For fans of retro fighting games, the best place to play them outside of offline events is on Fightcade. According to its website, Fightcade “is a new online arcade gaming platform heavily based on GGPO.” For you cubs to the fighting game scene, GGPO was an old-school online gaming platform that used a revolutionary (at the time) mechanic called “rollback” to handle lag. Rather than slow down the experience, GGPO would predict the player’s next input and runs the game as if they did so. If the player doesn’t input what the system predicted, the game “rolls back” to the point of error and plays out with the correct inputs. Obviously, the hope here is that the game is correct more often than not so the games will play out smoothly, rather than have players deal with the jittery lagfest matches we’ve all experienced.
Recently, the creators of the original Fightcade released Fightcade 2, a more user-friendly, streamlined approach to the original client. If you never used the original, now’s a great time to test out the platform for yourself. Here’s how to get started with Fightcade 2.
Download the client
Pretty obvious, yes, but you’ll need to download the newest version of the Fightcade 2 beta client in order to play any of the games. Mosey on over to play.fightcade.com, select your operating system, and download the client. Extracting the Fightcade 2 folder to your desktop might make things easier for now, but if you prefer you can always place it in your games folder or wherever you like to put programs like this.
Find the ROMs - and make sure they’re the right ones!
The necessary evil in all this is that the platform uses ROMs of these popular arcade titles to function. No, we won’t tell you where to find them, that’s what Google is for. Use your most trusted site and head to the arcade or “M.A.M.E.”section. You’ll want to make sure that the ROM you’re downloading exactly matches the one Fightcade is requesting. An example of this is below, regarding Street Fighter Alpha 3.
Please be aware of the region name and the numbers at the end. The ROM you download needs to exactly match this - so no, your American or Japanese ROM won’t work with the service if you try to use it. Nor will your European ROM with a different number at the end - it needs to be that one. Be aware, though, that sometimes you’ll need more than just the ROM for your game to work. Each case is different, but generally you’ll need bits and pieces from other versions of the game to finally get it to work. There's a lot of trial and error at this stage, but it's worth it in the long run!
Note: There may or may not be a complete set of ROMs that a kind user has put together to make this step easier, but we cannot confirm nor deny the report. You will just have to find out for yourself.
Put them in the appropriately named folder
Okay, so you downloaded the wrong ROM twice, but now you have the right one, pls along with all the other files you need to make it work! Now take those lovely files and place them in the “ROMS” folder of your Fightcade 2 folder. If you did everything right, you can click “Test Game” to make sure everything’s good to go.
Check your buttons
Once the emulator’s up, you’ll be able to check your buttons. It might behoove you to play a few rounds of arcade mode first to make sure your buttons are good, as every game has different button layouts and has different qualifications for light punch, medium punch, etc.
“Triumph or Die!”
Now all you need to do is join your favorite game’s lobby and start playing! Generally the more popular games on the platform are Super Street Fighter II X: Grand Master Challenge (an arcade-only port of Super Street Fighter II Turbo,) Vampire Savior (Darkstalkers in the U.S.,) and Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, but you’ll find players of other games on there too. The platform makes it handy to see how many active users are on at a given time, with nights and weekends of course being the most popular times. Remember, too, that this is a beta, and things might not work as intended. The website even says, “The goal is to enhance current features as well as add new community requests to improve the overall experience,” so if something’s not quite right, make sure you let the development team know!
So get out there, make some new friends, and be ready to learn! The players on this platform are no joke and will play you seriously, but are also incredibly passionate about their games and should offer some valuable advice. Not seeing many people for the game you really love? Then, check out our tips on how to build a community around a less popular game!
