Somewhere along the way, I lost touch with fighting games. The roots of this problem aren’t hard to identify. In my youth I preferred Mortal Kombat over Street Fighter II, which seemed like a great idea at the time but, in hindsight SFII is still being played competitively while MKII (and the entire franchise, honestly) is the definition of style over substance. In my teens I moved onto Tekken, dumping 100+ hours each into 2, 3, Tag, and even modifying my PlayStation 2 to play an imported copy of Tekken 4 six months early. After that my drug of choice was Super Smash Bros Melee*, which my friends and I somehow took seriously and ritually played nearly every day until 2008 when Brawl came out and crushed our collective dreams.
Yet, with the exception of Melee, one could argue I never actually knew what I was doing. I memorized entire 100+ move sets in Tekken, yet I never really managed to apply that knowledge by reflexively fighting a human opponent. Reverses, parries, and high/mid/lows were easy, but working all of that into a flow was a constant obstacle. I routinely got my ass kicked because I couldn’t get beyond “doing moves.” I blame Mortal Kombat (and, by extension, a local Arcade for having MKII and not SSFII) for forcing me down the path of “spam moves to win.”
For six years I lived with five people that lived and breathed fighting games. Every single day they were either playing Guilty Gear, Marvel Versus Capcom 2, Street Fighter III: Third Strike, or, as of late, BlazBlue and Street Fighter IV. I coerced them all into Smash Melee regularly, but they would always revert back to 2D fighters that seemed beyond my range of comprehension.
I’m so lost and bewildered that, whenever we have appointments with Capcom, I usually shy away from stepping up to the plate. Like those mainstream press members at E3, I don’t want to shame myself by playing a game I can’t possibly understand. I always roll my eyes when I see a guy from Time (or anyone getting paid, really) whom, when told by PR to press a button, has to look at the controller to issue the command. What the hell are they even doing there covering games when they can’t figure that shit out? I don’t want to be that guy.
And I’ve tried to correct this. Before E3 2008 I spent a week trying to learn Vega and Guile in order to not look like a complete dumbass playing Street Fighter IV, but what happened? I ended up getting smoked by Seth Killian, which isn’t unexpected given his place at both Capcom and the Evo scene, but he did it with one freaking hand. That particular event didn’t actually hurt my feelings, and it was mostly orchestrated by myself and Steve, but it was perfectly indicative of a major problem; I don’t understand fighting games.
I’m really bummed about it too. Lines at E3 are typically defined by a bunch of strangers patiently hoping the guy currently playing gets off the controller as fast as possible, but the culture surrounding fighters is entirely different. They’re not waiting for the guys on the sticks to finish, they’re appreciating their play styles and in constant debate over mechanics that, to the casual observer, seem like banal minutia. It’s awesome to see a subculture of people so heavily invested in their craft that they’re willing to step back and appreciate it, rather than try and blast through a vertical slice and write an impression. Purity like that isn’t often found on the show floor.
Yet, I’m sort of okay with maintaining a distance. You can’t be good at everything, right?
*I’m aware this isn’t technically a fighting game
