Guide to Japanese VFing - a proposal

Hey guys. My personal homepage is in need of a major revamp.
(/me hears a major rousing cry of "NO SHIT")
I've long been considering pitching some old crap on there and adding some VF content to go with the FV focus. One thing I thought would be cool to write would be a guide to playing VF4E competitively in Japan. It seems like a lot of people want to go, are planning to go, or have gone to Japan and have found themselves flustered initially at aspects of the VF scene there.

The guide would cover basic things like:

- How to sign up for/use VF.net
- How to get started and progress in JP VF4E (It's like starting from the bottom of the barrel all over again)
- VF ettiquette
- Commuicating with Japanese players
- Popular/famous arcades and what to expect from them
- Tournament-going
and anything else that springs to mind.

Do you guys think people would find this interesting, informative, and/or useful? I'd like some input on the idea, please.

I'm also thinking of a Japanese arcade pictoral and a page about Vanessa in the VF4 section of the site. I'm not going to stop updating the FV stuff, of course (I got some new material for that recently).

How does this sound?

 

NO SHIT! Hehe... couldn't resist.

I wrote a long ass PM to Yamato about a year ago when he first came here - it's how to sign up for VF.NET via PC, since a DoCoMo/J-PHone is impossible to get w/o a gaijin card, unless you've got someone here that really trusts you.

Unfortunately, I don't have it. If he's anyhing like me, he still will. He should be here now, so maybe he can be persuaded to dig it up.

For the Ettiquitte section - might want to throw something in there about dodging coffee and whatnot. /versus/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

Its a stupid idea.
If people go to Japan for such purposes they wont go unprepared and will ask those in the community for help.
That help will be provided on VFDC or VFhome and will be current as opposed to months old info that might be outdated on a site that has not seen an update for over a year now.

 

I think that's a great idea - i'd certainly be interested in the info. The topics you listed seem to cover the priorities.

As for the community taking care of people, that may be true for certain things, but in my time of lurking on
"i'm going to japan" posts, i've yet to see e.g. detailed card registration info of the type gaijinpunch was mentioning

 

Go for it. Japanese info for VF is talked about constantly (various terms, famous players, VFnet etc.) within the community so it would probably help the noobs (if they bother reading it /versus/images/graemlins/smirk.gif )

 

That's b/c people aren't asking YOU that info. Even Ice just asked me how to sign on for VF.net for PC.

 

I think it would make a great resource. It would be especially helpful for people who don’t speak and/or read Japanese. It took me awhile to get all that figured out even when I first got here. Great idea, both kind and helpful.

 

[ QUOTE ]
Fishie said:

Its a stupid idea.
If people go to Japan for such purposes they wont go unprepared and will ask those in the community for help.
That help will be provided on VFDC or VFhome and will be current as opposed to months old info that might be outdated on a site that has not seen an update for over a year now.

[/ QUOTE ]


Maybe signing up for VF.net and the jphone thing might change and get updated contiually, but such things as VF ettiquette
- Commuicating with Japanese players
- Popular/famous arcades and what to expect from them
- Tournament-going
don't really vary much over time.
At least it shouldn't in the next, say, year or two.

I think it would be a good idea for a guide Zero. At least I'd definitely read it, even though I don;'t plan on going to Japan anytime soon. Or ever?

 

I'm sure you can handle the VF.net for PC part, as you just need internet and a CC.

What about a per-city guide. I know jack about anything other than some areas of Toyko, but most people play in Shibuya/Shinjuku, so perhaps guides to these would help. It can be tricky finding a place like Kanispo if you're not used to Japanese streets.

 

Yeah, do it. Some stuff I think should be easy to find and widely known:

--Subway stops/directions for these major locations would be great.

---Where do specific pros hang out (i.e. if I want to have the highest possible chance of bumping into hereru, where would I go? How about chibita? etc)

---How much money should you expect to bring (I guess most ppl know it's a buck a game there. Are there seKriT cheap arcades somewhere for people without 1000 bucks in their pocket? How long does 50 bucks last if you keep getting reamed?)

--Is there any place visiting gaijin favor? I know, that's a stretch...
But I don't mean just arcades, I mean like... mcdonalds, or whatever.

Everything else is covered in your list. It'd be great to see this.
Lemme know if you want any help on the nuts and bolts by the way (like some photoshop work or whatever).

 

Yeah alright, she should do it.
Right after cleaning up the broken links on her site, taking care of the sections wich have been in coming soon limbo since she started the site and after finishing the shooter feature she has been promising for months to TNL amongst others.

 

stupid or not, just do it.... it would'nt hurt to, so why not.

 

My God, what a tool...

Anyway, i'm probably going to go sometime next year with a friend of mine, and hey, it always helps to be prepared! I would be fairly interested in the guide, because i definitely plan to play some VF... also interested in whether we darker-skinned gaijin's get treated like everyone else (no reason to think that we wouldn't, i guess, it's just that i've heard conflicting reports).

 

Hey if she does more power to her, her list of unfulfilled website promises and unfinished bussuines is quite long tough.

 

Directions are damn near impossible w/o a map. Yahoo Maps has some good stuff, but you'd have to put the landmarks in yourself. /versus/images/graemlins/frown.gif

 

Indeed, Tokio is the biggest city in the world.
With its lack of high rise buildings and a population of 33 million in the greater Tokyo area(including Yokohama) it manages to make places like NYc or Paris look like playgrounds.

 

The population numbers can be quite decieving, especially by western standards. What I've always been told was the population of TOkyo residents was 12mil +/- 1.5 mil. The working population, on the other hand which includes commuters from areas that "seem to be tokyo" is actually closer to 50. Considering Shinjuku station alone gets 2 million people through it daily, I'd say those numbers are pretty close.

The buildings do throw you off. Shinjuku is really the only place w/ a lot of high rises. The rest of the city has 8-20 floor buildings all over the place... they just all look the same. /versus/images/graemlins/frown.gif

 

I think it sounds really cool. Just to have the information on the scene regardless of whether or not people can go there can be really helpful.

It'd be great to see who the best players are and what characters they use and all the tourney and VF etiquette. That game singlehandedly saved the Japanese arcade scene, that's no small feat.

Good luck with it Zero if you do it.

 

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It'd be great to see who the best players are and what characters they use


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This will always be debated. Everyone's got their favorites and for different reasons. Considering that VF is like anything else and you can "be off" just about anytime, there's really no way to tell unless you watch those guys play each other all the time. I guess the Nishispo Friday night gig is as close as it gets, but even then - there's still debates. With very few exceptions, there's really no "best". Ice and I witnessed Mukki get his ass owned and then reamed by an Akira nobody... at least nobody I'd heard of.
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That game singlehandedly saved the Japanese arcade scene, that's no small feat.


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That's a bold statement, and not really a true one. Japanese arcades have always made money - namely b/c they're so close to everything else (bars, shops, cafes) and they've got different things to lean on. There's porn mahjong for the dirty old men, print club and other gay shit for the sailor suit girls, and fighting/action games for people like us, and finally the slots and other stuff. The other parts of the arcade are usually just as or more crowded than the VF section.

 

I stand corrected. Is it true in Japan their are whole arcades dedicated to Virtua Fighter?