Arcade UFO is an arcade in Austin that features several Japanese-style sit down cabinets, among other traditional cabinet games. This Saturday they hosted a Street Fighter tournament that included Street Fighter II, Third Strike, and Street Fighter 4. Yes, they are rockin' the SF4 arcade.
I actually went to watch the 3rd Strike battles, cause you know, 3rd Strike is ten kinds of awesome. I am warming up to SF4, it's got some coolness brewin' and it has been consistently drawing crowds. But it does cost a dollar (day-um!!)
But the 3rd Strike battles in the tourney were sweet. There is just something about watching top players in a crowd setting. Especially so if you're a fan of all things Street Fighter and can recognize the challenges and nuances of the battles. I probably should have entered myself just for the fun and experience of it, but I had no prob waqtching the entrants go to town on each other. I wouldn't say it was at the intensity of stuff you might see at EVO, but there were some kick ass bouts. There were a couple dudes there from other cities as well, and I can admire that kind of dedication to play. And of course it got a couple friends and I psyched up to get a little SF action going on our own little arcade (see my last post... )
What is Fight Arcade?? It's a custom arcade cabinet built entirely from scratch by my friend Enrico. This guy has been pouring his blood, sweat, and tears (quite literally) into building his dream cabinet in his spare time over the past six months or so.
I was lucky enough to get sneak peeks at his "secret project" over time and have been photographing the process for posterity. It was just finished a week or so ago, and it came out FREAKING AWESOME. It was built primarily for fighters, a genre of choice among many in our neck of the woods. As such it features classic six button controls and traditional bat-style arcade sticks-- with the clicky! You gotta have the clicky.
Inside this beast are a modded PS2, Saturn, Dreamcast, and a PC loaded with MAME. Enrico is some kind of wiring wiz-- or at least he became one-- so he's got an elaborate switchbox-dial setup to move between each of the systems. Additional details include full stereo sound, headphone jacks for each player, and LED backlit(!) buttons and faceplate.
The Fight Arcade logo, joystick base, and side panel artwork were done by yours truly, with a little help from Capcom of course (Enrico wanted his fave characters on the side). And I have to say as an art project it was one of the coolest things I've been involved in and am downright psyched to be a part of it.
To top off how cool a guy Enrico is, when the cabinet was done, he brought it into our office. We're co-workers at a small game developer, and the arrival of Fight Arcade immediately lit the fires of almost everyone there. Getting the most play has been Guilty Gear XX and SF3 Third Strike, with the occasional bout of Waku Waku 7. Tournament trees came forth almost immediately, and everyone is having a blast with no signs of slowing.
There have been some cool custom arcade posts here at Destructoid and I wanted to share this with you guys. Mainly to give mad props to my man Enrico, who gets to finally enjoy the fruits of his labor. He deserves it!
Thanks to D-toider Danmartigan pointing the way, I downloaded this dude's Castle Crasher papercraft template. Considering he created it from scratch based only on a photo of someone else's template, he did a pretty good job.
Putting a fresh blade in my trusty X-Acto knife, I got to work! But there are a few awkward elements I had to find out the hard way. You may notice some differences from the original ref at the Behemoth blog. Namely the missing tabs to attach the arms (but they still magically work albeit in a different way). Also the top of the helmet is missing the radius cut marking, allowing it to concave. You just need to find the center on the back and make a mark. The width to concave happens to be one spiked tab, tho the helmet in general is fairly tricky. Just note the preceding if you attempt your own.
Papercraft is for the patient... start to finish this took me about two hours. Good old Elmer's Glue works just fine, tho it needs to be applied as thin as you can. I'd eventually like to try the original template if it shows up somewhere. If anyone else tries one, please post a link!
A couple posts ago I talked about being notified on winning the monthly Figure Print lottery. Several weeks
later, my figure has arrived! I think he looks sweet and to me is distinctly "my" character that I associate most
with playing WoW. A bit rough around the edges, sure, but I did know what to expect having seen similar 3D
prints in the past. Things will certainly get cooler as the technology improves and is refined, but I gotta say in
this case it's neat having an early generation of such an offering.
I love Star Wars, videogames, art, and especially art books. After several years of mediocre results in the Star Wars videogame arena, I, like many of you, became very excited for Force Unleashed as the details and videos trickled out. I was also excited to hear of a published companion to the game, the "Art of" book I'm discussing here.
I'll preface by saying I'm a total bookhound and print connoisseur, my standards are ridiculously high in that respect. As such the Art of Force Unleashed is a letdown in many ways when, based on content alone, it certainly did not have to be.
The largest drawback is the presentation, the book design. Text is blocked out in random, crooked angles in some vain effort to look "cool" and changes colors, fonts, and backgrounds haphazardly. All the art is framed or sliced by superfluous "designy-techy" elements that aren't especially attractive or functional, they become annoying very quickly. Insert into the book in two places are ridiculous glued-in envelopes that hold trading cards (ugly trading cards). They really hinder the browsing factor of the book and in my opinion should be removed immediately-- which is possible with a delicate but firm hand, tho will leave a scar.
