On Saturday there were two things that I wanted to do:

1. Go to the Fighter’s Crossover all Japan 3on3 SF6 tournament last chance qualifier
2. Go to the DFM Fighting Game Fan Fest event

So let’s talk about those!

Fighter’s Crossover all Japan 3on3 SF6 tournament

Fighter’s Crossover is the series of locals that Kagecchi set up. Originally, back when SFV came out, unlike all other Street Fighter games to that point, it was not released first in arcades. Since there was no arcade release, people were really concerned about where that sense of community could come from. Kagecchi decided to set up a weekly in Akihabara. It was really popular, and it ran for a long time. Of course there were other locals as well, but this is the one that I went to, and I think had the largest impact on the Tokyo community. Lots of people got their start here – Tachikawa, Ohtani, Nauman, Takeuchi John, commentators (Nanai) and TOs. I tweeted a long thread about it when I saw that Capcom added a Fighters Crossover title. In fact, I’ll duplicate that here since I like to have my words on a medium that I control.

I tweeted something about this when I came across it, but I think it is amazing that Capcom put in a Fighter’s Crossover title in SF6. If you don’t know Fighter’s Crossover, it’s the weekly local that @kagecchi79 started when SFV dropped. Prior to Fighter’s Crossover in Japan there pretty much weren’t popular locals. SF4 was firmly entrenched in the then still fairly vibrant game center scene, and some arcades ran nights where the machines were on free play for some amount of time. You had to know where and when that was – I remember one of the arcades in Shibuya (Sportsland I think? RIP – and RIP to Shibuya Kaikan, one of my favorite SSF2X 50 yen places for that matter) had one on Thursday nights. You also had to know where would the good players be for any given night / arcade.

There was huge excitement for SFV when it dropped but there was NO ARCADE RELEASE. There wouldn’t be an arcade release for I think about two years. So Kagecchi, who is just a fighting game player, came to be well known in SF3, and was involved in various community events saw this, he started Fighter’s Crossover -Akihabara-, a weekly at Esports Arena in Akihabara on Wednesday nights. He ran that for all of SFV, and when SF6 dropped, started to expand – all on a volunteer effort – to other locations in Japan. Fighter’s Crossover has never had prized tournaments – for various reasons that is hard in Japan – so it always focused on providing a place for players to gather, meet, talk, and more or less replicate that arcade experience. Kagecchi also wanted to foster new players so he would often “hire” young players to do set-up and tear-down, letting them play for free (and I think some small payment – Fighter’s Crossover has always run at either a loss or minimal profit each year). Tachikawa and Ohtani are two people that came through and went on to success. He also used it as a way to teach people how to organize, and start on commentary. Nanai (again, I can’t believe that he passed so suddenly, at such a young age) started commentary at the weeklies, and went on to anchor Capcom’s JP events with the likes of Aru and Hameko. Fighter’s Crossover is a critical community run event that has done amazing things to keep the Japan scene vibrant, full of new people, and welcoming. It’s really great to see that officially recognized by Capcom themselves.
I try to make it out there as often as I can (sadly, it’s down to once a month usually now, but I used to go weekly prior to Covid). Anyway, thanks for reading this far if you did, and congratulations to not just Kagecchi, but all the people that support and go to FC events!

https://twitter.com/DocFugu/status/1763689923322986964

Ok, so what is the Fighters Crossover All Japan 3on3 SF6 Tournament? Well, the title there pretty much says it all. Starting in mid-January, at all the Fighter’s Crossover locals around Japan, Kagecchi organized 3on3 tournaments to get local representatives for the offline tournament March 10th. March 9th was the last chance qualifier, where two teams would go on to the full tournament (32 teams) on Sunday.

I went there to see what was going on, and check out the venue, Ash Winder eSports Arena in Takadanobaba. I had never been there before, and it was nice! The space was large, well lit, with all new equipment and a really nice setup. They have a little food stand which probably is always available (well, depending on the event, but they are set up to sell food and drinks). For this event they set up a bunch of casual stations – 9 head to head, 5 side by side, and then there were 4-5 tournament stations. There were also three booths, Grapht, Hori, and I-O Data. Grapht had some button caps that I think they were selling with different shapes to make it easier to slide across buttons, or jam on a drive impact button. Hori had a couple of their Fighting Commander Octa controllers (I have one and like it a lot) and they were testing changes to the D-pad, and asked people for their opinions. I liked one that had sections that made it easier to down-back, something I can never do on segmented (Playstation – at least the old ones – and nintendo setups) d-pads. I-O Data had some of their monitors set up.

There were lots of people – I played a few games but got smashed by everyone. I’m trying to learn on pad, and I’m just terrible. It’s fun though. There was one nice person who sat down and played maybe 10 games with me. She was trying to learn Classic on a leverless controller, and my Modern Ryu was about a reasonable match for her Classic JP (she still won more than me) but when she switched to Luke she just pasted me. Lots of fun though!

One thing I’ve noticed in Japan is that I don’t think I pick up on the sublte cues from people about when I should stop playing them. If the setups have signs (FT2 / FT3 / 10 minutes / whatever) I follow that, but when there is no one around and you can just keep playing, I notice that eventually people say to me “last one!”. I probably should have left before then I guess, but I have no problem losing over and over as long as I am getting something out of it. And I’m always trying to use those losses to learn, so I get something out of it.

Anyway, I went up to watch Fubarduck and his team play, I was really cheering for them, but they lost in a close one.

I left a bit early – went to a Chinese place to get some fried rice and ramen – and then went over to Ueno for the DFM Fighting Games Fan Fest.

DFM Fighting Games Fan Festival

You had to buy tickets in advance for this. I don’t remember how much, maybe 3500 JPY? It was held at the AU support eSports Style Ueno place – it’s a new esports space, and also looks really nice. This was more of a presentation sort of thing. We sat in rows and up on stage the DFM SFL team talked about the SFL and answered fan questions. I was really surprised that about half the people there were women. That’s great to see! Itazan seems surprisingly popular with the ladies, or maybe it’s Takeuchi John? He’s pretty fashionable.

The team also played Jenga, which was lots of fun to watch. There were the standard roshambo giveaways, and at the end people that paid the higher ticket price got to do a meet and greet. I took stupid selfies with everyone, and they signed the signature plate that you got when you entered with that ticket. It was a lot of fun!

Fuudo’s wife and their kid was there, and he was super cute. He was crawling around at one point, and near the end rushed the stage to sit with Fuudo. I’m really happy to see all the sucessful fighting game fathers out there.

I really recommend going to these fan meetup events if you get the chance – and speak Japanese. I’ve been to DFM’s, and a public viewing or two by Shinobism, and really enjoyed each one.