VF4 FINALLY HITS NEW YORK!!!!!

Great time today

I had a great time today playing VF against people after an absence for about 2
years. I wish I we can meet up like this some more, but there's no way we can
meet regularly paying $1.25 a game. Nelsom, Pedro and I were the last people to
leave, trading off to fight Dural. She is RUTHLESS. She was a shark and we were
mere guppies.
Its was very nice meeting Yupa and Rich. Hope to see again soon.

P.S. Don't forget about the VF4 tournament in Philly on Dec 1. Let me know if
your interested. Check out www.universitypinball.com

 

Re: Great time today

Sorry for the delay in writing this report up, but I had to recover from the trip and had a couple of rough nights at work....

I arrived at Rich's (Mr Bungle) home about 10:30am along with the sad news of the American Airlines crash in Queens. All the bridges and tunnels into Manhattan were closed in fear of another terrorist attack, so we didn't know if we'd be able to play VF4 in NYC at all that day. I hadn't eaten yet, so we decided to go get lunch at a local diner and explore our options... we even considered going to Philadelphia or Montreal at this point, as both are about a 5-6 hour drive from Rich's home town. Going that far really wasn't an option for me as I had to be back at work on Tuesday night... so we decided to head into NYC anyway and hope that the situation would improve over the 90 mins that we still had to travel. Luckily, it was determined that the airliner crash was mechanical in nature, and by 12:30, it was reported that the bridges and tunnels were being opened again. We were very optimistic, but still prepared to be stuck in traffic for a long time waiting to get across the George Washington Bridge. To our amazemnt, there was no line up to get onto the bridge at all. It looked like to alleviate the backup from the 2 hour closure, they decided to open the bridge up without the need to pay the $6 toll to cross. We were psyched as we crossed the bridge like it was 2:00am with no traffic and headed down the Henry Hudson Pkwy which also had very light traffic--there was still almost a multi-car accident in front of us--a BMW almost got crushed between 2 SUV's--but that's nothing new on NYC parkways... We even found a parking lot right across the street from Broadway City arcade. Rich and I both commented that this was the most painless trip we had ever taken into NYC. I was actually worried because things were going too smooth at this point....

My fears were alleviated, however, when we entered the arcade and found VF4 on the 3rd floor. As no one else had arrived yet, we started playing against the CPU and challenging each other only to save ourselves vs. the CPU characters. The joysticks seemed OK at first, and the setup is about the best one could hope for with a VF4 kit in north america IMO. As was said above, the arcade installed VF4 in their VF3 cabinet... the monitor is messed up on the left hand side. Sal said it was burn in, but I'm more under the opinion that the speakers on that side have been pushed closer than they should be to the screen causing a color distortion and some blurriness. Fortunately, the screen defect is close enough to the side as to not affect game play at all.

Over the next hour or so the NYC regulars started showing up... Adam, Sal, and Hiro were the first to check in and the challenging commenced. Shortly afterwards, Andy and Trevor made an appearance. Finally, Nelson showed up a few hours later. It was obvious, we were all still learning, so there isn't much to report on gameplay from my part... look for a general and Sarah impressions post from me in the Virtua Fighter forum in the next day or so. We were giving mercy rounds to maximize our time on a very expensive game, so each fight came down to a one round affair. Adam went on the longest streaks (a couple of 10 game win streaks) with his keep it simple Akira... and Andy also proved very powerful with some of Jacky's new repertoire... but everyone was still learning and thinking too much about what they were doing to really prove anything about which characters were strongest and who was the best player. Hiro used Lei some and the monk looks very scary once someone becomes competent with his attacks. Rich was having trouble with the sticks, so his Kage seemed very inconsistent, but when he used Wolf and Jeff the rest of us had a really tough time... both of the grapplers are very scary now... I don't have any trouble believing the long win streaks reported by Jeff players in Japan now. Trevor used Venessa primarily, but she is still too new a character for me to try and descibe what he was doing. Trevor's big advantage IMO was that he was having a better time tech rolling when appropriate, as opposed to me, who only tried to tech roll after Wolf's giant swing. I completely forgot about it most of the rest of the day...

