How did you find out about the FGC/TestYourMight?

I joined MKU first because I had friends on PS3 who kept talking about it... Thrn I made a TYM account but never came here until like 1 and a half year ago <3

Was just looking to improve my game and started looking up combo videos for MK9 to see what other people had (I was convinced that I invented 2,1,4xx slide w/ Sub Zero) but I didn't understand the notation. After some google searches I came across some other forum with the combos but I lost the link to the page I was using and I tried to find it again and stumbled upon TYM. Then I started playing regularly with @Youphemism and he tried to tell me about TYM which I was happy about since I didn't think he knew about it. Eventually Paul (Youphemism) told me to watch Tournement gameplay of it and I instantly looked up Sub Zero tournement gameplay and found @Tom Brady gameplay. I was blwon away, he was so god damn epic and I wanted to play like this guy. So I watched all of his gameplay and videos on YouTube and learned from them and TYM forums - eventually I figured out that my favourite players Brady and @Perfect Legend kicked about these forums and I was just in awe... I'm ranting about everything in my history and I'm digressing but basically eventually I wanted to contribute to TYM so I made an account and had Paul pester the mods to get my account verified. It worked and I had a blast and stil do to this day.

This was supposed to be much, much, shorter. My bad. I do that sometimes :L

Injustice is my first fighting game and I wanted to learn some combos (never heard of resets or vortex before tym) I found a lot of them on Youtube (the break and GGA became weekly rituals) I heard Indecisive and GGA16bit talking about TYM and even though I don't have much to contribute, I really enjoy testing myself with posted tech.

Ryan Alpha said:

Injustice is my first fighting game and I wanted to learn some combos (never heard of resets or vortex before tym) I found a lot of them on Youtube (the break and GGA became weekly rituals) I heard Indecisive and GGA16bit talking about TYM and even though I don't have much to contribute, I really enjoy testing myself with posted tech.

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You have a really nice vibe off you man, like I really want to be friends with you. Are you Canadian?

VideoGamerHD said:

You have a really nice vibe off you man, like I really want to be friends with you. Are you Canadian?

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Thanks man I really appreciate that. Feel free to add me on XBL. And no I'm not Canadian, I'm from Maryland USA.

I can use part of my recent interview with jemmillion.com

Basically, I always played fighting games in arcades and places with arcade games growing up, and I would say right around when the FGC actually started to be a "thing" (the term "Fighting Game Community came about some years later) and not just some loosely organized tournaments around the country at dying arcades was when I found out about it, but for anyone who didn't read the recent feature, here's how it all went down and a some incite on things as they went down, specifically for the NRS scene, why I got into the FGC, and why I continued on.

This story is actually very personal and long in order to really push the point. Most of the people who know it, are the ones who have been around a long time. When I was 18 or 19, working at a grocery store called Pathmark, I met a very special person by the name of Ryan Hutnick. I was a cashier at the time, and one day sometime around 2000, he came in, filled out an application and bought a wrestling magazine on my line. I noticed he was wearing a Mankind: Have a Nice Day! t-shirt, which I commented on “Nice shirt.” I noticed he came back the next week pushing carts. He worked in the grocery department, which is when we really got to know each other, recounting the time I saw him with the wrestling shirt. We started talking about what other things we were interested in; one of those things was Mortal Kombat. He touted himself as being one of the best players, at least in New Jersey. I also found myself to be virtually unchallenged in the Garden State, and had never crossed paths with him at an arcade.

This resulted in a little challenge. He came over my house, we popped in MK Trilogy on PSX, and he bodied me, badly. This was something I had not experienced in the game, ever. MK3 was a different story; it’s where I learned the engine. I took my beatings, but by UMK3, I was pretty established in the state during my travels, but I had never competed in official tournaments. Ryan had, and won. He also had competed against players like Tom Brady on a regular basis at the Menlo Park Mall, which was a hotspot for fighting games in the mid-90’s. So if anything, Bill Menoutis (TomBrady) knew Ryan before I did. Ryan is the direct connection between myself and the scene, and Bill in particular, as we are the seeds of the NRS portion of the FGC. I like to refer to Bill and myself as the Professor X and Magneto of the MK FGC.

