I started playing SF II on the SNES, but none of my mates got into it so I stopped playing for a few years until Alpha 2 came out in the arcade. I played there several nights a week so know all about how it feels to play on stick in a proper arcade setting, but even Capcom for arcade releases have been making it easier to do moves.

In Alpha 2, there were three levels of Super Combo, done by pressing P/K, PP/KK or PPP/KKK after the command motion.

In Alpha 3 they made it far easier by assigning level 1 to LP/K, level 2 to MP/K and level 3 to HP/K.

In SF III almost all supers were QCFx2 to make it easier for charge characters to combo in to Supers.

The PPP/KKK bindings made perfect sense for the default Playstation pad which is where it was first used and I'd never look down on anyone who uses those ingame bindings.

K.O.Kiki

Some of the world's best Tekken players use PS pads, but I don't think there's a single "accepted" configuration.

An Italian friend of mine plays claw-hand, no shoulders.
Another Italian plays with R1=LP+RP, R2=LK+RK, no L1 or L2.
A Swedish guy plays with R1=RP+RK, R2=RP+LP, L1=LP+LK, L2=RK+LK.
I play R1=RP, R2=RK, L1=LP, L2=LK.

What I'm getting at is that we all got used to playing one way or another since arcades were NOT where we grew up playing.

And come on -- you're on OUR turf now! Our consoles, our rules!


... right, off to build a stick...

Retr0gamer

Tekken however due to the motions it uses is excellent for the PS pad since it's tough to do diagonals which are hardly ever used. It's also good for Mortal Kombat which means tekken is only as good as mortal kombat :P

K.O.Kiki

Au contraire: wave-dashing (continuous SRK motions) can be done.

Sagat06

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

And come on -- you're on OUR turf now! Our consoles, our rules!

We're just borrowing the consoles till the arcade scene takes off again :rolleyes:

Azza

You fools its only a matter of time before the PC rains supreme and we are all learning how to FADC with control-alt delete!

Cunny-Funt

Sagat06 wrote: »

What I do wonder, is this elitist attitude from an arcade generation, is it because people have spent big bucks on sticks or am I missing the point completely?

Elitism or yes indeed purism , which is probably a better nicer word but its not like I came up with the term arcade stick elitism. This is a discussion thats been cropping up in the fighting game scene for years. & yes it comes straight from the 'arcade generation' although there is still a scene in the US, but it is pretty much dying there from what I understand. So yeah as kiki said the 'scene' has pretty much moved from arcades to consoles/pc emulation in most places bar japan and the likes.
Its generally the thinking that pad users MUST use the very same set up as stick users and just blatantly ignoring the fact that the game has changed due to consoles and that change involves allowing pad users to bind buttons. Simply because its not the same controlling the game with a pad versus a stick.

Turbo on the other hand has nothing to do with this old discussion, its never been about arcade stick purism or aiding pad players, its just simply considered a no no.

The arcade scene always sounded like such a cool experience. Sleazy Dr Quirkeys and the likes are the closest I ever got to it. Early Street Fighter for me was playing it on my mega drive, having to press the start button to switch the 3 button pad from kicks to punches.

But it was only through online gaming, about 2 years ago with emulators and 3rd Strike that I became aware of how deep, competitive and just down right fantastic the game was. (Game being street fighter in general)

**edit**

A-Trak wrote: »

I grew up playing SF2 in arcades too, and tick throwing where I played would, literally, get you beaten up!

lol woah! Someone needed to tell them about playing to win!

Monkeyto

I don't see it here but you do get some elitism. But with any sort of scene there's always gona be guys like this. It's lame and doesn't help anyone feel welcomed into a game or scene. GTFO Elitism!

bush

Cunny-Funt wrote: »

Early Street Fighter for me was playing it on my mega drive, having to press the start button to switch the 3 button pad from kicks to punches.

The first world warrior machine in my arcade didnt even have kicks at all. We played it for ages with just punches. I think it was only when champion edition came out that they got a machine with 6 buttons.

Creature

Lmao bush. I'm guessing nobody ever played as Chun so?

bush

Creature wrote: »

Lmao bush. I'm guessing nobody ever played as Chun so?

Ha, ye guile was fairly popular though