Montreal this weekend

Rich and I are going to be in Montreal this weekend for the Blind Guardian concert... We will be there Friday night, all day Saturday and Sunday morning... Wondering when/where a good place to get some VF action is... I hear JM Amusement got Evo?

Well hopefully we'll be able to meet some of you guys show us the Evo ropes...

-Alex

 

Yep! JM Amusement, and the sticks and buttons are in great condition last I checked. I'll probably be there on saturday between 4:00 - 9:00.

 

Yeah, we got 2 Evo machines. Good comp usually aswell. Ill be around late saturday afternoon probably ( 5~6 pm ), try to see about friday, dont know yet.

Billy, where you is last saturday ? Was nice action all night.

 

Awesome

So I take it JM Amusement is the place to play? We'll be there probably Friday and Saturday nights.. Very much looking forward to it!

-Alex

 

Re: Awesome

Ill try to drop by friday evening. 'round 7~8 pm. Will be there saturday for sure though.

 

Re: Awesome

Yea, we'll pry head out to there once we get all settled in and get some dinner and stuff. So we might be there around 10:00 or so depending on traffic, wrong turns, and any border mishaps. Saturday night is the Blind Guardian so we may not be there all that much. Anyways I'll see ya,

 

Re: Awesome

We may not be there much? Who are you kidding?

Definatley be there after 8 or 9 or so on Friday night and early Saturday afternoon/evening...

Been so long since I've played VF in the arcade!

-Alex

 

We found the place but got there at like midnight... Well, hope to see some of you tomorrow...

-Alex

 

To supergolden/namflow/ and others

First to golden brothers:
It's such a shame that you guys went all the way to Montreal only to miss the real action. Real action started soon after you guys left on saturday as better players came to the sit-down machine. Starting from there, there were constant flow of quality players. (I had to leave around 10:30PM, but I have no doubt the competion continued on.)

Okay, so yes I went to Montreal this weekend. (To the guys who were there on Saturday, I was the Asiian guy who mainly used Jeffry and some Kage/Sarah/Lei mixed in.)

I must say Montreal had such an enviable arcade scene: Price is pretty cheap by the US standard. (Not just for VF but for all other games.) And I was impressed by the sheer number of players and consistency of player level. (At least the main crowd around the sit-down machine.) Before I left Montreal I probably played around 15 people including hardcores and casuals.

And the 6-8 core group player were impressive in their flexibility. Pretty much everyone of them escaped throws pretty well. Going for same throws twice rarely worked. I haven't played much VF since NYG and it was my first time playing Evo. Considering that I guess I did okay with win streaks here and there but it was obvious that competition level was high. One Wolf player was particularly impressive to me as he seemed to be applying dodge throw escape not only in throw guarranted situations, but after getting hit by low punch or such. I beat his Akira but his Wolf was clearly better than me. A Shun player was impressive too, although I rarely played against Shun so I may not be the best judge. But what impressed me was that all the numorous players during the Saturday night were solid.

Again, Montreal arcade scene was very enviable. I am writing this to just let the people on the state side know that Montreal deserves its share of attention and encoruage potential visitors. It reminded me of the best days from Jillians in Boston, only cheaper and even better. Again it's a shame that you golden brothers missed the real action.

A couple of warnings for other potential Montreal visitors:
In Montreal they have mercy rounds. (Seem to be a Canadian trend.) So win three rounds straight at your own risk.
Not too surprisingly, it's COLD! Bring your heavist winter gear if you want to visit Montreal during this time.

To Montreal people: I may not necessarily want to go back to Canada till spring, but if you guys organize a tourney or something I think I can convince a few more people to come along.

My quick obligatory Evo impression:
1. Jeffry does feel weakened. Some of you know that my fav tactic is to b,f+P, d+P+G=> ring out. I felt like pulling my hair out when d+P+G got escaped which would otherwise have been ring out.
2. Sega continues its tradition of SUCKY character design!. Hardly anyone plays new characters. They look boring, play boring. Character designs not good enough for Tekken make their way into VF. What a waste of resource.