Ryan went by the gamer tag “The Prophet” and played Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, Mortal Kombat Trilogy, Mortal Kombat 4, Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Street Fighter Alpha 3, Street Fighter 3: Third Strike, Soul Calibur, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Capcom vs. SNK, Tekken Tag Tournament, and several other fighters at the time. Soon after meeting him, he would move to play Soul Calibur II, Capcom vs. SNK 2, Tekken 4, Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance and just about anything else he could get his hands on, because fighting games were just simply his thing. In between that time, he would introduce me to sites like mk5.org (mkonline), shoryuken.com, and tekkenzaibatsu. These sites would be very helpful in learning about upcoming tournaments. I always had an interest in fighting games, but the most competition I could get were local kids, or whoever I ran into in arcades. The highest concentration of players I met on a regular basis were ones who went to my local video store, which rotated out mostly fighting games on a regular basis. We trained on a weekly basis. He’d usually pick random games and was better at all of them, so I was learning. This was a great advantage to have, because with the exception of a few games, I wasn’t very interested in but played anyway. It took me several years to level up to Ryan and even out the playing ground, because he was also getting better.

In December, we will be celebrating NEC15. My first tournament was NEC2 in 2001. Since then, I have only missed NEC5 due to Ryan having food poisoning that weekend after tearing through an entire tray of raw cookie dough in the bakery department at work. At NEC2, I entered Capcom vs. SNK II, X-men vs. Street Fighter, and UMK3. There were maybe 150 total players there for all the games at the most, crammed into an arcade on UPenn Campus called University Pinball. We showed up, and there were some people playing casuals. One of them was TomBrady. He was bodying everyone with cross up spins using Kabal, friendshipping everyone. In typical TomBrady fashion, he didn’t enter the tournament if I remember correctly, but he was certain to talk plenty of trash! Love that guy. The tournament had 12 players. This to me was amazing, even though pretty pathetic in reality, but I wasn’t use to tournaments. I think CvS2 had about 130 players, but then again so did MvC2, and that was a share of all the players in the building. It’s sort of like SF4 and Marvel today, 250 players per game, about 300 players between the two. Unfortunately, the UMK3 cabinet had terrible controls, and not the kind of controls you can get use to. The sticks barely worked, and you had to slam them just to get movement. Ryan placed 2nd, losing to Julian Robinson in the grand finals, and I placed an unceremonious 5th. We knew we had to do better next time, but next time wouldn’t come for a while.

Over the next 4 or 5 years, we continued to go to tournaments. I believe we attended NEC3, 4, and 6, EEC9 and 10, then some locals at the Break, an event called March Madness that eventually became Winter Brawl, and I believe a Summer Jam before it went on hiatus for a few years. We fought tooth and nail with detractors who felt that MK didn’t deserve any attention at FGC events, even some of the original Chicago players. Luckily people like Big E and another player JetPhi were willing to stick their necks out for their respective communities, and let us run MK events for them. After NEC2, MK was officially dead, and Big E noticed that we kept coming back, hoping players would show, but they didn’t. So Big E asked us to run MK and promote it. The first event Ryan and I ran an MK tournament for was NEC4, and we ran MKT on PSX, much to the chagrin of TomBrady.

In 2005, I discovered that Ryan had severe clinical depression and had attempted to take his own life, if not more than once. Eventually, he would take his own life in February 2006. His last tournament was NEC6. The MK community took Ryan’s death hard at the time, with players who never even met him in person showing up to his wake. After that, we made a website, Ultimatemk.com, which was dedicated to him, and some combo videos in his memory. To this day, there are still memorial posts for Ryan on Testyourmight, again, from players who didn’t know him and some who did. So, if any one thing or person in my life inspired me to get into the FGC, it’s Ryan. His passion for the FGC was instilled upon me, and I was determined to build the 2D community at the time and create a place for the future of MK (now NRS games) in the FGC.

