Southtown Arcade

This past Sunday was our first trip to Southtown Arcade in San Francisco. Southtown opened in May of this year and I was very happy to go support a NEW arcade in Northern California!
Southtown is a fighters-oriented arcade with a lot of good titles running on Japanese candy cabinets. It's pretty small, but it is in San Francisco, so the rent is probably outrageous. The vibe is chill and everyone there was super friendly. They had some cool beats on the stereo system, but not too loud. Even though the focus is fighters, they also have puzzlers, platformers and at least one shmup. I didn't see any beat em ups, but aside from that they seem to have something for everyone if fighter's aren't your thing.

The main attraction of the arcade is their King of Fighters XIII machine. Southtown has been running tournaments on it all summer and the day that we showed up was the last one. Iplaywinner.com has been streaming the events and they had a nice setup with a TV on the wall showing the stream.

Here's what the tournament looked like on the day we were there, if you watch long enough, you can see myself and DoctorC getting pwnt by some locals. I think I did pretty good considering it was my first time playing XIII, it's too bad we didn't have time to stay for the losers bracket though.
(The whole tournament is in three parts. This is part one.)
Part 2 Part 3

Watch live video from IPLAYWINNER on Justin.tv


Here are some pictures we took of the arcade.

Southtown Arcade

Some Namco Noir style cabinets.

The King of Fighters XIII!

New Astro City's

An IREM Madonna!

Some Namco Cyberleads.

A Jaleco Pony Mark IV cab.

A Namco Exceleena II running some crazy version of Street Fighter II.

NEO-CANDY......Aww yeah.

This is the stream/commentator desk, the TV is showing the stream.

They also sell shirts...

Quarters.

They had a Puyo Puyo game! So awesome!

From what I can tell, they run the arcade in the traditional way, switching out games frequently.
They maintain a list of games currently in the arcade HERE.
Southtown Arcade gets extra points for having the best name ever. If you don't know, the name comes from the town in the SNK universe, Southtown.
I found this interactive map of Southtown while I was writing this. It's rad, check it out.

It takes guts to open a new arcade in the USA these days, the next time you're in San Francisco, drop in and show some support.
Oh, and btw, everyone that says "arcades are dead"....that place was packed, so stop spouting memes.

Support your local arcade!
Long live Southtown!

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Round 1 USA

(This post is for AKG ^.^)
I took a little trip to Round 1 in City of Industry, California last week.
Round 1 is a large amusement company in Japan, with over 100 arcades in that country.  The California location is the first one in the USA and only opened in 2010. Hopefully there are more coming.

Aside from the arcade, Round 1 also has bowling, darts, karaoke, billiards, ping pong, and a restaurant. It's inside the La Puente Hills Mall and it is massive.

Round 1 entrance

The arcade itself is a Japanese style arcade, with  lots of candy cabinets, super deluxe games, super deluxe UFO catchers, purikura photo/sticker booths, air hockey tables, and tons of redemption games. They have quite a few games that are hard to find elsewhere, including Technika 2, Raiden IV, Tatsunoko vs Capcom, Tekken 6: Bloodline Rebellion, Elevator Action Death Parade, and Super SF IV.


Everything runs on an overly complicated card swipe system. Some games cost credits, or you can buy unlimited games by the hour. Bemanistyle.com has a pretty good explanation of the pricing HERE.
I'm not a fan of card swipe systems, but the system at Round 1 works surprisingly well. I went ahead and bought the club card for an extra $5 and it looks classy, plus they gave me an awesome Round1xHello Kitty keitai strap!

Round 1 Club Card

Club Card rear.

Hello KittyxRound 1 keitai strap.

Anyways, here are the rest of the arcade pictures :)

The redemption center has lots of GOOD prizes!

UFO catchers galore!

A 100" super deluxe Terminator Salvation.

Super Street Fighter IV cabs.

Some candy cabinets.

A mega Mega Stacker.

Initial D Arcade Stage 6

Dead Heat

More candies.

Some shooters.

They have DJMax Technika 2! I didn't get a chance to play, because I was kinda short on time and the line was long, but it looks awesome!

Technika 2 cabs!

An alternative to putting your token up.

Technika 2 again.

Even MORE candy cabinets :)

Smart Smacker.

Round 1 has some serious UFO catchers, some of them cost $5.00 USD to play! It's a casino for kids!

Kitty catcher.

Rilakkuma catcher.

Snack catcher.

Ice Cream Catcher

Wonka Sweetland.

More UFO catchers.

