FIGHT FIEND
How Nick’s upbringing turned him into a fighting game fanatic
When I think about the great influences on my life, I have memories before the times that I encountered many of them. As a young child in hospital, there was no Sonic cuddly toy to hold because Sonic didn’t exist yet, and the 1997 general election was the first time I took any real notice of politics. But thanks to my dad, karate was in my life from day one. He’d been training since before I was born and he eventually became an instructor and later a club owner, so naturally that became a family thing. Two of my sisters have earned their black belts, and while I never reached that level myself I had some minor success at competitions in the mid-nineties, winning a couple of third place trophies for kata. Even though I no longer train today, I could probably perform a reasonable Heian Shodan.
Karate planted the seeds for so many of my interests. I’ll happily watch any combat sports, from UFC and boxing to Olympic judo and even the simulated scrapping of pro wrestling. My competitive streak was definitely fostered through competition days, and my interest in Japanese culture started here too. It also influenced our entertainment diet – The Karate Kid
was appointment viewing whenever it was on TV, and I definitely saw
Kickboxer too young. Since my dad was and is a gamer himself, you can probably imagine where this is heading. Mortal Kombat was the first fighting series I really got into, as dad borrowed the original game before eventually getting Mortal Kombat II
for the Mega Drive, and we’d play against each other regularly. At home, I’d borrow the Master System version of the original from friends, though I wasn’t allowed to use the blood code there since it scared my sister.
In the late-nineties, my tastes broadened a lot. Whenever we’d go to the town centre, my mum would give me a 50p piece or two so I could play in Sega Park while she got things done. It was there that I conquered
Virtua Fighter 3tb with a team of Lion,
Jacky and Kage, and there that reading
CVG paid off when I got to delight in the thrills of playing as Akuma in
X-men Vs Street Fighter. It was also there that I got my first challenge from a stranger in an arcade, and I narrowly lost that match. I grabbed
Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition when the local video rental shop started clearing out Mega Drive games. I discovered Tekken 2 on a demo disc at a friend’s house, and the game came with the Playstation I got for my 12th birthday.
Fighting games are best played with other people of course, and I’ve been fortunate to enjoy them with a number of friends. My friend James and I discovered games like Guilty Gear and Street Fighter III together, and I now have both the Saturn and the copy of Street Fighter Alpha 2 we played the first time I visited his house. At university, I’d play Tekken: Dark Resurrection on the PSP with one of my flatmates in the first year, and in my final year the Dead Or Alive games became house favourites because of their accessible counterattacks and spectacular multi-tiered arenas.
Blazblue became an unexpected hit in another shared house when my housemate’s girlfriend mastered Taokaka. I’ve had plenty of fun fighting my colleagues too, whether I was getting my face kicked off by Ryan King and Luke Albigés or experiencing the
Third Strike strategy known only as the Darran Jones Factor.
I’d never thought to count how many fighting games I owned before, but once I resolved to write about how much I enjoy fighting games, I decided to do it. It turns out I’ve got over 100 – and that’s just counting standard fighting games. I didn’t include anything in a compilation, nor anything sports-based like boxing or wrestling games, or unusual ones like Power Stone or Psychic Force. In fact, I keep finding ones that aren’t in my collection spreadsheet, and I’ve just realised that the most expensive game I ever bought was a fighting game – a Neo Geo MVS copy of Garou: Mark Of The Wolves.
Do I need to own Virtua Fighter on 32X, Saturn and PC? No, but the differences between the versions fascinate me anyway. Do I really need Street Fighter III: Double Impact when Third Strike is right there? Sure, because it’s fun to play the versions where Sean was taken more seriously.
I guess that’s the thing that shows how much you love a genre, really. I love the little details that set each game and each series apart, whether it’s the crazy movement options you find in anime fighters, the transformative nature of the sidestep in 3D fighting games, or even something as simple as going back to a time before super moves. I love seeing how some characters drastically evolve over the years, while some barely need to be changed to remain relevant. And of course what I love the most is putting this all into practice, whether I’m casually beating up the CPU on a random game or playing winner stays on with friends. If I walk past you and see you’re playing a fighting game, I’ll almost certainly stop to ask what it is and very likely ask to play a round or two with you. So if you ever see me at an event or somewhere like Arcade Club, you know what to do – issue a challenge! I might win, I might not, but either way you know I’ll be having fun.