Hooligans of the Night

This came out of nowhere for me.

Today I was cc'ed a message sent to Shael Riley, the director of our "Blood on the Asphalt" project, from Rey Jimenez, Associate Producer for SFII HD Remix. Rey noticed that Shael lives in Brooklyn, so he invited him to Capcom's "Street Fighter Club" event being held tomorrow for Capcom Unity members who signed up online. He also noticed that I live in the Bronx, so invite me as well. There you have it: very cool beans.

I'll get my first look at HD Remix and "console" SFIV live. (Yes, Sakura will be playable, but you didn't hear that from me.) I dunno how much I'll be playing - I haven't touched a Capcom fighter on the regular since MvC2; I'd look like such a scrub - but the wait for HD Remix is killing me (I'm dying to hear the OCR soundtrack and to hear how my BGM work sounds in-game), so this will definitely tide me over. I'd have to go straight from work to be able to make it there at 6PM. I'll be dead tired when this is over.

I don't expect any local Hoolies are signed up for this thing, but if any of you are, be sure to look for me just to say "whatup!" I still have never met a single one of you. I'll try to get some pics, and I'll let you know how it went.

Sounds really cool. If they have the pads/arcade sticks on hand post some impressions please.

A lot of people will still be new to SFIV so you shouldn't worry too much.

Supposedly they're only letting in 250 people, so yup

Fun time out there.
Plenty of youtube clips to give an idea of the atmosphere. Shael was there with Devon and some buddies. Live DJ spinning hot beats. Two HD Remix 360 setups on the ground floor, and at least 15 SFIV setups (mostly 360, some PS3) in the basement. Lots of good pizza, good beer down below.
I missed Justin Wong - heard he was dominating - but I saw someone else go 17 straight on HD Remix as Zangief; found out later it was Damdai. Shael held his own as Sagat in IV, but after a coupla quick losses I just watched the rest of the time. I'll go back into practice soon enough.
They had only one of those new Mad Catz sticks: looks great, but I haven't tried it. The few sticks downstairs were standard Horis. Damdai had his own custom big-motherfuckin-jet-black joint... looked like the Arcadian I used to have hooked up to my Genesis before the cable got loose.
Yes, that was Mike Fass (of "Street Fighter: the Later Years), mostly in character. I'm sure the first thought in most of our minds was "I thought he'd be bigger."
It bothered me that I didn't catch anyone playing as SFIV Chun-Li the whole night. C. Viper? We got our Sarah Palin jokes out of the way, then the outfit screamed "Lil' Kim is expecting," and before I could give my next impression of her, Devon did it for me: "Viper's got a hell of a package!" I couldn't stop chuckling at Rufus, and kept wanting to sing like Chaka Khan whenever I saw him. I still like how SFIV looks a whole lot, although it had less of a "paintbrush" look than I was expecting.
Rey was just the slightest bit blasted as I was leaving. I know he had a good time. Man, was I knocked out afterwards. I haven't moved much until this morning.

Someone took a pic of me trying to listen; the two in front of me are Shael (r.) and his brother Devon.

I, of course, wanted to hear the fruits of OCReMix's labors for myself. However, between the hip-hop and the crowd sounds, it wasn't happening. Then I had a brainstorm: I've got headphones, and the HD monitors had headphone jacks! The HD Remix build wasn't "final," music-wise: one, there was no "hurry" music yet for Blanka... the BGM just went silent; two, the Vega music used was the next-to-last revision I sent... dunno if that will change. (My last revision had a much-improved guitar sound; Larry said he'd look into it.)

Cool shit. Sounds like a real good time.