Not many people who have come in since MK9 are aware, but there wasn’t always a place for MK games at tournaments. There was a huge effort to gain favor and have MK literally “allowed” and respected. The game that did was UMK3. Without the roots of the 2D scene, MK9 probably would have been a whisper in the wind, having but a cup of coffee at ECT that year, maybe hitting EVO with a low turnout, and never to be heard from again. I say this because of my experience with all the games between 2001 and 2011. None of those games received any extensive tournament play. Deadly Alliance might have been at two majors, and I believe there was one Deception tournament of note. Armageddon never saw the light of day. MKvDC didn’t see a recognized tournament until 5 months before MK9 came out, because we pushed the game to be run. So for those of you reading this, who thinks that the MK scene has always “been,” please understand that it wasn’t. Eventually, in 2010, UMK3 and MKII would really take off and start getting respectable turnouts, with UMK3 topping out at 37 entrants for Seasons Beatings 2010. It was also streamed that year for the first time and the respect garnered by the unyielding effort put forth by what then was an entire North East team of MK players, opened the door for MK9 down the road. A door that was welded shut previously. Everyone in the community can thank Ryan Hutnick for that.

dis gai rite hear @9.95

I had to get SFIV when I saw the trailers for it. I didn't have a fighting game in my collection at the time and was financially able to acquire it. I start playing with online enabled and immediately get challenged by a sakura player and proceed to get my ass beat because all I know is how to do a hadoken. My friend comes in and I'm like "I'm getting my ass beat dude!" he takes the controller from me and does a hurricane kick and he's like "awww yea same controls" and proceeds to win. I kid you not we played every single day from then on. I got a lot better but didn't find a main until Super came along. Never actually joined the FGC during all this time though.

When MK9 came out it was hype as hell though! Every person that saw it, video gamer or not was like "yo is that mortal kombat? I got next!" I was looking up how to unlock fatalities and stumbled on tym. Didn't consider making an account until I came back here for like the 20th time. Saw a tournament for CH3 and realized I was in driving distance so my friend and I went and had a good time. The rest is history.

Dr Morganstien said:

I'd always loved fighting games and I was always the guy beating his friends in them (Shoutouts to Battle Arena Toshinden). Then when I started college the student union had a tv dedicated to vanilla GGXX (as it had just come out) and I immediately bought myself a copy. I lost a lot,but eventually became the man to beat in our little scene. After finally hitting the internet to see if there was more I could learn, I found the FGC and watched proto-streams and combo videos.

I drifted away from it all, then in 2012 I was stuck at home with ill family members and time to kill when @imblackjames forcibly made me borrow MK9. I relented because injustice had been announced and I wanted to try a NRS game in preparation. I loved it, and we practiced a lot in the hopes of attending a tournament. I never got above scrub level in it, but I was back into the FGC. He, James, told me about TYM and when I realized I wanted to participate rather than just steal tech I finally made an account.

Side note to everyone, I started travelling to tournaments because @DarthArma rules and just offered James and I couches without knowing who the hell we were other than interested parties for a NJ tournament. The man deserves his props.

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See me in WWE2k14!

It was a few months before injustice came out.
I had been waiting to play as the flash in any sort of video game since JLA.
I went and bought mk9 to get a feel of what it was going to be like,
once injustice came out I realized that I was below scrub at fighting games.
while looking for character guides I found sabin's youtube channel.
which led me to tym..sadly
I used to not miss a next level stream, back when chris G was doing work

Came here to learn MK9 combos, pretty sure the first guide I read was Tom Brady's Sektor combo compendium thing. Man those were the days. Watched PowerUp live on stream with my buddies, and was just so blown away at those horrible Cage Bnb's. Then PDP came and I saw somebody's raiden and nearly shit myself at the combos lol

From prior sites like UMK3, classicmk etc and knew a good portion to begin with from the past or online MK.

