...and the fighting looks like DANCING....
(Maestro, music please:)
Zoom zoom zoom and welcome once again to the Retro Confessional. Judging by the title I hope you can guess this will be about the wonderful genre of fighting games. Some of my favorite memories through the years were from fighting games. On the other side of the token, some of my most painful memories are also from this genre. More on that later….
WHO'S THE MASTER....SHO NUFF!
Karate Champ (Arcade)
My first memories of fighting games reside with Karate Champ. Footloose by Kenny Loggins probably reminds most of some movie with punch dancing, but my punch dancing memories are from Karate Champ at the roller rink. I would get dropped of for some serious skate time and spend more time trying to roundhouse-kick people into oblivion (one-hit oblivion) than actually skating. Half the time I swear Footloose or Let’s Hear It For The Boy was blaring in the background.
This game took the novel approach of using two joysticks to control the fighters. To get an idea how it works, tapping forward on both sticks would yield a Shinku Hadoken. Seriously I think that executed a forward kick. Every fighting game after this owes a debt to these pixelated warriors. A favorite to be sure.
20 years and only 3 sequels, oh wait I forgot about Alpha, EX, Championship.....
Street Fighter (Arcade)
The game that launched a thousand sequels (14+) across several generations of consoles, should be synonymous with Fighting games. The particular machine I played had three distinct features. The first is that it was one of the variety that had the pressure-sensitive pads. If you are not in the know, some Street Fighter cabinets did not have standard buttons. They had two large pressure pads. Depending on the force you hit them with, the characters in the game would deliver a weak, medium, or hard attack. In my arcade if you played Ryu (left player) the punches were all hard and the kicks all weak. This would be due to wear and tear on the machine. Those that selected Ken (in other words waited to be player 2 or right side player) had weak punches and kicks for the longest time. The other distinct feature was the need to concentrate over the sound of balloons popping 10 feet away at all hours (stupid Fanky Malloon).
My friends and I “played” this game for hours. “Playing” consisted of furiously moving the joystick around this way and that and pounding on the pads, hoping to shoot a fire ball. The final feature was the broken speakers that made the game sound like it was mumbling when it would play dialog. I mock it, but those were fun times. Another favorite.
Odds 3 to 1 for pink tank-top over pot belly box thrower, Ty
Pit Fighter (Arcade)
Where to begin? Pit Fighter was a very odd game. It consisted of fighters build like Bennet from Commando. The out of shape fighters were the playable characters. The NPC characters consisted of a who’s who from fetish parties…err the underground fighting world. The thing I remember most from this game was the fact that you got strangled. A LOT. Leather plus all the choking may have lead to some interesting questions to mom and dad. The other thing I remember about this game is that it ate tokens like nobody’s business. When I saw Pulp Fiction I thought of this game. This game is painful to remember.
Take note of Chun-Li's "Senior Picture Pose"
Street Fighter II (in all its incarnations)
Out of the gate I will say that Street Fighter II in one form or another has so many happy and fun memories attached to it. Though I have two painful memories which I will explain in a bit. When this came out I would travel to another mall that was not close, just to play it. My friend, who shall be know as Mr. Milk journeyed with me on many of those early travels. We had a steep learning curve since the old Street Fighter play method did not work. Eventually a machine arrived closer to home but still not in the reliable home mall arcades. This one was in a drug front. The full story on this is for another day. Finally we got some in the home turf, but that made me late from break for work…a lot.
Any player worth their salt will remember the first time the managed to destroy someone spamming a hundred-hand slap, psycho-crusher, or the dreaded “Yap yap yap” of Chun-Li. There were so many versions of this, but my favorite was Super Street Fighter II for the SNES. I spent many hours with roommates in an apartment playing this. The ultimate challenge was to play 8 vs 8 and set it for random select. Please correct me if I am wrong on the number of players. This was a great way to learn everyone and watch your friends despair if your anchor was someone you were really good with.
My painful memories will be reported in reverse order. When a version of this was released for Xbox Live Arcade I was very excited. I bought it on day 1. I stopped playing by day 3. I play in the Recreational zone of Xbox live. My compete ion started to give me the first negative feedback in my career on live. Most frequently I was called too aggressive. It’s a fighting game….
The other pain was from those roommates I played one with. One of them entered into an experiment with me. We were both former psychology majors, that were no longer in college. We decided to classically condition ourselves to not lose. It was simple. If you lost the game, you caused yourself pain. I do not condone this behavior and the experiment was a failure. All that resulted was you would feel very nervous if you were about to lose. I still feel sick to my stomach remembering this.
"China is here Mr. Burton"
Mortal Kombat (Arcade)
I bet you were expecting a picture of Raiden. Too Easy! I was not a fan of Mortal Kombat. I thought it was a poor Street Fighter II rip-off. However the fatalities were novel. I think most of my dislike came from how blatantly they “borrowed” Lightning from my beloved Big Trouble in Little China for Raiden (Yet for some reason Blanka from Street Fighter II never bothered me in this way). I will admit I liked to watch people pull off the fatalities. I suppose this one was painful for me.
And in this corner...RASPUTIN!
World Heroes (SNES)
This Street Fighter II clone provided hours of fun with my friends. It was easy enough to pick up on and the characters were so funny to us. Where else can you have a Hulk Hogan clone fight the mad monk Rasputin? Definitely a guilty pleasure.
Yes Orchid, everyone is pround of how many hits your myspace page got last week.
Killer Instinct (Arcade)
I hated this game. I never learned how to play it right. There was a reason for this. By the time this came out I was friends with one of those mall arcade managers. He used to play this without looking at the screen and win against the machine. Playing this game to me was like being able to dial a telephone number very quickly. Their “combo” system seemed to be nothing more than a very quick sequence of buttons with no skill. Oh and that one guy reminded me of the Predator aliens, and that annoyed me. I like those Predator aliens.
Hey! I said a little off the top, not my whole ponytail.
Battle Arena Toshinden (Playstation)
This precursor to Soul Calibur blew me away. It made me believe in that new machine Sony had dared to market. I mean who would have believed that Sony would prove a success. In my opinion this game helped put them on the map. I remember a lot of fun sessions with my friends. Also there was a little old man in it.
Someone played too much Pit Fighter
Soul Blade (Playstation)
I never mastered this game. I did have a great time playing it. It was a lot of fun to challenge your friends to a drinking game, called “No one will ever really learn to play at this rate”. I was amazed by the opening video to all of the different characters and fighting styles. Voldo would have done great in Pit Fighter.
Honorable mention / Food for comments:
Eternal Champions (Genesis) , Weaponlord (SNES), Tekken (any format), Last Bronx (Sega Saturn), Primal Scream (Arcade), Time Killers (Arcade), and of course Virtua Fighter (any format).
I have never been great at these types of games, but being an old arcade gamer you just had to get some skills. Today I still try and lose 90% of my matches in Soul Calibur online. I think the advent of the fighting game switched bragging rights from the top score, to the one who got to stay on the machine the longest. I did not care about high score again until Xbox Live Arcade made something old new again. Please do chime in and leave comments about your favorite fighters, or I might have to send Rasputin to kick you with his enormous foot.
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