Saltybet Real Money
I dreamt about Salty Bet two weeks ago. I've only ever dreamt about one other game in my life. That was Ocarina of Time, and I was 12.
What is Salty Bet and why do I think it is worth any time at all? Learn more about it while an A Tier Tourney plays in the background.- http://www.saltybet.com/. August 12, 2013 Paul MUGEN, SaltyBet, Twitch I lost 50 Salt Bucks on Skeletor Jeff Gerstmann over at Giant Bomb briefly ran down the doofy spectacle that is “Salty’s Dream Cast Casino” on a recent Bombcast but I still want to break down what is going on over there and muse a bit about what makes it so fascinating to me. Originally created as a joke for SaltyBet (If he ever won a match on SaltyBet, it'd say 'Spin To WIn' on the screen), Spin To has evolved into a spinning mess. This was created as my first 'real' character, and at the time I thought this would be my only creation, so I stuffed as many ideas as I could into him, all while abusing Angledraw to. Salty Bet Salty Bet is purely for entertainment purposes and no real money will be paid out. Salty Bucks are only used to play Salty Bet, they are not an actual currency and do not have value. Your access to exhibition match requests, the forum, Discord, or WWO may be removed at any time by a site moderator.
When I woke up, I turned on my computer, went to saltybet.com, and watched a small anime cat girl beat up a baby in a mech suit. Minutes later, I'd completed a payment of just under nine dollars for three months' membership. When I logged back into my account, I bet a substantial amount of pretend money on a green-haired, Japanese-speaking version of Ronald McDonald who'd scream 'ran ran RUUU!' as he chucked fistfuls of chips at his opponent.
I do not regret spending those nine dollars
Salty Bet is a game about a game. It pits computer-controlled fighting game fighters against other computer-controlled fighting game fighters on a nearly non-stop loop. As is tradition with beat 'em ups, the fighters come from all corners of the earth. There's Ryu and Ken from Street Fighter, Mai Shiranui from King of Fighters, and Spiderman from Marvel vs. Capcom 2. But there's also the aforementioned baby in a mech suit. There's a killer whale. There's a man-sized version of the open-gobbed subject from Edvard Munch's expressionist painting the Scream, appropriately named 'Munch.'.
They're able to fight each other thanks to the magic of MUGEN: a free fighting game engine that allows people to plug in their favourite characters. Ken and Ryu have had their data and move-set cribbed straight from Street Fighter. Munch is a community-made character born from 2chan's desire to replicate Japanese memes in a fighting game environment. In between are all manner of oddities: existing fighting game characters with vastly increased damage, bafflingly powerful schoolgirls, and - for some reason - a small army of Dragon Ball Z characters, each with a varying suffix.
These characters are randomly drawn to battle each other. Their matches are watched, discussed, and ultimately bet on by - on an average day - between one and five thousand people at a time. Bets aren't made with real money: the only currency at stake is 'Salty bucks'. They're completely arbitrary and completely inconsequential, and I paid about six quid to make sure that I never ran out of them.
My six quid got me three months of 'Illuminati' status, allowing me to see the career wins and losses of the site's slate of MUGEN fighters. Salty Bet pays out on bets depending on the match odds, in turn generated by those who bet. If Rare Akuma (won 32, lost two), taken from the Street Fighter series and souped up to ludicrous levels by MUGEN character creator P.o.t.S. steps onto the field against a wobbly pixellated version of footballer Thierry Henry (won two, lost 33), the odds will skew heavily in Akuma's favour and betters will find scant reward - a salty buck or two, at most - for betting on the favourite. Conversely, bet on the underdog, and you could be sitting on a fortune. Get the call wrong, though - guess that a seven foot monster with a sword might batter a ten year old girl dressed as a cat, only to have the cat-girl score three perfect rounds in a row - and you're back to the salt mines.
An Illuminati's Salty bank balance never drops below $666 no matter how disastrous their bet, meaning they're always well clear of the dreaded mines. I used this to my advantage when I first joined their ranks, betting my whole pot on clear underdogs in an attempt to win big. Upsets aren't common, but dodgy AI, strangely sized stages, and character mismatches can hand vast payouts to those brave enough to bet.
I won biggest on Captain Caveman. I stuck $887 on the irritating '70s cartoon character, hoping he'd outdo Mortal Kombat's Johnny Cage. Somehow he did: Cage's AI was unable to cope with Caveman's surprisingly effective rushdown game, and I received a $7,461 paycheque. I lost most betting on The Nightmare: $3,133 down the tubes against an anime girl in a nightie with one previous recorded victory over twenty bouts.
Salty Bet only stops streaming MUGEN matches during real-world fighting game community tournaments. It was at the most prominent of these that the site got its inspiration, as its creator explains.
