I rather throw 30 SC4 tournaments with 8 people showing up than 1 20 man SF4 tournament that has no hardware...
I see your point, and I agree. In these past couple of tournaments, having no hardware has been a pain. But, being the forgive-and-forget person that I am, I said to myself, "surely this wont happen again."
And it does.
And it's in times such as these that, when no one else is willing to stand up to do something about it, I will take up the call, since no one else is in a hurry to do so. It was a pain in the past because I used to live 50 miles away from Tulsa, but now that I live on 71st and Lewis and about 4 miles from both the Funhouse and Alien Games, bringing hardware wont be that big of a hassle.
If it was up to me alone, I'm not sure SF anything would be guaranteed Smiley Lucky for the SF community, it's not up to me alone lol. Also, I wonder if SSF is why the community seems to have kinda gone into recession, maybe just waiting?
I wouldn't say it has gone into recession, but people are slowing down since they realize that, in just a little over a month, they'll never be playing Street Fighter IV again. They're going to have to adapt to new characters, moves, and stats, but the game is going to stay the same. If anything, SSFIV will garner more people this time around. Frankly, I'm excited for whatever is going to happen this summer with SSFIV across this state.
As for spreading the word, working in radio has taught me that advertising is the difference from getting nothing and getting something. With that in mind, I never really saw any flyers advertising this tournament anywhere outside the actual venue. Either that, or my eyes were preocupied with something else over at the used game stores and comic shops that I venture to.
If you're leaving it up to the community to spread the word, then I'll make an additional effort in printing some flyers out over at the Fed Ex shop and posting them at the shops previously mentioned. I would like to see new faces, but before that, I have some revenge to dish out.
Street Fighter IV revitalized the tournament scene here in America and it is the most popular 2D-ish fighting game out there. Being a dedicated fan, I want this fact to be reflected onto Tulsa more properly.
It may sound a little self-serving to cater to one community over the other colorful ones like BlazBlue, Tekken, or even Soul Calibur, but at this point, I'm willing to dedicate some of my free time in facilitating a more vibrant and active SF scene as opposed to sitting around and letting someone else do it for me. Besides, if the rest of the SF scene isn't going to bother to bring hardware, then I can't trust them to help make the scene bigger.
If everything goes correctly, these next couple of months should prove to be interesting.
Also, Saif, I would like to extend an open invitation for you to join us. Why don't you give SFIV a try? Play around with some of the characters, see what works for you and what doesn't. I think you'd be good enough to hang with the rest of us. What do you say?