I was done, anyway. Also, don't mistake this for a flame war, because it isn't.
Who is Nocturnal? Is he the MOTW equivalent to UT's Fatal1ty?
No, he's not. But as far as I know, there isn't ONE big household name for this game that I know of. There aren't any famous Garou videos out there that'll expose some famous Justin Wong or Daigo equivalents, either. This is primarily due to the popularity of the game being less than that of UT or 3S. I mean, c'mon, that famous 3S video featuring Justin Wong vs. Daigo was even featured on College Humor, of all sites. The point I'm trying to make is that this game really isn't popular enough to have some well-known players that are recognized by people who don't even play the game. Of course, I know of a few good players from around the world (in the U.S., France and Japan), but I guess I can't expect casual players to know who they are, let alone
care. (Don't mistake this for elitism or I'll stab you in the heart)
So, if you're asking if he has hardware with his name on it, then no...I'm afraid Garou isn't mainstream enough for his name to be plastered on XFX hardware and used as a marketing tool. (That's the only reason I knew about Fatality, by the way.)
Perhaps he's only good at one version of the title. I've met tournament gamers who could only play one version of a specific title. Change the server or the gametype by just a fraction, and all their skill went to nothing. So why should one care what they think?
There aren't any Street Fighter-type changes in the different ports of Garou. Someone who plays the Neo Geo version could still play the Dreamcast version and know how to play (assuming they could just magically adapt to the controller). Sure, they might not be at their best, but their skills wouldn't just go to waste. You can't say the same for someone who plays Street Fighter on arcade and tries to play the SNES version later - it's not going to work out very well.
Garou also has two different ROMs, set 1 and set 2. There are virtually no differences other than set 2 not displaying "counter" on counter hits, I believe. So even with MAME, playing those two seemingly identical ROMs would not cause one to lose their ability (not unless they played the horrid prototype ROM).
So why do I consider Nocturnal a great player that's worthy of mention? He has innovated with the game and exposed new glitches and combos in the game that no one else has exploited yet at the time of his discovery. He knows the game much better than I or anyone in this thread does, and could easily hang with Japan's players. He can play on both pad AND stick and do everything on both--not to mention he can use every character and is capable of performing each of their moves (when you factor in feint combos, this is quite a feat). That's good enough for me...so there's no reason to believe he can't play a certain port of the game, when he has already proved that he can.
Also, I don't believe using the lack of a tournament group to represent that one is an inferior title. Plenty of inferior titles have tournament leagues. Look at Daikatana. Hell, some series that I would argue have inferior ports have leagues for those ports. A lack of a tournament does not seem to be a deciding factor for the quality of gameplay.
This doesn't apply in the fighting game community unless a certain version is too difficult to obtain or too expensive. Still, tournament play will most likely feature the original title on its native hardware and not a port. Again, your points are interesting, but the FPS and fighting game genres are entirely different. Let me reiterate that the Dreamcast port is not used for a reason.
Anyway, I guess I should ask what the thread starter intends to do if he gets into the game. If he's just going to play the A.I., then I don't see a problem with playing the DC port--except he won't get anything out of the game because the A.I. in Garou is broken and not very fun to play (instant counters and cheap moves like performing charge moves without holding back or down, etc.). It's very primitive.
