WTB: CPS2 SF2X/ST

[seieienbu]

So I figure this is a longshot but who knows, maybe I'll get lucky.  Every fall I help run a fighting game tournament in Dallas, Absolute Battle.  We have grown every year and are now a relatively large event; last year we had 700 unique entrants.  This is the 8th one and every year we've had more games and I'd like to continue adding in both new and classic fighting games.

So the matter at hand?  I'm hoping to run a side tournament for ST and I'd like a copy of the game to do so.  I checked ebay first and the only one on there seems quite shady to me particularly for the price tag.  Is there any chance that anyone here has a copy of ST/SF2X that they'd be willing to sell?  I have a US style A board but if I could only get a B board from some weird region that would likely be acceptable anyway.

[majors]

ST has gone up in value, is it like $300 now for a loose B-board? Darksoft multi could be your answer...sure you sack a game, but who cares about Alpha 1 or Vampire(1st Darkstalkers). Then you have them all.

I'm sure there has to be someone in the fgc in the Dallas area with a supergun setup that runs ST...I see those Undamned modded CPS2's all the time at the EC tourneys.

[SignOfZeta]

$300? Why? Isn't this game common as fuck?

[bartre]

$300? Why? Isn't this game common as fuck?

not ST specifically, but SFII in general is common.

but there's several factors -
eBay BIN tards.
people who think they're competitive gamers.
superguns are more easily accessible, meaning more people are into arcade stuff.
Batteries killing the B-boards (kind of an extension of my last point)

[seieienbu]

ST has gone up in value, is it like $300 now for a loose B-board? Darksoft multi could be your answer...sure you sack a game, but who cares about Alpha 1 or Vampire(1st Darkstalkers). Then you have them all.

I'm sure there has to be someone in the fgc in the Dallas area with a supergun setup that runs ST...I see those Undamned modded CPS2's all the time at the EC tourneys.

I've looked into it, but as I understand it the multi board doesn't play every game.  It has SF2 Anniversary Edition which isn't exactly ST and isn't the preferred tournament version.  I intend to get one anyway as it has Almost everything I'd want on the CPS2 but without ST it's not much use to me on this point.  Please correct me if I'm wrong on this one.

Either way, it seems that it's unavailable from the guy who makes them atm so if I'm buying something second hand I'd rather get the original if possible.

[CrackTiger]

From what I understand, phoenixed roms are frowned upon for tournaments because they don't behave exactly the same as the real thing.

[seieienbu]

I've read both that the phoenixed roms both do and they don't run faster so I think I'll have to test it myself at some point when I get around to buying one of the things.  If the SF2 Anniversary Edition thing is true, I think it's more of a deal breaker as even locally there are Old Sagat players who want nothing to do with the game due to nerfs.  At some point I Would like to get one though if for nothing more than playing D&D, AvP, and a few other non-tournament games.

Take it from me, I am one; Fighting game players are probably the most nitpicky sub group of game players that exists in the world.  I've known a bunch of SF3:3S players that, when playing the game on console, refuse to use versus mode because of the stage select option.  A hot button issue for me was Evo determining the tournament standard console a few years ago for SF4.  Until the last year or two of the game's life, they made the PS3 the standard console.  PS3 ran all Capcom fighters around a frame slower than Xbox360.  In SF4 I played Honda and if I ever wanted to do a big damage combo I had a 1 frame window to link crouching LP after EX Hundred Hand Slap.  The month before Evo, I would quit playing on Xbox360 and switch over the PS3.  I'd then play in training mode every day until I eventually acclimated myself to the timing but it was a giant pain to do so.  The spacing for the combo was so far apart that I had to rely on a visual cue and that 1-ish frame made an awful lot of difference doing so.  As a dumb aside?  Namco fighters last generation ran a frame faster on PS3 so it's not like there was an all in one solution at all.

I've met players who refuse to use certain soundtracks for games, players who argue over smoothing algorithms (imo they should just be turned off), players who throw a fit if their chosen color is picked against them, players who refuse to play on the opposite side of their lifebars, and some few players who won't play unless they are sitting on the same side as their opponent's life bars.  If the last two ever have to face each other in a tournament, I make them play rock paper scissors to determine side and afterward have to put up the potential of the loser of RPS losing the set and then becoming angry with me determining who won before the game was even played.

A question I've often wondered, is Smash Bros. Melee different when running on the Wii?  Everything I've read swears that it's the exact same and it would make my life a LOT easier to run a stream for that game on Wii due to the component cables for the platform not costing hundreds of dollars.  The actual smash players that have spoken to me say otherwise.

