What's new
* 7/01: Bernie was beautiful enough to drop off 15 DVDs worth of classic footage. I'll be mixing up encoding that and encoding the Pacific Northwest Majors tourney footage for the next couple of weeks. For starters, here's a new capture of the 1998 Street Fighter Alpha 3 World Championship (previously found as a RMVB or on YouTube): about the matches, US Championship: Graham Wolfe and Valle, World Championship: Valle vs Daigo, and Post-Tourney Exhibition: Daigo vs Valle. (SFA3 discussion thread.)
* 6/25: The Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix Beta is now up! Get at it. You can only play as Ken or Ryu and there ARE a bunch of beta bugs, but it's still great fun. Ryu's fake fireball and Ken's Rainbow hurricane kick are fun.
* 6/23: The Snakeshotpeople vs Infinite money match footage is up now thanks to Amir.
* 6/22: The June 6th Seattle Marvel tourney footage is up.
* 6/22: As a small reminder: don't rehost footage I put together on YouTube (a commercial site). If there are matches you feel should be on YouTube, ask me to put them up there. I strongly dislike that YouTube doesn't support fellow video sites, which is why anything *I* put up there will point you to the site that it comes from. I realize the video site community has kind of withered from where it once was, but we don't need to encourage further decay. Thanks for your understanding.
* 6/03: The latest Seattle Marvel tourney footage is now (finally) up. Camera assist here and there from Theo, thanks. =)
* 6/02: Joo released a sample video filled with clips he is using in a combo dvd. The combo dvd is filled with his best combos for every character. He is uncertain whether he'll release the dvd publically , however if he does, it'll be up sometime near the end of '08. You can view this clip here. It requires the X264 codec to play it back because Magnetro is a bad man. The video is great.
* 5/23: Another SF gem from NKI: TZW's Information High - an hour of crazy Street Fighter Alpha, Super Turbo, and Street Fighter THE MOVIE combos, focusing on Charlie.
* 5/08: For SF2 fans, thanks to NKI: TZW: One More Blue Nightmare. This is a two hour long SF2 Guile combo-fest and is 500MB so probably not for everyone.
* 5/08: If you're a Premium member on SRK, this thread again has a special goodie for you brought to you courtesy of MrWizard. *thumbs up*
* 4/18: All my Final Round XI footage is now up. Enjoy!
* 4/05: Good news, bad news: got some more Seattle Marvel footage up now - enjoy! Bad news (doesn't affect you!) is that I banned everybody I threatened to ban. If you get caught using a download helper, you will be banned. If you were caught, you have been banned.
* 4/04: The site has a new hard drive now (+750GB!) and my new home PC arrived. Good work all around.
* 3/14: Some pretty great footage of Josh360's IronMan vs SnakeShotPeople in New York. (The files use the DIVX AVI codec.)

* 3/12: I'm doing a hardware upgrade (bigger hard drive) so I can put more footage up, since we're actually at 249GB out of... 250GB available. If you want to kick in some cash too, that'd be sweet and I'll use that to make the site better for you. No pressure, though: I do this for the community - it's love, not business. Anyways, you can donate here if you want:

* Thanks to Gandido, Bernie, Eidrian, Jacob, Chris, Irvin, Steven, aziz, and Toan for their support. *thumbs up*
* About links at top: logos courtesy of those sites, Magnetro, Master Chibi, and Diego. If you have a better logo, please let me know. If you want a link down in the Links section, let me know. I'll probably write a rotating link bar when I get a chance, or at least scroll it or something interesting.
Potentially upcoming (read: this is all I know, please don't ask for further information because I haven't heard anything more):
* 07/02: Maybe another tape of footage from Evo East, Evo East MvC2 footage cut up (not just the big blob of footage currently up), maybe some footage from Rotendo.

Other stuff/older videos:
This is the usually out-of-date-but-fairly-accurate list of the 140+ GB of match and combo videos I have. You can use the Search page to sort through it. Literally everything is up.
Please do not put stuff I recorded up on YouTube. That is a commercial site and I do not support it. The quality is abysmal and it locks you into using that site (and Flash, which I also hate). The entire point of this FREE site is to let you guys grab great quality footage. I have my own YouTube and SoapBox accounts and if I want to put stuff up there, I could. But I don't want to, so please don't do that for me.

