you seriously have to watch this video of this guy playing tetris

[tegan]

The last minute or so is a mode where any blocks you've already placed turn invisible and you have to play from memory.

 

 

[melmer]

My girlfriend was insanely good at Tetris on the DS, she would just sit there and systematically complete all 20 levels over and over again. I don't think she actually derived any pleasure from it. It was not quite that standard but it was pretty fucking special, I couldn't get past level 8.

http://youtu.be/M-9wjbgWgJM

Oops wrong video

[Patrick R]

Tetris is the most immersive video game I've ever played. Only one where I can lose sense of the gap between player and game, and just become one with the blocks.

[Thrik]

The last minute or so is a mode where any blocks you've already placed turn invisible and you have to play from memory.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwC544Z37qo

WTF?????

I can play this game at the slowest possible speed and still end up fucked within minutes.

[Malice Song]

This is kind of blowing my mind, although actually more the part before he goes invisible. Usually the process, at least how I always experienced it, goes something like "Look at next block. Decide where to put it. Rotate while moving horizontally. Bring it down. Enjoy success." - this is just constantly skipping to the last part. It's quite obviously a display of telekinesis or some sort of wizardry.

[SecretAsianMan]

I like the 3:00 mark where it seems like a rhythm game for a while.  Also credits during the invisible sequence is awesome.

[tegan]

I basically just really like watching people be lords of video games. Check out this Street Fighter tournament footage:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lq1ey4-ewyQ

 

Here's some people that make me feel ashamed for thinking that I'm actually good at the games in question:

 

 

[Sno]

No thread about incredible feats of Video game nonsense is complete without at least one video of a Cave shmup.

For things you can actually buy in North America, i strongly endorse Akai Katana. Holy shit, what a great game.

[SecretAsianMan]

I basically just really like watching people be lords of video games. Check out this Street Fighter tournament footage:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lq1ey4-ewyQ

 

I love that video.  Gives me goosebumps every time.

 

Here's some solo 2-player Ikaruga

[Twig]

Damn that gave me goosebumps and I know nothing about fighting games.

[Sno]

Evo finals are easily one of my favorite things to watch each year, always incredible stuff happening.

[Sno]

Another fun oldie.

[TheLastBaron]

I went to Evo in '04, '05, and '06 and that was the best moment out of all of them, even though I don't play SFII.  Even the ones nowadays at the fancy hotels with tons of people aren't as crazy as that. 

 

The Pokemon video is kind of funny, but it's not really impressive since he's not doing anything special, just killing the other team with entry hazards.

 

One of the things that I find most impressive are (some) speedruns.  The most entertaining is probably SM64.  I could watch it all day. 

 

[Scrobbs]

Nice to see someone that good still have problems with that corner on Chenghou!

[melmer]

First to 15. $15K money match

 

 

so much HYPE! this is about a billion time more exciting to me then watching a football match

[Sno]

Oh man, i remember this, it was just before MvC3 was coming out. Kind of the culmination of over ten years of MvC2, big names giving the old game one last go, it was incredible. You can hear in the commentators' voices and in the noise from the crowd how excited everybody was and how much they all loved the game.

The very definition of FGC hype.

[Badfinger]

I feel fairly confident that I would never WANT to be that good at tetris. I think Tetris and bowling share a commonality, which is the point of them isn't to be good. The point is that it's fun and everyone can relate and no matter how good you are eventually you're going to mess up and shrug and laugh and everyone can laugh with you.

[Sno]

Here's another fun one -

From the video description:

'Quake done 100% Quickest' is a run through all of Quake on Nightmare skill, going through the levels as fast as possible, killing every single monster and finding every single secret in every single map of Quake.

The running time is 48:00.

HOW THE RUN WAS RECORDED:

We recorded each demo separately, on skill 3 (Nightmare), of course without any cheating. To start with the correct stats we ended the previous level with, we used a QuakeC patch that allowed us to select the statistics we started with. There are no weapons in the higher levels, because you should have them already from previous ones. And we did it by connecting single demos together because the final product is a lot more interesting that way and entertaining, and we could include some very cool tricks that we couldn't do had we recorded it in one sitting.

Enjoy the run!

The QdQ team

[Patrick R]

has always been my favorite because I never had any idea how much of the game was skippable. Also, Lam jumps and that dive out of Maggie Chow's window.

[tegan]

The Pokemon video is kind of funny, but it's not really impressive since he's not doing anything special, just killing the other team with entry hazards.

 

He's doing a lot of other little things, like playing around with priority brackets. At first I thought he was just using Copycat to make up for Roar's fairly average PP, but he's taking advantage of it having +1 priority as well.

The strategy he mentions early on comes from a Japanese player who made a level 1 team to fight Cynthia a week after the games came out. They did some really fascinating stuff, like taking a Pineco with Sturdy and setting up Leech Seed with it to make it basically invincible while it laid down entry hazards.

 

 

 

Nice to see someone that good still have problems with that corner on Chenghou!

 

I think they're deliberately colliding with it to orient themselves to make sure that they hit the boost. That video is the former world record.

[chummer]

I basically just really like watching people be lords of video games. Check out this Street Fighter tournament footage:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lq1ey4-ewyQ

Looking through my Tumblr feed, I saw this article where Bun Kuchera talks to Seth Killian about this very clip. Quite informative.

[castorp]

this article

Thanks, I just had a very faint idea of what is going on in this clip.

[Patrick R]

Looking through my Tumblr feed, I saw this article where Bun Kuchera talks to Seth Killian about this very clip. Quite informative.

It's stuff like that that fascinates me about sports, and why I could never get into them. I know the "rules" of the game but because I could never read a defense, or individually parse out what single players are doing, I know there's a level of drama and excitement that's completely lost to me. My eyes just end up following the ball.

 

I'd love to read more breakdowns of fighting games like that. Stuff that puts things into a context for me.

[Sno]

The big events like Evo are pretty good with regards to how their commentators handle themselves, they're usually pretty conscious of the fact that Evo draws a larger and broader crowd than normal and that they need to lay out some of the more basic things.

[TheLastBaron]

I'm curious to see what the state of fighting games in 5-10 years.  On one hand the EVOs now are held at big name hotels in Vegas, versus the ones I used to go to were in really small places not even close to the strip with much smaller crowds (not to mention no streams).  On the other hand the arcade scene is dying pretty fast (MvC3 isn't even made in a cab version).  Arcades were such a huge part of fighting games, I can't even imagine what it's like to try and play competitively just over xbox live or whatever people do now.  I guess it's a plus if you don't live in an area with a big arcade scene, but as someone who used to spend maybe 15-20 hours every week with my friends at arcades it just feels so weird seeing people who just play by themselves all the time and then go to competitions.  I'm probably biased because the arcade I went to had a really good scene with lots of good players played there like Ricky Ortiz. 

 

I don't play or follow fighting games at all really these days, and I probably won't watch Evo this year (I haven't watched it since they dropped MvC2 and made S/SF4 the only SF game), but it's cool to see it getting really popular.