Phi, as someone who is completely new to the FGC in Tekken 8, this was so amazing to listen to. There's a lot of this type of background that many old heads take for granted, but for those of us who are new, it takes a lot of time and effort to learn. Please more interviews with veterans in the community!!! Speedkicks was awesome!
It’s true what Speedkicks was saying about Mad Dog Jin, he used to come to LA w some regularity. There was a tourney here back in 2002/3, Electric Cancel I think? He and I were in grand finals for VF4. First set was Akira/Akira & I took it, but he switched to Kage and beat me from there to take it I remember we all thought character change was strange for VF, no one really did that back then; but it was common for Tekken players. He also placed top 8 for VF4 Evo at Evo 2003, where I got 3rd in my bracket & was just edged out of top 8. He was a cool guy, very friendly. The good old days
Man I remember playing tournaments in ttt1 and t4 back in like 2004 and there were like one or two guys in the region that were untouchable, always in the finals and they'd travel to tournaments with international competition and come back and we'd be like "What do you mean 64th?!?"
Also for those who are not familiar, it isn't literally about the quarters, for most arcade players it's about time. If you lose you go to the back of the line, you don't play again for 15-30 minutes until your turn comes back around, so you really don't want to lose cuz you just don't get to play any more after that even if you have money. That said $10 is 40 losses, so you don't really want to just go lose a bunch to learn like now you just go into ranked or quick match and lose 100 time on a row working on one skill, you always play only to win, and that then caps you at what works in your arcade to beat the guys around you, so there's entire skills and concepts you may never really develop despite being the "best" guy at your arcade. So it was just natural that these dudes in Korea fighting 200 guys who all travel for tournaments every day for 12 hours in their local arcades vs. NA arcades which had maybe 10-15 players and only a couple of them ever actually played the game outside of the city you are in. Online is changing all that. There's still cultural differences, NA people see content creation as the career for fighting games rather than actually winning tournaments itself, so we may never keep up with like Pakistanis who can actually make a living off just winning tournaments, but the gap will still close a lot in a generation or two.
@@alexonstott4954 I miss the arcade scene so much. And it truly does breed the best players. Pakistan's dominance owes a lot to the fact that they play locally.
@@alexonstott4954 Thanks for this -- I think you've pointed out a lot of fascinating observations about how geography shapes how players in different areas tend to develop, the challenges they face (or faced) due to the absence of things like a well-developed local scene, (relatively) unlimited time or money access to machines to lay on, and also things like NA players seemingly tending toward content creation as career vs. players in regions with lower cost of living finding it more valuable to do well in tournaments. I've been thinking lately about how community knowledges for competitive games like fighting games, FPSs, MMOs, even stuff like TCGs developed since the 90s or so -- one's location still matters in terms of finding competition, community, etc., of course, and of course the Internet has blunted that a lot, right? But it's not just the Internet; players have fleshed out concepts like the neutral game, spread patterns, raid encounter mechanics, card advantage, tempo... and in doing so have not only forced game developers to surface a lot of info like frame data, attack ranges, design processes, but developers have also changed how they design these games, and player communities have similarly adjusted how they learn these games and how they present data about them. The comparison that stands out to me is like, original Thottbot vs. today's Wowhead. Thottbot was useful but pretty basic, but pretty quickly Wowhead grew into this thing that scooped up all sorts of data, made tons of it available, but also had a community (not to mention all of the other communities of other websites, guild or server communities, etc.) who developed and provided all sorts of supplementary info about HOW to play WoW at a high level. And that pretty quickly ratcheted up the complexity of raids, dungeons, and even just random-ass other game systems in WoW. So when WoW Classic launched, it was never going to be the same because by that point WoW was just a way more understood game, and indeed player progression through its raids was much faster than the original, despite Blizzard trying to stick pretty closely to the original game. Sorry for the long (and tangential) post, but what you said got me thinking more about this sort of thing. On one hand I'm sad that it's taken me this long to finally get into Tekken, but on the other hand like... I grew up in rural Texas. I simply did not have much access to the FGC(s) until better internet infrastructure was built here, until I met experienced players or players who knew *where to go* to learn, until apps like YT and Discord (not to discredit prior work on forums, IRC, etc.) made it so possible for players *without* much computer background to easily share their knowledge. So, me personally? I was never in a position to enjoy the competitive aspect of the game very much at all until very recently. It's exciting to think that so many more people are now able to play these games with less hurdles in the way of learning or enjoying them.