Tourneys
Tourney announcements are made on SRK here. Check to see if there's one upcoming in your area.

Unlock All MvC2 Characters
The official CapCom document on how to unlock all characters on US MvC2 arcade board is here (my easier summary of it is found here. (Obot just pointed me to the Japanese codes here - big thumbs up for that reference.)) Text write-up of the Japanese steps.

How to play the files back:
WMV files can be played back most easily using Windows Media Player, although other players play them too. Most of these files use the WMV9 video codec. There's info on getting the right WMV9 pack for your player here if you need it.
If it uses AVI, I typically ensure that the file includes the name of the codec in the filename. Most AVI codecs are still under development/not ready for prime time, so I REALLY prefer not to use AVI for any reason. I've just seen too many (quite literally millions, as I work in multimedia for a living) of systems crashing due to bad AVI codecs.

Further links:
Gaming: Shoryuken. The granddaddy of fighting game sites.
Gaming: SRK Radio by Bunkei. New goodness.
Videos: GoForBroke News. Well maintained list of what's new in the video world.
Gaming: Dark Knights Clan. Kaillera and XvSF nuts. =)
Gaming/Videos: Tokyo Game Action. We like these guys.
Gaming/Videos: Denjin Video. They're back! These guys definitely helped build my early interest in Marvel.
Videos: comboVideos.com. They've really trimmed back the ads on their site, which is great.
Videos: Obot64. Good stuff.
Videos: Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 videos
Gaming/Media: Hardcore Gamer Magazine. Nice mag.
Gaming/Videos: Colorado Fusion Colorado gaming site, with Third Strike videos over at ExtraFresh.
Videos: CrazyAssKim. CvS2 goodness, kind of dead right now.
Gaming/Videos: Speed Demos Archive: non-tool assisted gaming speed runs.
Videos/etc: ComboAdictos. Mexican game fans.
Videos: Gamevideos at GodWeapon. Various collections of vids from all sorts of games. Has the Meikyousisui vids, which are damned hot. Doesn't seem to have anything original these days, but still alive.
Gaming/Videos: Chile fighting site. With pointers to videos.

The following sites are mostly defunct, but usually have some goodness left.
Videos: Carnevil is sharing a bunch of MWC7 footage. (Not updated since 2004)
Videos: Forgo has a huge amount of MWC6 footage. (Not updated since 2003)
Videos: Big Dave shares whatever footage he has handy. (Not updated since 2004)
Videos: Taiji's videos. (Not updated since 2004)
Videos: Video Opera generally keeps track of what new videos are available around the net. Dead now, very sadly.

About me
I'm an amateur (middle tier in the local hierarchy) player in the Seattle area. I prefer to use low tier (AKA 'amusing tier') and play because I enjoy friendly competition. I ran the local tournaments for a while, and own two cabinets myself, but our arcade died, so we're generally doing home/console play these days. I personally strongly prefer MAS Systems joysticks (p360s, for PS2 ONLY (you'll want to use an Innovations adapter (Evo-standard, but you can also use a Total Control adapter - don't get a TC2 though) to connect to the DC - if you put DC support in your MAS it can cause problems/blue screens), convex (Japanese-style) buttons). Note that calling MAS Systems is the only reliable way to get one, it really does seem to be run out of that woman's house, and yes the kids in the background are always noisy. =) I use a custom Marvel disc (although I do have a valid copy for DC and XBox): your other option is eBay, since the game is no longer being produced.

If you want to reach me, I'm 'zachdms' on AIM, 'zachdms' on MSN Messenger, and 'Preppy' on Shoryuken. Please don't ask for video downloads - I do not have those on the computers I run AIM on - you can get the old footage here. If you're interested in playing, I sometimes show up at GameWorks on Thursday nights after my soccer games, and otherwise I try to run a twice-monthly Poker and Marvel night that's pretty much an open invite for non-freaks.

If you're curious about the teams I use (?), I prefer Cable/Tron backing either MegaMan (anti-Mag/Storm), Sabretooth, Magneto, or Chun Li on point. If I'm feeling like changing it up, I'll put Thanos, Ken, or Morrigan in there, or play Captain America/Cable/Zangief-AA. I don't like how CapCom-AA or Cyke-AA based teams play, but will play them if I have to. I strongly prefer to play Tron on point, but that requires a lot of concentration.

