Why I Love Fighting Games: Part 1

I never really liked fighting games before. I was very bad at them and just did not understand them. All I saw was button mashing, and all I wanted to do is pull off some cool special moves.

Then Street Fighter 4 [SF4] came out in 2009. During one of my internships, a few of us interns would get together during lunch at work and play games. Mario Kart, Wii sports... whatever it was, we made it competitive. But soon, we started looking for something more competitive. We started playing Super SF4. It was fun, but I always lost. Badly. I got tired of losing and started looking for help online. I came across this video:

Exciting, right? For those who don't know what is going on, this was the last round of the semifinals at EVO, the largest fighting game tournament held in America. Check it out at http://evo2k.com/. The game was Street Fighter 3: Third Strike [SF3]. In all Street Fighter games, special moves inflict a small portion of damage when blocked. However, SF3 had a mechanic where you can negate that damage by pressing a direction a few fractions of a second of the attack (See Parry). The timing is very tight and the direction depends on the attack so it is very difficult. Anyways, Ken (male character) player had only a bit of life; he would die even if he blocked a special attack. So the Chun-Li player did a Super move that hits 18 times. The other player was able to parry every single hit, and THEN pull off a difficult combo for the kill. CRAZY STUFF!

Then I dove deeper. I learned that fighting games were like a game of chess. They are calculating battles for territory, complex clashes for resources, multi-layered mind games, and rigorous tests of hand-eye coordination. For example, while many people only notice the amazing action in the previous video, those familiar with fighting game strategies focus on the part just before that, where both players shuffle back and forth. The Ken player knows the other player is going to throw out a Super move. He must press forward just as the Chun-li player activates it to successfully parry. The Chun-li player knows his opponent knows this, so he is shuffling back and forth, pretending to do the Super in order to throw off his opponent's timing. So you see, these games are deep and thoughtful.

That is it for now. I'll be back soon for part 2, where I will talk about the fighting game community.