DarthArma said:

See me in WWE2k14!

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Any time, I might head down for the November Dave and Busters thing.

Dr Morganstien said:

Spoiler: I want a shot at the Belt!

Any time, I might head down for the November Dave and Busters thing.

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LOL I look lost

I made a thread about ponies.

I first started playing competitive smash around 2004/2005. Went to local tournaments. Around 2009, every weekend I would go to Chinatown Fair since they had SF4 before the arcade version came out. Ever since Vanilla I've been playing E. Honda and most likely will never drop him. Probably one of the reasons why I played Aquaman.

So the first time I heard of TYM was when I first played MK9.

I guess I was alright. Did pretty decent in tournaments. Won the midnight launch tournament for MK9 at GameStop.


TBH IDK why I stopped playing. Anyways when Injustice dropped, that's when I become more active in TYM. That's how when I met KDZ and DarthArma and became good friends/teammates with them, even tho I knew them years ago and admired them from afar.

I was looking up some random MK9 stuff to try and get better, then I stumbled upon this video
Thanks @Tom Brady and @Perfect Legend

I played online all the fucking time like it was my job, eventually started to meet others like me and became a part of the well-known online players, such as @EMPR_MURK, @EMPR Cucialcrab and @EMPR BUSHIN KID who then led me here. I had always watched tournament play of fighters since MVC3 vanilla came out, but INJUSTICE opened my eyes to frame data, fundamentals I was sorely lacking and everything that makes competitive fighters so hype. I never actually got my TYM activated until TFC, but it still felt great to finally get in here and start giving shout outs to all the great people I got to meet there in person. I hope to continue involvement in this community and make an impression at NEC, I want to give myself more of a presence here as time goes on .