I'd be willing to bet that a good number of players would be better if they weren't getting crushed by their jobs everyday. Just speaking for myself, nearly everyone I know that plays fighting games wants to put in the time and grind up, but having the time/energy to do so regularly is basically a small miracle.
That's what I was about to say.. it's easy to be really good at a game when u have nothing to do in your life.. I work 12 hours a day and play for like 30 min a day going against mfs who play for 12+hours
I try to set aside a half hour or so just for practice and not 'playing'. Then, when I have actual free time the application in the lab and actually playing the game is more enjoyable.
If there's one region I associate with people having easy jobs with lots of free time outside of work, it is East Asia. e: this is sarcasm, for the love of god stop sending me replies telling me that people in east asia work long hours. we all know that, that's the point
so like every other person, nice. Do you think every pro is a rich person? or that they can affort to travel oversee because "they have nothing to do"? you guys are weird
Love the long form talking content, I put them on in the background while I play other casual games or just clean around the house etc… so please do more 🎉
I can only speak when it comes to games like smash ultimate, but one thing is that NA is way to large. Regions like Japan or Korea, the transporation and the size of the country allows the best players to fight frequently at small and large tournaments. So since the average tournament will have several top ranked players, by default everyone will get better so the base level play goes up. So Japanese players are basically being pushed every weekend. In America, the best players will go unchallenged for such long periods because the best players are spread out all over the place and only run into each other consistently at major tournaments and thats assuming they actually meet in bracket. So when Japan collides with players from other regions, they are just more battle hardened than someone who is only playing in the state of Texas.
I guess my followup question would be whats stopping the US from having a bunch of many koreas? Like why is someone whos only played people from Texas facing lower competition than people facing others within their country. I know population density is way different, but even then in dense places like NY, Atl, the bay, etc. Why isntnjust playing people in the northeasest ewuivalent to playing people across japan. Not sure if this makes any sense?
@@bemtheman1100 he already answered your question, because the best players in america are more spread out. You even mentioned yourself the population density thing, a ton of America's land is rural countryside
@@M_CFVNYC's population density is 11k per square kilometer, higher than Tokyo's which is 6k, so that doesn't really check out as to why NYC isn't as strong a region as Tokyo. It's clear population density doesn't explain everything
@@waterguyroks transportation sucks so much in many states until more recently and offline scene wasn't fostered here as much especially with moba's, mmo's, and fps that tend to lean towards netplay due to team style gameplay and having better online for alot longer along with more mass appeal. You can also throw in that same fact of the fighting game scene being much smaller and that online for em sucking not allowing them to be played online with as much variety. KI and skull girls in 2012-2013 were the first to have good online, SFV had rollback but it didn't have good rollback even though it released in 2016. Despite GGPO being released in like 2006 it was only on retro titles like sf3 and mvc2 which weren't new releases that had eyes on em. Countries like ones in latin america loving snk games and dbz are perfect storms and more pure good luck.
This video was really really good. As a new player still grasping the fundamentals of Tekken, it’s cool to see how you all define the different styles and emphasize that there is no right or wrong style, just you two pointing out the different histories each scene developed. This is going to be useful when I’m eventually proficient enough that I can build my own style
I think what’s interesting is NA does have their games but it’s generally for 2D team games. For example the Marvel vs. Capcom series has always been dominated by US players even today where most top 8s will contain at least be 7 US players. EVO last year being Marvel’s last hurrah had 3 non US players within the top 8 and 2 got to be on stage for top 6. Even now Dragon Ball FighterZ has a fairly even mix of French and US players.
Its the case where barely any asian countries play it, but US (and also french for DBFZ). There is MK too where basically no asian country play it. But game where most countries play like SF and tekken. US usually fall behind other regions. Tho cant say the same on SF as ppl like menard, punk, and nuckledu still usually compete with the best in asia. Menard not US i guess yea but still american region. But yea in tekken its surely the case here.
Most of the U.S. being car centric to the point that going to locals requires a really big time commitment, hurts the opportunities for people to improve at the same pace as other regions
Especially now how crazy the economy is now.. random but even a damn pack of gum or “quarter” bag of chips are all 50 cents now for even less product in them. Smh
Yeah sure. But in countries like Pakistan there is a lack of money. (So yeah sure no car problem. But you literally have a device availability problem and money problem because of that) P.S. not mention. Good luck going to world tournaments from countries like Pakistan .(Even if you get a visa. You need money. And the money required will be enormous compared to developed countries)
@@Vespyr_ I swear! It just be shake and dust flavoring in them. Like what’s going to happen if no one buys this shi? Try to sale old products anyway or lose money by throwing them out ?