There's a lot more going on at Round 1 than I could get pictures of, the place is seriously gigantic. I really hope they build one of these in northern California soon!

Here's your list of games :)
Fruit Ninja FX
Mega Stacker
Smart Smacker 50
Pump it Up 2011 Fiesta EX
Dance Dance Revolution Extreme 2
Guitar freaks XG
Drum Mania XG
Pump it Up PRO
Super Street Fighter 4 Arcade Edition
Guitar Hero Arcade
Terminator Salvation
Sega golden Gun
Typhoon
Galactix (redemption)
The fast and the Furious Super Cars (4p)
Initial D Arcade Stage 6 (4p)
Midnight 3 EX Plus
Hummer Extreme Edition
Tank! Tank! Tank! (4p)
NASCAR Team Racing (4p)
King of the Road Harley Davidson (2p)
Mario Kart Arcade GP 2 (2p)
Nirin (2p)
Dead Heat (4p)
Elevator Action Death Parade
Pump it Up 2010 Fiesta
Dance Dance Revolution Supernova 2
Sega Rally 3 (2p)
Need For Speed: Carbon (2p)
H2Overdrive (2p)
Let's Go Jungle
Let's Go Island
Ghost Squad Evolution
Razing Storm
Outrun 2 SP (2p)
Nicktoons Nitro
Panic Museum
Big Buck Hunter: Open Season
Big Buck Hunter Safari
RAMBO (the shooter)
Deadstorm Pirates
Metal Slug 5
Guilty Gear xx
DJMax Technika 2
Raiden 4
Shikigami No Shiro episode 3
Virtua NBA
SVChaos: SNK vs Capcom
Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike
Marvel Vs Capcom 2
Tatsunoko Vs Capcom
AfterBurner Climax
House of the Dead 4
Tekken 6: Bloodline Rebellion
The King of Fighters '98 Ultimate Match
BlazBlue Continuum Shift
Street Fighter 2: Hyper Fighting
Hammer 2


That's all for my review of Round 1. I thought it was an absolutely wonderful arcade and would recommend it highly! I wasn't able to get any tokens this time, if anyone has any they want to part with, please let me know!

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EVO 2011 Results and Other Goodness

Here are the final EVO 2011 results.

King of Fighters XIII (side tournament)

1. BALA
2. Romance
3. Mr. KOF
4. Reynald
5. El Rosa (Mex)
6. Xian from Singapore


Tekken 6

1. DMG|Kor (Bob)
2. Fab (Bob)
3. Reepal (Law)
4. JustFrameJames (Law, Baek)
5. Crow (Bob)
5. Mr. Naps (Bryan)
7. LLL|Ryan Hart (Kazuya)
7. MCZ|Tokido (Bob)


BlazBlue: Continuum Shift

1. Spark (Hakumen)
2. Lord Knight (Makoto, Litchi)
3. MCZ|Tokido (Noel)


Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition

1. Fuudo (Fei Long)
2. BrokenTier|Latif (C. Viper)
3. Poongko (Seth)Poongko (Seth)
4. MCZ|Daigo Umehara (Yun)
5. eLive|Kindevu (Yun)
5. MCZ|Tokido (Akuma)
7. WolfKrone (C. Viper)
7. Flash Metroid (Zangief, C. Viper)


Marvel Vs Capcom 3

1. Viscant (Wesker, Haggar, Phoenix)
2. DMG|PR Balrog (Dante, Wolverine, Tron)
3. EG|Justin Wong (She-Hulk, Wolverine, Akuma)
4. cc.coL|Combofiend (She-Hulk, Taskmaster, Spencer)
5. UVG|Noel Brown (Wolverine, Wesker, Akuma)
5. cc.coL|Filipino Champ (Magneto, Sentinel, Phoenix)
7. Mine (Wesker, Taskmaster, Phoenix)
7. X-Ray (Dante, Amaterasu, Magneto)



Mortal Kombat 9

1. DMG|Perfect Legend (Kung Lao)
2. vVv|REO (Mileena)
3. JOP (Johnny Cage, Raiden)
4. LB|ChrisGNY (Reptile)
5. Denzell Terry (Johnny Cage, Liu Kang)
5. 16-Bit (Katana)
7. FR|ATL Redd (Liu Kang)
7. OnlineTony (Kabal) 


For all the crap that I talk about current Capcom fighting games, The SFIV was actually quite fun to watch, it's hard not to get enthused with the crowd and all, even if it was a Yun/Fei Long fest. 
Marvel Vs Capcom 3 is still garbage though :D


They had a Street Fighter 3 Third Strike Online Edition exhibition and it's looking really good. It definitely looks better than Street Fighter IV does.



