I was 12 years old when Street Fighter II came out. I had been
playing games for a long time already at that point and would spend
hours playing games like Legendary Axe on my TurboGrafx-16, or Space
Harrier on my Sega Master System. My friends and I loved games. We would
argue about which was better, Nintendo or Sega (I was a Sega fan), we
would go to each other's houses and take turns playing games like Mario,
Sonic, and Zelda. We loved video games. Now, there were "multiplayer" games at this point, but multiplayer was really viewed as a way to play with your friends, not against them. Or so we thought.
Oh how wrong we were.
There was a bowling alley, "Southgate lanes", that rested a few streets over and just across the highway from my street. The most my friends and I knew about this place was that it was where old people would bowl, and teenagers would take their girlfriends on the weekend. Oh and they had Double Dragon. But aside from that we didn't really care much for the bowling alley.
But all that changed the day we walked in and saw a new arcade machine sitting there. The name of the game was "Street Fighter II: The World Warrior", and it was unlike anything we'd seen before. We all know fighting games well enough now, but at that time, the idea of a game where you fight one on one versus other players was crazy. And the buttons, THERE WERE SIX BUTTONS! Three buttons for punches, three buttons for kicks, each with a weak, medium, and strong version. There was so much to take in, I would never learn how to play this game.
And that's what hooked us. The fact that there was enough there to actually formulate a strategy against your friends and best them in one on one combat, why hadn't anyone thought of this before? We would all walk to the bowling alley almost daily to spend what few quarters we had on a few games on Street fighter II, and spend the walk home talking about the game. When we were at home we would search our parents cars, our couches, beg grandparents, anything we could do to get some quarters and go play a few more games of Street Fighter.
I still remember the first time I pulled off a fireball (Hadouken) with Ken, it was such an amazing feeling. It took me a while to do it again, but after I'd done it once I was determined to learn all of the special moves. My friends and I all had our characters that we used the most, mine was Ken. At the time I was taking a Karate class and seeing the American in the Karate gi was easy to relate to.
Street Fighter II had taken the world by storm and everyone was paying attention to it's run away success, especially Capcom. Shortly after the release of Street Fighter II, Capcom released Street Fighter II: Champion Edition, which added the four boss characters as playable fighters, as well as the ability for two players to choose the same fighter. Then came Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting, followed by Super Street Fighter II. Capcom made it a point to capitalize on the monumental success of Street Fighter II, but who could blame them? The fans wanted more Street Fighter and that's what they were giving them.
Not long after, my cousin and I were at a mall in the next town over and decided to check out the arcade. When we walked in we immediately noticed a large group of kids gathered around a particular machine. After finally managing to push our way close enough to get a look at what all the excitement was about, we saw Mortal Kombat.
We were completely floored by what we saw. First, the graphics looked real. Not good, not really good, real. Second, there was blood, and tons of it. Every hit saw gallons of blood fly from these realistic looking characters. But then, when the fight was over, something mind blowing happened; the winning player grabbed his opponent by the neck and pulled his head off, and held it up like a trophy while the spinal column dangled below. It was INSANE.
In our minds this was the perfect evolution of the Street Fighter formula. Before, we got to beat up each other and random strangers, now we could finish them off after we'd won. How cool is that? It wasn't long before our bowling alley got a Mortal Kombat cabinet in their ranks and more than ever my friends and I were making the trek to play these games. The arcade at the mall was the real proving ground though. Sure, it was fun picking on the unsuspecting teenagers trying to show off to their girlfriends on Saturday night, but the true test of skill was the arcade.
The arcade was where the best players from all over the city would show up to see where they stood against everyone else. This is also where "quartering up" was born. You want to play? Put your quarter up on the machine to let everyone know. Winner stayed until beaten. There was also a mutual respect that you won't find in today's online games. There were times when things got heated and sometimes ended in a fist fight, but those were the rare occasions. It's a completely different situation when your opponent is standing less than a foot away from you.
Later came the SNK machines that had multiple games in one cabinet. I remember walking to the local Circle K gas station to play those games. They had games like Art of Fighting, World Heroes, and Fatal Fury. World Heroes 2 was our favorite because of the awesome and unique characters. The SNK machines always had other games that weren't fighting games, but we never played those, we were there to brawl. We would even challenge people as they came and went from the gas station.
All through my teenage years the fighting game genre flourished. It wasn't until Halo came along that fighting games were dethroned as the most mass market genre in gaming. Up until SoulCalibur on Dreamcast, the order of things was that the real way to experience a game was at the arcade, but if you wanted to play at home then you had to settle for an inferior home version. But as technology became cheaper and home consoles became more powerful, the arcade all but died off. Arcades still exist, but they're no longer the central hub for multiplayer gaming that they were when I was a kid.
Fighting games haven't really changed much in the 20 years since Street Fighter II came out, and that's ok with me. Sure, they've since gone 3D, added tons of characters, even weapons in some cases. But the core of the fighting game, the one on one, side viewed fighting is still the same.
I've grown up with fighting games and they have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. Someone was talking recently about games that you you go back to over and over throughout the years and why that is. I believe it's because it's familiar. It's something you feel a connection with, something that you know every little nuance about. That's how I feel about fighting games like Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat, or even SoulCalibur. I've been playing these games for such a large part of my life, and I can remember spending so much time as a child talking about them and playing them with firends.
