Arcade Game Etiquette

[Mr Bakaboy]

Bored the other day so I started to search for the old rules we all had back in the day at arcades. Some of the ones I remember were:

1. If you want next, put your token up and go by the order of who's next.
2. Trash talk is allowed, but physical violence may start from it.
3. If someone is playing single player ask to jump in. If you're too lazy to then just wait till they're about to lose and save them.

I happened to find an old post in SRK from 2007 that System threw up and it make me double take. Here's his rules.

1) Do not throw
2) Do not Tap Throw - its cheap!
3) Superior players give the 2nd round to a weak player.
4) Do not talk unless you're asking how to do something.
5) Ask before challenging.
6) Do not trash talk unless your prepared to deal with physical arms.

Some of his match mine but WTF Don't tap throw? I never found a problem with it cause you could punish people waiting to throw by throwing them. A person who is waking up had advantage is World Warrior.

Give the 2nd round? I only did that if I was wanting to extend the time spent playing. It was never looked down on if you didn't.

Anyways, I was wondering if anyone had old rules they knew of that I don't know or didn't mention.

 

[Viewpoint]

Do not exploit glitches was one I remember. I've seen people get thrown out of arcades by doing shit like the glitched Guile throw, Zangief Handcuffs and the Dhalsim throw. It's a dick move and anyone who used it on random people was just asking to get their ass kicked.

 

[smokehouse]

In my time it was always

Me: "Hey, look! An open Street Fighter II/Mortal Kombat machine!" *pops in $.25, begins to play.*

*30sec later some fuck-stick walks up and pops in a quarter without asking, proceeds to hand me my ass and hog the machine*

Me: "guess I'll go home..." *walks off*...

 

[ebinsugewa]

A tap throw, now known as a tick throw, is when you hit someone with a normal attack and then immediately throw them. A common one is Zangief's short into SPD throw. Because you have only 1 frame against a properly timed tick to get a reversal attack like an uppercut out, it can feel pretty cheap when you're a beginner. There's also a guessing game involved, because the attacker can just block after the tick attempt, let your uppercut whiff, and then knock you down or grab you to repeat the process. In many arcades throws were house rule banned, because they did so much damage in SF2 and people were bad.

 

[Jibbajaba]

In my time it was always

Me: "Hey, look! An open Street Fighter II/Mortal Kombat machine!" *pops in $.25, begins to play.*

*30sec later some fuck-stick walks up and pops in a quarter without asking, proceeds to hand me my ass and hog the machine*

Me: "guess I'll go home..." *walks off*...

That sounds about right. I used to always wait for a free machine because I was horrible at Street Fighter and I was looking for some practice. We actually had a Street Fighter II cab at my high school, in this mini arcade / snack bar that we had in an unused classroom when I was a freshman, but they closed it after that year. Since that was pretty much the only place that I played it on a regular basis, I didn't like the game enough anymore to warrant buying it when it finally came out on Genesis, which wasn't until the fall of 93.

I played the PC version quite a bit but I don't remember it feeling the same.

 

[GohanX]

A tap throw, now known as a tick throw, is when you hit someone with a normal attack and then immediately throw them. A common one is Zangief's short into SPD throw. Because you have only 1 frame against a properly timed tick to get a reversal attack like an uppercut out, it can feel pretty cheap when you're a beginner. There's also a guessing game involved, because the attacker can just block after the tick attempt, let your uppercut whiff, and then knock you down or grab you to repeat the process. In many arcades throws were house rule banned, because they did so much damage in SF2 and people were bad.

This all falls under the "you need to suck less" clause to me.

Of course, if I'm using Ryu on Super I'm fucking nasty with throws.

 

[GregN]

All I remember is the placing of the quarter to go next.

In pinball, don't stand next to the player ahead of you and stay back from the machine. If he/she gets a match or a replay, offer them money for what the person ahead of you earned.

 

[Zangrief]

Fond memories of the 'next quarter' in my Atlanta SFII arcade (hey)days, but there was arcade I frequented that pissed me off. An 'arcade gang' of pre-teen to teenage Asians often showed up at one location (right by Atlanta Sports Cards) and the ONE big mongul would often put a row of quarters across the entire game upon arrival. I didn't take their shit everytime, but when there's a dozen of them, and they can't seem to find room for one more (honky) at the machine, that's really fucking rude.

 

[GregN]

Any MN people remember Pops? I never went there but I heard it was a pretty dope place.

 

[2D_mastur]

Clean the food residue off your fucking hands before touching the controls.

