Big things happening for the week of February 14 to 20 (Part 1)

Ah February, the time when the new Sentai is upon us. It's always exciting especially if the general consensus prior is positive, unlike a certain train themed one. But this year's February is extra special. Not only is it Sentai's 40th anniversary, it also marks the release of Street Fighter 5.

Now this may come a little off topic for this blog since I never really talked about fighting games but ever since E3 and EVO 2015, my focus on the gaming industry has intensified, specifically on fighting games. Whenever I have the time, I have been visiting Eventhubs for fighting game news and USF4 highlights. I watch the top players on the Capcom Pro Tour and I really enjoy the moments. I played MK X for quite some time too, having Jason and Predator really piqued my interest. Ferra Torr was my first character and they are a blast to play as. It's a crying shame the PC users will not be getting Alien. I was planning on purchasing the Komplete Edition but I guess WB lost another customer with this decision.

I had so much fun with this Variation

Now if only Freddy returned this would be even more perfect

So with all these big events happening in my fandoms, I began thinking about how I grew up with these 2 fandoms. I will start with the fighting game genre

One of my earliest gaming memories involve Street Fighter 2. I do not know which iteration I had I was trying to get 2 Blankas to hit their electric attacks at the same time. I don't believe I ever succeeded.

In fact, when I try to think about old gaming memories, majority of them are from fighting games. I remember battling my cousins in an Alpha Series. I was button mashing like crazy and my thumb always had blisters. We battled in Tekken 3 where Eddy Gordo was the cheapest character ever.

The Vs series blew my mind. I loved playing those games over and over with different teams. I remember seeing a 99 hit Super combo with a 2 Gambit team and I was so into it.

This is probably my favorite one of the series

Eventually the PS2 era came and we got Tekken 4 and MVC2. By this time we were not that into it anymore. We got to play the Naruto Vs games and that reinvigorated us for a while. Then the PSP came along. Tekken 5 was in a handheld device. I was able to take it anywhere with me. It was amazing. I threw myself into training mode and grinded out the most damaging combos I could find. Then Tekken 6 came out and I can't tell you how many hours I wasted beating the same Arcade mode over and over again.

                                  
                                           

After the end of that, I was done. I did not want to game anymore. Nowadays we all have PC games and console gaming in my family is ancient history. I do miss the days when we would get together, boot up the old PS1/PS2 games and play.

One big reason fighting games have always appealed to me is because of its fast pace.  After 2 rounds, you have a winner. The loser gives the controller to the next guy and the cycle continues. Everyone will likely get a chance to play. Everyone can get the chance to show off their favorite characters. It's so satisfying to win and it's exciting to watch. Even those who don't play can get in on the action by button mashing and back then, it usually works.

As I got older, I realized something, I told myself, "Hey, you've been playing these games all this time and I don't think you even really know how to do a Hadouken" And I felt ashamed. Unfortunately for the Street Fighter  side of me, which was really non existent at that point in time, I never got to play SF3. It was Tekken 5 era. So I learned Tekken. Then SF4 came out, I realized the inputs were identical. A Phoenix Smasher had the same input as Hadouken. A Lightning Fist input is the same as a Shoryuken. I never properly learned SF4. I never got to learn FADC combos or whatnot. Playing on keyboard and trying to pull off Ultra moves with say Guile or Zangief confounded the hell out of me.

                                    (How in the world do I do this in keyboard?)

And the links, oh my gosh a simple 2 button combo was impossible for me to do. I was so dumbfounded that I could not link a light and medium punch combo. So I gave up, what chance did I have with those long combos that ended with  Ultras. So I just played casual as can be SF4 with friends. And I loved every minute of it. Even though we couldn't do the fancy stuff, I still felt the same feelings the old games gave me. The excitement of simply watching 2 people try to win in a fighting game is all one needs to enjoy them.

With SFV on the horizon, I plan to be an online player. It's a new game, we are all on even playing field, except those who got the beta, I have a definite interest for the FGC, I have a decent laptop that hopefully can run it. I also have a PS4 controller. I think the way Capcom is handling the DLC is the way every game with DLC should be handled. SF4 with all its iterations really did it no favors.

Pre order shenanigans

Oh wow, this was longer than I expected, I'll talk about Sentai/PR in the next post.