CONTEST! FightStick Giveaway!
UPDATE: The comment contest is now over and all entries after 10:00 AM PST on May 28, 2014 are not eligible to win the prize! Thanks everyone (all 400+ of you) for your entries! The winning entries are pictured below (click thumbnails to view)! Congratulations to Evan & Lenn! Our panel of judges picked you as the winners!
Alright followers! I wanted to do a cool giveaway for Memorial Day weekend! I’ll keep this short and sweet. This contest is open worldwide, so don’t hesitate to enter! The TEKKEN TAG TOURNAMENT 2 Arcade FightStick TE S+ was a VERY important project for me. It was the FIRST official TEKKEN stick I worked on for a community that I love with all my heart. That being said, I want to give away one of these to you! They’re no longer being made, so this is your chance to win!
CONTEST PRIZE: 1 TEKKEN TAG TOURNAMENT 2 Arcade FightStick TE S+ for PS3 and 1 Arcade FightStick Carrier (Messenger Bag) by Mad Catz
HOW TO ENTER: Leave a comment below and tell me WHAT got you into fighting games? My coworkers will help pick the winner on Wednesday, May 28, 2014! (Make sure you scroll all the way down to find the comment/reply box)!
career. hobby. passion. - @MarkMan23 
I got into fighting games after competitive CS started to die down in the mid 2000’s. I liked the aspect of only having myself to blame, no way to blame other teammates for losses and such.
street fighter 2 got me into fighting games. one day it showed at my local store and it was like nothing i had ever seen before. i played it a bunch and would stay for hours sometimes watching other better players play.
I’ve always wanted to learn to play on a stick especially tag 2. I’m ready to up my game.
Forgot to mention what got me into the gaming community. It was a rivalry between my cousin and I. He was 13 at the time and I was about 5 or 6 and he introduced me to street fighter 2. I was enthralled by the game at a young age.. Absolutely taken back. I begged my parents for the game and It was all I had till the n64 days, and even then I kept coming back to streetfighter 2, never knowing that there was another version. When I found out it blew my mind that there was more. I remember picking up alpha 3 as my second game and playing it just to do flashy stuff like supers. Then the internet came and my life changed. I found this amazing community and I knew t his was the place for me.
Mortal Kombat. I played it at a friends on Sega Genesis. At that age I wasn’t allowed to play violent games, so I would sneak over after school and play all day learning and perfecting the game and fatalities.
I got into fighting games when I was about 5 years old, My very first fighting game was Mortal Kombat (believe it or not) I got so wrapped up in the game as a child I use to invite lots of my friends over and we’d play for hours on end. I’ve been pretty passionate about fighting games ever sense.
Crap, auto correct miss (corrected since with sense) :S
I remember the first time I got interested in fighting games, because all my friends were playing fighting games and always invited me to come over to play with them even though I had no knowledge at all about it nor being good at it, but they always welcomed me warmly…..I am glad to have such a warm community!
I remember when I was very little and suddenly we had this new game for the SNES, it was Street Fighter II Turbo! We’d have fun without even knowing how to do a single special move, but whenever a hadouken suddenly came out, I’d feel like the king of the world. I guess it’s not a special story; my brothers bought the game and that’s how I got into it, we would play it all day every day, they don’t play any more, but it ignited my spark for fighting games, which is something I’ll keep forever!
What got me into fighting games was the search for a game that would fuel my competitive spirit. Although there are many games around, only fighting games draw me so much into what’s going on the screen and make me concentrate 100%. Also the community is full of people who want to compete on the same level as me and I reckon that’s something really special.
I got into fighting games when my brother used to play mortal kombat and used to sit me there and beat me all the time.
Daigo Umehara!
What got me into fighting games, was when I first went to an arcade, I saw a Street Fighter arcade. I heard about the games a bit earlier. (I’m 21) and I decided to check it out. Once there, I was hooked. I got into Tekken, Marvel vs Capcom and Soul Calibur, but nothing could hook me as much as the Street Fighter series could.
that feeling you get for beating the other guy in the arcades.
Been playing tekken since t3 on ps1. Started watching tournaments on twitch made me hype. So I decided its enough of mashing buttons and time for some serious play.
I was a teacher in my late twenties when some of my high school students got me into fighting games. One of them kept his PS1 in my classroom all year. We took on all Tekken 3 challengers at lunch and after school.. I got good quick. My students even held bracket tournaments on the Friday afternoons before vacations. It was such a blast. I’m 45 now and I still play most variants of Tekken, Soul Calibur, and Street Fighter in my spare time. .
you’re a cool teacher. My fifth grade teacher would only let us play chess. I never ever, ever, ever played video games at school.
First game I played in an arcade was street fighter 2.
Every time I put in coins, someone would challenge me and bullied me out of the machine.
I ended up paying my ‘tuition fee’. It was hefty.
But I got hooked. I wanna not pay more ‘tuition fee’. I started watching others better than me when they play and watch their hand. I gotten better and better after.
Now.. I make others pay their tuition fee.
BWAH HA HA HA HA HA..!
In the 90’s SF2 arcade machines were everywhere. Then came Sf2 on Genesis, CvS 1,2 on Saturn, Tekken and Soulcalibur on ps2. Then there was a long quiet period when FPS’s took over the world. Then rebirth or fighting games with SF4. Now I mostly play Skullgirls and VF5.
what got me into fighting games is maximilian dood :3
I use to hang out at the local arcade around my area and though I was tight just mashing buttons with Eddy Gordo and Paul’s phoenix smasher. Than I meet someone in middle school and was telling him I’m pretty good. So one day we meet up at the arcade and he f***ing wrecked me doing real juggles and other stuff. After that we started kicking it and he showed me the scene, the real scene. Showed me video opera and combo videos. Learned about other arcades and japanese players and all this crazy stuff and I got really into it and never looked back!
What started my fascination with fighting games was obviously sibling rivalry, beating my brother in Street Fighter II was the ultimate bragging rights I could have ever wanted to earn more than a trophy. But alas, I was never really good at fighting games so as the variety of titles evolved from Street Fighter to Tekken, to Soul Edge, to Marvel Super Heroes, to Bloody Roar; I kept at them in hopes of being able to beat him.
Alas, I’m 26 years old and I finally beat him; with him ‘growing too old for video games’ and here I am trying to vouch my win for a stick I never got the chance to buy.
Cheers Markman!
Pretty simple actually, high kicks and mini skirts. My uncle actually brought us to a coin laundry arcade and we played Street Fighter 2 while we waited for our clothes go wash and dry. We’d save up quarters and do double k.o. to play extra matches.
I didn’t really get into fighters until I played CvS1 back in 2000. My friend whom I borrowed it from was going through the SATs and didn’t want any distractions, so he let me borrow his DC with CvS1, Sonic Adventure, and a few other games, but after playing CvS1 (up until that point I had only played SFII, Alpha, and MSHvsSF) I couldn’t put it down. I was in middle school at the time and I’d set my alarm to go off at 5am every morning so I could get up and practice. I had never played a SNK fighting game besides Fatal Fury so that half of the roster was completely new to me aside from Terry and Mai. The game just felt perfect compared to how silly MSHvsSF felt. And since playing it on DC was essentially the same as the arcade version, the hit effects, animations, stages, and music were all beyond what I was used to from my previous experiences with SFII and Alpha.
Shortly after returning the DC and games to my friend I told him how much fun I had with CvS1. His only response was: “Show me what you’ve learned.” He was always the best fighting game player in my small town and that day was the first time I held my own against him. I still remember the rush I had when our matches came down to the wire.
Then CvS2 came out and since then I’ve never put the game down. I still practice it once or twice a week and even stream/record my matches when friends come over.
Disclaimer: Pour English gramar and spelling may be the result of being German. 🙂
I always have been a fan of games where you can grow as a player. That’s why I – when I was still a kid – had a lot of fun playing games like SF2 on SNES, CvS2 on GameCube and Soul Calibur 2 on Xbox. While my friends stuck to mashing buttons I tried to learn the Characters, wanted to find out what their moves do. But since I was living in a small town in Germany, there was not much more to do than to hit arcade mode over and over.
It all changed with the release of Street Fighter 4. I got back into this genre and learned not only about the in-depth mechanics of 2D-fighting games but also discovered the competitive scene in the US and Japan via Youtube.
Allthough I am now living in one of the largest German cities, there are still only about 20 players who “really” play fighting games on a regular bases. But I made it my job to make the community grow. My girlfreind an I bought lots of stuff – lagless LCDs, consoles, sticks (5 fully operational stations) – and travel to German conventions to spread the love for fighting games, show people there is more to the genre than “mashing buttons” and take their “fear” from playing with an arcade stick.
I play fighting games because I like the thrill of playing a strong opponent, growing as a player and overcoming challenges. But I also play them to bring more people into the genre, forming a community and sharing this passion with others.
What got me into fighting games was randomly finding level up lives twitch channel about a year ago ever since then i watch them every week i had always been in to gaming in general but didnt know about the fgc but since i found it, its been crazy seeing how big the fgc is and how much support it gets i dont know how i didnt find it before because of how amazing a community it is and also how big it is im glad ive found it i made a few friends like cloud 805 and found out hes from the same city i was born in. also after finding the fgc it showed me how big the fgc and gaming community is in general and what the community is capable of thank you.
2nd or 3rd Grade. SF2 CE at the 7-11 near my house. a friend of mine took me there to check it out, and said he knew “combos.” I had no clue what he meant at the time, but since then whenever we went to an arcade I was playing SF or something.
Though it was in High School when I got more serious about learning the games (Tekken 3/TTT/MVC1). TTT1 especially was the game that got me going around to more arcades and playing against amazing comp (Ricky Ortiz at MGL and Redfoot at Wonderpark, etc.). The people I met and the great times I had got me hooked.
When i was a kid i remember watching my Dad in the arcade playing street fighter and Killer Instinct. Seeing the hype and how competetive it was always intrigued me as a child.
Got really into fighting games, cause of an injury when i was in playing basketball for high school a friend brought over Tekken 3 and i got bodied so hard i wanted to play until i could beat him. Always loved messing around in Street Fighter since SF2 on the SNES but loved the scene once i knew that there even was one!
When growing up i played some early street fighters, and later on around when tekken 2 released I started playing the tekken series with friends. I didn’t know much about fighting games, but i knew i liked playing them. While i was playing Jump Ultimate Stars online with online friends from an IRC, we randomly decided to play some fighting games on Kaillera with MAME like SF3 3rd Strike and KOF98. It was then that I decided to really try and learn mechanics and how to play better. In around 09′ when SF4 came out, I saw one of those friends play Street Fighter 4 on video in a tournament and thought how cool it would be to learn this game and play with more people, which is how I learned about the fighting game community. Since then I’ve learned more about the games, the fgc, its history and what it has to offer. Honestly, if it wasn’t for this I probably would’ve never met that friend who’s on the other side of the country since he came here for a fighting game event.
I first got into fighting games when I saw this huge amount of players playing Tekken Tag Tournament in a amusement park inside a mall. I got enticed by looking at those insanely long combos, flashy movesets and stuffs. Took a break from it due to the decreasing amount of players after a couple of months, but when I saw evo moment #37, I decided to go back to fighting games and play SFIV until now.
What got me into fighting games was the release of ssf2hdr while me and some friends were waiting for Street Fighter 4. We were just kinda mashing and throwing nonstop back then but I remember how satisfying the game felt with its fast pace and simplicity. About a week or so after that I discovered the famous Daigo Parry, and then something just clicked. I didn’t just wanna play because it was fun, I felt the need to improve, to understand what I was playing, to try to the best of my ability to master a game. So here I am 5 years later running my own series of monthlies trying to keep a community going in my town. Fighting games are honestly one of the best things to ever happen to me, and I don’t have any regrets with how far I’ve taken my hobby!
I thought fighting games were pretty simple, at their core. Then one day I somehow managed to play HD Remix on the day it came out with some well known NorCal players. I got bodied, predictably. Everyone was really nice and awesome though, and I suddenly wanted to learn what made these games tick. I’ve gotten much better since then, and love this genre of games.
When was around 4 or 5 years old (2001-ish) my parents would always take me to the local Swap Meets in the San Fernando Valley. I would always glance at the Marvel vs Capcom 2 machine and try to play. I could barely reach the buttons let alone actually play the games. I would get beat out by the CPU and let some other 20 something year old guys play. I would be amazed at what they were doing. The assists, the specials, the 63 hit combos. I always wondered how they did it. I watched dozens of people play for years and years and told myself, “One day, I’m going to be as good as them.”
In 2012, my uncle got an Xbox 360 with a game named “Street Fighter X Tekken”. I was staying at his house and I played it for a bit but then it hit me, THIS is my chance to finally understand fighting games. I played all night with my team of Nina and Ken just trying to beat the arcade on Medium. I eventually got it down and slept right after thinking “Hmm… maybe I should more into this.”
