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I remember when Street Fighter I was a new arcade game. The demonstration mode would show Ryu fighting Retsu, and occasionally he would throw a fireball. The

by snarfy 6y ago

I remember when Street Fighter I was a new arcade game. The demonstration mode would show Ryu fighting Retsu, and occasionally he would throw a fireball. The game didn't say how to do it. It would always be this random thing that happened while playing. If you play fighting games, you know the motion is pretty simple, but on SF1 it's actually pretty difficult to do on command. The input scanning just wasn't very good and you had to do the motion with just the right joystick speed and button on/off timing. I figured out how to throw a fireball on command and became the wizard of the arcade. Shortly after I figured out the dragon punch too. I never figured out the hurricane kick. The game never showed it during demonstration so I didn't know it even existed. It would happen sometimes randomly while playing but for some reason I thought it was a glitch and not a real move. One day another player showed up from another arcade, and he was doing all three moves. He didn't have them quite figured out though as his technique was to mash the joystick motion spastically while hitting the buttons, but it was enough to figure out the hurricane kick too. When SF2 came out, I was excited because I already knew the special moves, but then there were all these new characters I didn't know how to play. And that's when it happened: people started playing each other. That's what changed everything. The arcades were all dying, but with SF2 the crowds started gathering around. It was no longer about playing the games and getting the high score. It was about being the best competitor. It's crazy to see it all start and to have gone to and competed in a lot of the first video game competitions. It has come a long way from arcade employees setting up home grown tournaments and giving away ticket prizes. Now we have EVO.

mercer 6y ago
> One day another player showed up from another arcade, and he was doing all three moves. This was one of the arcade-specific experiences that I've never quite had at any other point in my life. MMORPGS and forums have given me some of the feeling of being at an arcade, but this was something unique. I was perhaps too young, or for whatever reason not good enough to be noteworthy at the arcades. But (as mentioned elsewhere in this thread), my best friend was. He was notoriously good. We'd go from arcade to arcade in town, until they'd ban him or (in one case) up the difficulty just to get him to leave. We'd play co-op games where he carried me through and it was a kind of bonding experience I can't quite compare to anything else. He was so good at the competitive games (in particular SF2) that people wouldn't challenge him. Why waste a coin? I sometimes put in a coin just to bait others, because the clever players knew that if you saw someone playing SF2 alone for a while, they were probably really good. He'd give me 10 cents to reimburse me :). Whenever a new arcade opened up (usually in a shipping container, but sometimes 'real fancy'), we'd rush there and first try the new games, but then get back to SF2 and hope there were players that didn't know about him yet. It usually worked for a while. But possibly one of the most vivid memories of my childhood was the time that, while I was faffing about on other arcades, out of the corner of my eye I'd see some other guy (it was mostly men, but perhaps that's partly culturally. women became mothers-in-training in their teens) walk up to his solo SF2 play, and pop in a coin. I swear, when that happened, it sometimes felt like a Western. I'd notice first, on account of keeping an eye on my bestie, but others 'in the know' would nudge each other and cut off whatever game they were playing to watch the spectacle. A crowd would form around my friend and this 'new guy', and, of course, most of the time he'd do the equivalent of drawing so quick that the other guy didn't stand a chance. Sometimes he'd play around. Pick one of the weaker characters (that monster one I don't remember). Or humiliate his new adversary by offering to play with one hand. I think there was only one time where he struggled, and it turned out this guy was a dude from the capitol and was known there for being the local SF2 champion. EDIT: Oh, and just to add some color to this story in case anyone liked it: I was one of the few people in town with a personal computer. My parents told me to not mention it to my friends for fear of theft. I told this friend and I will never forget the experience of having him over and playing games together. This was a 486 and we played Wacky Wheels and (I think) Doom and One Must Fall, the latter which was closest to the fighting games he was so good at (or perhaps a similar game?). These games were clearly a step down from what we got to play at the arcades, but the fact that we could play them without having to put in coins (even if they had the 'continue' and 'credits' screens) was just mind-blowing to the both of us. Sadly as I moved on to RPG's and RTS', he stuck with the arcades and we drifted apart in this regard. We bonded over watching badly dubbed films though, The Matrix being probably our favorite.
- drx 6y ago
  Thank you for sharing, what a nice story.
  - mercer 6y ago
    The memory was so nice that I'd have been happy writing it in a journal just for myself :). Very happy to have been reminded of it.
- raiyu 6y ago
  I think you hit the nail on the head. I grew up with Street Fighter and never really connected the dots as to why I love the game so much. Sure it had pretty good graphics for the time, and gameplay was great as well. But the real differentiator was the ability to "compete" with other people. Not just compete, but the fact that you plopped down 25 cents and within 3 minutes one of your lost. At the time we didn't have much money, so 25 cents per game play was quite a lot. So it really came down to being great and trying to beat as many people as possible so that your 25 cents could last longer. It was probably my first real memory of truly being competitive at life.
  - mercer 6y ago
    Oh yeah! While I preferred the games there focused on co-op, I could see the appeal of Street Fighter. My friend seemed to have a decent amount of fun seeing how long he could last in single player, but the constant second player putting in a coin was what it was all about. Some of them would tell me later that they spent their weekly allowance on trying to 'git gud' beating my friend.