I always tell people that I grew up in the fighting game era of video games. I love many kinds of games, but fighting games hold a special place that can't be replaced. I still have friends to this day that were with me the first time we played Street Fighter II at that bowling alley when I was 12, and we still duke it out in Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat or numerous other fighting games from years gone by. Ask anybody from my generation and I'm willing to bet that they have strong memories of playing fighting games when they were younger, even if they don't game now. That's what makes video games special, that something so seemingly insignificant can be the tie that binds life long friendships together.
Oh how wrong we were.
There was a bowling alley, "Southgate lanes", that rested a few streets over and just across the highway from my street. The most my friends and I knew about this place was that it was where old people would bowl, and teenagers would take their girlfriends on the weekend. Oh and they had Double Dragon. But aside from that we didn't really care much for the bowling alley.
But all that changed the day we walked in and saw a new arcade machine sitting there. The name of the game was "Street Fighter II: The World Warrior", and it was unlike anything we'd seen before. We all know fighting games well enough now, but at that time, the idea of a game where you fight one on one versus other players was crazy. And the buttons, THERE WERE SIX BUTTONS! Three buttons for punches, three buttons for kicks, each with a weak, medium, and strong version. There was so much to take in, I would never learn how to play this game.
And that's what hooked us. The fact that there was enough there to actually formulate a strategy against your friends and best them in one on one combat, why hadn't anyone thought of this before? We would all walk to the bowling alley almost daily to spend what few quarters we had on a few games on Street fighter II, and spend the walk home talking about the game. When we were at home we would search our parents cars, our couches, beg grandparents, anything we could do to get some quarters and go play a few more games of Street Fighter.
I still remember the first time I pulled off a fireball (Hadouken) with Ken, it was such an amazing feeling. It took me a while to do it again, but after I'd done it once I was determined to learn all of the special moves. My friends and I all had our characters that we used the most, mine was Ken. At the time I was taking a Karate class and seeing the American in the Karate gi was easy to relate to.
Street Fighter II had taken the world by storm and everyone was paying attention to it's run away success, especially Capcom. Shortly after the release of Street Fighter II, Capcom released Street Fighter II: Champion Edition, which added the four boss characters as playable fighters, as well as the ability for two players to choose the same fighter. Then came Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting, followed by Super Street Fighter II. Capcom made it a point to capitalize on the monumental success of Street Fighter II, but who could blame them? The fans wanted more Street Fighter and that's what they were giving them.
Not long after, my cousin and I were at a mall in the next town over and decided to check out the arcade. When we walked in we immediately noticed a large group of kids gathered around a particular machine. After finally managing to push our way close enough to get a look at what all the excitement was about, we saw Mortal Kombat.
We were completely floored by what we saw. First, the graphics looked real. Not good, not really good, real. Second, there was blood, and tons of it. Every hit saw gallons of blood fly from these realistic looking characters. But then, when the fight was over, something mind blowing happened; the winning player grabbed his opponent by the neck and pulled his head off, and held it up like a trophy while the spinal column dangled below. It was INSANE.
In our minds this was the perfect evolution of the Street Fighter formula. Before, we got to beat up each other and random strangers, now we could finish them off after we'd won. How cool is that? It wasn't long before our bowling alley got a Mortal Kombat cabinet in their ranks and more than ever my friends and I were making the trek to play these games. The arcade at the mall was the real proving ground though. Sure, it was fun picking on the unsuspecting teenagers trying to show off to their girlfriends on Saturday night, but the true test of skill was the arcade.
The arcade was where the best players from all over the city would show up to see where they stood against everyone else. This is also where "quartering up" was born. You want to play? Put your quarter up on the machine to let everyone know. Winner stayed until beaten. There was also a mutual respect that you won't find in today's online games. There were times when things got heated and sometimes ended in a fist fight, but those were the rare occasions. It's a completely different situation when your opponent is standing less than a foot away from you.
Later came the SNK machines that had multiple games in one cabinet. I remember walking to the local Circle K gas station to play those games. They had games like Art of Fighting, World Heroes, and Fatal Fury. World Heroes 2 was our favorite because of the awesome and unique characters. The SNK machines always had other games that weren't fighting games, but we never played those, we were there to brawl. We would even challenge people as they came and went from the gas station.
All through my teenage years the fighting game genre flourished. It wasn't until Halo came along that fighting games were dethroned as the most mass market genre in gaming. Up until SoulCalibur on Dreamcast, the order of things was that the real way to experience a game was at the arcade, but if you wanted to play at home then you had to settle for an inferior home version. But as technology became cheaper and home consoles became more powerful, the arcade all but died off. Arcades still exist, but they're no longer the central hub for multiplayer gaming that they were when I was a kid.
Fighting games haven't really changed much in the 20 years since Street Fighter II came out, and that's ok with me. Sure, they've since gone 3D, added tons of characters, even weapons in some cases. But the core of the fighting game, the one on one, side viewed fighting is still the same.
I've grown up with fighting games and they have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. Someone was talking recently about games that you you go back to over and over throughout the years and why that is. I believe it's because it's familiar. It's something you feel a connection with, something that you know every little nuance about. That's how I feel about fighting games like Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat, or even SoulCalibur. I've been playing these games for such a large part of my life, and I can remember spending so much time as a child talking about them and playing them with firends.
I always tell people that I grew up in the fighting game era of video games. I love many kinds of games, but fighting games hold a special place that can't be replaced. I still have friends to this day that were with me the first time we played Street Fighter II at that bowling alley when I was 12, and we still duke it out in Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat or numerous other fighting games from years gone by. Ask anybody from my generation and I'm willing to bet that they have strong memories of playing fighting games when they were younger, even if they don't game now. That's what makes video games special, that something so seemingly insignificant can be the tie that binds life long friendships together.
1 comment:
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