I got myself some chinese arcade stick off of ebay and I don’t play MvC2 or SFxT anymore (Ever since finding my love for 3rd Strike, Tekken Tag 2, and Street Fighter 4), but man, getting into fighting games was one hell of a great idea.
I got into fighting games since mortal kombat 1. I would use scorpion and yell GET OVER HERE!!! I got into competitive gaming when Street Fighter IV came out. I love the FGC!!! I played the tekken series, MvC3, KOFXIII, MK9, INJ, and divekick.
Playing a bunch of arcade games in the 80’s. People crowding around the machine and placing a quarter on 2nd player for Street Fighter 2, Mortal Kombat, World Heroes, Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting. Got my ass handed to me a bunch of times, but it felt good when I won.
wow awesome, thanks everyone so far for the comments/replies. I love reading stories about how people got into fighting games. keep em’ coming!
what got me into fighting games… I remember back when World Warrior came out… It was very popular everywhere i went, it gathered large amounts of people. And I could never understand why, it was only for 2 players. I liked games like the Simpsons or TMNT because those were games where more people could play… Usually all little stores in mexico, pharmacies and such had 2 arcade cabs, one was street fighter and the other was usually a hack n’ slash like the simpsons, tmnt, spiderman, etc… Until one day, I noticed that there was only one guy playing SF2 CE and the crowd was huge, so I decided to give it a go. I played Bison, somehow even though I never touched the game, he looked like a bad ass. I gave it a go, and after that I fell in love with the genre… The controls were amazing, the music, the movements, everything was just top notch… Months later my uncle became an arcade operator and had arcades thruoghout the city, and my dad’s place (a burger joint) had a pair as well. I made a lot of friends, played a lot of games, and to this day it is probably what got me into fighting games….
-@neopenny
i got into fightin games becouse of tekken 3, back in the day if you weren’t good at it, no ones was inviting you to their home playing. I love the feeling of your hearth pumping hard in your chest even if you are playing a long time friend, just for the honour to be the winner; other game generes can’t make you feel the same!
Two things, really. I remember being at the Westminster Mall back when I was in Jr. High, and a friend of mine was playing the original Street Fighter (Yeah, I’m old). I had played the game before, but I sucked at it. So I stuck around and watched him play. All of a sudden, he’s throwing fireballs, and doing these hurricane kicks. My mind was blown. Mind you, this was before the internet. This was before PSX. So I asked him how to do those moves, and he just smirked, and kept his mouth shut. So, I kept at it until I figured it out.
Fast forward a few years later. I’m on vacation in Osaka with family. Street Fighter II was already an arcade hit. Well, I’m at a toy story, looking for Gundam models or Zoids to build because I’m crazy bored… and there I see it, in the glass case. Street Fighter II for Super Famicom. I snatched that sucker up, went to my cousin Katsunori’s house, and I think we played that shit until I had to come back home to the states 2 weeks later.
Fast forward again. I knew the basics of fighting games, but I had no fundamentals. An friend of mine introduces me to this guy named Alex Valle, and while we were never good friends or anything, we were acquaintances that knew each other by name. One day at my friend’s comic shop, he taught me the tricks of the trade on an Alpha 2 machine, and while I was already into fighters before, at that time, I became a full blown junkie. I was at Golfland in Stanton (R.I.P.) all the time, studying players, learning the meta-game in Third Strike (which ended up being my favorite of the SF series).
Playing fighters is almost like learning a real martial art. The discipline involved to better yourself. Reading your opponent. Staying focused, paying no attention to distraction. Love em. Since the original Street Fighter, and just about every side scrolling beat-em-up that came out before it.
Since I was 13 I always had a love for fighting games, but it would not be until I entered high school that I truly got hooked. My high school had a SF Champion Edition machine in the student lounge and whenever I had a moment to spare, I was at the machine. It also didn’t hurt that there was a shopping mall (Montebello Town Center) just down the street that had a “Tilt” arcade. I thought for certain that after high school I’d be stuck to playing console versions of my favorite fighting games, but as luck would have it I choose a community college in a city, that was home to the legendary Pak Mann Arcade. Family troubles would see me and my father move into the Inland Empire and because of fighting games and a couple of great arcades (Super Arcade and James Games) I made some strong bonds with some of the best people I know. Fighting games allowed me to break through my social shyness and get to know my best friends and my fiercest rivals. Though life has taken me far away from these people, thanks to modern consoles the fight doesn’t have to stop because of how far away I am.
Blazblue Continuum Shift got me in to fighting games
When I seen my first tournament.
Mortal Kombat page on facebook post it. Its was Justin Wong with Kung Lao at the time . (CEO most likely)
I was hooked ever since.
I didn’t care about fighters til after that tournament.
I always liked to watch it on streams but i didnt get into till super came out. My friend and i played it all the time at his house at a causal level( we thought guy was op lol). Im more of a watcher now though since im not too good though.
When I was in middle school, I knew of the fighting game community. This was around 2005 where I was familiar with the games & played 3rd Strike at this time. However, the earlier years for me began when I was in middle school. I got introduced to this game that I love to this day: Tekken 3. It was the coolest thing I’ve seen ever & fell in love with King & all the throws he did (I was mad into wrestling at the time). Nowadays, I am still a Tekken player, through thick & thin, even after everyone around me left & moved onto other series for money, I’m still here, playing Tekken to test myself and become the best.
Going to the arcade and seeing a huge line for mortal kombat and the challenge of seeing how long you could last on a quarter really got me into fighting games.
I got into fighting games when I first got a Sega Genesis and Street Fighter 2 championship edition in 1993. I would spend hours playing as Blanka trying to get to the final fight against Bison only to get defeated time after time. Eventually I learned how to Blanka ball and electrocute as my 2 moves that I spammed over and over to beat everyone including Bison. I was just over 6 years old back then and I felt that it was my greatest triumph at the time. Shortly after I caught on to the dpad motions needed to execute special moves and button combinations that would give me combos. It opened my world to other fighting games like killer instinct for the snes and mortal kombat to tekken 1 and the SF alpha games. Man…thanks for the nostalgia waves Markman. Good times man, damn good times.
My family got me into FGs. Growing up we always played super turbo on Snes. We didnt understand a thing besides Hadoukens and jump in sweep which was unblockable at the time. There was always a cousin I couldnt beat and didnt understand why. Thats why I kept playing. We played the same way with any version of SF we touched. When we got a playstation, Alpha was the first game we owned. That was also around the time I played my first Tekken game. Tekken 3. I was the family champ because I mashed with Eddy Gordo and it seemed like he never stops hitting you. I played fighters my whole life but I never knew there was something more to these games until sf4 youtube videos. Years later I am hooked. This all started because i wanted to beat my family members. I love fighting games.
It all goes back to my childhood when i got my hands on Stree fighter 2, my most loved game at the time. Playing against fried was so much fun, showing off new move and stuff, seeing who was the best of us…i was VERY BAD at this xD Then comes Mortal Kombat, wich (in my hometown) only had 1 arcade cabinet around in a bar. Dunno if it’s true, but i was tell that my older brother (10 years older then me) was the first in town to ever beat it on all difficult mode available. I used to play a lot with him and always end up loosing cause i was just jumoing around and using special move. Didn’t know at the time you could run and actually combo something xD
Then i discovered Tekken 2 and the faublous charisma of kazuya…my most favorite character in all the tekken series, wich is why i mained him, trained so hard all his combo to catch the timing to do them properly. Shortly after there was tekken 3…so sad Kaz wasn’t there…there was jin, but…not realy the same as kaz nor jun…but i still played it a LOT with friends and familly, i was always discovering combo’s and move and it was very fun. I came back on Tekken with the fifth one and again: it takes me all my time. But this time, it was different. This time, i was about to discover a whole new world in fighting game with all the technical data behind. And for that, http://www.tekkenzaibatsu.com/ was my best tools, and with all that training i spent was worth it as i end up being the best among all my friend.
Tekken 6 was then to come, and with the bounce, new juggling and combo’s to find, wich made my game even more efficient.
After that thought, i came back to 2d fighting game when i discovered Garou mark of the wolves. There was this custom arcade cabinet at my work, everyone used to play during lunch and afterwork. I found the game very cool and it kinda reboot me into street fighter. Playing Garou with my coworker was very fun, as none of my relative wanted to play fighting games anymore, i was alone, playing against computer or online, but it’s not the same as when you actually play with someone, and definitly not the same as when you play on an actual arcade machine.
And to this day, those are the most important fighting memories to me, all the major turning point in the fighting universe i made and all the events that lead me to love fighting game even if i don’t have anyone to play with me. All the technical, all the amazing comeback and impressive reflexes you can have in the fighting games universe, that is all why my love for them will never vanish.
Sry for the long post also xD
Mortal Kombat II was the first fighting game I played when I was a kid. That, Ultimate III, Killer Instinct, and Street Fighter 2 were all staples when my friends got together to play games. I stopped playing fighting games for a really long time, until I got talked into picking up SSF4AE for the PC. After about a month of playing, I was hooked and my 360 pad wasn’t cutting it, so I invested in my first arcade stick.
Now, I’m just trying not to be ass.
FCHAMP WINNING EVO
What got me to fighting games was Mortal Kombat on SNES, I had this neighbor back when I was little who became an acquaintance of mine. He invited me to play this game with him and it was Mortal Kombat. I did not have a console back then so I needed to visit him often just to play, and we’d play for hours just discover fatalities of each character. Then we were old enough to visit a local mall were we saw Mortal Kombat, King of Fighters, Fatal Fury arcades and we got hooked really hard and met bunch of kids who plays fighting games as well.
I really got into fighting games & became a big fan after getting a SNES & SFII. Street fighter was what started it all for me. I Grew up on it & just liked fighting games ever since i was little growing up in NY. Going to pizza shops just to play on the arcades, Getting into MvC. Playing DarkStalkers & so many others. Fighting games was always something i liked more then anything, & another game that really made me stick to fighting games was the first killer instinct.
I Remember going to the shop just to play the game & then getting it on SNES & trying to learn all the characters, how to beat the boss quicker etc. So yeah! FGC Forever!
Shoutout’s to MadCatz, Mark & N8 !! You already know who this is! Your boy NY.
Having 2 brothers, a PS2 with Tekken Tag Tournament and two controllers.
That was literally the only game we had and I’m not gonna lie, we were kind of disappointed when we first found out, but after a a day of playing non stop. We were hooked.
We played every Tekken from there on until I had to move to the US. When Tekken 6 came out we we’re able to finally play again, online, but we didn’t care.
I was at a Brawl tournament in my old high school and an acquaintance of mine asked if I played any other fighting games. I told him I was good at ST:HDR and he said “no, you’re not.” So I challenged him and he beat me down so hard that I asked him to teach me his ways.
I was at a friends house to play some cardgames and he goes “check out this cool game I got as an arcade rip”, the game in question was Blazblue CS. The game immediately popped with me and I’ve just moved on to absorb the genre from there. I now have a local community with a bunch of amazing people and I really can’t imagine life without fighting games anymore.
When I was a kid, I went to the Philippines to visit family. My parents went shopping and dropped me off at an arcade, where I saw a cabinet for Street Fighter II. I had originally played the game with friends who had it on the SNES, but I had no idea how to do any of those fancy special moves, aside from Guile’s flash kick. While at the arcade, some random Filipino guy sees me playing Guile, and, out of the kindness of his heart, he teaches me how to do Guile’s sonic boom.
Apparently I was lucky, since I now hear all these stories of kids always getting into fights and stuff in the arcade, but this nice random dude taught me a very important lesson about charge characters. Now those are the types of characers that I usually end up playing these days. 😀
IWhat got me into fighting games was the want to get better. I played in a small arcade in Annapolis, Maryland and was just a kid. Losing has always been something to make me feel terrible so my competitive drive always kept me going when I was learning. I didn’t want to be that loser. So I kept at it. But it wasn’t until 2008 when I actually started playing competitively.
Well on my 5th birthday, i was introduced to the genre but as i got older, i started playing more games like Street Fighter Alpha 3 and Marvel in the Arcades and Tekken 3 and Mortal Kombat 4 on PSx when arcades disappeared. i got a PS2 then the PS3 came along which i deem it as the best era for fighting games since games like Tekken 6-Tag 2, Street FIghter 4, Mortal Kombat and many great titles. plus i really need an arcade stick. PS3 controllers have a slight bit of BT Lag and i’ve heard arcade sticks are for people with instant reaction on PS3
SF2Turbo. i played with my friends back in the days where arcades were scattered everywhere. i’m a scrub back then and i always got my ass kicked. but it didn’t stop me from playing. i played sfa series, kof 95, 97 – 13, darkstalkers, justice gakuen, garou, tried doa, tekken 3 – 6BR, sf4, p4a, vf5 and injustice. and now excited for ggxrd. figiting game is almost my life.lol
I had a friend in elementary school who used to play Mortal Kombat A LOT (poor parental guidance, eh? lol), and so I would go over to his house with a friend and his brother and we would all play. Those were some great memories since it would be a room of 6 kids all yelling and getting hype. Since then, I’ve always been into fighting games, and still consider then one of the best party game genres around (yes, Smash included).