Now for the bad parts... The sticks seem to be the original VF3 green ones that came with the cabinet. The left one was very loose/bouncy, and finding straight down and the horizontals were quite difficult. Compounding the problem IMO is the stupid button layout on the left side. They used the VF3 P+K+E buttons for the VF4 conversion which puts the VF4 G+P level horizontally and the K button diagonally *below* the P button!? ARGH!!! (Sal's pic above shows this perfectly.) The result is that you want to play off to the side like on a north american VF1/2 cabinet, but the joystick isn't rotated clockwise to compensate like it is in the older cabinets. You end up having to rotate your right hand fingers clockwise and it gets very painful very quickly even for someone who uses his index finger on G like me. If you want to use thumb on G, it's even worse because the G button is even further away... :-[ The left side was very frustrating for both me and Rich to use... The right side, however, seemed to have a much better joystick and a much more comfortable button layout with the P+K being horizontal with the G button located diagonally below the P button.

The other bad news is the price... $1.25 for only best 2 out of 3 matches... ugh. If it was 3 out of 5 it would be worth it, but I'm sure once NYC gets a VF4 at the port authority or in china town for 50 or 75 cents a game that not many locals will be playing at Broadway City anymore. Sucks too, because Broadway City *is* a really nice arcade. All the newest games and plenty of classics. Tons of pinball that they advertise as well maintained. A snack bar and lounge area where you can sit down and relax a bit. The arcade's background music was loud, but not overpowering. We were able to here the audible cues from VF4 with no trouble... just not the background music from the game. Basically, if you want to check out VF4 in New York, Broadway City is the place to go right now, but it won't be the place the local heavies will train at once a cheaper game becomes available.

Around 8pm both Rich and I needed to eat, so we said our good byes and headed across the street to Applebee's. Our frustration with finding the horizontals on the stick aside, we were both positive about the experience. My opinion is that VF4 is a much greater change from VF3 than VF3 was from VF2. Primarily this is due to the new kumple down animations (especially not being knocked down by sweeps anymore) and the big change in the ground game with tech rolls. It was a lot harder for me to determine who had the advantage in many situations, but I'll learn with experience... None of us were really dodging at all, so there's still that whole area of gameplay to explore too. I felt like a scrub most of the time, but I look forward to learning how to play VF4. It is a brand new game for me =)

Rich let me crash at his house so that I would have a safer drive home, but I ended up sleeping longer than I would have liked, and ended up getting stuck in Hartford rush hour traffic... yuck. It took me an extra hour to get home, and I went right to sleep. Last couple of nights at work were real crappy, with primarily computer problems making my life real difficult, and I haven't really recovered until this morning. I held off on writing up this report until now because I wanted to be in the right frame of mind to do it justice.

It was great meeting up with Adam, Sal and Andy again. Cheers guys! I was happy to reintroduce myself to Hiro after not challenging him since VF2 days... and it was good meeting Trevor and Nelson later in the evening too. I'm glad Nelson is sticking with Shun, I'm interested to see what he comes up with the new version of Jiji.

A couple of new knick name suggestions:

Rich (Mr Bungle):
Over-the-Mountain Kage: I had to drive some of the steepest grades I've ever been on to get to his house in upstate New York... That road must be scary during the winter... Rich's own suggestion was Binboa Kage (binboa = poor as in no money) but I'm sure he'll find employment soon enough...

Adam Yuki:
KISS Akira: as in Keep It Simple Stupid Akira. Adam's really always had this style, and I guess most very good Akira players do really keep it simple when they're at their best.

I plan on going down to Broadway City again either on Monday Nov 17 or on Nov 26. I'll let you guys know as soon as I confirm my plans.

Later,
Yupa

 

Re: Great time today

Nice report Yupa. Glad to hear Nelson is sticking with Shun. It's good to know I am not the only exclusive Shun player left. I do not know how anyone could leave him he's just so strong now. You really don't even need to be drunk to win now.

 

Re: Great time today

Thanks for the report...

