Street Fighter V is a game about fighting, in the streets.
I was at an FGC event a while back and this kid said to me, "Street Fighter has changed, man. Back in my day it was pure." I asked the kid how old he was, he told me he was fifteen years young. Usually I would have wanted to smack fire out of the kid but instead I smacked fire out of myself. I realized at that moment I had quit playing Street Fighter six years before the kid was born.
How does that work? How does a game last for so long? how does it build a community that survives generations. I don't want to talk about any of those things. I want to rant about how bad Capcom fucked up the Street Fighter V launch.
I kind of also want to tell a long winded story about my first experience with street fighter, and I might, I literally might just begin telling that story out of nowhere in the next paragraph, but this launch situation has me so charged up I think my ADD will stay in check.
A long time ago I was a young kid in the City. I didn't have much to do after school because I did my homework on the bus so I wouldn't have to talk to anybody. And since no one was home to tell me not to I would walk up to street to an ice cream shop called Scoops to play video games and eat ice cream. The struggle was real back then.
The kid who lived up the street would do the same because his dad was a consistently unemployed member of one of those San Joaquin Valley organizations that fly the confederate flags not ironically and he enjoyed beating up on the kid when there was nothing better to do. So he went somewhere else.
I was a defensive player and the kid was an offensive player. I was notorious for giving people a round, pretending to mess up moves and dropping combos. Waiting for the opponent to get comfortable, and then I would punish every choice they made. Street Fighter taught me the more dumb you pretend to be the more you can get away with.
The kid was always in your range, forcing errors, crossing up, generally pulling a player out of themselves. He also used real life proximity to his advantage. He realized talking pedantically to an opponent was the most efficient way to shake them. He would say things like, "If you were patient you would be really good!"
Anyway, we would take turns playing rounds, a really controversial move at the time. We figured people would have to beat one of us so it wasn't really cheating.
Oh wait, yeah Street Fighter V is not a full game yet. I don't like the game because I am not good at it. Online play is terrible, and it's not pure. Not like it was back in the day. Oh, and about the kid, he joined the marines, I joined the Navy. Such is life.
I hope information (Oh stop the blog was always bad and rambly don't sigh) actually plays The Division Beta instead of just talking about having played the Division Beta. It's... It's not bad. Oh and also good luck to DB, Activision is a good home don't listen to the haters. Oh crap sorry I forgot also JERBZ.
The Protoculture Mixtape : Issue : People : Duck-Duck-Dooken
