One thing I can safely assume about anyone who reads my blog is that they like video games. That’s rad, I like video games too. Common ground!

Over on the forum we’ve gotten together to play games from time to time, but right now two games are really at the forefront of our minds: Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 for PlayStation 3 and Mario Kart 7 for Nintendo 3DS. Because we’re enjoying them so much, I decided to add some structure to the fun and introduce Thursday Night Throwdown and Fast & Furious Friday Nights.

Starting this week we’ll be getting together to play once a week (well, twice a week if you want to play both games) and have a good time. This won’t be a super-hardcore tournament atmosphere, just dudes playing games for fun.

If you’re interested we already have threads on the forums started by Megafan and Eric for Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 and Mario Kart 7 that I’ve turned into official threads for both themed nights. We’d love to have you! (Just remember before registering for the forums to read this splash page!)

I finally found a new main in Soulcalibur V! I wasn’t sure who would become my main character after Namco Bandai decided to kill off my Greek goddess Sophitia, but with today’s character announcement by Famitsu there is no choice but Xiba (or Sheba, or Sheva depending on which Romanization you’re looking at. I’m going with “Xiba” because technically it’s correct when translating from Chinese to Japanese).

As you guys know, I’m a big Dragon Ball fan. What you might not know is that early on, Dragon Ball was loosely based on the Chinese epic novel Journey to the West which featured the great monkey king Sun Wukong as its main protagonist. “Son Gokuu” is the Japanese pronunciation of Sun Wukong, and both characters feature a tail, a staff that can grow in size and ride around on a cloud. Noticing a pattern?

Anyway, as such I’m always a fan of fictional characters based on Sun Wukong. I loved playing as Son-Son in Marvel vs Capcom 2 and I even nicknamed my Infernape “Wukong” in Pokémon Diamond. When I saw Xiba, I immediately knew I had found my new favorite character.

I haven’t written much lately. Looking at this front page, I’ve hardly written anything of substance in the past month! Sorry about that. That’s just like me, saying I’m not going to stop writing and then doing exactly that. In my defense Christina and I have been very busy, she’s been sick and those Blogimations that no one watches are a LOT of work.

Rather than spend another day doing nothing and complaining that I don’t know what to write about, here’s a few quick thoughts on what I’ve been up to.

I haven’t bought a Dragon Ball game since Dragon Ball Burst Limit for the Xbox 360 in 2008, and even then it was only because I wanted a Dragon Ball game in HD.

There’s a lot of reasons that despite how big a fan of the series I am, Dragon Ball games stopped being interesting to me long ago (at least the fighting games; action RPG Buu’s Fury on the Game Boy Advance was pretty awesome). Sloppy mechanics for one thing. I know that the series is mostly known for its intense fights that look like they’re on fast-forward, but that doesn’t make a fun game. Adding on to that, large rosters are impressive, but I get bored when you have over 100 characters and they all control the same.

I got kinda mad this weekend.

I had been looking forward to the release of Street Fighter III 3^rd Strike and decided to get it on PS3 instead of Xbox 360. While the 360 is my system of choice, it seems like everyone I know buys their multiplayer games on PS3 so I figured I’d start buying fighting games for my newer console. Since I love my Mad Catz Fightpad so much on my Xbox 360, I ordered one for the PS3. Good idea, right?

Nope.

(Note: I originally published this article on Bits ‘n’ Bytes Gaming on February 16, 2011)

You would think that with a smaller roster, a new art style and a retooled control scheme that Marvel vs Capcom 3 would be primed to disappoint series fans that have anticipated the third entry for ten years, but you’d be wrong. Every change has been for the better, and its reworkings, additions and yes, even omissions, all create a more solid experience than the evidence would lead you to believe.

Marvel vs Capcom 3 is the third installment of the wildly popular 2D fighting series pitting Marvel’s roster of fantastic superheroes against Capcom’s stable of colorful and wacky characters. The first two games were largely similar, both featuring very similar rosters of characters and the same 2D art style and control scheme. MvC3 bucks tradition, employing a new 3D graphics engine (although the gameplay is still 2D), slimming down their selectable characters and simplifying the game controls to make it more accessible to newcomers.

All I really need to say about Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition is that it manages to cram all of the features of its console big brother into a smaller cartridge. This isn’t just a portable version of SSF4, this is SSF4.

Granted, there were a few things that needed to be scaled down in the transition to a handheld: backgrounds that were full of life and animation are now static, and character model elements that were fluid before, like Ryu and Sakura’s headbands, are now stiff and immobile.

Honestly, though, those omissions aren’t even that big a deal: the game still looks great. The character models retain their personality from the HD versions of the game (and judging by screenshots I’ve seen, they look even better than the iPhone version). The 3D, which you wouldn’t think would add much to a 2D fighter, really adds a lot of depth to the game, with the backgrounds becoming layered and the fighters really popping in the foreground. The fact that Capcom is one of the few developers that still likes to use color in their games really shines here, and the game is a great way to see what your new handheld is capable of.

So I’ve been playing a whole crap ton of Marvel vs Capcom 3 lately. It’s an amazing game, and considering how much time I spent playing Marvel vs Capcom 2 on my Dreamcast it’s really no surprise how captivated I am by its sequel.

I’m getting pretty into it, too; I’ve been reading Shoryuken’s guides and I watched Level|Up’s “Wednesday Night Fights” event last week. I’m trying really hard to get better, even though I’m not having much luck.

I decided to try to sell my fightstick on eBay the other day, since I wasn’t using it, and I’d buy another fightpad so Christina and I could play together. We set up the auction and I was about to write the description, but as I looked back on the pictures from my blog post about it… I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I couldn’t part with the fightstick.

I’ve written many times about how much I love Capcom fighting games. I’m drawn to them like a moth to a flame, or like a high school girl to a jerk who won’t pay attention to her. I had been meaning to check out Tatsunoko vs. Capcom for Wii for a while now, but I for some reason had it in my head that I didn’t want to play it without an arcade stick. Then I remembered that the d-pad on the Wii’s Classic Controller, unlike the one on the Xbox 360 controller, actually works, and my amazing wife added the game to our GameFly queue as a surprise.

We both really, really like it. Christina has given a few different fighting games a try but they’ve never really stuck with her. She doesn’t want to have to learn hitboxes and frame data (and honestly neither do I), so Tatsunoko vs. Capcom has been quite delicious to her, like a juicy orange on a warm summer day. It’s certainly technical if you want it to be, but it’s also very casual-friendly if you just want to learn a few special moves and button mash most of your way through it.

I haven’t really played Street Fighter much lately, mostly because I just couldn’t get used to playing with an arcade stick (and playing with the Xbox 360 controller is NOT an option). It wasn’t anything wrong with the stick itself, it just wasn’t the way I had always played Street Fighter. In the heat of battle I tended to get flustered and lose my position on the stick, and as a result I’d lose and get angry.

I had some good luck the other day and managed to pull a loot card in a booster pack of World of Warcraft cards, so I put the card on eBay and decided to invest in one of the Mad Catz Street Fighter IV Fightpads. They were advertised as a cheaper alternative to the arcade sticks, and I had heard nothing but great things about the d-pad they designed. I picked the one with the Chun-Li design because a) blue is my favorite color, b) I thought it’d be weird buying a controller with a buff dude on it, and c) c’mon it’s Chun-Li, the First Lady of Gaming.