I got into fighting games back in ’92 while I was living in Hawaii by word of mouth. One of my fellow students in 6th grade told me about SF2 and how you can throw fireballs in the game. My friends and I would brave the dangers of crossing a busy street to the shopping center in Aiea to check it out. Was hooked on SF2 since. I would frequently go for the next 2 years to a local gas station down the road and the arcade / comic shop in the shopping center to play SF2, MK, MK2, FF (cheap ass game… damn you SNK! I realized your trickery even back then!) and I remember KoF first coming out and doing DBZ style powering up. When we weren’t playing at the arcade, then we were pretending to be our favorite character saying things like “aaaayooooked!!” or “sonic boom!” during recess. Yeah, it was a pretty big impact on kids back then 🙂
When I moved I no longer had an arcade to play at, but my friend had a SNES copy of MK3. After that, it had been a few years until I got a Saturn and picked up a damn great port of SFA2.
Then a large break from fighting games. Never had anyone to play and playing against the CPU didn’t really teach you anything.
HDRemix came out, and you could play it online. I was actually playing people, and that sucked me into being competitive. Still playing competitive today with local friends and every now and then a little online.
BTW, I don’t need the arcade stick, I have one I’ve customized already to my needs. If I do win the stick, it won’t be going into my hands, but to a friend who wants to upgrade from pad to stick and is having his first EVO this year and playing in ToL2 and X-Mania!
What got me into competitive fighting games was when I was 6. My cousins introduced me to SFII on SNES, they weren’t very easy on me so I got my asked kicked, a lot. It wasn’t till I learned you can get an edge by reading magazines and going online to learn combos or something broken about a character. I trained like crazy till I beat my cousins to were they almost stopped playing. What a great feeling it is to put work in and reap the reward.
I remember playing Tekken 3 with my family. Tekken was a family game so we used to have ‘winner stays on’ kind of things. Everytime we used to play, my brother always won. So, my dream was that one day I will beat my brother. After 10 years, I can finally beat him. I just play casually now but I’m trying to get into competitive play. And then one day, I might beat JDCR! So yeah, that’s how I got into fighting games like Tekken!
I got into fighting games in the 90’s playing mortal kombat and street fighter with my cousin. we had casual tournaments in the basement. I fell in love with tekken 3 when i first played it in the arcades, never reached ogre until i bought it for playstation, i still have my tk3 with me. Tekken is still my main fighting game, it got real when i actually wanted to learn all the basics on ttt2. I love it so much i watch all the tekken tournaments on twitch, i even watch atp with aris; it was so cool how you helped tekken comeback to evo this year can’t wait for al the great matches and maybe haradas announcement for a new tekken. my hands are too big for the ps3 controller i can’t QCF properly, with the stick i’ll be able to backdash/wavedash/sidestep like a pro. you can help my 45% win ration go up T_T.
I was 7yrs old when 91 hit and the original World Warriors was released in Arcades. I came across Street Fighter 2 at a local 7-Eleven just up the street from where I lived. This was my introduction into competitive video games and I remember taking the three dollars my mother gave me and cashing it in for quarters. I promptly got my ass beat by a friends significantly older brother and after getting salty, he made me a proposition: For every 25 cents I gave him, he would teach me one special move for a character of my choice.
So the next day I came back with my lunch money, gave him a dollar and as a agreed upon, he taught me the special moves of a character of my choosing. I chose Guile for two reasons. One, I liked his haircut and two, he had the “handcuff” glitch, that at the time, I didn’t know was a glitch, I thought it was just part of the game.
Anyway, as time went on, I kept sinking more money into the Arcade machine. Even going so far as stealing five bucks from my older brother to do so. I eventually got good enough to where no local player could take me off the machine and the two women working the store were always talking about me in Spanish — no idea what was said but I’m sure it wasn’t all pleasant.
I still play SF2 to this day, albeit Turbo edition, even bought my own arcade cabinet three years ago. While my priorities have clearly changed as I’ve got older, I still get salty and still have that competitive spirit. Over the course of 23yrs, I competed in various local and national tournaments, met a lot of cool people, some of which I still remain in contact with and I would never trade all those years of grinding for anything.
I don’t have the time to sink into SF or Tekken, not like I use too. But when I want to get away, I’ll go into my garage, where I have my SF2 Turbo cabinet, and grind a couple hours away and come back feeling better and refreshed.
No glorification, no special narration to describe my experience. Just the truth.
This is the truth, and like more than half of the people who play and love fighting games these days;
I was suckered into the hype when I saw 20-30 people crowded around SF2 The World Warrior back in 1991. There were 2 setups.
I was nine years old. I had a $4 daily allowance. I have never seen a crowd like that ever before. Everyone only cared about the consoles and going to each others houses and bragging about what our parents got us.
I went to the mall twice a week for enrichment classes outside of school. It was Thomson Plaza in the northern part of Singapore. Yaohan was still there. I attended computer classes at CAL. (now defunct)
Mum asked me if I found the classes interesting. I said yes I enjoyed it very much. (Just because I wanted to go to the arcade after lessons, everytime.)
I am not gonna lie. I didn’t get a chance to step up on that SF2 Machine. There were big boys in their teens, young adults, grown men, tokens after tokens waiting for their turn. I found that it was immense fun just watching. Especially when everyone gave it their all and every game WAS a money match with a quarter on the line. From where I’m from it’s SGD$0.50 per play. Everyone was into the fad. Even those who had no intention to play, found watching it completely satisfying. I still remember their faces.
I had no chance at all to touch that SF2 Machine. I ended up playing a lot of the early Neo-Geo games like Art of Fighting 1 and Fatal Fury 1. I think I was only one of few people who touched SNK back then at the arcade. When SF2 was in it’s heyday, SNK was COMPLETELY neglected.
Then came mid-1992. SF2 was released on the Super Famicom. I had a Megadrive. I didn’t know what FML meant then or if it has even began to surface as slang for ‘just fuckin kill me now please’. That was what I felt. FML. I had a friend, a classmate who had a SFC and the game. Man, he was so cocky. I never had a chance. He was killing me with Guile the whole day. But I was happy. All I wanted was a chance to play Street Fighter 2.
Tests and Exam periods were the hardest and it wasn’t just because I had to study. It also meant that the parents of my friend didn’t allow him to play videogames either, and as such we couldn’t touch SF2 on the SFC.
The wait was worth it.
1993 Came, and Special Champion Edition was released for the Megadrive. I also had an official 6 button Megadrive 2 Controller. I was a happy kid again.
There was no turning back.
Congratulations! You are one of the winners (we changed it to 2 prizes! We’ll be contacting you via e-mail shortly)!
I got into fighting games because there was no levelling up, no kill streaks or any other bonus abilities to tip the balance, just pure skill and determination against your opponent. I’ve seen it one of the purest types of gaming since I got into it. Plus the community is awesome and just too funny. And Guile’s theme.
When I was younger and living in the Philippines, me and my cousin used to go to Playstation rent places that had 1 hour games for 20 pesos each. Every time we would pick Tekken 3 and play it until we got salty. Losing to my older cousin every time inspired me to get better. The problem was that I didn’t get a Playstation until the 5th grade, which was the same year the Playstation 2 was released, but it was great. I would practice every character on pad until I knew how to do combos consistently. In that same year, I was introduced to other fighting games in the arcade like SF, Guilty Gear, VF, Soul, Classic MvC, and etc. Those games really inspired me to get a fight stick but we were still kinda struggling at the time, so I couldn’t just keep going back to the arcades. Ever since then, even moving to Australia, I’ve always wanted to get my hands on a fight stick. I’ve always wanted to have that arcade experience at home.
I got into tekken because when I was a child I loved to play it with friends. After I discovered all the things behind the competitive aspect of the game, like frames, punishments, juggles etc, I started to appreciate it even more, because it seemed to me as a game where the best mind wins. Also I love competition in general, and to unify aspects like competitiveness and intelligence just made me fall in love with tekken.
I grew up with 2 brothers and we all were always very competitive. First fighting game we all got into was actually the very first Mortal Kombat. Very special game to be, to a lot of people the infamous Contra Konami code is the most known code, but to me it was always “ABACABB” (the blood on code for the MK1 Genesis version). As for competitive gaming, I always watched it since the UMK3/MvC2 era. I only entered my first tournament in 2011 in Mortal Kombat 9 thanks to Arturo Sanchez actually who was pushing hard on his twitter for a lot of people to come out to a local touney they were having in NYC at the time. Moral of the story, I ❤ fighting games, can't imagine a life without them!
I always played fighting games since i was a 2 years old! I played Tekken 3, Smash bros 64, SF Alpha 2 and Rival Schools. But i never actually played them seriously! Until last year when i started watching Maximilian Dood on youtube and Twitch and now i fucking love Fighting games with all of my heart! Right now i play SF4 AE, TTT2 and 3rd Strike.
I got into fighting games back in 92 because it was my escape from the world around me. Now I play them because they have been a part of my life for a long time and I can’t see myself not playing them.
What got me into fighting games at first was, of course the fighting. Seeing characters attack with fireballs and you say to yourself as a kid “Woah! That’s so cool!” When it happened was when I was around like 3 years old. I don’t remember much but I remember playing Street Fighter II with my brother on the Super Nintendo. He always kicked my ass but hey, he was like 10 years older than me and I didn’t know any better. He bought Tekken Tag when that game came out, still kicking my ass at these fighting games. It wasn’t until my dad got orders to get stationed in Japan, that’s when it kind of started to happen. At the local shopping center on the military base they had MVC2 & 3rd Strike (Really surprising, huh?) That’s where everybody who wanted to do some killing was at on the weekends or after school, the local arcade. People got sent home, bills were changed to quarters, yelling from across the room. Mind you the arcades were Japanese too. Then Tekken 5 came out, now that was real. Me and a couple of friends would go off base to real Japan and play Tekken 5 with the Japanese and man they were good. That’s how we would learn, from them…before YouTube was the go to on how to learn combos. I never really knew why I liked fighting games, I just…did. I had other games to but fighting games were the ones that would make me want to go somewhere and play with someone.
What made me get serious? Is when I went to the Philippines for school. It was there I met someone from LA who played Street Fighter VI. Me being the idiot I was, boasting about how I was the best in Street Fighter VI when I myself knew I didn’t know shit about it. I fought this guy, and I got my ass whooped. I had it coming, but what I saw what you could do in that game…blew my fucking mind. Ryu vs Ryu, here I am doing hadoukens and roundhouse tatsu because that’s all I know. Then BAM…I get FADC Ultra’d (WTF?!) it was amazing. It was then I knew I wanted to get better at this game. I played everyday from then on out. After class, in between class…I didn’t care. Then at the school, we would have like a do whatever you want week where there’s food and activities. Walking down the hall I noticed a Tekken 5 booth, Tekken 6 was already out but whatever…I decided to give it a try. The rules went 10 win streak you get a prize. Here I go…I’m knockin’ off boots, this used to be my game in Japan so shit I got this. On my 8th win, this gentlemen sits right next to me. I get kind of nervous because I know who he is, he’s the best Tekken player in the City. I get scared as fuck and he kicks my ass, I was not at the least surprised. He spoke really good English and asked if I played Marvel or other games. So down the road, these two guys…the Street Fighter player who whooped my ass and the Tekken player who whooped my ass became two my best friends. They helped me train to be better because they saw potential and it was a just a good crowd playing games together. Then on out, I’ve joined more Tekken tournaments. Never was able to win any of them, but I was never out too early. Almost usually a match away to the semi finals but it never crushed my spirit.
We would have sessions every time we could, from maybe early in the evening to late in the morning. These two guys though, helped me so much. Now I live in Las Vegas, doing better than I actually could do in the FGC, going to EVO heading to the local spots where everybody is playing. I even fought Markman in KI at the Gamestop EXPO 2013, for a game I’ve only played one time in my life before that moment…I did pretty good. All the way to the last round with both of us with low health lol. Not trying to sound cocky, but I wouldn’t have lasted if it wasn’t through my friends or all the training with other fighting games. Playing fighting games help me actually get a job, I’ve gotten away with “I play a lot of Street Fighter so I do think about my choices and what opportunities can be done. I take that aspect from the game, to real life challenges that I face as a person.” Some might laugh but hey, I’m employed at a good job (not saying the Street Fighter thing is a good approach at all interviews lol) I just got lucky. Through fighting games, I’ve met some great people like some of my best friends and amazing players in all different forms of inspiration and a thrive to become great. I wrote a huge long story lol, idgaf.
