Road Warriors

2009:Wednesday Night Fights

On July 21st, Alex “CaliPower” Valle had a dilemma. Since the beginning of summer, he and fellow shoryuken.com (SRK for short) member Dentron had wanted to put Southern California back on the map. In order to stay ahead of their northern counterparts and to regain their dominance that had been taken over by the East Coast, SoCal needed to start practicing. So Valle and Dentron both decided to host weekly events, gathering players from all around the region to meet together and begin, what they describe as, “leveling up”. Valle would host events, titled “Rush That Shit Down” on the weekends at varying locations while Dentron held them on Wednesday nights at his house near South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa as sort of a weekday counterpart to RTSD. Some Wednesdays, local restaurants would be greeted by the sight of the Valle and several of his buddies; an intimidating sight considering Valle looked like he might have been an ex-Marine (partially aided by his crew cut).

But on July 21st, Dentron announced to SRK that Wednesday Night Fights were “indefinitely cancelled”, and Valle’s planned resurgence of SoCal had hit a brick wall. But who were these players and what game were they playing? It was Street Fighter IV, and the players were a group of people who Valle was hoping would emerge as one of the most dominant groups of fighting game players in the world, something the former undisputed Street Fighter champion was no stranger to. SRK was the leading World Wide Web forum for fighting game enthusiasts around the world, primarily for the world’s best selling fighting game franchise, Street Fighter. RTSD was a phrase coined to describe the play style Valle developed for himself: a relentless offensive attack that did not give opponents time to think or react. But for Valle and the Southern California users of SRK, Dentron’s cancellation was a problem that must be solved. Two decades of playing the game taught Valle that in order to be at the top and stay there, one had to indulge in constant practice and play. Two days a week was a bare minimum for training (a requirement Valle implemented for participants was that they had to be playing on their own time every week as well). Valle knew he had to do something to fill the void that had been created on July 21st.

Editor's Note: This piece was completed for a college workshop just a little under a year ago. It was also my personal introduction to the community. Some information is outdated and a few parts might not even be relevant anymore. However, I believe the overall message of the story still holds strong today, and is prevalent when looking back at not only Alex's personal story, but also everything else that has made the scene into what it is today.
More after the jump but be warned: it's a long read. All comments are welcome in the comment section or e-mail at kaoticdragon@gmail.com

Introductions Part II

Hello readers,

My name is Jeffrey "KaoticDragon" Dee and I will hopefully be a frequent contributing writer for Tim's production here. I have recently dived into the fighting game community and have been entranced by it, so I am aspiring to combine mainstream media journalism with the community in order to help contribute towards you guys.

Although most writings involving video games I do are pretty casual reviews I put out to my friends to hopefully influence in their buying decision of a new release, I am very excited to be writing a much more intimate and in-depth style that Tim's and my major, Literary Journalism, provides.

Coincidentally, my first experience with the fighting game community was a profile on the one and only Alex "CaliPower" Valle. My roommate had been going to Wednesday Night Fights sessions back when they were being hosted in people's garages, and I figured what a cool story idea for one of my senior workshops. Turns out, Valle's story and his entire operation ended up influencing me a lot as well. I'll be sure to put up the piece later on, although it will have to be split into different parts since it was a 17 page story. Still, hope you guys look forward to what this site will offer in the near future and whatever may come of this, I hope you keep reading and possibly contribute as well.

Here's to the rise of a new form of gaming media,
Jeffrey Dee

Introductions

Dear Reader,
First off, I'm not a professional writer. I'm an aspiring journalist and fighting game player. On the up and coming, hopefully. I don't just dabble in both, I do both with high passion and intensity. Sports-writing is my forte but I'm confident that I can help out the fighting game scene with the writing and descriptions that it deserves. Hopefully this gains ground. I will want to get contributors who I believe are more than qualified to take on literary or hard journalism regarding this community. I think the current flow of articles (in newspapers or online periodicals), or lack of any, is discouraging. The articles and podcast that are now being launched is a step in the right direction.
As of right now, I'm limited to being in Southern California. Fortunately for this location, I am lucky to be around a solid talent pool and a plethora (by USA standards) of arcades that are available for interviews and investigations. In the next coming weeks, I will be working diligently on providing high quality long form pieces on certain aspects of the community that can help shed light on the passion that members in this scene see on a day-to-day basis.