My point is, if I ever get a multicart I'll test it by running a game side by side, starting the timer at the same point, and then see if one of them gets ahead of the other one.  Whenever there's a change in anything, some fighting game players will inform me that the smallest difference makes a huge change in how the game is actually played.  In some cases, they're right.  You couldn't play MvC2 well on PS2 because of scenarios like if you try to alpha counter out to save an assist from, say, a Storm Hail super chip kill?  Your character dies anyway rather than safely hopping onto your bench.  Meanwhile, in SF4 people swore that the East Asia Underpass stage was larger than the other stages.  At one point I used the dev tools to count that it was 15 blocks wide, the same as all other stages.

[bartre]

"Pro" gamers are gigantic douche canoes.
it's exactly why I stopped running tournaments.
it doesn't matter what you do, someone will bitch about something.

[SignOfZeta]

Man, I had no idea that Pheonixed CPS2 boards were supposedly in any way different performance-wise. Does anyone have a link to a good read on that? Do Capcom's own fixes change anything?

So should I get moving on buying these things so I can at least keep the batteries fresh and continue to postpone their irrecoverable data loss?

[seieienbu]

This is a pretty good read on the topic.

http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/showthread.php?260882

[majors]

I've looked into it, but as I understand it the multi board doesn't play every game. 

Darksoft has ST...dunno where you read that. There may be some JP quiz game not ripped yet...but it has what all that you want...and I'm sure it WILL be ripped, they are focusing on the what has been requested first. Create an account at http://www.arcade-projects.com to view the official threads. They have an ongoing thread for current released games(rom sets).

I've run my Darksoft multi with ST/X at NEC and Final Round without any gripes from the players. I think a lot of the "nitpicky" players are blaming hardware for their lack luster skills...do they even show up for real events? And I also have a unmodified Grand Master Challenge b-board that I mainly use, I only bring out the multi's when tournament needs more setups to help speed up the brackets.

That N-G thread is talking power...I always adjust my voltage(s) when swapping PCBs. I'm sure arcade operators BITD never bothered to do so.

Man, I had no idea that Pheonixed CPS2 boards were supposedly in any way different performance-wise.

Or could be ppl trying to maintain a false sense of value on their CPS2s for swapping batteries all these years...Do the phoenix boards you have run to your liking? Do not let internet banter make you question yourself.

[majors]

The actual smash players that have spoken to me say otherwise.

Fuck smash and their nipple wagers.

[CrackTiger]

Wasn't the CPS2 encruption decoded a while back and phoenix roms soon won't be necesary?

[bartre]

Man, I had no idea that Pheonixed CPS2 boards were supposedly in any way different performance-wise. Does anyone have a link to a good read on that? Do Capcom's own fixes change anything?

So should I get moving on buying these things so I can at least keep the batteries fresh and continue to postpone their irrecoverable data loss?

the "argument" is that since the system no longer has to decrypt, the game runs faster than intended.
I'm not saying that I'm super sensitive to the stuff, but I've not been able to tell the difference between battery, phoenix, or darksoft setups.

in fact, we have a 3rd strike machine running on the darksoft hardware at my bar, and the "pro" players have never made a complaint about it, so I'd honestly tell you not to worry about it.

The actual smash players that have spoken to me say otherwise.

Fuck smash and their nipple wagers.

I love the games, but hate the community.
I strictly play with friends or people my friends "approve" of.

Wasn't the CPS2 encruption decoded a while back and phoenix roms soon won't be necesary?

correct, though a lot of people don't yet have the tools etc. to do so.

http://shoryuken.com/2016/05/10/cps2-board-security-successfully-reverse-engineered-allows-dead-arcade-boards-to-be-easily-resurrected/

http://arcadehacker.blogspot.kr/2016/04/important-capcom-cps2-announcement.html

[SignOfZeta]

I don't have any recovered games. I only have SFZ2A that I swapped the battery in a few years ago, first time. My friends all have all managed to hold 3V on that line all these years so I don't know anyone with a Pheonixed board or whatever a Dark thingie is.

 If there was anything wrong with that specific game, SFZ2A,...I probably would be the asshole to notice it, but I'm not anything like a high level player in anything like VS games or shooters and I'm sure that kind of difference (if it exists) wouldn't matter in AvP or Pro Gear so I guess I'll continue not caring about it.

I would like to A/B this some time just to check it out.

[seieienbu]

The Darksoft multi-CPS2 kits are out of stock for the next 3 months.  On the other hand, I'm finally getting around to getting a CPS3 multibios, so, that's cool.  As it stands however, I'm still looking for some way to play ST if anyone around here can help me out.  Thanks.