What got me into fighting games?
Well I guess, it’s quite simple really. I was born in Nov ’94, so we all know what major console hit northern shores a year after. ( hint.. hint.. the first PlayStation ) Well anyways, growing up in a family of 5, we weren’t financially gifted so we had to make due with what we had. What we had was my oldest brother’s Sega Genesis. While my brothers were busy trying to convince my parents to get ahold of a playstation, I would be venturing into a world of video games. We only had a few games for the Genesis which included NBA Jam, ToeJam & Earl, and a few others. One game in particular always had my interest ( and my heart later on in life ) and that was Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition. To me that game opened my eyes to not only fighting games but video games in general. Everything of that game to me is memorable, from chun lis win pose, the fustration of trying to beat M.Bison, and GUILES THEME! I still have that cart with me and I still recall all the times I’d be wasting away my childhood in front of the TV throwing hadoukens and dodging sonic booms for hours at end. Growing up I didn’t have the perfect family, constant fighting, and just things kids shouldn’t witness just wasn’t cool but I thank Street Fighter for being a game where my adolescent self could just focus on having fun rather than worry what’s going on at home. I remember at one point my older brother had actually rented the Street Fighter Movie game, it was so horrible, but as a kid that game was fun no matter what. How awesome is it to know your favorite game had a live adaption film and a video game? Well my younger self thought it was the coolest thing ever. But yea, that was my childhood experience with Street Fighter. To this day, I still play the game (even though some of my friends don’t like playing me due to my love for it and familiarity with it haha ) , keep up with tourneys, even making my first evo trip this year, and I would just love to finally get a second stick. Been using the same one for roughly 2 years now. Well that’s pretty much it for me 🙂
(P.S. my love for SF even went into my first shoe purchaes and those were the Chun Li and Akuma themed SB’s that were released )
The first time I played a fighting game was on an arcade machine on holiday, Soul Calibur. Ever since then I’ve been hooked. I grew up with two older brothers who were also big gamers and they could always beat me in other games, but never when it came to fighting games. That is probably something that fuelled my passion. I got involved in every fighter there is, Soul Calibur, Tekken, DOA, Mortal Kombat, I loved them all. I watch multiple tournaments weekly and can’t get enough. I love the tactical nature of them combined with the natural talent of the player. I would absolutely love a fightstick but unfortunately can’t afford one, so here’s hoping I get lucky and get to relive the old times that brought me my love of fighting games with the arcade style feeling a fightstick brings
For me, it must’ve been my competitive drive. I’ve always been the type of person what wants to git gud, triumph over others, be the best. Fighting games allow me to pour my efforts into such a purpose due to their extreme competitive nature. Their 1v1 nature is also extremely appealing to me, as there is no crutch to fall back on when you lose. No teammates to blame, nothing. If you lost, you were just worse than the other guy that time.
I’m extremely new to fighting games, I’ve only been playing for a year and a half or so, but I feel that I’ve found a community in which I truly belong, where we just want to fight and git gud together.
I’ll be entering my first big tournament in September, for tekken tag tournament 2 and Ultra Street Fighter 4, and I’m pretty sure the stick would be a great help towards doing good.
I got into fighting games after watching The Revival of Melee 7 on Twitch, from there I then started watching other fighting game streams and decided I wanted to give that a try. Haven’t looked back since.
There were 4 pinnacle moments/people/reasons that got me invested in the fighting game genre.
First was my uncle. The first fighting game ever introduced to me was Street Fighter Alpha 2 on the Playstation 1, but I only knew it because of him and was not that into it myself. At the time, I was only 4 and was barely into fighting games at all; the kinds of games I played were racing games, adventure games, and shooter games. My favorite games to play at home were Banjo Tooie, Gran Turismo, and Goldeneye 007. It was my uncle that was into fighting games at the time. He played a lot of them; Street Fighter, KOF, Marvel, Tekken, everything that involved two colorful characters facing each other on a 2D plane and duking it out with fists, kicks, and fireballs. While I wasn’t that interested, I loved watching my uncle play these. He’d ask me to play with him just to brag to me how he knew how to throw out a Hadouken and I couldn’t. I’d ask and he’d never tell. It sparked a bit of interest, but I still had a bunch of other games to play.
Second was whenever I went to an arcade. I can remember what I feel to be the golden years of the arcades, at least here in the Philippines. It was a time when coin tokens were still a thing instead of the credit holding cards used in majority of all the arcades today (the majority being Timezone arcades). I’d be playing games like Daytona USA, The House of The Dead, and a bunch of other games that weren’t being crowded. Basically I never touched any fighting game arcade machine because they were always crowded by people that were way older than me (again I was about 4), but I always wanted to. I was a challenger at the arcades at racing games, taking the available seats of Daytona, Sega Rally, and Indy 500, taking on players of all ages. The feeling of beating someone older than you was so hype for my 4-year old self. Doing the same thing for fighting games however, was something I wanted to do but just couldn’t garner enough courage to do so. My logic was basically this: can’t fireball? can’t play. The crowds and sounds of fighting games always attracted me though; from the cheers, to the sound effects, to the mashing of buttons and turning of sticks, there was always some sort of presence surrounding the fighting game genre in the arcades.
Third was when I was about 13 and still wasn’t that into playing fighting games. In our school, bringing gadgets like Cellphones and game devices was considered a violation and doing so would get you sanctioned, and your gadget confiscated, but that never stopped a number of students from bringing their PSPs and playing Tekken: Dark Resurrection with each other in-between classes. It was so funny, it was like watching a fight club in school, except instead of actual fighting, it was all virtual, but still intense. I was the kind of guy that always followed school rules, but eventually I gave in; I had to get in on all the action. So, I got my PSP, bought a UMD of Tekken: Dark Resurrection, and started learning how to play poster boy Jin Kazama, and the British boxer Steve Fox (I picked him because I thought his name was bad-ass). I still remember being one of the first people who knew how to sidestep Devil Jin’s “fly across the stage and shoot lasers” move that people kept on spamming. Eventually, I became one of the best in my class. Wanting to keep that title, and maybe even progress it, I’d practice on my PSP almost every chance I had. There were times I even practiced while taking a dump. It was that game, Tekken: Dark Resurrection, that fueled my desire for fighting games and competition.
Fourth and finally, was because of this awesome discovery I made while browsing the internet. I had been a Tekken boy ever since I discovered Dark Resurrection. I played other fighting games like Vanilla Street Fighter IV, and Blazblue Calamity Trigger, but because I did not know much about how to play them, and because the scene wasn’t as big as the Tekken scene here in the Philippenes, I never found those games as that entertaining. Then, about the time Super Street Fighter IV came out, I finally decided to look for some tutorials on how to play a character in the game effectively. That character was another boxer named Balrog. Eventually, I found a tutorial with a man named ‘Gootecks’ as the teacher. I watched his videos and learned the basics and some advanced tricks, but the best thing I learned from him, was the existence of a little thing called ‘The Excellent Adventures of Gootecks and Mike Ross.’ First episode I watched and I just couldn’t stop watching, both as an educational experience, and an entertaining show. It was from them I learned about the competitive scene of Street Fighter all over the world, which eventually lead to me learning about people like Daigo, Alex Valle, Infiltration, and a bunch of other fighting game related stuff. Somewhere along the line it had come to the point of me wanting to buy my own stick and competing in some tournaments. I got the cheapest stick I could find and started practicing, and the rest as I’d like to say, is history. Now I’m 18 years old, and love fighting games in general. Tekken and Street Fighter may be my favorites, but all of them are great in their own ways.
In a world where copy paste shooters and free to play moba’s reign in the videogame market, as casual games and competitive sports, I believe that fighting games, no matter how many of my friends prefer everything else, will always be the most intricate genre ever created and played.
PS. I’d rather show off a bad-ass arcade stick, than a glowing mouse and keyboard 😉
As a kid my brother, sister and I got a PS1 on Christmas from Santa. Santa didn’t put a game with PS1 so we only had the demo disc to play for the longest time. I played so much Tekken 2 and King of Fighters 95.
Around 5 years ago, I was still a mugger in school going for tuition and stuff like that, was pretty stressed out because I had a major exam to take soon. One fine day the tuition teacher did not show up so the class was released early. Since my parents did not know I decided to give my first shot at the arcade, what immediately caught my eyes were the sheer amout of SF4 machines, literally lined from entrance to the end of the store. I was like wow this must be pretty popular, never really got a chance to pick it up because I would usually lose and had to give up the place to the next guy and everyone was literally on another level and would not really teach me much. So I had to play the less popular MVC, Tekken, soul caliber, etc. The first game I really got into was Blazblue the art style really caught my eyes and the person who taught me back then was really cool, would show me the basics. I never really got the chance to beat him since the machine was broken and never replaced. Still playing the game today to get better and hopefully meet him again. The experience he gave me was unforgettable, the precision which he executed his combos and the pure level of standard he showed despite being a beginner I could tell was godlike. Fighting games mean alot to me because it was what helped relieved my pressure of school, having a community which helped each other to improve along the way and get better was what kept me going all those years becuase I really believe that games are what unite people
I got into fighting games when i joined the US military. Im stationed in korea and i met the guys from cafe id and been going and playing seriiously ever since
I was an only child and fighting games were always a way for me to interact with other kids; even ones I didnt know at local arcades and mom and pop stores/ laundromats/ wherever. I did study abroad in college and fighting games helped bridge the gap between different cultures even though I couldnt speak japanese well and people were reluctant to approach me because I was a foreigner. I got to apply skills I learned play chess with my dad along with hand eye coordination learned from sports together in one activity.
Oh man… I got into fighting games when my mom took my brother and I to a mall arcade so we can play skeeball. When we walked in, i saw a bunch of kids huddle over machine so I wandered over there to see what it was. It was Street Fighter II and I couldn’t help getting sucked in. “To hell with skeeball, this looks way more fun!” I thought (or at least the equivalent version that an 8 year-old Filipino boy would think). The first match I saw was Guile Vs Blanka and my mind was blown! I couldn’t stop staring at the screen. I remember begging my mom to let me play. When I finally did, I was hooked. At first, I just liked the cool special moves and the stuff they would yell out, but over time i developed a deeper love for the genre as a whole.
well my facebook name said its all. marvel gado the name came from a game bloodyroar… a fast pace fighting game. killing with stlye is name of the game.haha.. but what really got me in to fighting is all about surpassing my opponent. in video game its not always about winning but having fun while playing it. especially everytime i fight a great player that exicment never seem to get enough ..losing always hard..but thats how we learn..cause fighting game its a test of mind reading others mind..and bealive thats why fighting game have gets old …hahahah….keep on fighting you all…like streetfighter ending say. the battle may be over but the journey still on going. nevet stop playing never stop improving…heheh….
I’ve been playing fighting games for a while now, like a lot of folks I started with Street Fighter 2. I also played a bit of Clay Fighter, but when I’d visit my main man’s house back then, most of the time it was SF2 we were playing on that ole SNES of his.
From there, I went on without playing much anything else as far as fighting games go for a while, and then the same friend I was playing SF2 with bought Tekken 3, and introduced me into the Tekken series, and man do I have some fond memories of Tekken 3. I didn’t really play too many fighting games between then besides a lot of Smash with my bros. I do remember renting Guilty Gear X for the PS2 quite a lot, I loved it, but could never find it at my local Walmart because that’s all we really had here at the time for video games. Would’ve been nice to have had a Gamestop, or a local shop back then now that I think back on it.
Then one fateful day I went to my cousins house, and he had a demo disc for his Xbox. Scrolling through the games on the menu I came across Dead or Alive 3. We played it for a bit and I instantly fell in love. It was the greatest thing I’d ever played. I hounded him to please buy it, he did enjoy the game, but I think I played a big part of him buying it because I didn’t have an Xbox at the time, and to this day I still appreciate the gesture. Every time I’d come over to visit, I’d immediately ask him if he was interested in playing. We’d play for a bit, then he’d take a break, and I’d still keep going be it in practice mode, or arcade mode. Looking back on it, he must’ve hated me coming over because all I wanted to do was play DoA. Haha.
