GOOD?
HOLD ON. What's "good"?
You decide how good is good. That's how everyone does it.
'Good' for Me: I can beat most any random at a party. But when I visit any players who take the game seriously at all, I can't beat any of them. Online, I swim around in the low ranks. For instance: in SFV, I play mostly in the bronze ranks and briefly peek into the silver. If I get onto a game for a couple weeks, I can actually hang in that silver rankā¦ but that's about it. For a short period when I was younger I was a little better because I was practicing intensively, but still kind of learning how to look at things.
I consider 'good' to beā¦ somewhere beyond my level? That's how vague 'good' is. If you want to know more than that, please ask.
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TLDR:
I find great enjoyment in fighting games and always have, but I've never been very good at a single one despite playing thousands of hours over 25 years. If you're curious about how I can enjoy them so much despite losing so often, please ask me anything.
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# Welcome.
If I could only play one genre for the rest of my life, it would be fighting games.
I get at least some enjoyment out of every one I play, and have spent maybe half of the past 25 years obsessed with one or another, and always up for a match otherwise. My perspective on them has evolved a lot over the years. For the first half, I longed to be 'good'. For the second half, I let that desire go. Nowadays, I see that winning or losing at a fighting game even at my modest skill level has led to my richest gaming experiences and always will.
When I was 12 years old, I was considered to be an excellent player, adjusted for age. I could beat the some of the highschool boys in my suburban city, and they would torture or bully me when we crossed paths around town. Despite being truly scared of them, I was not deterred in the least. I wanted to play so bad.
At 13, me and one friend became locally dominant at Mortal Kombat 2. Dominant. There were two comic book shops and an arcade. We would walk to any one of these with 50 cents between us. Enough for one play. We would alternate rounds as long as we liked, chewing through a conveyor belt of older kids who crowded around the machine. Random select every time. This actually got our asses whooped irl a couple times. This would be my only taste of domination.
By 14, I learned how to do walking 360s and became pretty nasty with this character that was considered unusable in our little pond. Our little, shallow, low-tech, pond.
When I got my driver's license, I started traveling to the South Bay where the real action was supposed to be. It was really really real. It wasn't just highschool boys. There were MEN. Grown ass men running those machines. I had basically never seen that in my town. Young and old were on another level there. Way out of my league.They were steady and cool when they played. They had so much control. Were so clever.
I was nothing. This was a gut churning revelation. I was terrible at Street Fighter. Terrible at Tekken. I could hardly keep myself from falling out of the ring in Virtua fighter. Literally couldn't follow xmen played at that level. I guess I could hang in at the killer instinct machine or maybe primal rage like the babies did. :< I met some online peeps down there to play Tekken 3 once. Wellā¦I was so embarrassed at how bad I was that I never talked to them again and disappeared from that forum.
Sometime in my early twenties, I started hanging out at the arcade that used to be at Cal Berkeley. This was transformative. All the relevant games in deluxe cabinets with optical joysticks. All of the less relevant games at hand to be snapped into a cabinet. Regular players who were better than I had ever seen. And not least I was finally ready to ask for help and receive help.I learned a lot of technique, but that's nothing compared to the perspective I took away. Fighting games are more fun than ever since then. I entered the weekly tourneys there. I never got very far and they weren't exactly huge events.
Y'know tho - This one time I went, I didn't realize our weekly tournament was part of a regional this time. I got lined up against Ortiz. Think about this for a second: She had to crack me up for four rounds in front of an audience. I'll always remember that. It was like she somehow took control of my character. By then I had learned to be cool. I focused the whole time and tried not to walk into her sweeps over and over. Seriously beat me four rounds 70% with sweeps. But I stayed cool even being so outmatched and intimidated.
By then I was able to appreciate being bodied like that in front of a crowd. A cherished memory. That's the perspective I took away from this period at the UCB Bearcade.
That's pretty much the best I ever got and it wasn't much. But the appreciation for the games I took away was - as I said - transformative. Thank you, Binh.
After that, it was all downhill. Anywhere I went where people could actually play, I was one of the worst people there. Every game, all the time, through the death of arcades and the birth of online. I still did well in low tech environments, but now I knew I wasn't very good and never was. There can be great value in not knowing some things. Bliss, they say.
I sucked but it was mostly okay. I could forget about that most of the time and still have tons of fun. I believed that if I put enough time in and practiced enough, I would get 'good'. And that would be good?
It never happened. Maybe I don't have it in me. I see it doesn't matter anymore. I fight not because I will win but because I am full of fight.
So I've never been good at any fighting game. It's my favorite genre and I enjoy the hell out of them and I have fun every time. Because I play a great variety of games, I make basically no time to practice now. Yes, I generally play online. Yes, I eat multiple bee stings every session even playing in the lower ranks.
I'm pretty sure there are members who do want to enjoy fighting games, perhaps even deeply, but cannot because they are resigned to the idea that they will never be good and never be able to practice enough to be good. Locked out or at least walled off from enjoying this country.
So here I type, with the fire alive after a quarter of a century, but having never been good. Do you find that strange?
Ask me anything. Or ask me nothing, and may this thread sink. Thanks for reading!
