UGTL is having another one of their kickass events on Saturday and WOW, it’s written about on the LA Times web site! Not quite sure when the last time competitive Street Fighter was written about on the LA Times (which means I don’t think it ever has), so high fives to them and Alex Valle for being quoted on the article as well as our friends at Get Your Tournament.
From the article:
The event, equal parts party and competition, starts at 2 p.m. with a three-hour open bar (there’s a $10 cover), a taco truck, DJs, artists and retailers, and it goes on until about 10 p.m., when a victor is crowned (and paid). There is also a separate $10 registration fee, from which the last UGTL winner was awarded $350. More people are expected to enter Saturday, and the pot will grow.
There’s a lot going on,” Marquez said. “There’s music, there’s art to look at — I did it to make sure I appealed to everyone and to everyone’s five senses.” There will even be a casual gaming lounge hosted by gaming site Get Your Tournament, where old-school games can be played on original Nintendo or Sega systems.
Note from gootecks: This is TuboWare’s first article here on gootecks.com. He’s one of Las Vegas’ tournament scene regulars and submitted this article about their Halloween tournament at Game Over_ that featured the city’s newest SF4 arrival, Marn. Please leave some feedback in the comments if you enjoy articles about local Street Fighter scenes because I’d like to include tourney reports from all over the world if you guys like them. If you’d like to submit similar articles, hit me up on Twitter or send me an email: gootecks *AT* gootecks *DOTCOM*. Also, I have no idea what the picture is supposed to be, but I decided to include it anyways lol.
Las Vegas. A city known for gambling, fast money, glitz, and glamour, yet one thing Vegas isn’t known for, is it’s fighting game community. That might be something that changes very quickly. Las Vegas has a new resident and fighting game expert. Martin “Marn” Phan is the new king of the Las Vegas fighting game community, and the great majority of fighting gamers in Vegas are very excited about this news. When I asked Sonny “CarTooN” Lopez on his thoughts of Marn moving to Las Vegas, he replied, “I think Marn can help our community grow, but only if we aren’t afraid to lose. That’s the main problem we’ve had here. People will play and get beat, and then stop playing instead of trying to learn from mistakes.”
On October 31st, 2009, local game store and Street Fighter 4 training ground, Game Over_ had a Street Fighter 4 tournament. With around 30 entrants, and first place taking home five hundred dollars cash, second place winning a new Playstation 3, and the third place player taking any game of his or her choice in the store, the stakes were high. All of the top Street Fighter heads in Las Vegas showed up, including Daniel aka ruiN-, Josh aka Trophy Club, J-Ma, and of course Marn. People started popping into Game Over_ several hours to get in casuals before the tournament started.
I asked Jordan who is more known by his Shoryuken.com forums name of “Mno” what he though would happen if he got matched up with Marn in the tournament he replied “Yo just know that if Marn bullshits me and doesn’t play for real, I’m going to smash him.” Luckily for Jordan, he didn’t have to prove himself right, and never had to play Marn during the tournament.
As soon as everyone signed in, the tournament started. Many spectators were watching the matches, but no matches were watched as much as the ones between ruiN- and Marn. RuiN- and Marn first met in winners finals. Marn took the match 3 win to 2 wins, and even made an interested “counter” pick against ruiN’s Akuma when he picked Rose. It didn’t work out as planned though, and ruiN tied the match up 2-2. Marn then proceded to pull out the big guns with Sagat and dominated the last game in winners finals. The rest of the tournament had some great matches in it, and Tropy Club ended up taking 3rd, losing to ruiN- in losers finals. RuiN and Marn met again in the grand finals, but Marn pretty much took it to ruiN- and won the tournament. Top three: 1st- Marn, 2nd- ruiN, 3rd Trophy Club.
After the tournament I got a chance to catch up with one of the owners of Game Over_, George. When asking him what he thought of the Las Vegas community as a whole he replied “Well, I love the community. Game Over_ is here for everyone to get together and play all games, not just Street Fighter, and we hope to be here for every for a long time.” I also asked George if the though we would level up now that Marn is around and he responded with a great amount of insight by saying, “See, the thing is, people can’t be scared to play him. You have to treat people that are better than you like the school bully. You can’t just be scared of him. Sometimes you just got to hit the bully in the face, and yea, you might get beat up after that, but you’ll learn how he fights and what he likes to do. It’s no different in fighting games. If you’re scared to play someone, how can you ever beat them? You can’t. I also feel that sometimes casuals can be too casual. If you come to play for real every time, you’ll learn much more than just messing around and not trying to win.”
With Marn taking his first local Las Vegas tournament, I only see the community here growing. With the high level play of Marn and ruiN, Las Vegas has no where to go but up.