 

Well Rich and I were there late Friday night, for abuot two hours Saturday afternoon (around 3:00-5:00) and early Sunday morning... The only competition that I saw was Saturday afternoon (dunno if that was any VFDCers or not)...

At around 5:00 most people left the Evo machines alone so Rich and I were headed back to the hotel then who do we run into but Hyun! Definatley the most pleasant surprise of the vacation, just wish I knew you were coming so we could have organized time to play... Would have really liked to have payed against you some more... Rich and I were very lucky to run into you... Hopefully some more people came by to play after we left...

The concert got out late Sat night so we didn't go back then, and were there 10:30 when the arcade opened on Sunday (I know I said 10:00 but the arcade manager got there at 10:30 and said that they were supposed to open at 10:00, I guess a worker no showed...

I guess that is it, very good to see you again Hyun!

-Alex

 

Hi, I was glad to see you guys but at the same time feel sorry that you guys missed the action. On Sunday I went there around 12:30. No one really there. I blew up the rest of my tokens playing against the CPU and a couple of people, got food and headed home and that was then.

Can you guys come to NYC when EVO comes out?

 

Re: To supergolden/namflow/ and others

Thanks for the note Hyun!

First to anyone I might have played, I didn't know about the mercy round deal until someone took mercy the third round on me, so I apologize to anyone I swept and didn't give a round too... Wish someone told me so I wouldn't feel like the ugly american now...

Anyway before you got there on Saturday we played against three or four people who were good at the game... There was a big guy with short dreadlocks, a somewhat clean cut guy, a guy with sideburns and another with five o'clock shadow... They definatley knew what they were doing, I was surprised I managed to get a 4 or 5 win streak with Jacky.. I wasn't so lucky when I experimented with other people though...

I think the joysticks on the Evo machine without the built in stools took some getting used to...

The arcade was definatley cheap, and had DDR Max 2 for 50 cents (Rich and I played when there was no VF competition) and some great other games... If it was close by I'd definatley be there every Friday/Saturday night..

And to second what Hyun said, the arcade and competition was great... I'm surprised I don't see more Montreal threads here, they definatley have it going on... It was very hard to pull myself away from the arcade to go to the concert... The city is great too, lots to do and if you are from the US it seems like everythnig is inexpensive because you are paying with Candian money /versus/images/icons/smile.gif

As for missing the competition, it is a shame but the concert was very good too /versus/images/icons/smile.gif We did get to play against some people before, and the few matches against you were good as always...

Ammendum: We can definatley make it to New York after they get Evo... Specifically during winter break we are only three hours from New York, from Dec 23rd - Jan 12th we could definatley make it to NYC once or twice...
-Alex

 

yea, it's a shame we missed out, but both Friday & Saturday nights our timing was off. We got lost trying to find the place where we were staying and ended up getting to the arcade around 1:00 am (obviously not the best time.) Then on Saturday we were there from about 2:00-5:15 or so and then had to run and get dinner & go to the Blind Guardian concert (which was awesome, the Montreal crowd was the best I've ever seen for a concert ever)

Anyways on Saturday there was a small group of like four guys playing. (If you guys were there, I was one of the twins who looked like Jesus who played as Pai.) I had a decent winning streak. I might have pissed a few guys off cause I didn't know about the mercy rounds until later on and I definitely had a few sweeps in there. Sorry guys!

The arcade was definitely awesome, two VF4 evos, tekken 4, soul calibur 2, cvs2, mvc2, and I even got my DDR on with DDR Max 2 (for 50 cents no less!) And that drum game that I suck at but kept playing. Their selection of games was top notch (with all the controllers in good condition as far as I noticed), and the prices were awesome. To American players close to the border: with the exchange rate, you can't beat it.

And it was FREEZING. Nothing beats having snow blown in your face as your walking around. At least alex and I finally found out how the Metro works, saving lots of walking & freezing.