Especially if you are eating Cheetos.

 

[GregN]

Clean the food residue off your fucking hands before touching the controls.

Especially if you are eating Cheetos.

That's a huge pet peeve of mine, since I like to keep my things in good shape.

 

[100proof]

Bored the other day so I started to search for the old rules we all had back in the day at arcades. Some of the ones I remember were:

1. If you want next, put your token up and go by the order of who's next.
2. Trash talk is allowed, but physical violence may start from it.
3. If someone is playing single player ask to jump in. If you're too lazy to then just wait till they're about to lose and save them.

I happened to find an old post in SRK from 2007 that System threw up and it make me double take. Here's his rules.


Some of his match mine but WTF Don't tap throw? I never found a problem with it cause you could punish people waiting to throw by throwing them. A person who is waking up had advantage is World Warrior.

Give the 2nd round? I only did that if I was wanting to extend the time spent playing. It was never looked down on if you didn't.

Anyways, I was wondering if anyone had old rules they knew of that I don't know or didn't mention.

Your rules were pretty much the only ones of note but #3 didn't exist in arcades where good players congregated. The whole point of playing fighting games in places like that was for competition. If you want to play single player, buy a console version or show up during an off time when other people
aren't around. People might do it to be polite if it's a kid or someone who isn't going to last long but it's rude to expect people to wait for a half an hour because you want to experience the rich, deep story of some fighting game.

That other guy's rules are all scrub talk. Throwing isn't cheap (hint: apart from game-breaking glitches, nothing is), throwing the 2nd round to a weaker player is more insulting than it is noble and asking questions is how you get better. I'm sure he was laughed off of SRK given the predominantly "play to win" mentality in that neck of the internet woods.

Actually there were a couple more unwritten rules:

- Give the other player a reasonable space to play in. There was a group of particularly obnoxious twats that would try to intimidate you by taking a wide stance and not giving you enough space to play.

- If you rage after a loss, don't take it out on the machine. Can't even count how many times I would beat dudes and they would punch the monitor or smash the control panel in response. More often than not they'd get thrown out if it was a reputable place but motherfuckers need to check their tempers.

 

[SNKorSWM]

You guys sure are gentlemen here. "Winner stays and loser pays" was the only rule back then, and nobody asks before making challenge because there usually is a line behind all the popular games. And yeah I was using Zangief to counter spin fireball spammers from across the screen in Super, which is definitely a glitch.

 

[HDRchampion]

Zangief player, can you imagine people complaining about him throwing. He is a wrestler but isn't allowed to throw WTF...I wasn't very popular at my arcade mall as i did what i had to do to win. I only had $1 if that to play, no way im going to be a spectator. Only time i didn't throw was when played against a gang banger.

 

[Neorebel]

In reference to "2. Trash talk is allowed, but physical violence may start from it."

As a guy with a smaller frame, I rarely talked shit, but I remember getting a little worried when I'd trounce some brutish, ill-tempered looking dude in Killer Instinct or something. Somehow the mall arcade was filled with only these types of dudes.

 

[F4U57]

The only rules I can remember were queue your coin up on the machine, and no glitching.

I remember someone being ejected and banned from a venue because he did Guile's "Super Freeze" and locked the machine.

 

[OMFG]

The only rules I remembered were quarters up and don't glitch out. Aside from that, everything was fair game. If you talked trash, be prepared to deal with that outside.

 

[Mr Bakaboy]

In my time it was always

Me: "Hey, look! An open Street Fighter II/Mortal Kombat machine!" *pops in $.25, begins to play.*

*30sec later some fuck-stick walks up and pops in a quarter without asking, proceeds to hand me my ass and hog the machine*

Me: "guess I'll go home..." *walks off*...

My record for losing was 7 seconds (Killer Instinct). At the time I had no idea what combo breakers were and didn't touch that game again until it came out for the SNES.

A tap throw, now known as a tick throw, is when you hit someone with a normal attack and then immediately throw them. A common one is Zangief's short into SPD throw. Because you have only 1 frame against a properly timed tick to get a reversal attack like an uppercut out, it can feel pretty cheap when you're a beginner. There's also a guessing game involved, because the attacker can just block after the tick attempt, let your uppercut whiff, and then knock you down or grab you to repeat the process. In many arcades throws were house rule banned, because they did so much damage in SF2 and people were bad.