Now as far as playing competitively, it wasn’t until around 2007. I had gotten an Xbox 360, and Xbox Live along with a copy of Dead or Alive 4, and I went in on it! I think I put more hours into it than I have any other fighting game. This was the first fighting game I’d ever owned that had netplay, and it opened up a whole new world to me, playing against people across the map while sitting in the comfort of my own home was like magic. Can’t have the good without the bad, though, I also experienced how terrible it is to play in lag, but the good times I had with it made up for it. After a while I got around to trying Street Fighter 4. I wasn’t really too sure what to expect with it since I didn’t play a whole lot of Third Strike because there weren’t any arcades in my area, and sadly still aren’t, and only one person I knew had it for Dreamcast. So, I rented it, ended up not liking it, and went back to DoA4. It was the only fighting game I played on a serious level from ’07 until SF4:AE dropped. I had played other fighting games during that time, and I did enjoy them, but DoA4 had, and still has my heart.
Things have really changed, though. Now I’m mostly an anime player, but I still love 3D fighters, and I play some DoA5U from time to time, but it’s not really my main thing. I can’t help but wonder where I’d be if I had never played DoA4 since that’s what really set my competitive drive off. Either way, I’m glad I did, and I’m glad to be part of a community like the FGC.
Long story.. here goes. I first got into fighting games via my cousin. We were playing super street fighter 2 turbo on SNES; I begged him for it because I loved it. The following Christmas, my wish came true. This is the “sad stori,” my pops and uncle jacked it out of my hands and went home to play it (we were at my cousins house). I wasn’t even the first one to play my Christmas present! As the years went by, my obsession grew.. I still have memories of playing Street Fighter Alpha 2 with my mom! (SHE STILL PLAYS AE WITH ME TO THIS DAY). Also, my cousin is still my main rival( Shout outs to LiquidSoard on XBL) even though we’re 1600 miles apart.
I got into fighting games with SF2 on the sega genesis back in the day. I remember not being able to pull off a shoryuken without rubbing the d-pad randomly. Good times.
I first started playing fighting games when I was 6 years old in 1997. I went to Mexico to visit my family for the first time and my cousins were big fans of arcades. Seeing that I had never been to one, they took me to my first arcade. The very first game I saw was marvel vs capcom 1 and I was mesmerized when I saw someone using megaman and he turned into a big robot as his super. I thought it was the coolest thing at the time and I had to play it. I was mashing buttons to see what would happen and then it happened, I did megaman’s super and turned into a robot. It was the best experience ever despite me not knowing what was going on or the purpose of the game was. As a kid, all I wanted to do was the cool supers and to see the screen change color to see it happen. The machine next to the mvc1 was king of fighters 97. My cousins were very good at that game and It was amazing to see these characters with their Japanese voices do all these cool special moves and supers. It wasn’t even an hour into my first arcade experience and I was already in love. In the time I was in Mexico for the first time as well, all I wanted to was be in the arcade and play all the fighting games that were available. Those memories of my first experience playing fighting games will never leave me. I still play fighting games and I’m more in love with fighting games now, then I was as a child because at least now I can do combos and actually win.
Basically Street Fighter 2 on the snes. My cousins were lucky enough to get a copy of it when it came out(I heard it was very expensive back then) and I was pretty much at their house everyday playing it. Also went to the arcades a lot in the 90’s and played a lot of SF and MK.
Grew up next to a video store and saw street fighter 2 for the first time and it changed my life forever. From there on i love fighting game until i die.
Well i live in Bangladesh a very small country near India that is only reaching a decent place in terms of competitive gaming, but when it comes to fighting games there were some arcades here and there in far away cities that we used to go and hang out , there i first got the taste of fighting games i was very young and i was decent at Double Dragon and good at darkstalkers, then this thing called Study pressure happened and i was not able to spend as much time as i wanted on arcades, i was away from fighitng games a long time only playing sf2 once in a while alongside kof, then SF4 came and i had PC so i started to play again on a keyboard which is vastly different and difficult , then one day i saw Daigo’s 2004 evo moment and that just hooked me in, i started playing a lot again , even on keyboard because arcade sticks are not available here in my country unfortunately i tried and wanted to be good at it, and still am trying while playing other games competitively, studying etc but fighting games has always been my first love in competitive gamines
Tekken 3 for PSX with a friend, he would visit my town once a year and we would rent Tekken 3 and go to town with Tekken Ball Mode
chun-li’s thigh’s got me into fighting games
Spiderman took me into fighting games,It was 1996, I was 8 years old and there was a Marvel Super Heroes cab near my house, those were the years when the 90s spiderman cartoon was on tv, it was love,then I started playing KOF, and al VS series, P.D. I love TE S, they are my fav model 😛
My uncles actually got me into fighting games! They brought me into the world of Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat, and I haven’t looked back ever since!
There was a small farmers market near my house that my mom went to every weekend when I was a kid that had an arcade by it. She would drop me off with a handful of quarters and pick be up when she was done shopping. There was a street fighter 2 machine that caught my eye. I made friends with everyone there and we all shared the same excitement when we saw a poster for championship edition get put up. Mirror matches AND boss characters finally! That’s when I knew I was hooked.
The original street fighter world warrior arcade machine at my local 7-11. That’s what hooked me into fighting games. And watching the evolution of fighting games from then till now is what what kept me coming back and dropping quarter after quarter and rival after rival.
I started way back in the ’90’s. Vampire (aka Darkstalkers) caught my attention because of it’s crazy cast of monster characters, flashy art, and it was often forgot about because people were always crowded around Street Fighter II at my local arcade so it was nearly always open for me to play. To this day, Darkstalkers holds a special place in my heart, being the one fighting game to get me interested in the genre and one I still play to this day alot.
What got me into fighting games is my brother back in the 80’s when I was just a kid, either taking me to the arcade for the first time or bringing games home for us to play on the console. Once we got Street Fighter 2 for the SNES, that’s when I knew I loved fighting games to the point where it was in my blood. I spent hours practicing the game every single day after school because I hated losing, and I wasn’t going to quit until my brother couldn’t beat me. I used nothing but charge characters for a whole year until I could throw a fireball. After that, it was on.
From there, that passion for fighting games continued whenever a new fighting game or the next version of Street Fighter came out. I would play in every arcade in Philly until all but one closed down. Every Chinese food spot, corner store, or check cashing place had an arcade cabinet with some fighting game that I wanted to play. I still remember cutting school to play Alpha 2 when only one spot in the city had it and I could go there before 3pm and not get kicked out like I would at the arcade because Big E would bounce students out the arcade.
My brother also had the Saturn and the PS1, so any fighting game that came out on those consoles we played. Fighting Vipers, Tekken, Soul Blade, Tobal, Bushido Blade, etc. I didn’t even know what sandbagging was at the time, but it got to a point where I needed to throw games so we could continue playing. I didn’t have either system, but I had a 3DO and bought Super Turbo for it which we played every weekend for a long time on the 5 button controllers which sucked.
I had to give up fighting games for a while when I joined the Marines back in ’99. On base, the choices were slim when it came to arcade games until we got a Tag 1 cabinet. I wanted a Dreamcast for Soulcalibur, but I wasn’t making much money at the time and it wouldn’t have smart to drop it on a console, but my brother shipped me his with a bunch of fighting games and a MadCatz RF adapter which got me through some really tough times. I still have the console to this day and it still works fine.
Once my service was over, I went straight into college for the next 3 years, so I didn’t have time to play much until that was over and I got a job which turned into a career. Even though I was working, I still wasn’t comfortable dropping money on a new console since my money was going to paying the bills and taking care of the family until my brother gave me half to buy a PS3 so we could play Call of Duty 4 together, which we did for years until MW3. When I wasn’t playing that, I was slowing getting back into fighting games with T5DR, then later with SC4, and that’s when I started finding out about the competitive scene and Big E who used to work at the arcade was now running these big ass events for fighting games in the city, and catching up on all the things I wanted to do but couldn’t either because I was serving or going to school.
I don’t play fighting games with my brother anymore. He bought SF4 on day one with another friend of his, and after a few games against me it was a wrap. But he still comes over to my house and would watch a stream that I am watching. He was laughing his ass off listening to Aris on the mic for WNF when I was watching the archive the other day. And now that I have a career, I was able to become a part of the community and share the love that I have for fighting games and the things that my brother has done for me with someone else, such as this Asian kid who happen to live 5 minutes away from me and later became one of the best players in the world for Soulcalibur.
I just wanted to share my story. Happy Memorial Day.
I got into fighting games when i was like 12 first fighting game i really loved was vanilla mvc3 kept playing against my cousin everyday FT15 and i watched youtube vids streams of marvel and picked up a few tips and then i wanted a fightstick because its looks so damn cool so i got a wwe fightstick and i customized it to a megaman arcade stick with new buttons and artwork after that i wanted to try more fighting games and have fun learning all these swag combos and w/e
After playing so many MMOs I ended up meeting a lot of people who were in the FGC. I eventually found streams like FinestKO, leveluplive, and all these other tourney streams. Seeing that, I wanted to get into FGC myself. After doing so, I learned to enjoy the accomplishing feeling of putting all that technique and experience you learn from each match to winning future matches and becoming a better fighter.
One fateful day late in the summer of 1991, a Tuesday no less much to Chun Li’s dismay (R.I.P. Raul Julia), I went to a Pizza Hut in little ole Greer, SC. Little did I know on that fateful day I would catch a fever, and not just from one of the other children that was a breathing cesspool of disease.
After deboarding the rusted van with “Creative World of Learning” peeling off of the side I wandered inside with more excitement to spend my extra $1 on Ivan “Ironman” Stewart’s Super Off-Road Racing. It stood next to a crane machine in the entrance way but we were hurried inside to our tables by the poor woman who was getting paid pennies on the dollar to put up with us. After ensuring their misery by ordering soda and ALL of the caffeine, I was able to slide away from the table. Some of the kids had gathered around the arcade cocktail table across from the James “Buster” Douglas Knockout Boxing. Thinking that it was another Ms. Pac-Man (which were commonly in those table cabinets) I bypassed it to go race crazy Ivan. Much to my dismay, none of the other kids were interested. Instead they were yelling excitedly at the table cab. I wondered back over after a solo off-road race to see what about this Pac-Man was so different. Instead there was a militaryan with a high top fade that would make Kid n’ Play jealous battling against a Chinese woman on a street with a rock that some of the kids swore that you could bash her head in with. The self-proclaimed “Strongest Woman in the World” spanked any child that challenged her until only one remained.
I slide into the bench behind the cabinet after inserting a quarter. Having just recently beginning karate I selected one of the karate fighters, Ryu. I squared off against Chun Li (who was still getting revenge for her father by beating it out of every child possible) and promptly had my face kicked in, but not without winning a round. The other kids chattered with glee that I was the only one to beat her one round. Fueled by Coca-Cola and determination, I inserted my third quarter and hit continue. This time, I’d use the Cobra Kai strategy and sweep the leg. It worked! The other kids erupted in cheers only to be snuffed out by the red underwear wearing Russian. I funneled my last quarter into the machine and decided to try something that Zangief had done to me: jumping dropkick him in his stupid mohawk and THEN sweep the leg. Success!!!
Then E. Honda had his way with me in a bath house.
This would start a long & healthy obsession of fighting games, as well as a healthy avoidance of bath houses and confessional booths.
The first fighting game I ever played was Tekken.Specifically Tekken 2 for PSX.My Dad would play it occasionally.I was about 5 at the time.He would never let me use the Playstation until I was nine however.We still had Tekken 2 by this time and I finally got to play.My fave character was Yoshimitsu.(Remains that way today)I was amazed by the stages,cutscenes,and especially the music.The soundtrack to Tekken 2 was a large part of the music I heard as a kid.Tekken 2 was all I played for a long time until I got Tekken 3(and so on).I am 18 now and I have not stopped playing.
Me and brother when we were growing up we had a revival he got me in kof as well my very first true fighting game till this day we have gone at untill i finally supassed him , But hey he uses to beat me in everything l do thx him it wasn’t for him i wouldn’t want to get better and suprass him he gave me the drive to get better 🙂 Now i can say iam decent at fighting games now.
I’ve been playing Street Fighter ever since I had a Sega Genesis. I remember learning how to do all of the characters moves and beating my brother endless times when we played. As I got older, the better I got. But what really lit the flame for me was the infamous Daigo v. Wong match at EVO. Seeing that level of play only made me want to get better. One day I’ll compete at EVO myself, and I’m aiming straight for the top.