The best part of the EVO stream was the Aris and Kayo Police Tekken 6 commentary.
(lolz)



Balrog : Behind the Glory was awesome too.



Here's the final SF IV matches, where you can see Latif totally choking :/



Tekken 6 Grand Finals.



BlazBlue Grand Final.



Here's was* the  final hour of MvC3.

*Video has been removed by shoryuken.com?! Way to go Shoryuken.

Good times :)

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EVO 2011 Streaming Video Feeds

EVO 2011 is starting tomorrow morning, Friday 7/28/11. I wanted to post the live feeds here for everyone.
(These) feeds are being run by Shoryuken.com

Feed 1 is covering Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition on Friday and Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 on Saturday.



Feed 2 is covering Mortal Kombat 9 on Friday. Tekken 6 and BlazBlue Continuum Shift 2 on Saturday ^.^



There's a LOT going on at EVO this year, here is a schedule of events.

Orochinagi and Dream Cancel are holding a King of Fighters XIII side tournament and Kei Yamamoto (KOF XIII producer) is challenging the winner of that contest!

More later.

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California Extreme 2011

This weekend the good DoctorC and I went to Santa Clara for this year's California Extreme.
California Extreme is like a giant arcade game and pinball convention that is held every year in northern California. This was my first year going and it was hands down the best arcade I've ever seen in my life!
The scale of the thing was just completely massive and the sounds......the sounds were overwhelming :)


I took a bunch of pictures. You can view the entire set HERE.

Our press passes ^.^

Pins

A homemade Video Pinball TRON mod.

Missile Command...is it the fast cursor or the slow cursor?

PONG Doubles

Spy Hunter pin

Punch-Out's!

Gold Neo-Geo

Baby Pac-Man

Big Six

A happy, bustling arcade :)

Finally got to play TRON Legacy :) It has steep ramps.

They had like this whole section of auto playing ragtime instruments that was mind boggling!

Ragtime Piano

A row of Candy Cabinets.

A deadly Berzerk game :)

A deluxe Super Sprint?!

A cockpit Star Wars and a Spy Hunter.

They had lots of merch tables selling all kinds of cool stuff!

There was a huge amount of vintage pinball games at the show. They all looked SUPER classy and were really fun to play!

The oldest pinball games were all very pretty with great sound!

Alice in Wonderland
The vintage pins ended up being my favorite part of the show I think :)

Most impossible games ever :)

Aside from the arcade itself, they had a bunch of bands playing in the hotel!

Playing were:
Jean Baudin
Survival Guide
Gnarboots
A_Rival
The Phenomenauts
ComputeHer
8 Bit Weapon
The Megas
crashfaster
Awkward Terrible

 Here's part of 8 Bit Weapon's set



DoctorC shot some video footage which has yet to surface. In the meantime ccyrus77 shot some video of the show for everyone to enjoy.
This video isn't even half of the arcade though, the place was seriously huge.





We also picked up a copy of Doctor Kong: Cutting up the Competition at the show. Although the movie is only 18 minutes long, I thought it was very good and worth the ten dollars I paid for it. Hank Chien is very funny in the film.

Overall, California Extreme was one of the funnest places I've ever been to and it is now a mandatory annual show for me :) If you haven't gone yet, you're missing out on the coolest arcade ever.
THANK YOU to everyone who put the show together! See you next year!

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The King of Fighters XIII Arcade Game Has Been Dumped.

It looks like another Taito Type X² arcade rom has been dumped, but this time it's the King of Fighters XIII. The game that everyone has been waiting for and almost nobody (in the US at least) has played, despite it being released over a year ago in the arcades. There's a lot of people crying about this on various forums saying "Oh boo hoo! Now no one will buy the console release! We are all teh doomed!"

My response is this. I don't want to play the console version, I want to play the arcade version, (in an arcade preferably). If it was around here, I would have already spent more than the console version costs on it two or three times over by now and been happy about it.
For the record, the console versions are set to be released in North America in October.

If you want to try and get the arcade version running on your PC, you can grab the files HERE or get them off Demonoid. (I haven't had a lot of luck getting it to run, but others have pulled it off.)












I'll probably buy the console version when it comes out because I'm KOF obsessed, but I'll have to play at a friends house, because I don't own a modern home system at this point. Given the choice I'd rather have the arcade version every time though.

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