Round 4....FIGHT

When I was a kid, one of my favorite games was Final Fight for the SNES. I liked taking Haggar, or Cody, walking from left to right punching bad guys in the face, picking up pipes and bashing villains over the head, and eating slices of pizza to cure my various injuries. I could never get too far in the game. Inevitably, the pizza would run out and I would then get murdered by the nameless thugs sent to kill me, but that never stopped me from enjoying the game.

My dad was the first person to introduce me to Street Fighter II. To this day, I have no idea how he found out about it. This is the same guy thinks every TV show thats not on the Hallmark Channel is Lost. I'm not sure if he used to sneak off to the arcades during his lunch break or he secretly read Electronic Gaming Monthly in his spare time, but he somehow knew about the game before I did. Regardless, I remember one day he came up to me and said "Hey, do you want that Street Fighter game?" I had no idea what that was, but I assumed that it was going to be like Final Fight, likely because it had the word Fight in the title and I was an idiot who thought that games with similar titles were the same. I believe I got Street Fighter that very day, although that may be because every single memory of my childhood has blended and been warped together so it seems like everything happened on one long day. So it's weird to think that I got one of the greatest games of all time on the same day I got grounded for lying about getting a detention for not doing my homework during my aunt's wedding at a Chinese restaurant.

The first thing I remember from my first impresions of Street Fighter II was that I was disappointed that it wasn't like Final Fight. "You only face one guy? That's it?" and "Oh snap, that guy just threw a fireball at me! Oh snap, that guy just gave me a jumping uppercut! Where's the pizza so I can cure myself?" were the thoughts that ran through my confused head. Indeed, it dawned upon me soon enough that there would be no pizza to save me from Ryu's Dragon Punch. I would not be able to pick up a pipe to counter Blanka's electric attacks. I would need more training to stand a chance.

The great things about the Street Fighter II games is that it's easy enough for a child to play. Each character has only a handful of moves that are simple to remember and pull off and are always satisfying to see in action, mostly because of the chants each character says for each move: "SONIC BOOM!" and "HADOKEN!" being the most memorable. Yet it's deep enough that a kid mashing buttons and doing the same moves over and over again would have no chance against someone who knows every combination and when to time counter moves at the exact time. Despite my initial misgivings, it was compelling to go one on one against a sumo wrestler, a Russian wrestler, and a Japanese whore. It reminded me of boxing, only there were kicks and fireballs and an Indian guy with arms like Gumby. And I was hooked.

I felt challenged by the need to improve, as was Capcom, as they released three different versions for the SNES (World Warrior, Turbo, and Super Street Figher II). I got every one of them, even though they were essentially the same game only faster or slower or with more characters. I wasn't very good, but I wanted to become a master at the game. Needless to say, I never became that master. I wasn't terrible, but I wasn't good enough to challenge the seemingly professional gamers at the arcade.

About two years later, I had dropped Street Fighter from my gaming rotation and moved onto the Mortal Kombat games, which had simpler gameplay, plus added features fatalities and blood. When the next generation of consoles came out a few years later, I moved onto Tekken, which had 3D graphics and was a more realistic experience. Eventually, I just stopped playing fighting games altogether as I got older, and my game playing choices narrowed down to a few reliable choices like Madden or Grand Theft Auto. I hadn't gotten a fighting game since Tekken 2 ten years ago...

...Until Street Fighter IV came out last week.

I got the game last Thursday, about two days after it came out because I had store credit at Blockbuster and they never get games on time. I bought it partly because I was suckered in by all the hype, and also because I wanted a chance to become great at a franchise that I've always been average in. As I looked at the cover art when I got home, a flood of memories came rushing back to me. It felt like I was a kid again, except I knew I wasn't buying a side scrolling beat 'em up. This time, I knew what I'm getting into. This time, I was going to be ready.

Or at least that's what I kept telling myself. As soon as I put the disc into by XBox 360 and started the Arcade mode, I was challenged by a random guy on XBOX LIVE. I accepted the invite, picked Ryu, got hyped up for my first Street Fighter challenge in over a decade, and I was promptly destroyed in about 40 seconds. It took me longer to write this sentence than it took for this guy to dismiss me in two rounds. It made me wish there was pizza on the ground.

"To live is to fight, to fight is to live!"
--Ryu, Street Fighter II