'I started opening bets for FGC tournaments in May (2013), and continued to be a part of major events up until EVO. After EVO, I started brainstorming and became interested in the idea of streaming MUGEN so that people could bet when FGC events weren't happening. Things started off pretty simple, with me loading up characters manually, pausing the game, and entering in the matches. Things just grew incrementally from there until it became a 24/7 fake money casino.'
Salty Bet's creator is protecting their anonymity: when I asked for a name, Salty said the site was 'powered by a team of highly intelligent saltwater dolphins,' only providing a tidbit of detail on their background. 'I played Marvel vs. Capcom casually within my local FGC, but was and still am primarily a stream monster.'
Salty Bet has attracted stream monsters of its own, with their own exhaustive lexicon of terms. I asked Salty what he thought caused the rampant neologism. 'It's a mix. The site itself is called 'Salty' Bet, and salty is like the first or second word in the FGC handbook. The community has many people from outside the FGC as well, so they bring their own influences. Dongers?'
Many words and phrases spotted on Salty Bet's chat are loaned from other Twitch.tv channels, or even other games. Visitors will often see the words 'raise your dongers', accompanied by a squat figure with raised arms: 'ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ.' The term originated in League of Legends' player Imaqtpie's stream, and has propagated across Twitch streams, to be deployed at near-random intervals.
But Salty Bet has also birthed its own language. 'Mexibeams' are hugely powerful laser attacks, used with regularity by MUGEN's Dragon Ball Z and Saint Seiya characters. Their name comes from the Spanish-speaking versions of the latter group loaded into Salty's casino; their popularity comes from their ability to turn a match in one attack. Often DBZ characters - over-represented in Salty Bet's roster - will flounder all game, missing punches and taking a pummelling, before unleashing a mexibeam that wipes an opponent's health bar in a single strike. This has resulted in Salty Bet's first two maxims: 'always bet on DBZ,' and 'never bet on DBZ.'
The 'mexi' prefix has been tacked on to other words: health, to indicate an inflated hit-point pool, or damage, to suggest the character hits overly hard. It's even sometimes jammed onto the front of another Salty-forged word: 'dream.' When a character is on course for an upset, the stream chat in the corner of the screen will be awash with dreamers. At first, the stock phrase was 'the dream is alive!' Over time, it's morphed to 'dream.exe is installing!' When the underdog's upset is stymied, 'dream.exe has crashed.'
More specific memes are produced as viewers learn Salty's roster. Darkstalkers' Jon Talbain growls before a match: Twitch chat replicates the noise, hundreds of people repeatedly typing 'RRRRRRRRR.' Others, such as 'waifu', to be aimed at any female anime character, are repurposed from internet subculture dens - most commonly 4chan.
MUGEN's open-source nature means new characters can be suggested by emailing their data in. That variety breeds Salty Bet's best matches: robots versus children, children versus extra-galactic tentacle creatures, extra-galactic tentacle creatures versus dogs. I asked Salty for his favourite match so far.
'Every Thursday we have a special event where subscribers to the Twitch channel can request exhibition matches. During the Shaker Classic 5 tournament, someone requested Radish SSJ4 vs Barney, both characters capable of one hit KO. About five seconds into the fourth round they both just started feeling the music and jamming unexpectedly, before resuming battle.'
Salty is happy to admit new characters, no matter how weird. 'As long as the character doesn't crash the game/system, they will probably make at least one appearance. If they end up in the roster and fail to entertain, they may be removed. Some people like to see very balanced characters and match-ups which I understand, but you won't get the fun Radish & Barney dance party moments without a few broken characters.'
An hour with Salty Bet is packed with those moments. As I type this, I'm watching Ikkyu versus K' in a small window at the bottom of my screen. K' is from King of Fighters, and wearing a red jacket. Ikkyu is from Japanese arcade exclusive Blood Warrior and appears to be a small Buddha-esque figure stuck in a permanent crotch-thrusting loop. Next up is Guile versus Bison - an actual Bison, large enough to fill half the screen on four legs. Bison wins, crushing Guile with repeat headbutts before the Street Fighter can throw out a sonic boom.
Mugen means 'dream' in Japanese. Not only does MUGEN allow dream matchups - Ryu versus Link, Homer Simpson versus Spiderman - but it has enabled a game about a game good enough to dream about. And as an hour with Salty Bet and its unique language will tell you, dreams will never die.
Saltybet.com is amazing. Despite the fact that MUGEN characters are all fan made and therefore there’s almost no way of knowing which one of the fighters is going to be vastly more powerful than the other one, I’ve spent the best part of a weekend sat in my fucking underpants watching this, trying to work out the best possible bets you can make to ensure that the salt mine are a thing of the past, and you spend your future loaded with filthy, filthy salt dollars.
PLAY
Dragonball
ALWAYS bet on Dragonball.