24:25 I think this was also the time that Knee's Trophies in the Green Arcade got thrashed so people just assumed that Knee was depressed or something.
I do hope that you'll make some of these follow-up videos that were mentioned like talking to Anakin or others about their experiences and what the old scene was like, I really enjoyed listening to Speed talk about it!
I stopped playing after Tekken 4 (the nadir of the series IMO). I played in Europe for the first or 2nd European wide tournament in London 2001. I remember back then Ryan Hart was the best there and the italians came and dominated that time. The players like Nin, Qudans were coming up and Jang Ik-Su was the top player in Korea. It's very interesting to see how it's all evolved since then. Tekken Tag was the peak of the series before Tekken 7 IMO.
worst thing about playing in NA is the huge possibility of your fight being recorded and posted on social media if you ever use scrubby plays to cheese the fight and win
This is so damn 🔥🔥🔥 as someone whos been extremely passionate about Tekken since Tekken 1, this is amazing to see. Absolutely get with Anakin and Aris💯✊🏿 Keep the amazing work my guy Huge inspiration as a content creator and with your consistency.
yo I'm loving the interview style content with your notes Phi, with both Speedkicks and some others you've had on here. It's really cool to get more insight into the Tekken communities of various regions and just hearing the history of things is awesome.
THIS WAS AMAZING. Would love a small (or ongoing) "podcast series" talking about this type of stuff. Also covering things like, how you work on improving your decision making ( what to look out for), and even interviewing other international players if possible. Incredibly interesting and informative. TLDR: GOOD SHIT MAKE MORE PLEASE 🙏
Some more context about the Korean videos from back then in tekken 6 there was this guy on youtube uploading a lot of esports stuff. I think his handle was Jon747 or something. He mainly uploaded GSL Starcraft 2 content, but when Tekken Crash came around he also uploaded all those videos. You'd recognize many of the names of the participants, but one that stands out is Saint who I think had his breakout performance when his team eliminated Knee's in the qualifiers. It was pretty funny because Knee's face was on all the promos and the opening TV sequence and he wasn't even there, similar to NBA playoff ads with Lebron and KD even tho they got knocked out in the first round. Those were like the only korean tournaments and the only footage of those tournaments Then there was taktak1983 (who i think got his name from a korean rapper) who had all the green arcade uploads, as well as guys who reuploaded vids from Niconicodouga (the old JP youtube) and even someone uploading from his arcade in Hong Kong. Unfortunately those channels kinda died when a guy from the Middle East named JinAndKazama started reuploading all the footage on his own channel. He lasted til like the first couple of weeks of T6 console release, when he started reuploading people's combo videos and finally got copyright struck into oblivion. Think of a bigdaddyjende who stole from everyone. I'm not sure that taktak would have come back from hiatus if he didnt get stricken, you can't even find those old t6 videos anymore. i think the 1893 channel is actually his 'new' channel
This was super interesting and informative! I appreciate the in depth interview style. One question I have is do you know who would be the midwest / chicago rule of 2? Heard earlier that is a specific region but not what players were great
I love this style of video, just a podcast style sitdown and talk with someone covering tekken topics Would love to see more of this, especially if its not super structured / scripted.
The other game NA is really strong in right now is Strive, and I tend to think in that game the West in particular is just stronger than Japan. To my knowledge, it's one of the only anime games where a Japanese player just hasn't won Evo. The reason for it is partly because GGST isn't as popular in Japan, but also because I think a lot of professional players leverage the online really well. They very frequently play long sets and train with one another, and since the game doesn't have a traditional ranked system it also kinda pushes you to do that too.
Dam I'm old 😂 I've been playing Tekken since Tekken 1 in Arcades! OMG I remember when Tekken Zaibatsu was a forum 😂 I was in Iraq on my 1st tour.... this is a good video
Anakin could probably tell you about a cool bit of NA history. Back in TTT1, JOP came out of no where in Atlanta and was beating up on international players after proving himself to the Cali crew (Tomhilfiger). I believe JOP gave Anakin his name because he (Anakin) was young (13ish) and competing with the Atlanta crew. JOP correctly thought he would be the future of Atlanta tekken.
