Fighting Games

In 1987, a little-known video game company called Capcom unleashed upon the world what would later become known as the greatest arcade game since pong. Street Fighter. This world we speak of was the obscure planet of Weebo6-RX2. On Earth, however, it was generally not as well recieved. HOWEVER, I'm willing to bet my high school educational equvilansy dipplomah that few could have known the impact the game's sequels would have on the future adolsecent male population, as well as the limits and boundries pushed in every grey area of copyright infringement. Now, to truly get the full scope of what we're dealing with, we must first understand what a fighting game is. Really, why am I writing this now, I'm about to leave on a date with a girl I met on craigslist and officially cheat on my girlfriend, thus voluntarily accepting the title of "scum" and it's lesser cousin "d-bag". She's a nice girl, I need help, this is totaly not cool. Fighting games encompass three things.

1. A hero character that can throw a fireball.

2. A villain who's incomprehensible evil is matched only by his inexplicaple ability to operate outside of any kind of law enforcement.

3. Something else, which I haven't thought out yet, because I am just making this up as I go along. I should have chosen the "Flavor of Love" topic. No one else but me ever thought "Buckwild" was hot. I am in over my head.

Violence has always been a staple in society. To experience it, to watch it, and to play it out in magical settings with no repercussions of any kind and physical abilities that could never be matched or even considered by the practitioner. If you're a male, you've at least once tried, mostly in vain, to excecute your own fireball. This has tended to happen at the most unfavorable of times. Like when you thought you could break down the restroom door in a hurry after that beef chimmichanga you had for brunch didn't agree with you in fifth grade. THAT was a day I'd like to forget. But you must understand, these characters are heroes to us guys, and to some of us, a coming of age and manhood. If wacking it to Chun Li is wrong, I don't wanna be right. Seriously people, I am not a professional writer. Just an asshole, you get what you pay for. In general, a fighting game consists primarily of two fictitious and ridculously dressed people kicking the "wax-on" out of each other with anything they can get their hands on. In most cases, this is their hands. The winner is decided when one player's health bar has been depleted, and is knocked out of the competition. The health bar is a critical aspect of the game, as it measures how shitty you are playing. In most cases, it is common and encouraged practice for one to simulate the game's sounds on their own while playing said game, and mashing the buttons on one's joystick, so as to increase the power of the hit delivered. No lie. this was an actual feature of the first Street Fighter. Why it didn't stick, we'll never know. For the record, I am not spell checking this article. Are people allowed to leave comments here? If so, everyone who hates my writing can sit on a 10-incher. But I digress. In 1991 we saw the emergence of what would become the flagship of fighting games, Street fighter 2. In one of the very few instances of a sequal completely giving the orignal an anal fisting, it ate up quarters all over wherever it was released. I'm assuming this was the USA and Japan. Sorry, I already closed wikipedia. As expected, the gaming industry responded with praise, acceptence, and, of course, the most prestigous form of flattery; el plaigerismo. With the incarnation of "SFII", the genre was re-born and it looked like clear sailing for Capcom, with no end in sight. Unfortunately, the end was in sight, as some video games borrowed, ripped and/or blatantly stole choice aspects of the franchise from under it's nose. Games such as Fighter's History, Art of Fighting, Fart of Biting, Tart of Icing and other nonexistant chains with names i concocted and originally found humorous but ended up only sounding childish sprung up. Within these games were found familiar characters with incredible simularities and possible relative relations to those of SF2. Capcom took action and sued the black belt off of several of its rivals. Some suits they won, others i think they lost. I really don't know. They're still around today, so i guess they did something right.

If there was any reason to own a Super Nintendo, it was SF2. Granted, the snes kicked the genesis' ass in graphics and sound, it was only sweetening the deal if you had a SF2 cartridge to pop in. -And all your favorites were there, in arcade, coin-op-quality! I remember when i was a wee lad, back the old country, my friend and I would engage in stiff head to head [ no homo] competition which always played out in similar fashion to a snail taking on construction machinery normally requiring a Class F license to operate. In retrospect, he was older then me and I have no idea what satisfaction he garnered from pummeling a kid who didn't even know the characters could JUMP OVER those fireballs. Of course, I always played with Ryu, who didn't? Yeah, we all tried to be original at one time and pick the stretchy indian dude, but who were we really kidding? FUCK, VEGA'S STUPID JUMPING FIERCE KICK IS THE ONLY MOVE HE HAS AND NOTHING BEATS IT!! The world warrors were all the rage, enjoying the party and rocking on until someone in the audience pulled off their own head whilest screaming FINISH HIM! Mortal Kombat had came. I mean, Mortal Kombat had come. either way, someone was getting their toasty on. Mortal Kombat was a new kind of fighting game which did away with all the honour and gracious winner crap. It wasn't until Mortal Kombat that the term "baby got back" got its first litteral interpretation, as the idea now was basically, "who wants to see me yank out that guy's spinal cord?" By utilizing a system of actually killing your loser opponent in ways that made Lucifer rethink his life choices, Mortal Kombat seperated itself from the pack. The pack it didn't seperate itself from was angry parents and other people who lost their heads over people losing their heads. This article deserves a pulitzer. There, I said it. fuck this. $50 is totaly not worth the time i'm putting in. Fighting games rock. The End.

UPDATE: i am totaly done writing this. Also, the girl i went on a date with is now my new gf. woo-hoo!