Robots
Robots are about the closest thing to a guarantee in this ridiculous game of luck. All of them are super strong, fast and have a dangerous combination of moves that hit from anywhere and a hitbox that makes them a pain to damage. The only thing that can beat them with any regularity is when they come up against some daft creation with a one-hit kill move, which is fairly unlikely and usually quite obvious, so bet fairly freely when it comes to robots. Perhaps Rise of the Robots was onto something after all?
Little Anime Girls
The SECOND closest thing to a guaranteed win is little anime girls. For some reason they’re all super-fast, damaging rushdown monsters, most of which have hugely overpowered super moves too, that can completely switch momentum in a fight and, if ever actually needed, claw victory back from the jaws of defeat. “ALL IN ON WAIFU”, as they say.
Darkstalkers
For some reason, the cast of Darkstalkers tends to perform pretty well in these AI vs AI scraps. Maybe due to their slightly more OTT moves than other fighting games, but unless they’re up against something that is clearly unfair (like a bloody robot) they’re a pretty reliable bet.
Salty Bet Cheat Codes
Dogs
No idea why. I’ve just seen a load of dogs win fights.
Fighting Game Bosses
Bosses tend to hit hard and fast, which is the best way to ensure a victory on Saltybet. Rugal from KOF and Dimitri from Darkstalkers are both known to hand out a kicking when they get selected. Some of the more unbalanced top tier characters will best them though, but they’re worth a bet from time to time.
Weird Marvel Character Palette Swaps/Mashups
Salty Bet Real Money Slot Machine
What do you get when you cross Venom and Carnage? VARNAGE, that’s what. Clearly designed by some giant nerd who has decided he can do a better job than Stan Lee and merged together a couple of superheroes like he’s the creator of Sonichu. I’ve seen fighters such as Iron Lantern, Ghetto Warmachine and MASTA Gambit all lay down some serious beatdowns. The dafter the palette swap and name, the better they are, seems to be a rule. The ‘Wolvenom’ that showed up once sucked hard though, so watch out for that one.
Mike Tyson
He can drop anyone with one punch. Of course.
AVOID
Dragonball
NEVER bet on Dragonball.
Weird MSPaint Creations
This is where shit gets weird. You get the odd thing that turns up that isn’t from some rubbish anime series or another videogame, but from the mind of someone who thought “I can definitely create a good fighting game character”. The result can vary wildly from badly drawn Ryu knock-offs to a gigantic Tiger Woods head on a barely animated torso. Remember, despite a handful of them doing INSANE damage, you’re basically betting on some wild internet madman's creativity here, so going ‘all-in’ on someone’s shite sketch might not be the best idea.
Naruto
Naruto characters are usually really short and quite difficult to hit, which does allow them a few opportunities to pull off an upset, but they’re fairly mediocre and up against anyone from the above section will usually result in a quick and brutal finish. Don’t risk it.
Salty Bet Real Money Glitch
Most actual fighting game characters
One of the most baffling things about Saltybet is how badly any character who is from an established fighting game series performs! If you see anyone from Street Fighter, King of the Fighters, Guilty Gear, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure et all - AVOID. Don’t play. Save your salty dollars for another fight. There are a few exceptions of course, but for the most part you’re going to be betting on something that is far too ‘balanced’ to do well. Despite all this, Terry Bogard from KoF, in completely unaltered form, is an absolute fucking BEAST. Always bet on Bogard.
Final Fantasy/Resident Evil/Anyone From A Game Series You Love
Sometimes, the best way to win some salt dollars is to play a little amateur psychologist. When a famous videogaming icon appears, they’ve usually been made by someone who was trying to make their own MUGEN version of Smash Bros., so these characters are usually - heaven forbid - fairly balanced and well thought out for the most part. As touched upon above, these are not traits a fighter needs to perform well in the Saltybet arena of death. Don’t waste your money because of your dumb loyalty to Squall Leonheart.
Grover
Grover from Sesame Street has turned up a couple of times and both times I’ve seen him get absolutely leathered by his opponent. I laughed for hours.
WILDCARD
‘Fake’ Characters
Salty Bet Reddit
Here’s the fundamental thing. All of the characters used in MUGEN are fan made, even the established ones like Ryu and Ken. Some of them follow the moveset and damage amounts set by the original creators fairly accurately, and are middle of the road bets. However, you occasionally come across a ‘fake’ version. Look closely - Why is that Vega starting without claws? Why does that Ryu have red eyes? Why does that Kyo have a strange, garish palette? These are fakes, and it can mean one of two things. They’re either going to be lethal, throwing out combos that drain entire life bars or absolutely useless. The big one of these to look out for is ‘RARE Akuma’, who has the most ridiculous moveset it would practically be spoiling Saltybet for you to describe the carnage that unfolds when he is picked to fight. Fake could be your ticket out of the salt mines. Or straight back in. Only bet if you’re feeling brave!