Thinking about why US falls behind in alot of ESports titles, I honestly think it's just a coincidence. Especially when it comes to fighting games for instance, id imagine that one of the reason is because 1) USA is pretty big in terms of area and population. 2) The Arcade culture never fully took off - the same way it did in Asia. Counter Strike took off in Sweden because it was easy to set up and play over LAN - so I remember growing up that we just kinda hijacked the computer hall at our Middle School and grinded away. Besides, larger LAN parties like Dreamhack also started in Sweden
I think SoCal (mainly LA) was weak during TTT2 in part because of arcade closures and online. The most dominant players maybe lost interest, and most of the next gen skewed online, so they didn't integrate into the tournament scene immediately.
I remember a comment about playing Tekken in Korea during the T6 days. Apparently you could walk into some random ass hidden arcade and play with some of the best players on the planet all day without issue regardless of your skill level. Everyone rematched and the mindset was self-improvement. Where I lived at the time all of the tekken cabs were completely empty. If someone was playing and you challenged them you would get 1 win in and they would stand up and walk away. In my home state I beat most of the local players 1 time and then they refused to ever play me again. Despite the fact that they were 5+ year players and I was ~6 months into the game. The only saving grace was a Lars player in the area that played probably several thousand matches with me at the arcade. I remember burning through a 500 play Tekken 6 card by just playing against him and getting my ass handed to me.
38:20 - I thought that I initially commented on this video but I guess I didn’t. I played a lot with the NYC Tekken guys in the T5DR and T6 days. So now, even playing online by myself in T7 and T8, when someone does something super unsafe, my knee jerk response is always “Why would you do that?!”
Speed talking about NY... His "Yo, why would you do that hopkick?" Quote sounds just like FightingGM when I see his clips on YT 🤣 Also these types of videos are fantastic!
Ahhh the regional thing is so funny because New York street fighter played the same way. I sat down with Sanford at combo breaker in sf4 and he’d eat wake up 10/10 times and ask why I kept doing that all while getting pissed. Thought it was the funniest shit ever. I’m a Midwest player btw.
my region is ME, whenever i go on reddit and see people saying shit like "theres no difference between red and green ranks" or "blue ranks is when players are decent" and it just makes me believe NA is just the shittest region. i see NA gameplay in purple ranks and people be doing shit im doing, and im hardstuck red like people be blue ranks and still cant hit electric meanwhile yellows in my region know how to wavedash pressure
Or maybe... You are hardstuck red cuz you aren't that good? Its random. I play some days and I get fujins that play like green/red ranks. Other days I get a shinryu or destroyer that plays better than a Fujin. But overall, red ranks are pretty bad.I mean.. I'm not good at the game and I have an 84% win rate overall 85% with lee, 79% with kazuyas (went up from 72%) and 87% with dragunov. don't at me about dragunov. I'm a lee, kazuya and dragunov main since forever. But I started playing seriously with Tekken 7, as in actually learning the game and online play. I was playing Tekken 6 on psp/psvita just for fun. Lee and kazuya have been my "mains" in Tekken 2, tekken 4, Tekken 5 and all the others, and dragunov in Tekken 5 DR. But yeah, It also depends on characters. Like a xioayu in purple/blue ranks, can be good but doesn't play ranked or plays ranked and is a green rank just spamming flowcharts and op shit and getting carried by the character. Finally, the bigger the region, the more players, the more bad/casual players you have. What character do you play to be hardstuck in red ranks, the new green ranks?