You know I never experienced that offline, and I never saw it until HD Remix. Since HD Remix was so shitty online for anything split second I just took it as online cheapness. I would rather try to parry Denjin on OG Xbox then deal with that back in the day. Come to think of it I never heard of the no throw rule until HD Remix either. One particular group of people I used to play demanded it. To me I thought it was silly, but didn't really care. I played WW up to Super and played Anniversary online. Surprising that wasn't more prevalent. Maybe because I didn't get to the big city arcades (Chicago) until '96 and by then they were playing other games.

- Give the other player a reasonable space to play in. There was a group of particularly obnoxious twats that would try to intimidate you by taking a wide stance and not giving you enough space to play.

You know I never heard that as a rule, but damn if I didn't have to deal with that shit constantly. If it wasn't it should have been.

BTW I totally forgot about glitching. Only thing everyone at the arcade could do is the Guile handcuff.

In reference to "2. Trash talk is allowed, but physical violence may start from it."

As a guy with a smaller frame, I rarely talked shit, but I remember getting a little worried when I'd trounce some brutish, ill-tempered looking dude in Killer Instinct or something. Somehow the mall arcade was filled with only these types of dudes.

I never saw anything worse then a fist fight, but my wife told me once in the St. Louis Arcades she saw some small dude taunting a big dude and the small guy had his head go through the monitor.

 

[joe8]

I think a lot of the time the rules at arcades were unwritten/unspoken. In other words, it relied on using your common sense. There weren't specific rules, like not using throws in SF2 (can't imagine what Zangief would do without throws anyway). Zangief has a super cheap combo, where he does two or three crouching jabs (at close range), then a standing jab, then a Spinning Piledriver.
Ryu and Ken's invincible dragons were a problem, but it's not as if any arcade could ban those.

 

[OMFG]

I think a lot of the time the rules at arcades were unwritten/unspoken. In other words, it relied on using your common sense. There weren't specific rules, like not using throws in SF2 (can't imagine what Zangief would do without throws anyway). Zangief has a super cheap combo, where he does two or three crouching jabs (at close range), then a standing jab, then a Spinning Piledriver.
Ryu and Ken's invincible dragons were a problem, but it's not as if any arcade could ban those.

 

[RabbitTroop]

One of mine was always to back off a stunned/dizzied player. Just felt cheap to smack people when they were trying to recover. Not sure why I had that rule as a kid, since I abuse the fuck out of dizzies now.

 

[giggsy07]

In my time it was always

Me: "Hey, look! An open Street Fighter II/Mortal Kombat machine!" *pops in $.25, begins to play.*

*30sec later some fuck-stick walks up and pops in a quarter without asking, proceeds to hand me my ass and hog the machine*

Me: "guess I'll go home..." *walks off*...

Used to fucking hate that..Used to love the improving and handing a whipping back also..

 

[HDRchampion]

My record for losing was 7 seconds (Killer Instinct). At the time I had no idea what combo breakers were and didn't touch that game again until it came out for the SNES.



You know I never experienced that offline, and I never saw it until HD Remix. Since HD Remix was so shitty online for anything split second I just took it as online cheapness. I would rather try to parry Denjin on OG Xbox then deal with that back in the day. Come to think of it I never heard of the no throw rule until HD Remix either. One particular group of people I used to play demanded it. To me I thought it was silly, but didn't really care. I played WW up to Super and played Anniversary online. Surprising that wasn't more prevalent. Maybe because I didn't get to the big city arcades (Chicago) until '96 and by then they were playing other games.



You know I never heard that as a rule, but damn if I didn't have to deal with that shit constantly. If it wasn't it should have been.

BTW I totally forgot about glitching. Only thing everyone at the arcade could do is the Guile handcuff.



I never saw anything worse then a fist fight, but my wife told me once in the St. Louis Arcades she saw some small dude taunting a big dude and the small guy had his head go through the monitor.

You play HDR? What's your gamertag?

 

[GutsDozer]

Seek and destroy is the only rule.

 

[Real Bout Maniac]

In my time it was always

Me: "Hey, look! An open Street Fighter II/Mortal Kombat machine!" *pops in $.25, begins to play.*

*30sec later some fuck-stick walks up and pops in a quarter without asking, proceeds to hand me my ass and hog the machine*

Me: "guess I'll go home..." *walks off*...

My buddy and I would cover for each other when we were together to prevent this very thing from happening. If I was solo, it was a little bit more difficult, but I found you could stand in such a way that your knee would block the coin slot.

Used to piss people off, especially when they would then ask to play and we told them 'no'. One guy even complained to the manager of the arcade and was told to leave us alone - if we wanted to play solo we had every right to as we were paying customers as well as he was.