I haven't written much about VF4 because I dunno what to say. It's such a blur. I was having a hard time getting used to the feel of the game, and the sticks, short rounds and hyper competition didn't help, as far as taking things in and adjusting. That sort of setup is no way to learn, unfortunately.

Hopefully a cheap VF4 will spring up in Boston, soon. One had better, grrrr.

Thanks to the NY crew for the good competition and mercy rounds, and to Yupa for the ride and sponsorship

 

Re: Great time today

When are you two going to swing by Toronto?


kbcat

 

Re: Great time today

1) When I can get some significant time off from work... not likely for awhile now as we have a skeleton crew after one of the other dispatchers left to work for another co.

2) When I feel more comfortable with VF4. Both Rich and I were pretty much overwhelmed with all the new stuff we were seeing during our first day with the game. I want to make my trip to Toronto worthwhile, as in a learning experience... I'd prefer to learn the more high level tactics that your group is currently grappling with instead of the lower level stuff that I still have to learn like what moves generate krumple downs, when I can/should tech roll, how the hell do you do Sarah's charge attack, etc.

If Boston gets VF4, this process will be much faster...

 

chinatown fair arcade getting vf4...

just more further proof that chinatown fair is getting vf4, they put it up as a "coming soon".

<a target="_blank" href=http://www.chinatownfair.com/news.htm>http://www.chinatownfair.com/news.htm</a>

 

another VF4 machine in broadway city

yep, another vf4 machine in broadway city arcade and this one is the worst of them all. this one is located in the second floor all the way at the end of the new area (the one where they have a bunch of daytona machines ) this one runs on a LOW resolution monitor, how do i know? well, after seeing this one im tottally convinced now that the one on the third floor (using the old vf3 cab) is running in HIGH resolution (was skeptical at first, but now i saw the light /versus/images/icons/wink.gif ). vf4 on low res is ugly, nothing compares to high resolution, its like night and day. you can CLEARLY see the scan lines on the low res one. also, the buttons are screwed up big time (imo). they are in a horizontal line but lifted a bit higher like this:

***********O
********O
*****O

aint that fucked up!? and the sticks are really loose, in other words noone will play on this machine.

btw adam, i found out about this machine about 5 minutes after you left /versus/images/icons/wink.gif.

 

Re: another VF4 machine in broadway city

**well, after seeing this one im tottally convinced now that the one on the third floor (using the old vf3 cab) is running in HIGH resolution**

Why doesn't anyone believe me when I talk about arcade machines? I thought myself and docs like the friggin VF4 manual would have made it clear (to say nothing of just LOOKING at it) already.

I did have a nice doc in the works about collecting arcade VF machines and the configurations needed and necessary, but I'm gonna pull a GLC and just say fuck it, and toss it.

 

Re: another VF4 machine in broadway city

Hey Sal, just checked the 2nd floor machine out today.

I actually like the button placement better! 1P is the same as 2P, and at least for me (thumb on guard people), the hand doesn`t hurt as much from playing. I think for Adam, the 2P side on the 3rd floor is better, but the 1P side 3rd floor is definitely worse than the 2nd floor buttons. The 2nd floor one is at least even, and there`s not much "Hey Adam I hope Nelson beats you on 1P so I can get 2P" type of thing.

As for the controls for the 2nd floor machine, the 2P side is quite good (not perfect) but the 1P side has issues. Adam couldn`t even do a bodycheck on the 1P side! I had fewer issues with the 1P stick (and ended up playing on the 1P side the whole night, boo), but the stick is a little sluggish/unresponsive, which is frustrating at times.

The monitor there is definitely low rez, but it`s a much nicer and newer low rez monitor. The 3rd floor monitor on the other hand is old, has distortion, and seems a out of focus.

On the whole, for versus play, my preference is for the 2nd floor machine. Fewer beginners (though I may miss them, heh), same button set up, tolerable sticks, tolerable visuals.

The biggest thing the 3rd floor has over the 2nd floor is the flow of traffic and the "oohs" and "aahs" of casual observers.

