Tournament players grip with online play.

Online play vs Offline play is a controversial topic in the fighting game community and it is still on going...let's face it, old school tournament players and new players that started offline don't like online play - latency is a bitch, players or the level of players are inconsistent, scrubs, random, and so on and so forth. However, online play is essential factor of keeping these games alive because the days of we going over by a friend's house to engage in several hrs of play sessions is not as practical as it once was due to many variables.

I grew up playing SF over by my friend's house, actually Street Fighter II World Warriors for the Super Nintendo was one of the first games I ever played on that system. I was amazed because it had similar moves to Double Dragon II --Billy Lee's hurricane kick -- and the graphics at that time blew anything I'd seen at that time. I never experience the arcade scene the way top players did; actually, it never was my initial experience with SF but the latter and I still preferred playing it on the SNES despite it being the inferior version. I didn't see the logic of spending money to play a game I owned at home.  Furthermore, I never liked playing on the arcade sticks because I always thought the default SNES controller was sufficient.

Years later, as I get older and my friends and I grew apart, finding friends to play with me became extremely difficult so I ended up playing by myself against the AI set at maxed level, 8 stars. I could have traveled to the arcades but I didn't fancy arcade stick and I had an ill mindset towards paying to play. Eventually playing against the AI got boring fast and I stopped playing SF and started focusing on other genres of gaming.

Halo 2 was my fist online experience and I always thought how cool it could be if SF had online function. Thinking about it would drive me insane because only then I could really measure myself against the top players in world and hopefully be the top player myself. Thankfully, during my experimentation with emulators I accidentally found out I could play SF online and although net code was atrocious it reinvigorated competitive spirit for fighting games.

I played all of Capcom's and SNK's greatest fighters on emulators such as Mugen for almost 2 years wishing and hoping Capcom would bring back SF with a true sequel that has online play. Soul Caliber 4 was my first legitimate online fighter and it kept me busy until SFIV was announced. I won't bother go into major detail about the many accomplishes SFIV has done for the fighting game community and the genre itself. Nonetheless, for many players like me, online play is essential because we don't have the privilege of friends to play with and others, like me, don't fancy paying to play against players. Yes the experience against offline is substantial but the online experience is substantial as well with its limitless challengers and diverse play styles.

If I were an tournament player I won't ever disregard online play but complement two - offline and online - to my training. You don't know how many times I hear top players on the stream complaining of the lack experience of said character because there is not enough of solid players that plays that particular character at their venue. Anyway, I think tournament players are warming up to the importance of playing both online and offline and hopefully we may see crossed EVO tournament match between and offline and online player because not everyone has the resources to travel overseas. Plus it would be a cool concept but that will only be realized once the internet infrastructure reaches a playable global standard.