Yie Ar Kung Fu – the greatest beat em-up I’d ever seen – played it to death in the arcades and that was it, I was hooked. Nearly 30 years later, I still can’t stop playing beat em-ups (and could really do with a new stick as my girlfriend keeps complaining that I spend too much on fighting games and associated paraphernalia).
sf2 nostalgia when sfiv was released
The main thing that got me into fighting games was my dad when he bought me a Playstation One when I was in elementary school. He bought me Tekken 2 and Street Fighter Alpha as my first two games. The reason that he bought me these games was to give me a reason to get better grades and not get into trouble at school. I can truly say that fighting games have changed my life for the better. At the time when I first got these games I did not have a memory card so I would play these games for hours upon hours just trying to re-unlock every character so it was actually a good thing for me that I did not have a memory card then! Literally because of me playing fighters at home they have turned my life around from being a trouble maker in class and have taught me that I can be successful if I just try to apply myself. I remember so vividly trying to unlock Roger/Alex in Tekken 2 by winning Stage 3 with a GREAT! victory. Most of my fondest memories come from fighting games. For example I will NEVER EVER forget how hype I was just from watching the intro FMV of Tekken 3 and was so amazed at how the graphics were at that time lol! Another fond memory was when I won my very first local Tekken 5 DR tournament at Quail Springs Mall in Oklahoma City! I don’t think that any other time that I was competing in a game that I was that happy to just be playing Tekken with many people who just wanted to have fun while playing our games! Literally for me there is no greater type of competitive video games than the FGC! Literally people are pushing these games to the very boundary and doing things that many people would never even believe could be possible. I have even made many great friends and developed many relationships because of fighting games. I cannot do anything but be excited for all of the great events and great future games will be made possible because of the FGC! These are the reasons that I just absolutely love the FGC and am PROUD to say that I am a member of the FGC and will always be in this community as much as I possibly can be in it!
What got me into fighting games was spending a lot of time at my local bowling alley. I spent a LOT of time playing MvC1 and SF3:3S. After that I got into SF4 and I’ve been playing fighting games ever since.
my passion for fighting games comes from my big brother. when i was really little i would watch him play mvc2 and street fighter 2 turbo. he would take me to the arcade with him and i would mostly just watch but i still loved it. i’ve been playing fighting games for a while now and he’s taught me everything i know. we mostly play SF4.
Playing SF2 at the mall arcade. Putting up my quarter and waiting 15 min to get my ass handed to to me than doing it all over again.
Loved it. I was hooked.
Than came MK, World Heroes, Eternal Champions and so on.
When I lived in Mexico, there was a small arcade just down the street from my house. I was 8 and didn’t really know how to play fighting games but for some reason i always wanted to be good and get better at them to beat the High School students that would knock us off the machines every time me and my friends played. Eventually, we got good enough to get their respect playing King Of Fighters 98′. Now, years later, I’ve rekindled my love for fighting games and have loved trying to mod, and customize sticks! This would be an awesome stick to have if I got the chance.
i might not win but here it goes:
the first thing that got me into fighting games is the street fighter x tekken commercial. it showed kazuya wearing a suit and he was gonna fight ryu. i thought that was cool and i wanted to play the game. that was my first fighting game that got me into the fgc and playing it competitively. also for a bonus, the reason i still stick to fighting games is that afrocole told me that i have a good kazuya at the first wednesday night fight thant had cross tekken for verson 2013 and that comment made me want to continue playing cross tekken and i still do.
Local arcade 2 minutes from my house in the 90s. Its where me and my bro would go to get out of the house.
What got me into fighters, a couple thing did actually. First as a child my uncles used to always own me for free on the SNES in ST. And unlike most common scenarios where the younger child would storm off into tears or get to the boiling point for having not won a single match in a hour and a half or so, I adapted and got much better. The second thing was I met NerdJosh when I moved back to Groton, CT during my Middle School years. I guess he had moved back with his father for a shirt period and we used to just go over to his house and just view an archive of combo videos and try to execute the styles and it wasn’t just in a single game. We rounded the world from MotW, MvC1&2, CvS1&2, ST ALPHA Series and it just goes on. Then we began going to tourneys like Shadowman @ Jester Arcade in Waterford CT or PIC’S father’s pub where Mas, Arturo, Caddies and the rest came into play during the time of our young gaming youth. So overall, with ambition and the luck of knowing great competitive players I delved into a great community known now as the FGC.
SF2 got me into fighting games, I was a kid practicing karate and love martial arts movies so when I saw the game I fell in love with FG as a whole. Miss the good old arcade days ;_;. Peace!
What got me in to fighting games is Street Fighter , with the two button setup for punch and kick. Depending on how hard you push{mash} a different punch/kick or hadoken/hurricane kick will come out. It was the most noticeable cabinet in the arcades at the time with the pacmans and galagas at the time and I wanted to play against people. Street fighter 2 is when it all went bonkers , the local 7/11 had a cabinet and all the kids after school would flock and drop a few dollars to see who is the top player. It was a social gathering that I still remember to this day.
On the Super NES, I had Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter 2, and Killer Instinct. I’ve always played it for fun but it was always by myself since I only have 3 sisters who aren’t interested in video games. I still always found it fun to play against the computer but the lack of competition for me eventually made me stop playing. I got into smash bros for the 64, melee, and brawl but same thing happened, no competition but it was still fairly fun to play against the computer. I never found the drive for fighting games, or just any game in general, until I started playing League of Legends. I reached diamond tier in League, but it doesn’t feel rewarding. My cousin showed me EVO 2013 and I realized how cool the new street fighter and marvel vs capcom looked so that alone got me interested in fighting games once again. I realized how much effort and skill it takes to be considered “good” at fighting games. Reaction time, mind games, outplaying the opponent, all made me think that it takes much more skill than MOBA games like League of Legends so I started giving fighting games one more chance. I felt the hype when watching the EVO 2013 stream even though I barely knew what was going on and that alone got me to purchase Street fighter 4 AE on steam on June 30, 2013. I play AE hardcore now and I always strive to get better. I’m still learning UMVC3 but I’m more focused on AE. I found a local arcade nearby and FINALLY found a place with serious competition. Frame data(for links and learning blockstrings), training your muscles for bnbs, the mental pressure, and everything else, I find require much more skill than League of Legends, so I wish I started taking fighting games seriously at an earlier date. Yeah I said it, FIGHTING GAMES > MOBA GAMES!
The thing that got me into fighting games, well i think it was my big brother, when i was young he showed me how to play Tekken 2, after that i just felt attached to Tekken, As the years went by and i learned (wasnt good) we played Tekken quite competitively which made me a good Tekken player, at the moment i play with a controller and would love to try an Arcade stick, So yeah i will thank my big brother for getting me into fighting games, Love all franchises now, Street fighter, Tekken, Soul calibur…you name it, its all thanks to my big brother :), sorry for this long paragraph…haha!
I got into fighting games when I saw Tekken 3 in my local arcade for the first time. Seeing the intro movie really got me hype as a little kid, causing me to pour so much money into that cab.
What got me into fighting games? Before all of the craze was a simple little arcade game called “Kung-Fu Master” in 1984 (yeah, I’m pretty old). I can still remember seeing the antagonist fighting against a series of attackers and a flying fat guy. I thought wow this is intense and like the Bruce Lee movies I watched, I would try to copy the moves at home. My next great fighting game was Double Dragon. The one on one DiveKick like game was awesome and the side scroller owned my non school time when I could afford to rent a NES from the video store. At the arcade it was Final Fight then XMen and Ninja Turtles at the arcades. All my friends said I loved fighting games more than them but I would get them charged up. Finally, the strongest reason was Street Fighter 2 in the Wal-Mart arcade. Every kid in the city would have their quarters lined up to play. I would get beat a lot but I kept coming back for more, looking for any magazine with move lists and trying to be the best Guile and Ryu. I never was the best, but I was always playing. Fighting games especially Street Fighter was all I played in high school. I would even bring a SNES to school and host tournaments. I always was and always will be a fighter and I have passed that excitement on to my girls. I build sticks as a hobby and they love to play. It will always be part of our lives and traditions. SHORYUKEN!!!
I got into fighting games as a kid playing street fighter over a friends house then playing Mk over dads and I remember every other weekend going to the mall and playing against ransoms and my dads friends it was so fun especially playing tekken and xmen vs sf
What got me into fighting games? The spirit of competition going up against some friends, finding new rivals, plus it serves as a great way to win money and build memory structure.
I started going to the arcade when SFII first came out. I didn’t fit in at school but I quickly made friends at Aladdin’s Castle. I took my share of beatings and dished out my share of beatings. I think the two things that really made me a fighting game player for life are 1.the camaraderie between fighting game players and 2. the thrill of the fight. I sincerely hope arcades make a real comeback someday and long live Tekken!
Street fighter 2 & Mortal Kombat. I remember trying to learn everyone’s fatalities.
When I was about 6 years old I went to my cousins house and he had KOF2002 on PS2 with the Soulcal stick. I thought it was fascinating, I’d played arcades beforehand but it was my first time seeing a stick on a home console. The game itself captivated me with the soundtrack and art alone and I watched him perform combos and though it was amazing. I then asked my mom to get me the game and the stick, I was one happy camper 😀 Although I never could beat my cousin lol
When I was 14 years old, I was enjoying summer in México and a friend of mine told me there was a new Street fighter, and being the stupid kid that I was, I said to him that I already knew and that the new characters were a ninja and a bald guy… He looked at me and said that the ninja was real (he was talking about claw) but the bald guy wasn’t. So we went to that place and remember, 99% of the arcade machines in México were bootlegs (there was one original arcade machine but that was imported) and the first match that I saw was Blanka vs Chun Li.
That match looked amazing! The arcade had like 30 kids playing and waiting and when I finally had a chance to play I chose Chun Li because she was so pretty and to be honest it was the character that it was winning more. Needless to say, I didn’t last very long. I couldn’t do nothing: no throws, no footsies, nothing. I was just thinking that the game was like Final Fight where the combos would be automatically, and at the end I lost so badly that I got mad. That was my first salty moment, knowing that I would have to wait for another 30 minutes made me crazy.
With the years I became better at fighting games. I was playing everything, from capcom games to snk games. One day, I found a new poster that took my interest. It was the poster of tekken 3 with Jin Kazama. I loved that character, he looked so cool! So when It came out on playstation I bought it right away and started to be more serious about this title.
I played for months and unfortunaly, the arcades in méxico had the worst joysticks ever created. Not even the Lorenzo version were available. They were some crappy quality sticks that made the game unplayable on arcades. I ended playing tekken 3 by myself in my home due to my inhability to play on arcade’s sticks.
Gaming has been amazing all these years. But having a great fightstick has been even better.
Growing up with 3 brothers, there was always a natural rivalry between all of us, for anything you could think up. Growing up as lower class minorities in Brooklyn, NY meant that we had to make due with what we had. It was only a matter a time before young brothers found out that we could beat up on each other and see who was the best for only 25 cents. We were young but we were hungry to compete and super street fighter 2 turbo was out answer. Back in a time where bodegas still had cabs we could always be found after school huddled over a cab. Quite soon it turned from being the best between brothers to being the best on the block. Once we found out that other fighting games actually existed, we never looked back. As much as it defined our childhood, some of them grew out of it, and none still play as competitively as I do, but I play and I keep playing hard and try at every crack session, and every local tourney and hopefully if I ever have the extra money, a major outside of the city. So that I can tell my brothers confidently that i’m still trying hard to be the best; for us. The reality is that my story isn’t all that unique but I am always proud to tell people my story because my love for fighting games and love for my brothers has never been stronger.
man i feel old.. xD what got me into fighting games…hm.. i think it all started when i played some Street fighter 2 Turbo and Alpha 2. those were the good old days. my cousin always beat me and my siblings at that game xD afterwards i played some tekken 3 with my dad (he always picked eddy and law and bodied me LOL) that’s pretty much it. then played some soul calibur 2. that game was super fun on gamecube (BECAUSE LINK).
what really got into competitive fighting game though was tekken 5 and tekken 6. i watched those Levelupyourgame 1hour videos. just to learn everything about tekken xD (it was long and painful, but i enjoyed it :P)
at the age of 14 i bought my first SNES from my first earned money as a paperboy. half a year later, i had the money to buy this pretty cool locking game named “Street Fighter 2”, because it reminded me of the game named “King of Fighters” from the place where i was used to stop by after my teenage job stopped. the glamorious pizzeria named “Mikes Pizza No.1”. I loved both of them, but Street Fighter was not eating my money every ten minutes, so i played it over and over again. Till today, i cannot stop playing those games. Killer Instinct and Street Fighter 4… i could play this every day, every hour…
Growing up as a kid, I always dabbled into fighting games but never really got into them. I played the shit out of Bloody Roar when I was around 6 or 7 years old with a friend, and we also had this rivalry over fighting games. Fast forward a few years and I played my first Capcom FG in a movie arcade, which was Capcom Vs. SNK 2 at the time. I was only like 10, and the only thing I really knew how to do was throw out specials (that was the only advantage I had over friends as I grew up. I had a somewhat natural instinct to be able to input motions required for specials with ease) but still had no knowledge on all of the fundamentals of a fighting game. This asian guy came up to the machine, and perfected me 3 times in a row. I was devastated, but also amazed at how good this guy was.