 

Yo!, I convinced the guy who repairs the machines at broadway city and he put the stage select on and guess what else?? its 3 rounds now!!!!! all this happen right after adam and jeff left LOL

 

Awesome! Good work Sal. Makes the price a little more justified then... We tried talking the tech who fixed the vertical hold on the monitor again tonight on the VF4 at Goodtimes in Somerville to 3/5, but he wouldn't go for it. Sucks... but he did make the screen brighter and it looks a lot better. Between the two techs that were working on the game we got about 7 free games too. Pretty good service, huh? =) BTW, if you buy $20 of tokens at a time, VF4 is 60 cents/game here.

 

#"$%#$%'%("$%"#%#"&"#&"#%$!#$"#

What luck! Grrrr..

 

checked the arcade today and.......the fuckers changed it back to 2 rounds!!! could you fucking beleive that!? I think we should just wait for the home version or wait till PA or chinatown gets it, really...its not worth giving them our cash. its ok to play like once a week and waste $2.50, but that's it!. if i see any of you playing there regurlarly I'll consider you either a spoiled rich mofo, a stupid person, or a person who enjoys pain (you know the kind) /versus/images/icons/wink.gif. but seriously, boycott that shit man

 

I was actually there with Hiro on the very next day that you posted that it's been changed. Nope, when we played it was first to 2 as usual. We even asked one of the guys if it was a mistake and to change it to 3. "Nothing I can do," the guy says. We had stage select at least, which was nice.

 

Sal, Broadway City probably has a mole on this forum... at least a lurker who's in management there. The whole arcade is way to expensive if you ask me, but you got to remember where they're located just a block from Times Square and they have a couple of huge floors with tons of floor space... I can only guess how much the rent is for that kind of location in NYC.

 

Virtua Fighter 4 is at Chinatown Fair in our showcase 33" machine on high res. 50 cents to start/continue. 3/5 rounds. Machine has perfect 360 joysticks and convex buttons. Button setup is like japanese style. Machines in our arcade always work 100% or get repaired asap.

~henry
http://www.chinatownfair.com
NYC's best and last real arcade.

 

holy shit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

henry, you are the fucking man bro!!!, i'll be there tomorrow. thank you so fucking much man!!

 

AWWWWWWWWWWWW JEAH!!! Thanks Henry!

Where's my KAT niggaz???!?

 

Re: VF4 FINALLY HITS ChinaTown NYC

Just got back from arcade! VF4 is in a nice cabinet. up-slanting keypad area is wide and is way in back ( back wall) of arcade. Sticks are smooth and accurate. Buttons are best configuration of any VF4 in NYC. (112/5/01). 50 cents a game allows for lots of fun. Small group from Tekken machine drifted to watch me play the CPU, but, not a single challenger. ;( Look for Lion sign in middle of street ( Lion International). when you are approaching Square where Worth and Mott come together... Narrow loud and almost always bustling, Chinatown Fair is my favorite arcade. As you go in the door you must wend your way past the Capcom Vs SNK 2 players and Tekken 4 gamesters to find the new VF4. (Huah!) Beautiful thing.
In NYC's famous Chinatown on 8 Mott Street. They are open most everyday of the year and is reachable by bus (M15 for our east side uptown gamers. Subway (N,R,W,Q,6) trains at Canal Street. Walk east toward Mott and head into the winding street. Terrific Green Tea shop (Ten Ren's) opposite side of street two blocks away. citibank on corner of Mott and Worth is twenty steps from arcade. Candle Lite Thai restuarant is across from citibank. When you come up town from ferry look for the LION Intl sign in middle of street and you are there dude! Cordial restaurant hosts. Sometimes it has the feel of a surreal Shenmue like mystical place. For more info call (212) 964-1542 or visit www.chinatownfair.com nycat,,, going there email me or call cell: 917-634-6168 nycat@thelion.com
See you at the chicken arcade. For those people who haven’t been to NYC. The Chicken Arcade got it’s name many years ago when they actually had a live chicken that could beat 70% of tourists that paid to play Tic Tac Toe against the chicken. They took the word chicken off the sign recently, but you can still see the outline of the letters.