Fighting Games are Awesome But......

I love a good fighting game and fighting games are probably one of the most fun genres around.  Grab a couple of friends and just beat the shit out of each other all night long over a few drinks, it's a damn good time.  Doesn't matter if it's 2D like Street Fighter or 3D like Tekken, generally speaking whacking out a fighting game at a gathering of gamers is a guaranteed good time.

As you may have been aware from my ranty post about how much I hate Tokyo, I'm currently stuck here on job training.  One weekend me and my buddy hit a game centre and I had a quick blast on Capcom Vs SNK 2.  That game is awesome and I was able to beat the whole thing with one coin which was pretty nice.  Following our little run at fighting games in the arcade, we went back to his place with some cans of beer and fired up a bit of Street Fighter Alpha 3.  We ramped the difficulty up to 8 (max) and took turns working our way through the games arcade mode.  We had to continue a couple of times but it wasn't too long before we made it to the end.

Now if you think I'm telling you all this to show off, I'm not.  In fact it's quite the opposite, I love fighting games but I fucking suck at them really hard.  Sure, I'm good enough to beat down the CPUs in an arcade or on a home console version but if you put me in front of someone who even remotely knows what they are doing, then I'm going to get smacked the fuck down.

I remember first coming to Japan in 2010, me and my friends had been playing an absolute shit ton of Tekken 6 and we were extremely excited to jump on an arcade version and try our hands against the denizens of Nagoya.  Generally speaking, there was little to not competition at our university with everyone who came play being embarrassingly bad with the exception of our group.  We were sort of successful online but coming to Japan and playing the people here was a completely different ball game.  We got beat down.  Hard.

Despite my complete suckage it hasn't turned me away from the genre.  I find the competitive scene for this genre absolutely fascinating and the dedication it takes to learn a fighting game well enough to play at a tournament rivals that of speed running.  All the things such as frame and hitbox data as well as how to use each character effectively is amazing and it's a great thing that people take the time and effort to learn this stuff in great detail.

Fighting games are great and the people who play them well are a treat to watch.  I only wish that I was better but I just can't wrap my head around that shit.  If I sat down and played one for a significant length of time maybe I could get good but between speed running and my backlog I don't think that will be happening for a very long time.  Guess I'm just destined to be the ultimate scrublord for all of time.