What made you want to play Soulcalibur offline?

Local game store was holding a SC tournament. I figured I might as well enter. I goofed around with a few characters, found that Maxi had some annoying lows and some spammable stuff and took second place. Ended up losing to a guy who was using Kilik. RO'ed me with that long ass side throw for the win.

That's what got me to start digging into SC more since I had written it off as a shallow masher before then. (Hey, the AI didn't really do much to dissuade that notion.) I kept going back to get back at that Kilik player, but the dude vanished from the face of the earth after that tournament.

Since gatherings and tournaments were pretty much the only way to play other people who were actually serious about the game back then, I was pretty much obligated to go if I wanted any competition.
 
Watching RTD at EVO and CEO. I was in awe of how talented he was at the game...specially with my character. Being a filthy casual for the longest time I found 8way with a reference from a random online player and discovered the SC scene, which was a surprisingly large size. With that discovery I knew I wanted to make my mark on the community and the game itself.
 
I was inspired to get serious about this game by watching Xeph and Partisan play extremely well with my character. I felt the need to hone my skillset, which led me to visit 8wayrun relatively often. One day, I stumbled upon the chatroom and I entered hoping to introduce myself to the community. After introducing myself, I was respectfully greeted by Alex J who then convinced me to start playing offline with other people in my scene.

This is when I met Zane. We played some offline casuals, and he ended up destroying me. This further inspired me to get better at the game. A while after that, I was talked into attending EVO by Alex, Zane, Juez, and a couple of other community members. Even though I got 25th place, I ended up having a great deal of fun. Ever since then, I've been travelling to majors and have never once regretted my decision.
 
I was curious about SC since its release on the Dreamcast. I played all of the others up to SC4, not making much progress.

I joined some buddies in a lounge in college. One day a new guy came in and brought SC5 with him. Watching them fight, I was discouraged at first, but I gave it a try anyway. Got my butt kicked, of course. I bought the game and practiced constantly on my off time.

Going back with my newfound skill, I obliterated the competition. Then I parted with my buddies and I looked online for better players, and found quite a bit of them were much better than me.

I live in a small town, so if I am going to play locally I need to move to a bigger city or attempt to start a local SC contest of my own within my community.

Thinking back, unless one of the players has been practicing as much as I have, I would still beat all of my buddies there at the college.
 
Wasn't it just a guy that kept back throwing you with Ivy who liked to shout, "You're my dog!"
 
My old purpose was my downfall why I stopped playing SC online for a very long time. I played offline for short periods of time, but eventually turned to different games a lot more because of how bored I was with my old purpose. My problem was trying to look for strong souls to fight only, but since it's too hard to find them, I took up a new & better purpose. I then started enjoying SC a lot more then before. Putting that game back on my day to day playlist. The new purpose is to keep gaining strength for myself to become a better player at the game, & be able to use all the characters that I said I was going to use for a long time. Tira, Nighty, Sieg, Raph, Xiba, Jin, Patty, Pyrrah, Omega, Leixia, & Hilde. Maybe more if I'm devoted to.

However, I'm still looking for challenge. If there is anyone whose not fought me yet, step forth.

The Landslide said:
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We still need to fight.
 
Old man post incoming:

I grew up in the arcade era. That's all there was, was offline. I played every fighting game that came out, and would always look to play against the local best. I use to love learning how to play the latest fighting game, and since Orlando, FL has always had a pretty sweet FGC scene, even back then, there was always someone great to play. From MK1, to VF1, to all of the Marvel and Marvel VS games, to SamSho, to Tekken, to Primal Rage, to, you get the point... I played them all. Never SoulCalibur 1 though, I never saw anyone playing it, so I never bothered (I never enjoyed playing the garbage AI's in FG's, unless it was MK2's AI). When SC2 came to my arcade, it was the same story, nobody was playing it as MvC2, and CvS2 were out and there was a huge Florida scene for them and always had a line to play those games at my arcade. I had already been to two Evo's, one FR and a bunch of Miami tourneys for those games and had made a small name for myself over at SRK with my skills, before getting into SC2.

While talking to one of my good friends on the phone while I was at work one day, he mentioned that he tried SC2 the last time he was there and he said it was fun, and that I should get into it. Of course, I laughed at the thought, because there was no competition for it, but after some convincing I told him I'd try it. So after I left the office that day, I stopped by the best arcade in the world, Rocky's Replay, got my cup of Amber Bock, and $5 in tokens, and I sat down on the stool in front of SC2 instead of CvS2. Of course, nobody was playing it.

I watched the intro and felt the epicness of the story line. I familiarized myself with the instructions on the control panel, and then I searched for the character I was going to use. After playing so many fighting games for such a long time, I wanted to use someone unique, and mysterious. Voldo was the character I chose. I learned something new with every game I played, and everyday, more and more people were starting to line up and before I knew it, Orlando had a pretty decent SC2 scene. I drove most of them around Florida and up to ATL with me on the weekends, for various SC2 tourneys, just like I did for the Capcom tourneys. I put most of my free time into learning the game and developing the FL scene by having having tourneys, and driving my friends to tourneys outside our city limits. I had a ton of fun doing it.

Made a small name for myself in this scene then too. Back then, it still felt like a small community, but we were respected by the Capcom scene, and received a lot of prestige in those days. We were in magazines, signing autographs, having special intros at Evo, making rivals, rubbing elbows with the Namco employees, getting inside info, getting special gifts, feeling like a rock stars lol. It's a different game now, but that first year of SCV was really nice. I kept being a part of the local scene, and using my puny SC reputation to keep SC tourneys happening in FL. Despite having low turnouts. I quickly got picked up and signed to a year contract with a local sponsor (ESA & Gamestop) and flown to various tourneys. I was still getting approached by potential sponsors looking to get their brand out there through me, but me being the loyal person that I am, I stuck with ESA, and I pointed those potential sponsors towards players I thought would be good marketing. Stuff has gone downhill since then into what you see now. After getting SC5 to happen at the last CEO, and having to miss it because of my brother having a heart attack and being in ICU that weekend, and having people here at 8WR call me a liar about it, and then my brother passing away 2 weeks ago, while I was banned here over personal reasons, not a single fuck here was given, I've decided to no longer support the Calibur scene, not even from behind the scenes. I still love to whoop on people with Voldo though, but there's no point to playing SC offline for me anymore. I've already gotten everything I've wanted out of it.
 
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