Code_Man65 and I went to a Street Fighter IV tournament in Oklahoma City last Saturday (06/27/2009).  It was put on by a group called OKGamers.  I mostly went because CM didn’t want to make the drive alone.  So, with one hour of sleep and a borrowed MadCatz XBox 360 fightpad, I went.  We got there early, got registered, signed in, and…waited.  We could not even practice because they did not have any systems set up for SFIV.  They had at least a dozen systems set up for a Halo 3 tournament they were running in the same room, though.

Eventually, a couple of guys did show up with XBox 360s.  One of them did not bring the game, and did not have any characters unlocked.  The other one had all of the characters unlocked, at least.  A few minutes before tournament start time, another guy showed up with a PlayStation 3 that had everyone unlocked.  The hitch here is that the controllers, be they a pad or a stick, are not compatible between the XBox 360 and the PS3.  Because of this, if you were playing on the opposite system for the controller you bought, you were supposed to be using an adapter that would allow your controller to work on the system.  The catch here (there’s always a catch, right?) is that the adapter did not work.

The tournament was supposed to start at 2:30.  It did not start until 3:30.  Finally, they came back and announced the initial match-ups.  As one of the first ones up, I sat down and got beat by a very good Guile player.  We went and reported our results and settled in for a wait.  We then found out that what we did did not count and that they were starting the whole shooting match over.  They announced another set of match-ups, which I was not part of.  I tried to watch the fights, but every time I found a spot where I could watch a couple of the screens, someone would step in front of me and block so I could not see either of them. The guy who had beaten me was in this line-up, too, and won again.

After that round was reported, we waited some more.  We found out that again, none of the results counted.  They started us over one more time and actually had someone back there dedicated to our tournament to set up matches instead of having to have the person run all over the room.  My first match after this third reset was on the PS3, which meant I had to borrow a PS3 controller.  Having never used a PS3, and having never been much on the PS2, either, this put me at a pretty severe disadvantage.  I will not try to claim that it cost me the match, but I will say I did not make as good a showing as I am capable of with a more familiar controller.  Needless to say, I lost that one, which put me down one in a double elimination tournament.

In my next shot up, I was on one of the XBox 360s.  I managed to win one round out of 5, but that still left me with a loss for the match, and doubly eliminated.  I got to watch CM play both of his matches, and I can tell you his execution was way off.  I watched him fail to exploit a couple of openings that I know he saw (and mocked him for as much on the ride back to Tulsa), I watched him take bait he knew better than to take, and I watched him just not play as well as he should have.  He got doubly eliminated just as quickly as I did.

Final impressions:

Despite being poorly ran (especially compared to the Halo3 and Super Smash Brothers Brawl tournaments that were running concurrently), we both had fun.  Odd though this may seem, introvert though I am, I think I had more fun talking to the other SFIV players than I did playing Street Fighter.  I know I had more fun listening to the Halo 3 players, some of whose methods of “psyching” each other out bears a striking resemblance to a Tourette’s patient.

I do not see myself playing in another of their tournaments any time soon, especially if it looks like they might be this poorly organized again.  They are having another one near the end of July that I will not be making, but if I hear it is run better, I may think about attending later ones.