As I continue to pimp out Montreal, to any americans interested in going I'd suggest staying at The Alternative Backpackers of Old Montreal.
(http://www.auberge-alternative.qc.ca/) This was the second time I stayed there & loved it. It's a youth hostile, so it could be a pain if you don't like sleeping on bunk beds in a big room full of strangers coming in & out throughout the night, but everyone I've met there so is really friendly & nice, and during the winter it's $17 canadian a night, which you really can't beat. It's also near a Metro Station which you could take to get to the arcade. I don't remember the exact stops, but there's a metro like 2 blocks from the hostile, and you can take that, transfer, and then end up at a stop 2 blocks from the arcade.

So, if you had a car and wanted to go for a weekend of VF goodness here's what I'd suggest:

stay at the youth hostile for 2 nights: 17 * 2 = 34
parking right next to the youth hostile: 5 * 2 = 10
food whereever you want = ? (hey, I don't know how much you eat)
metro tickets = like 2.25 per ticket, you could pry get better deals by buying in bulk or getting a day pass or something (anyone from Montreal want to clear this up?)
and .50 cents per game of VF.

And with the conversion rate it's like an american dollar is worth about 1 and a half canadian dollars, so it's really not that expensive.

So that's the route I'd go if I were to go again (which I'm sure I will, hopefully when it's warmer out or I'm smart enough to bring a ski mask, gloves, boots, and anything and everything else to keep me warm.

Oh yea, there are beautiful girls everywhere in montreal incase you need some extra motivation to get up there.

So yea you could do a weekend full of VFing goodness for pretty inexpensive. Plus the arcade is awesome.

Yea so I suppose I'll stop ranting about how awesome Montreal was. It's a shame alex and I didn't get to meet any of you guys (even though it was awesome to see Hyun again!) If you guys have a tourney any weekend I'll do my best to make it up there.

Umm yea that's about it. Again it's a shame we didn't get to fully partake in the experience, but the main reason we went was for the concert, and in all our spare time we were at the arcade either playing VF4 or DDR if no one was playing.

ps - what's the deal with the mercy rounds anyway? Will people really get pissed if you sweep someone?

 

Re: To supergolden/namflow/ and others

Somehow i seem to have totally blocked you out of my mind, although i remember you playing against Mr. White clearly. I think. I dunno if I actually played you.... I was playing akira, kage, goh, cycling through them for the most part, but with more goh than anything. I'm pretty bad with sticks, only getting the hang of them now, but i'm getting better very fast (this would be my 4th time playing real competition). By the end of the night my throw escapes were really good. I was wearing all black and i have very short hair. I got there sort of late, but stayed until 12:30 when competition pretty much died.

The impressive wolf player was Mr. White. His throw escapes actually started getting good really recently since wolf was weakened and changed in evo. Lots of fun to watch him play, he takes a lot of risks.

Yeah, that shun player is a big pain in the ass. I last played him 2 weeks ago and he was much much better this saturday. He got some win streaks later on. He was getting too many drinks on everybody with surprise P+G throws, I need to work on seeing those coming more.

You didn't see the best montreal players tho /versus/images/icons/laugh.gif. There are 2 akira players that just dominate. Lots of fun to play, one of them is really fancy too.

Too bad i didn't get to see the other guys from new york at all /versus/images/icons/frown.gif

Yes it was hella cold yesterday.

Nobody plays the 2 new chars? There was a pretty good goh player there yesterday, i dunno if u were there when he was, and he also plays brad. i play goh, and he's my new primary. i know of 1 other person who plays brad also (not counting newbies of course)

Anyway, great that you enjoyed the vf scene in montreal, thx for the promotion /versus/images/icons/laugh.gif. Hopefully we can arrange a tourney sometime in the future.

 

Re: To supergolden/namflow/ and others

I was wondering who you were ! We had never seen you around and you knew your way around okizeme. But I knew it wasnt Rich and Alex. Nice playing with you. Yeah, that was my Wolf. He's gotten alot weaker in Evo, but I try my best to adapt, although you saw that I been practicing with Pai ( first time user ). Nice solid strats with Jeff on your part. Made me get back to straight forward head on VF. I think I needed to get back to basics considering the "new" Wolf.

Hope you make it back up here soon.

Rich & Alex, shame we didnt see each other. Cool you enjoyed the city so much. Maybe next time all of you guys can get to play some of the other good players.