The written content of the book, the "Making of" part, was something I was not aware was in the book initially, but there is quite a bit of it. As a game industry veteran myself, however, the more I read the more depressing it got. You may come to the conclusion that Force Unleashed was first and foremost a marketing effort, something whose priority was to reach a mainstream audience. The text does not hide or infer this, it flat out states it several times. For a company who must invest millions of dollars into a product, it is understood that this would be a key component to a major new release. As a gamer and life long Star Wars fan, it does kind of knock the wind out of sails that should have been full of awe and wonder for a major Star Wars and videogame creative effort. Even with that focus it is still interesting in places to read about the evolution process of characters and ideas in general at LucasArts, tho you may not share the ideals. To twist the knife a little deeper, the most fascinating information revolving around the technology the game is built upon is relegated just a few pages at the end of the book. I would have been more than happy to have a book of art along with explanations of the pipeline into Zeno, Euphoria, and DMM.
Lastly we come to what is the book's redeeming factor, the art. The art is plentiful and it is good. Very good, clearly from conceptual artists at the top of their game and who love the Star Wars mythos. It is wonderful to see artists expand on the universe and create new characters and vehicles, all with dozens of variations. From the purely conceptual pieces that are just meant to inspire or invoke emotion to the polished designs and environments that need to be translated into game assets. That is the kind of thing I love and eat up with a spoon. But-- (aw, there had to be a but)-- the actual print quality in the book is lacking. I am seeing more and more of this every year: the majority, if not all, of the concept art for this game was created digitally. Digital art that is created or displayed on a monitor cannot simply be put in a book layout meant for print. Thus in this book much of the art is dark and over-saturated, thick with too much ink. It is a failure by the publisher and designers to not compensate for this and make the necessary adjustments. Basically it's print 101 but in the digital age the artisanship of print often falls to the wayside. :-(
Does this book have great art? Yes. Is it a great art book? No. That's where the disappointment lies because instead of a treasured new addition to my library I have a so-so book that may occasionally be referenced. I still look forward to the game and the playing experience, which hopefully can put all concerns aside and just be... fun. We'll see.
Holy Crapxors! Okay, I got the opportunity to get my Figure Print.
When Figure Prints were announced, I thought it was crazy cool, a way to have some physical evidence to represent all that virtual time spent playing World of Warcraft...
Of course I stopped playing WoW months ago, and I haven't played regularly for some time. What can I say? I enjoyed the hell out of it, but I played it out and other pastimes beckoned. I am nowhere near as hardcore as many of my friends were (and still are), doing endless instancing or raids for all the 7334 lewt. Still I dutifully entered the Figure Prints monthly lottery, because that shit is cool.
Well my number came up, or however they do it, and I am totally getting it. Investing so much time as I have, I have a seriously strong attachment to my character, Vonnagan the Dire. For me the game was 85% solo, although I had some great dungeon party experiences. That's just how I preferred playing, walking the world and questing, grouping up for an occasional instance. So me and Von spent some serious time together exploring Azeroth. The thought of getting a figure of him is so outlandish, something no other game has ever offered at this level of custimization, that I've got to plunk down the gold.
Now before anyone checks out my Armory page and tells me how lame my gear is, dude I KNOW. I have him prepped for the Figure Print specifically in the gear that I feel most defined my character, not all generically epic'd out. Fenrus' Hide was my one of my first "rewards" from my first group instance in Shadowfang Keep. That was pretty early in the game's life cycle so at that time the game was blowing me away. Hunting down Fenris and getting his skin as a cape was too freakin' cool. The Robes of the Lich was one from another amazing instance in Razorfen Krall, probably one of the coolest dungeons of the game. My other gear I either made as a tailor or just liked the look of. Even tho I'm a warlock I always carried a sword and fought with a blade whenever I could survive it, plus a warlock with a sword looks neat. The point is I'm getting the figure of Vonnagan for how I remember him while having the most fun in the game.
PS-- when that thing finally show up (probably months from now) I'll post pics!!
PPS-- yeah, I will be hopping into Wrath of the Litch King. Gotta try out the Death Knight.
Who is Super Edco? Since back from the retro days of yore, anytime a game would let you create a character and name it yourself, I've been using EDCO. It came about as an amalgam of my own names and the fact that an unusual number of games in those days only let you use four characters.
Videogames are a big part of my life. I've been playing and making videogames just about since there was such a thing to be done. My favorite games are RPGs and action adventures, and the rest of that list is a long one indeed.
Destructoid is an independently-run publication forged by our love of video games and the gaming community's need of accountable enthusiast press living the dream since March 16, 2006
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