I didn’t touch fighting games again until I was 13, which is when I got a PSP and also bought Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX. This was the first time for me playing a Street Fighter game, and I also played the shit out of that game, though my interest in it drifted after realizing none of my friends had got the game.
When I was 16, Super Street Fighter 4 was on sale on Steam and I bought it. It was a completely new experience and I thought it was too damn cool. Being able to play online made it even better for me, and after a few months of scrubbing it out on a keyboard, I invested in my first arcade stick.
From there on the interest just kept growing, and I sought out an offline scene to play in and become a part of the community. I signed up on SRK forums, learned as much as I possibly could about SSF4, footsies, neutral game, all of the technical terms and aspects of the game and I absolutely loved it.
Now I’m 17, waiting for USF4 to drop and hoping I can get a second stick to have a set up at home for people to play on if they come over for some casuals 🙂
I got into fighters during the arcade scene of the 90. I marveled at the skill that people played even before I was able to reach some of the sticks. And by the first time I saw a King full grapple combo, I was already hooked.
Iv been playing fighting games for over 25 years. My keen interest in martial arts & philosophy brought me to a new understanding. Never really good over the years i struggled but that’s what fighters do. Iv struggled a lot in life i tried so hard to focus on developing myself after my father died. Pushing gaming aside but it always called gripping me. remnant’s of a childhood cut short. All the characters that helped me Ryu’s journey. Jin’s bloodline. The parts of Soul edge in siegfried. The strength & clarity required to keep balance between good & evil reflects alot in day to day life.
Over time i couldn’t fight the need to be around my comforts of FGC my love for the community was stronger then ever. In early 2013 i started a facebook to promote & stand for those that stick to & remain in the community despite the fast moving pressures of modern age. We maybe small but what we don’t make in numbers we make in passion & unrefined dedication. Still i struggle to find form & technique but understand FGC is for everyone. I continue to promote & stand for it today.
In the end where all winners because we are a genre that never age. yet grow & develop our potential
Thank you FGC (^______^)
Doomzy
What got me into fighting games? I was super into kung-fu theater sundays as a kid on television, and flipped when I saw my first Karate Champ arcade game. It only got better once the vs edition came out and I was hooked for life. Street Fighter II sealed the deal and I spent every day of my teenage life @ 8’on the Break.
To think we’ve come from arcade “twin stick” fighters to home consoles and customizable TE sticks!
Damn I feel ancient…
I used to go to arcades when I was younger a whole lot, and I’d watch all the older kids play competitively. I thought to myself that I wanted in on that, so I spent almost every weekend at my local arcade playing anything I could get my hands on. Street fighter, tekken, svc chaos, etc…. I’d drop atleast $50 every time I went. It was just something I felt was worth my time and money.
I’ve just started playing fighting games a little over eight months ago. The things that drew me in was the mental part of playing. I used to play FPS games and the gameplay got a little to stale after a short period of time. I eventually stopped gaming. I started playing FGs when Injustice came out. Although the multiplayer online was a little laggy it felt great to actually think while playing a game.This led me to SSF4AE. This game single handedly cement my love of fighting games. I’ve consistently played fighting games for the last eight months. The community is great. We take care of our own in any way we can and give back to each other to keep the community healthy.
What got me into Fighting Games? I grew up in a very isolated part of Western Australia, and lived on a huge farm. I couldnt go out as we lived about 100miles from the closest small town. We didnt have internet then so I was pretty much stuck on the farm. One day we went to the closest big city (Perth) and did grocery shopping (Took 9 hours to drive there one way) and stayed in a hotel for the night. They had Tekken (1) and Street Fighter 2 in the lobby and I started playing it with some of the kids who were hanging around. I did surprisingly well, and it was awesome. I still remember how hyped it made me.
So I saved all my pocket money i got from chores and bought a console (ps1) and became so hooked on Yoshimitsu. I just couldnt believe I could stab someone in a game. Ever since then I have always had a console with SF or Tekken on it and play them regularly.
I still play SF4 and TT on my ps3 and really am pumped for USF4. I also hope that TxSF makes its way out someday, as I might be the only person who really liked SF EX 😀
Thanks guys
In all honesty, life happened. I reached a point where school, family, and work left me with very little free time so I couldn’t really sit down and play Morrowind for hours. I discovered that with fighting games, I can sit down and play for less than 20 minutes and enjoy that little bit of time more than four straight hours of an RPG or shooter.
Well my first fighting game was SF II for SNES since that game I’m in love with fighting games in SNES I got the chance to play MK, KI, the art of fighting, and fatal fury. I went into arcades alway before to see a movie, always I plat MVC, Sf Vs Xmen, and KoF since KoF 97, in PS i got the chance yo play a lot of fighting games, all the games that I play in arcarde plus Tekken II & III, blody toar, evil zone, etc.
Now I want to make the FGC Scene bigger locally at least specially for amateurs and all of us win some experience y confidence for participate o why not winning a mayor.
In the future I want to work with FG, like other people like Max arkman itself.
I got into fighting games when was in the third grade, I used to go to my local sandwich shop an they had a street fighter 2 arcade machine there. I remember hardly being able to play cause all the big kids used to take over the machine, eventually my mother surprised me with a Super Nintendo and the street fighter 2 game, I was so happy to finally be able to play this game and I’ve just been hooked on fighting games ever since.
I became interested in fighting games when they put a Marvel Superheroes cab in the games room at the campground I went to every summer as a kid. I didn’t have an arcade around at home so every year I’d save my quarters and eagerly wait for summer so I could play again. Then years later I got into SF4 and here we are!
Fighting games gave me friends and a community when I really needed them most. The great community here keeps me around
I used to get bullied as a kid. One day I was watching some kids playing ST in an old mom and pops joint I used to hang out at and thought that might be a good way to vent my frustrations. The rest is history.
I always thought fighting games were ok growing up. I played sf2 and the mk series by renting them. But I really got into fightings when my parents bought me a PS1 and SF alpha 1 for christmas. That was the only game I owned for a long for about half a year till my birthday. I fell in love with that game and the SF world and started playing the old ones and learning all the differences between them.
I got into fighting games because i got DOA5 free on PS+. I tried it out to see what all the fuss was about, and i loved it from day one. 500+ hours later i still play it 🙂
Street Fighter 4, I was playing it for fun and messing around like I did every other fighter I got before, but then I saw that one of my favorite youtubers was playing competitively and I wanted to play him soo bad so I got good enough to fight him well and before you know it I was playing every fighter well (in casual settings results may vary in tournaments) This was all when I was like 16.
A very close friend of mine showed me King’s Multi Grab into Rolling Death Cradle in Tekken 3, that got me started. Then he proceeded to show me the glory that was Tobal 2, Eretzvaju, Angel Eyes, and my favorite Critical Blow!
Learning how to play different characters and different play styles
So i was getting into retro gaming, i was looking back on my most nostalgic memories where i came across a PS2 demo disc (that came with the console). This demo contained a demo with Tekken 4.The airport stage stood out to me more than anything in that game. Also Marduk scared me to death when he yelled out “Ill break your face!” Along with his ff 1+2 grab… (When i was really young of course).. I loved this game so much that a bought every single Tekken game have been addicted ever since.
What got me into fighting games was definitely the style and the sheer awesomeness of the rosters. I remember reading in a game informer magazine about Marvel vs Capcom 2 and I was absolute blown away. I was a fan of comic book and had played my fair share of Capcom games so to see mega man and gambit fighting cammy and thanos was a dream come true. I bought the game the following week and from there I discovered the FGC and it’s a fantastic community to be a part of.
Maximillian_Dood got me into fighting games, I bought Street Fighter 4, and now I’ve been practicing like crazy for when Ultra comes out so I can jump into some ranked matches.
I got into fighting games when I was in elementary, use to head to arcade after school to play KOF, Tekken, Guilty Gear and MVC2. I got back into playing street fighter 4 years ago… I always wanted to learn to play Sagat so I practice everyday. I really liked his playstyle, it’s easy to learn and pick up.
i got into fighting games when my brothers and i would rent ssf2 on snes from the video store all the time. i was probably 8-10 and they were both younger. the great characters are what got me hooked in. we would mash the hell out of the snes controller and whenever one of us would accidentally do a special move, we would get pissed and accuse the other of knowing how to do it on purpose and not telling us. there was one rule when we played, though… NO DHALSIM. his stretchy limbs were considered “cheating.”
I’ve always played fighting games since I can remember. I started with street fighter then picked up mortal kombat on Sega Genesis. But really I’ve always been a street fighter player. Just a couple years ago I ditched to stick and have never been happier! This TTT2 stick is really a great stick and I would love to be puttin in combos on it!
Two of the first fighters I ever played were Tekken 3 and Dynasty Warriors 1. Tekken 3 in particular was such a well-made and enjoyable game that I still consider it my favorite in the series to this day. It was one of the biggest influences on me as a fighting game fan and as a gamer.
I was a casual fighting game fan for the longest time, but the Daigo parry video made me want to get really good at fighters, and I’ve been a hardcore fan ever since. I’ve always enjoyed the friendly-yet-competitive nature of the FGC and it reminds me of why I enjoy gaming in general- it’s just fun.
I’m a relative newcomer to fighting games. I grew up in a small town in the middle of Saskatchewan after the Street Fighter 2 days so I never got to experience the arcade scene at all. I knew about fighting games but I never really played one until I was in grade 12 and myself and my friend were having an argument about who would win in a fight between Wolverine and Spider-Man. Naturally we decided to settle this with Marvel vs Capcom 2, so we used my friend’s totally-not-modded Playstation 2 and a totally-legit-copy of Marvel 2 to determine that in fact Wolverine does beat Spider-Man like I always said and don’t let know man tell you different. From there me and my friend started to play a lot of fighting games, branching out to Third Strike and eventually to SF4 where we’ve suck as out main game for a few years now, and started to really follow the scene, even travelled to a couple tournaments.
I wasn’t the richest kid growing up and I really love video games so I would go to the nearest laundromat and watch people play Samurai Shodown, Street fighter 3, and Marvel vs Capcom 2. I fell in love with Street Fighter 3. Everyday I Would go the Laundromat and play Akuma trying to beat Gill.
Heard Blue Water Blue Sky, which got me into Guilty Gear, and that branched out to Street Fighter after getting to know the amazing FGC a bit better.
A long time ago in the realm of arcades many warriors journeyed to claim victory over one another. The lords of Namco had created one machine to rule them all. This machine was unlike anything anyone had ever seen before. They called this beast of a machine TEKKEN TAG TOURNAMENT. It claimed the lives of many, including my own. I am forever dedicated to serving this beast and all incarnations till my last breath. Long live the KING OF IRON FIST!
I originally started playing Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II with my friends at a young age of six. I had little experience as to what I had to do in order to beat my friends and figuring out how to get their life bar depleted to 0. It was a tough challenge for me and I, honestly, hated playing fighting games at first. I just kept getting beaten by my friends because I didn’t know the special move lists or how to input them fast enough. However, when I hit the age of fourteen and Soul Calibur came out and appeared at my Time Out arcade, I decided to figure things out again.
Soul Calibur was what brought me back into the fighting game scene. Figuring out how long range characters beat short range at their maximum range but lose once they get in made me so curious as to why it happened. I learned that while playing fighting games that there was far more to it than what I initially thought. It made sense why people had to space far away when shooting hados at a reasonable range without getting hit by the good ol’ J.+HK to cr.+HK (considered everyone’s first baby combo). It made so much sense to me that I wanted to figure out many other fighting games. I tried learning the basics of CvS2, SF:3S, MvC, Tekken, KoF, and many more. Each game had their own unique game mechanics and it made me excited learning more about them. Though, I could never be as good as some of the well known pro players, I was satisfied just knowing the average amount. In the end, the idea of figuring out “why” and “how” things happen in fighting games made me want to learn how to play them.
Seeing Street Fighter 2 being played at a local grocery store by some high school kids. They were having so much fun fighting each other. Got a few quarters from my mom and challenged them. I got wrecked but was smiling the whole time.
I got into fighting games back when I got diagnosed with melanoma cancer in 1992. My mom bought me street fighter 2 for the Super Nintendo to keep me occupied while I was on chemo and distract me from the pain. I have been hooked ever since! Thank you
Sorry to hear that. Hope you get better. Have you tried cannabis tinctures, garlic and lemon bombs, I hear ice baths sometimes can help one control the immune system.
