Welcome to day 4! Our list so far:
-Day 1: Metroid: Other M
-Day 2: Batman: Arkham Asylum
-Day 3: inFAMOUS
and now for today's entry:
Street Fighter 4
-Xbox 360 (also on Playstation 3, PC and in Arcades if you can find one that still exists)
This game.
Man, this game.
Talking about this game requires a story.
Lets take a trip in the DeLorean. About 20 years ago, Street Fighter 2 was in every arcade (back when such a thing existed and was commonplace), 7-eleven, laundromat and comic shop. It was a phenomenon. It was groundbreaking.
And I sucked at it. I was downright terrible. Yes, I was around 10 years old at the time, but my contemporaries were pretty good. Hell, my best friend back then in middle school was a freaking SF2 DEMON. He played as Guile and frustrated the shit out of older kids. Just straight up owning them. He tried his best to teach me, but my stubborn young brain and dumb hands could not coordinate well enough to beat anyone, even the computer on easy.
Years would pass and in high school I hung out and even worked part time at a local brick and mortar game store called GameStuff. Every regular customer and employee was really damn good at fighting games. EVERY fighting game. So they taught me in the best way possible: by beating the living daylights out of me everyday. I will NEVER forget the lessons I got from Rony and Thomas in particular, where they took turns destroying me. Instead of "winner stays" it was "winner tags out to partner to fuck up Dre". I was not allowed to stop playing until I won a ROUND, they showed me no mercy.
Over time, it worked. It took a while but it all eventually clicked in my head. I remember when X-Men vs Street Fighter came out in arcades. I used Gambit and Charlie and was surprisingly wrecking people. It became second nature, very akin to an old marital arts movie when I was able to hold my own against everyone in many games. Virtua Fighter, Fatal Fury, King of Fighters, Street Fighter Alpha 3. I was not just button mashing anymore. I knew what I was doing.
As years passed and I got a real job, I had not played fighting games religiously for a while. They had become much more technical and in my opinion annoying (i.e. Street Fighter 3, Marvel vs. Capcom 2) and I no longer had the free time to practice and keep up with the current scene.
Fast forward to Summer 2008, Capcom finally learned to count to 4. My current best friend Jai and I went to an arcade in Walnut to play one of the first Street Fighter 4 cabinets in the U.S. What I really loved about the game is that it had a very old school style to it. It played like the old SF2, but with some modern things mixed in. I lost both of the matches I played, but I knew the moment that game came out for home consoles, I was all in. I even went out bought a legit arcade fighting stick controller for the damn game.
When it finally came out, I jumped online and it was EPIC. All the lessons of my old training combined with all the times I watched my old friend in middle school finally melded together to whip some ass with my old school Guile. I am not THAT good at the game, but damn if I can put up a good fight. That feeling is what got this game in my all-time list.
Tomorrow is the lone representative from 2008 to make it into my list.
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