About hosting
This site is now hosted by FDCServers.net. I pay $160 per month for a dedicated system with a 1TB hard drive and unlimited bandwidth.

I am willing to host any interesting footage of MvC2 that people want to throw my way. I figure this is a way I can give back to the community, as it has provided me with a lot of fun and a lot of great friends. It is easiest to send me the files via AIM (ONLY AIM, fake AIM clients won't work) as a RAR or ZIP of all the files, or send me a URL to download it from YouSendIt or that sort of thing.

As regards combo videos, here are "my" rules for hosted combo videos (as suggested by combo video experts):

Progressive scan end product only. If we can see the interlacing, it's going to look horrible.

Encoding:
* Encoding tutorial from Magnetro. MPEG-centric, but helpful.
Please try not to use MPEG1: MPEG1 is just terrible inefficient compression. Use either WMV or AVI with a good codec. (MPEG2 decoders are for pay, which is annoying.) Please also try to keep the bitrate around 1Mbps at most, since I only have a finite amount of disk space for videos.

I prefer to host WMV9 files encoded at 500kbps, up to a maximum of 1mbps. MPEG files are WAY too disk-space piggy, MPEG2 files require a for-pay decoder (and older MPEG2 decoders are pretty buggy). I will NOT host MPEG files. DivX/XviD and so forth is just a mess of Microsoft-derivative code and buggy decoders, QuickTime locks you into QuickTime, and likewise with RealPlayer. So: .wmv and .avi files would probably be my preferred formats if you would like me to host your stuff. To clarify: Do not use MPEG1. It sucks. Do not use MPEG2. It's much better, but you screw people playing it back. Don't encode under 300kbps and try not to encode over 1MBps (there shouldn't be enough difference to make it worthwhile).

To minimize the scanline (very important since the black scanline is soooo annoying), set your shutter speed manually to the highest value - I use 1/60 with my (now old) Canon Optura 20 for video game filming, and put it back onto Auto for non-game footage. (Good camcorder information/reviews can be found here.) With my new Sony HDR-HCR3, I simply turn off steady-cam to get rid of scan lines.
I use a tripod to get the steady shot. The downside is that you can't move as easily to get a shot of the player's faces, but ... I think it's worth it, since you avoid CrazyCam and nobody bumps you when you have a tripod. If you're hand-filming, people jostle you all over the place. Plus at ECC9, the tripod let me raise the camera over people's heads easily for filming, letting me film stuff I could not otherwise have had a clean shot on.

I capture the videos to my computer using Windows Movie Maker 2.0 (part of Windows XP) via a IEEE 1394 (firewire) connection. Very much worth it, and a surprisingly easy process. Average total time spent is about 2.5 hours or so per hour of tape, with an hour of that simply being getting the video captured onto the computer in the first place. If it's interesting Marvel footage, I may be willing to encode it for you if it's on miniDV.

I would also heartily recommend a camera backpack. They're too bulky to really be stolen easily, so it provides me a handy place to keep everything in (the camera, tripod, batteries, tapes, back-up switches and buttons, brackets, etc) that I'm not likely to forget and that I feel fairly secure about. I use a TamRac CyberPack 8 and adore it, even if it is a zillion dollars.

I also can't recommend enough the biggest possible battery for your camera, and having at least 3 extra tapes beyond what you think you'll need. I went with BP-535 (which lasts me through the tourney), and use at least two tapes every tourney, even when I'm not taping much. One big battery saves you the hassle of swapping out batteries and worrying about charging each one in preparation for the next tourney. Spending the money here is really worth it, more so than on almost any other accessory, I think.

Tiers
A lot of new players don't know the tiers. Marvel is a pretty complex game, but this very handy Frame Attack Data page does divide up the tiers almost perfectly. I realize that most people these days actually haven't seen top quality play of the non Top 4 characters, but ... yeah, those tiers are really accurate.

Donations
If you want to help support the site (currently it's $150/month to run), donations are appreciated and will be used for the Shoryuken/Marvel cause:
Don't sweat it, though: this site is up because it's how I can help, and I'm glad to run it for y'all. If you do want to donate, like $5/$10 would be great, and anything else is kinda too much. I do this for you anyways: I don't want people to feel obligated here. It's just meant to be a way to give back to the cool people I've met over the years.