Why Game? 1 - TextFiles.com

Anything but Shredder.
Shortly thereafter I discovered Street
Fighter 2, clamoring my dad to take me to the
local 7-11 so I could spend my weekly allowance
on two precious rounds with Ryu, only to lose
in a flurry of button-mashing and return with
bruised pride but renewed determination to my
GamePro strategy guides and movelists. Street
Fighter 2 was something else for me: it was no
longer about the justification for fighting - this
was a fighting tournament, so the characters
had to have expected to get hurt, and besides,
it’s just characters on a screen. The honor no
longer belonged to he who had done the right
thing; storyline “good guys” and “bad guys”
were both fair game at the character select
screen. It was all about whoever possessed the
superior knowledge of special moves - and, I
would learn years later, execution, move range,
priority, and ‘footsies’ - and reflexes capable of
doing the right move at the right time. There
was no more right or wrong. Fighting had be-
come a game.
I returned to the Street Fighter series a
good ten years after being introduced to it, as a
sophomore in high school, bored with role-play-
ing games and too broke to keep up with the
hardware necessary to remain competitive in
Quake III. I still remember the formative point
in my Super Street Fighter 2 revival (pardon
the pun); it wasn’t the first time I picked up the
Gundam Wing: Endless Duel ROM, which would
reignite my interest in fighting games in general
(leading me to pick up Street Fighter Alpha 3
for the Playstation). Nor was it brought about by
the few games I had played with my good friend
David, who would regularly bring his Dreamcast
to school so we could play a few games on a TV
in an unused classroom. It was during a high
school debate tournament, of all times, and a
buddy named Brian dragged me down to La
Vals, a shitty pizza place in Berkeley with a big
TV that attracted most of the local poor folk and
a Capcom vs. SNK cabinet that the guys occa-
sionally got rowdy over. Debate was fun and all,
but the adrenaline of playing against someone
sitting right next to you with a crowd of people
thirsty for dragon punches and big super com-
bos - it was something else.
From there began a journey that has lasted
more than four years. I’ve read thousands of
forum posts and dozens of movelists. I’ve spent
hundreds of dollars on arcade tokens in arcades
in places from UC Berkeley and Castro Valley
and Sunnyvale in Northern California to UCLA
and Southern Hills Golfland in Southern Cali-
fornia to a run-down little arcade in downtown
Atlanta to a lonely little Marvel vs. Capcom 2
machine in downtown London and a number of
mall arcades in Manila. I make no secret that
a factor in my choice of college was its relative
proximity to James Games in Upland, which is
about three miles from my campus, a fifteen
minute bike ride if I’m desperate. I own two
MAS Systems arcade sticks, a trusty SNK vs.
Capcom edition Japanese arcade stick, a crappy
Interact Alloy stick that I’m trying to get rid of,
and an also-crappy X-Arcade two-player unit
that I received for a review (and am also trying
to get rid of). I have contemplated buying an
Astro City arcade cabinet for my dorm room in-
stead of a car. I have worked at my local arcade
to help defray the costs of playing there. I have
competed in dozens of tournaments in several
different games, including making it to Evolution
2003 and 2004, the largest fighting game event
in the United States. And I’ve met some of my
best friends with nothing more than the line “So,
you like Street Fighter, huh?”
In short, I’ve been Ryu.
What I have found in my four-years-and-
counting stint as a Street Fighter player is that
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