In the beginning, I always was a Dragonball Z fighting gamer on Ps2 ( Budokai 3, Tenkaishi 3), and I knew that if we would have tournaments of that like we do now, I would be the absolute best at that game. Right when I was a freshman at California State University Long Beach in '09, I remember being attracted to the student union, when I saw that they had pool tables and a bowling alley there. Little to my surprise I heard a bunch of yelling and screaming coming from a room around the area, and when I went to check it out, I discovered that they had a mini arcade center there where people were going at it hard at two arcade cabinets in the corner. As I was about to check the games that a numerous amount of people were surrounded by, I seen a friend I knew from high School playing a game there, and as soon as I've seen what was in this game, I was surprised to no end. It was called Marvel Super Heroes vs Street Fighter. I couldn't believe they had a game where some of my favorite Marvels heroes were fighting street fighter characters in a two on two colab of craziness. Of course I got my butt whooped, but I was so engrossed with that game I started to download MAME emulators for the first time in my life just so I could discover the ends and outs of every character. I mean seriously I put a huge amount of time in it, and eventually I discovered games like X-Men vs Street Fighter, and Marvel vs Capcom 1 on emulators which soon became one of my favorites.. After about the second year at college, I noticed that people were still just as hype if not more hype for a the same certain two games there. I decided to take a look. My jaw dropped so wide as I regretted meeting my friend so long ago, and not paying attention to the other games in the arcade, as I discovered that there was a sequel to one of my favorite games of all time MARVEL VS CAPCOM 2. There was some other stupid game there called Street Fighter: Third Strike that was there. (But I wouldn't kick myself for not playing that game and knowing the significance until 2 years later ;P). Dazed like a guy who has just been stick twice in a row by lighting, I started to research this game on Youtube, and I was bombarded by 10 years worth of tutorials, tournament streamed videos, salty videos, and the famous ITS MAHBEL BAYEE, and NEVER GIVE UP videos as I learned that theres I community who actually plays these games. My love for the FGC was born. (And of course at one time or other I seen EVO moment 37 or whatever it was like the rest of us.) Soon the fighting game club at California State Long Beach started having tournaments, and I found that there was also a game that already came out called Marvel vs Capcom 3, making me late yet again. I got so hype, and so full of confidence that I was gonna enter that tourney immediately with no skill, no knowledge of the game, no nothing, but my younger brother had to calm me down, and convince me not to throw away money like that. (Sometimes I need to be grounded cause I'm a dreamer lol.) Going to 2013, the arcade was taken out of the school, and replaced with TV monitors, the economy went down, and all sorts of things happened like life, and boy did the time fly. I still would play with Ponce and some other guys there with the Tvs in Utimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, but It wasn't the same as the arcades. I remember debating with my friend about whether a decent Dc fighting game would ever come out( DC vs Mortal Kombat doesn't exist, I said decent). Lo' and behold, Injustice was announced, and I researched and join the testyourmight forum around the time I got the game, so I wouldn't be late again, bought the game 4 months after release anyways, (then the ultimate edition -__-) and the rest was well you know. Now Im training and setting goals to become the best Injustice player whether people play it or not ( Till this day my favorite fighting game of all time is Super Dragon Ball Z and I used to playing it alone with no hope of no one joining. If anyone important that works in EVO read this, can we pleased get Super Dragonball Z as the mystery fighting game and get it streamed?) and hopefully by 2015 become the next EVO champ. I don't have a car yet, but my first goal is to attend Wednesday Night fights, and to at least win my first match if I lose my others, and work my way from there. The reason why I do what I do is to show other players starting out that no matter what character you play, or where you start, you can still make it to the top as long as you believe, and you are willing to work towards it. My second goal in any fighting game is to never call any character low tier until I test them out myself, and deem they are so putting all my effort like so many others before me. I haven't been playing Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 as much, but Im trying to get back to it. (Im also training right now in Ultra Street Fighter 4, so all you Marvel players and Street fighter players better let your kings know that Im coming for there crowns too when im done over here.) So I expect to start doing so low budget videos now, and to everyone that believes in me I apreciated it, especially the "low tier heroes" as I feel your guys pain sometimes. For all who have given up, give me your energy and I'll continue for you as well as try to lift you up. And for all my future haters and present discouragers I would like to thank you, for without you I would look half as good, and I wouldn't be on my toes as much. So everyone better bring your best, cause this is gonna be the best year the world has ever seen for Injustice, especially when step in. You stream monsters better be looking for me.

Injustice Champion of Long Beach,
Vincient "SuppaSapien3" Wise

MK9, PS4, Hell chat room

queen some shit, i forgot that obnoxious bitch's name - "FIGHT ME MKU VS TYM"

rekt her shit, asked her are you TYM or MKU, she said TYM, i was like ayy lmao, joined TYM because fuck that ho. i beat wc once in a shang mirror in ranked and didn't find out he was a a/b god shang tsung until like 4 months later. gloated so hard because online means everything.

tom brady vs pl at power up 2011 brought me here

rolz420zx said:

Arma got back to me, I then started to go to the Break more often. Really glad I did because I met a lot of really cool people and always have a blast either having sessions or just chilling with everyone at the break.

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First of all, your user name is "rolz420"?!

I found out through the infamous mkvsdc


Hold that

9.95 said:

Seriously...that was the WORST weekend of UMK3 for me ever. LOL

Not to mention that your and @R.E.O. played some kind of epic no rules MKA on Wii that weekend as well, which apparently led to the 2011 Winter Brawl no rules MKA MM between you two.

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True, it did. That money match culminated from that weekend, as well as the huge gathering for 3D MK at NEC.

Icy Black Deep said:

First of all, your user name is "rolz420"?!

Spoiler

Second of all, this story means that when you joined TYM you were old enough to know better than to pick a user name like "rolz420".

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Yeah about that.....actually I got nothing, you're right!!! lol