Can you explain this differnce in t7 to t8 for ranks? I never really understood why people say red is the new green etc.. im currently mighty ruler with kuma, and would like to know how the compares to traditional ranked, like how league of legnds has, bronze silver gold.@kato093
@@DesiringANewDawnThe ranking system is different between the games. For starters, yellow is the minimal rank in t8 since you cannot lose points before that. All ranks before fujin have 3 ranks per colored rank instead of 4. Once you get closer to fujin, you will notice the skill gap is much higher. I believe it's because the point loss is now greater than the points gained from winning. This is where a lot of players get funneled at since you really have to win much more than you lose. You also start to face high rank tekken players ranking up new characters since the rest of their characters get brought up to fujin rank. You will notice the skill level of each player. This depends on region as well. There are a lot of red ranks and purple ranks who do not even know any combos or even simple fundamentals. You will also see how some players know how to play their character but do not have any match up knowledge or have weak defense. In T7, purple ranks and even low blue ranks used to have a lot of aggressive players who do it to compensate for their lack of defense, or match up knowledge. T8 exacerbates this aggressive strategy due to the nature of the system. That is why I believe high purple going into Fujin has an odd mix of player styles and skills. You will notice that some characters can pull this off better than others. Some characters can ignore match ups and do their thing, while others really have to work for aggression, therefore, requiring more defensive knowledge to compensate. Blue ranks care for more win streaks rather than wins so this is where I believe most players start finding more cheese, improving in the lab, playing more cautiously, one and done-ing or avoiding rank altogether. I haven't played league for a long time so I can only make an analogy. Imagine red to low purple is silver then, suddenly, you start to face a mix of plat, diamond, and challenger smurfs learning a new character. I haven't played T8 in awhile so this is before tekken prowess matchmaking I heard they implemented? However, this was my take on those ranks when I was bringing up many characters 1 rank at a time to fujin on west coast region. It may be different now that there are less players, players being abit more spread out through the ranks, the tekken prowess matchmaking, in theory, possibly changing the odd skill mix around fujin, or just more people knowing the match ups now that the game has aged abit. I'm one of those people who believe mighty ruler is the new green rank or greenbu only because it feels familiar but it's also inaccurate since one or two ranks up is a mix bag, so I disagree with my own statement. "Green" rank is just you learned your character at a competent level with some understanding of tekken mechanics and you can climb those ranks just knowing your character more than the other player knows their own. It's better to just ignore ranks altogether and focus on who you are actually playing against. It all depends if you or your opponent knows the match up or not.
You see it in guides. A lot of our guides are focused on how to play our characters but you find little on how to play against other characters or even how to play the actual game. This why you start to see different styles from high level players in this region because some figure it out themselves or look for resources from Koreans or Pakistan players. NA/EU optimizes their character execution and gameplan but only few optimize match ups and strategies. There are Korean videos that teach you how to move around and whiff punish jab pressure while we got videos on why jab is even good. Korea got videos on how the psychology of decision making in RPS situations, meanwhile, we got how to setup our 50/50s. Also, your view of ranks is a common perception from below. It's true region matters but that's not the criteria of good playerbase. You believe execution leads to being good which ironically is what most NA/EU tends to believe. "Play my character optimally and I win" mentality isn't what makes a great player great. Knowing match ups and knowing the when, why, what a player is doing to the other player is much more important. Just because you can KBD, for example, it doesn't mean you know how to use it. You'll just be put into the corner against a better player who probably doesn't know how to KBD. Wavedash pressure? You'll just give up turns, get hit, or get nothing out of it if you don't know the purpose of it. Honestly, at this point, many players just care more about doing cool things rather than being the best. We just don't have that environment that makes being competitive accessible or worthwhile.
@@spyaxel11 I not only appreciate the response. But the time you put into it, seriously thank you. I noticed alot of one and dones while I work towards fujin. And there are alot of people who seem to know only two combos tops. And not much else of their character, I learned all the moves gor kuma. And am learning match ups well. Just can't get into a groove for mix ups since he doesn't have as much as others. And im terrible with side stepping. If i even remember to do it. So I'm currently working on facing that problem.
Needed this video, before tekken 8 my only experience with tekken was playing it whenever I'd go to the arcade back in 09-2010 when i was like 7 yearsold so I had 0 tekken kowledge
I think the difference for us we don't play defense and backdash cancel for the first 30 seconds of every round.. I think NA will win some major tournaments in T8 because It's more about aggression, instead of back dashing the entire game. Also we don't participate in offline as much as everyone else does.
Its a culture thing, my bro is a monster at Tekken but barely started playing competitively recently just because we just didn't have a chance to etc. Opportunity is a huge factor
I knew it was true because apparently there a was a tournament in Atlanta near my brother. Unfortunately he couldn’t enter but his friend did and he doesn’t play it much and he won the whole tournament
Tekken is mostly online now and the netcode experience is the worst in the USA because of the distance between most of you. Im in ireland (small country) and playing my friend at the other end of the country is usually 16ms at the most since they also have good internet. Koreans and japanese have similar experience. The more distance there is between you and the opponent, the more online infrastructure you have to sift through etc., the more your growth is stifled because you're not playing in an online environment thats optimal for punishing, stepping, bd etc. Thats my take on it, at least. Within europe even from ireland to france or Germany im getting 30ms, im getting maybe 60-70ms going as far as Czechoslovakia or the balkans
I am missing going back to casual play because trying for pro makes this all feel like work and after ACTUAL work, i dont want to play tekken but i gotta because i love playing locally at arcades but suck compared to these kids who dont even know taxes.
