Super Battle Opera Season arrives!
January 3rd, 2008 Seth Killian
The most awesomely named tournament in the universe is back for 2008, sure to be full of hot arcade action as always. The Super Battle Opera (called boring old “Tougeki” in Japanese), is Arcadia magazine’s annual arcade fighting game tournament, with qualifying events held across Japan leading up to August’s three-day finals.
Although “SBO” is primarily a Japanese event, they have added qualifying spots for foreign players as well in recent years, based on the strong international competition found at events like the EVO Championship Series. Although the Japanese ran rampant at this year’s EVO finals, no foreign player has ever won SBO. Americans have finished as high as 3rd in years past, and last year the infamous Wolfe brothers (Alex and Graham) placed 5th in the Hyper Street Fighter II: Anniversary Edition tournament. Check out the video above of the Wolfe’s leveraging extreme patience and old fashioned cheap tactics to take out two of Japan’s most famous old-school players, Otochun and Komoda Blanka.
This year’s SBO game lineup includes Street Fighter III: Third Strike, as well as the original Super Street Fighter II Turbo. Click here for the full SBO 2008 game lineup.
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Foreigners have won SBO before, though not in Capcom games, as far as I know. Xiaohai, a Chinese player, won KOF98 last year, though, and I think a Korean team has won Tekken at some point.
Haha, yes, by “foreign” I was probably thinking “American” since as a good American, that’s pretty much the only country that matters to me.
/sarcasm off.
I’m disappointed that I forgot about KOF98–one of the best KOFs IMO, which have lately degenerated a bit into wash, rinse, repeat of the bread and butter combos.