by snarfy 6y ago

mercer 6y ago

> One day another player showed up from another arcade, and he was doing all three moves. This was one of the arcade-specific experiences that I've never quite had at any other point in my life. MMORPGS and forums have given me some of the feeling of being at an arcade, but this was something unique. I was perhaps too young, or for whatever reason not good enough to be noteworthy at the arcades. But (as mentioned elsewhere in this thread), my best friend was. He was notoriously good. We'd go from arcade to arcade in town, until they'd ban him or (in one case) up the difficulty just to get him to leave. We'd play co-op games where he carried me through and it was a kind of bonding experience I can't quite compare to anything else. He was so good at the competitive games (in particular SF2) that people wouldn't challenge him. Why waste a coin? I sometimes put in a coin just to bait others, because the clever players knew that if you saw someone playing SF2 alone for a while, they were probably really good. He'd give me 10 cents to reimburse me :). Whenever a new arcade opened up (usually in a shipping container, but sometimes 'real fancy'), we'd rush there and first try the new games, but then get back to SF2 and hope there were players that didn't know about him yet. It usually worked for a while. But possibly one of the most vivid memories of my childhood was the time that, while I was faffing about on other arcades, out of the corner of my eye I'd see some other guy (it was mostly men, but perhaps that's partly culturally. women became mothers-in-training in their teens) walk up to his solo SF2 play, and pop in a coin. I swear, when that happened, it sometimes felt like a Western. I'd notice first, on account of keeping an eye on my bestie, but others 'in the know' would nudge each other and cut off whatever game they were playing to watch the spectacle. A crowd would form around my friend and this 'new guy', and, of course, most of the time he'd do the equivalent of drawing so quick that the other guy didn't stand a chance. Sometimes he'd play around. Pick one of the weaker characters (that monster one I don't remember). Or humiliate his new adversary by offering to play with one hand. I think there was only one time where he struggled, and it turned out this guy was a dude from the capitol and was known there for being the local SF2 champion. EDIT: Oh, and just to add some color to this story in case anyone liked it: I was one of the few people in town with a personal computer. My parents told me to not mention it to my friends for fear of theft. I told this friend and I will never forget the experience of having him over and playing games together. This was a 486 and we played Wacky Wheels and (I think) Doom and One Must Fall, the latter which was closest to the fighting games he was so good at (or perhaps a similar game?). These games were clearly a step down from what we got to play at the arcades, but the fact that we could play them without having to put in coins (even if they had the 'continue' and 'credits' screens) was just mind-blowing to the both of us. Sadly as I moved on to RPG's and RTS', he stuck with the arcades and we drifted apart in this regard. We bonded over watching badly dubbed films though, The Matrix being probably our favorite.

drx 6y ago
Thank you for sharing, what a nice story.
- mercer 6y ago
  The memory was so nice that I'd have been happy writing it in a journal just for myself :). Very happy to have been reminded of it.
raiyu 6y ago
I think you hit the nail on the head. I grew up with Street Fighter and never really connected the dots as to why I love the game so much. Sure it had pretty good graphics for the time, and gameplay was great as well. But the real differentiator was the ability to "compete" with other people. Not just compete, but the fact that you plopped down 25 cents and within 3 minutes one of your lost. At the time we didn't have much money, so 25 cents per game play was quite a lot. So it really came down to being great and trying to beat as many people as possible so that your 25 cents could last longer. It was probably my first real memory of truly being competitive at life.
- mercer 6y ago
  Oh yeah! While I preferred the games there focused on co-op, I could see the appeal of Street Fighter. My friend seemed to have a decent amount of fun seeing how long he could last in single player, but the constant second player putting in a coin was what it was all about. Some of them would tell me later that they spent their weekly allowance on trying to 'git gud' beating my friend.