Wow this was really interesting. As a semi-competitive player during the Tekken 3/TTT1 days one of the under appreciated parts of getting good at an international level is diversity of arcade "cultures".

What this means is that your arcade generally provides the same players again and again, and performing well against those players provides little guarantee against players in another arcade who've developed entirely different techniques and playing styles.

So you have to play, a lot, against a huge range of players. You can't really just play against your arcade's local players and get to a level that's competitive on even a regional level. I remember the first time I emerged, after a few months of heavy playing, into an arcade in a neighboring city, and getting crushed the first few matches.

I've since played TTT1 in arcades around the world and I've always found somebody who does something I've neve seen before.

That these guys can pull off winning, against ultracompetitive leaders in ultracompetitive hypermarkets like Japan or Korea is absolutely incredible.

It'd almost be like Pakistan fielding a Superbowl winning American Football team after only getting together enough guys for the offensive and defensive lines and only playing those lines against each other.