I’ve always play SF. ST A3 A2 3S and AE just for fun. Never really knew about frame data, links, footsy’s, and what not. So one night I went to go, and hang out with a close friend of mine. We have not talked in a few months, because his fiancé and him just became new parents. With that being said, and blah blah blah, I walked into their apartment, and saw him playing AE. First words that game out where, “Dude, I will beat your ass in some Street Fighter!” Cory replies back, “Grab the controller or my other arcade stick!” Needless to say, I got bodied! Plus I was using a Xbox controller with that horrible D-pad haha. That night was the longest night of my life, because he was explaining everything in the book to me on why I lost, and my head about exploded with confusion, and info intake. I never knew there were so much about playing fighting games. Just mash buttons and see who wins. When Cory was explaining to me how to link Ryu cr. forward to fireball, I was like, “You can do that?!” Ever since that night three years ago or so, when SSF4 was out and, AE was right around the corner I’ve been playing. Just learning a new things everyday, new pokes, combos, frame data, and match ups are just amazing to be. Don’t forget some of the headaches also haha. That one hour rant Cory explaining to me why I lost triggered something in my head to want to play more and more. So I blame him for my interest and introducing to the FGC haha. My first get together with a group was a couple of weeks later, and we all still hang out playing every week till this day.
What got me into fighting games. When CODMW2 came out that was all i played.it was my first online game and i just played that day n night. I got really good joined a few teams and got ranked with them. I always kbew what street fighter was and about the FGC and all the tounaments i just never got the game until i was convinced by one of my first friends on XBL to get SuperStreet fighter 4. When i got home and started playing i got hooked. I practicly stoped playing COD and became more involved with the FGC. I constintly went on SRK fourms and Eventhubs for info so i could get better. When MvC2 was released for download i immediately got it because i remember when i was young around the age of 9 when i went to the laundry with my father it had a MvC2 machine i was always there playing by myself i guess people didnt know about it in a laundry mat but i would go there sometimes after school and spend a bunch of quarters all on that machine. So after i download that i play more and more and i continue to buy more and more fighting games kof13, kof2002um, 3rd strike, umvc3, ttt2, sf2 hf, skullgirls, ggxxaxp, soulcal2 hd and i played all of them everyday. Youtubers like Maximillian, PikachuAkuma, Behrudy, Desk as well a tournament pkayers like Daigo, Justin Wong and several other are really what inspired me to focus on the games true mechanicems. I would love for one day to attend a major tounament maybe for Ultra street fighter 4. By the way i am currently 17 and about to graduate from High School so i have been involved on fighting games for about 8 years and if my friend never got me to get super streetfighter 4 i would not be playing these amazing games today.
My friend introduced me to SF4 back in late 08′, and he used to kick my ass a lot haha. I made it a goal to beat him and become better than he was. I kept getting bodied by everybody online but I never stopped getting back up to fight. Because of my strive to become better, I only leveled up further and further. When I fought against my friend months later after all of that slaughter I put myself through, I bodied him free. I finally reached my goal.
Around the time SSF4 came out, I decided to pick up Makoto because I always thought she was a cool character. I repeated the same process I went through when I first picked up the game, not to mention that I also just picked up an arcade stick for the first time in those days. I went through a lot of different experiences, mentalities, playstyles, concepts and theories playing SF that I was able to carry over to other games as well. Now, up to this point, I’m going out to tournaments more often and I have an even hungrier strive to level up.
My step dad downloaded MAME and put Street Fighter II on it when I was 9 years old (this would have been 2002). I later bought Capcom vs SNK 2 and the Street Fighter Anniversary collection and have been playing ever since.
A while ago I really interested in Tekken 6 that my friend brought to me in PSP.. I really like the interactive gameplay of Tekken, I have to say Tekken now is the best fighting game exist, especially Tekken Tag 2. Now I’m really into Tekken Tag 2 and playing it every weekend in arcade with my friends and the Tekken community here in my town. Can’t beat the best but i wanna be the best. Thank you
I got into fighting game by playing SF2arcade a at a local Asian super market and fell in love with the fighting game genre ever since.
LOVE STREET FIGHTER~~~!!!!!!
I was introduced to Street Fighter II when I was 7 or 8 years old by my brother.. he brought me to his friend’s place to play this game on SNES…
then I found this game at local arcade center… it only costed Rp100,- / game at dat time.. That was how much I got for 1 day as my allowance… I could only play like 1 game everytime.. and always lose immediately…
but I didn’t know why everytime I got money and found the machine.. I always wanted to play..
then when I was 6th grade… my parents bought me PSX… and the FIRST GAME I picked from the shelf was STREET FIGHTER ZERO 3.. That was the only game I keep playing and playing.. until memorizing all the characters’s movelist… ==’
that was how I learnt how to do 720 or other difficult inputs..
Then marvel vs capcom, rival schools, SF EX, Pocket Fighter.. I also played WWE (WWF) game at that time.. wakaakak
Few weeks ago my brpther’s sons who are just 5 and 6 years old.. I let them played SF for their first time… but somehow they managed to do hadouken shoryuken tatsumaki at the correct timing… maybe they inherited FG blood from my bro, since he was SF player also 18 years ago.. hahaha
What started my love of fighting games was after I watched Evo 2012. I remember all the hype and wanted to be a part of it. So i picked up SSF4 Ae shortly there after in September. I remember getting destroyed so badly back then, but losing equals learning and so I did. I hope (work permitting) I will be able enter my first tournament soon.
A friend of mine got me into fighting games, when we where younger. Back when Mortal kombat was released on the Snes and Sega Genesis. We where at a local video game rental store. Way before there ever was a blockbusters or gamefly, when all we had were mom and pop corner video rental stores. We where looking through the rack of games and he stumbled upon Mortal Kombat. Pulled it off the shelf and asked me if I ever heard of or played the game. I told him I never even heard of it and he insisted we rent it and play it. He said it was a fighting game like Street Fighter with blood and you could kill your opponent at the end of the match. Needless to say after playing hell of the game for a few days straight, I was hooked on fighting games.
I’ve always enjoyed games that cater to my competitive spirit, but they were mostly FPS (CoD) games. Unfortunately, I’ve found the latest iterations to be lacking any form of real competitive skill, so I made the switch to fighters with the release of SSFIV. I’ve purchased, mostly, the whole line-up of EVO fighters to see which I’d enjoy the most, but it wasn’t really until my soon to be 5 year old son caught interest in one of the tournament streams (UFGT9) I was watching. He was awestruck watching the action unfold between Bananaken and Lord knight’s grand final P4A match. Long story short, it has been a wonderful bonding experience having “Friday Night Fights” at our house. He enjoys them all immensly, but his favorites are TTT2, KOF, and P4A (he loves Teddie). I’d love to be able to pass down my brawl stick to my little pint sized fighter. All in all, the competitive nature fighting games brought me in, but what got me hooked was the enjoyment my son and I have playing together.
P.S. We can’t wait for Ultimax!!
I honestly got into fighting games when Street Fighter x Tekken came out. I always played Street Fighter and Capcom related fighting games before that but never anything to the point where i sit down and learn a character. My cousin, who always played Tekken growing up also got hyped for this game and told me he would be able to beat me with pure Tekken
characters. I couldnt let him beat me with these characters so I trained hard using using Ryu and Juri, playing online and getting bodied over and over. When the time came to play my cousin, he selected both Law and Jin, two characters who i have seen online the most! Our matches ended with him usually on top but that never got me down, I kept playing until i downloaded his playstyle completely. I ended up defeating him once, and I was really proud but salty over the amount of losses that I suffered. I guess you can say that the overall competitiveness is what got me into fighting games, the fact that the amount of time you put in the game will show.
Freaking Street fighter 2 for the snes! Also fighting games just run in Mexicans blood. It was inevitable xD
A random trip to a Kroger grocery store with my mom when I was about eight years old or so. I wondered off into the magazine section, because Kroger’s toy isle sucked. Tucked behind an issue of EGM, was a Gamefan magazine with some sort of crazy cover. Inside was all sorts of great articles, and pictures.. but one stood out, an anime looking version of Street Fighter. I had played SF2 plenty at the local dairy mart, and wasted tons of my parent’s hard earned quarters on it.
Recently I had been watching Ronin Warriors, and Sailor Moon on network TV, and knew through friends older brothers that it was Japanese Animation. So here was a Street Fighter with art in that same style. I was instantly hooked. I was so diehard into early import or Japanese influenced stuff as soon as I got my first job, ordering stuff with checks online..
It’s now about twenty two years or so later, and I own a physical copy of Street Fighter Alpha 1-3/Collection on just about every platform it was available for, including CPS2 boards. All thanks to a magazine, and a company who made some of the greatest games of my childhood.
I am even later than an 09er. I got serious about playing fighting games when I was 19 in 2011 with Marvel 3.
When I was 19, I moved back for my second year of college and it really shook me. Almost immediately, I was diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety. I didn’t want to get out of bed or go to class or go to work or anything. I laid in bed and wished everything would just stop. I picked up Marvel vs. Capcom 3 on a whim and it just clicked.
Fighting games were like this magical device where everything just stopped. Everything just clicked and all that mattered in my life was the match. I was devouring all the information I could find about combos, terminology, more games. I picked up Super Street Fighter 4. I learned Third Strike. I found out I was ass at Tekken (sorry Markman). They became an outlet to deal with my complex feelings. If I could sit down and out-think my opponent, then I could out-think my brain causing all these issues for me. They were instrumental in my recovery as well as in my social life. I started going to locals and making more friends who played the games.
Fighting games were my outlet and helped me get my mind together. I came for the therapeutic nature, stayed for the community.
What got me into fighting games was how much fun the different games where and that alot of my friends made good competition.
It’s hard to say, really … I played a lot of arcade games when I was a kid. I think the first time I really had an idea of what I was doing, though, was when my dad bought a second-hand SNES and we got Street Fighter 2 with it. I don’t think I really loved fighting games until Battle Arena Toshinden and Soul Blade came out, though.
What got me into fighting games was actually my mom. My earliest video game memories were when I was 3 years old. My dad had bought a sega genesis and I would watch my mom hog it because she was so determined to beat mortal Kombat. She eventually did beat it she was so happy. Watching her be that determined and passionate about that game made me fall in love with fighting games
My parents taught me how to play mortal kombat when I was little. We had a genesis and the first 3 titles
I had the family where my dad actively wanted to practice our combos/fatalities and I am very fortunate for that
There was this Tekken Tag Tournament contest at a mall, it was a mix of Korean and Filipino players. My friend plays Xiaoyu against a Yoshimitsu player, then this crazy stuff happened where the latter player (Yoshi) who was low on life performed a Hara-Kiri move and earned a double K.O. to win the game. Crowd went wild for that, and that hype is what got me playing fighting games ^_^
The old sports and games behind the rickles on Route 22 near Union. One Friday a month my mom used to take me and my brother there after school and give us not 1,2,3,4 but FIVE DOLLARS. (Fortune when you are 5-7) Anyway we walked in and the place had Mortal Kombat replacing the huge DDR machine with 2 fight sticks. I was instantly hooked and we both had to start on the other machines because of course lil kids cant’ play on the big screen were kids. But still gr8 memories of eventual Genesis blood code and etc. Mortal Monday Baby! Sadly S&G since was shut down due to Cocaine and Heroin sales.
What got me into fighting games was getting to meet one of the voice actors for Tekken. I work at a local anime convention, and one year one of our guests was Lisle Wilkerson ( She voices Nina, Zafina, and Christie) I got to work with her during the convention. So wanting to make sure I dont look like a chump I picked up a copy of Tekken 6 and studied it inside and out. Ever since Ive been hooked on fighting games. Didnt get to fight her in it, but I was ready!
I always played with friends and my brother, since I was a kid. The truth is FG got me into it.
I got started in fighting games at my neighborhood arcade 8 on the Break in New Jersey. They had so many fighting games like Tekken 4 , Street fighter 3rd strike, and capcom vs snk 1 and 2.
Loved playiong games at my local bowling alley (Missile Bowl, Gardena, CA how I miss you!). A SF2 machine popped up one day, so I put in my coins to try it out and was murdered by the computer. Started another game and began to figure things out when a kid younger than me walked up and put his credits in. I was like oh crap, I don’t think I can beat him. Sure enough, he beat me and told me to get lost (lol). As I stepped away, a bunch of his friends came up and monopolized the cab.
My first virtual beatdown. I loved it.
I first got into fighting games with Street Fighter in the Arcades. Mortal Kombat was next for me. I still buy every Street Fighter and MK game that comes out. It’s video gaming at its bare bones which I love.
Since i was a kid and my mom sent me to the store to get things for breakfast and the trip took me like 1 hour because a king of fighters arcade got in my way, i saw so many people doing line to play that, it was king of fighters 98, i saw people getting mad for loosing, i saw people laughing for winning, i saw people bragging about how good they were, i wanted to beat those guys, then i discovered more and more games, breakers revenge, street fighter 3rd strike, and since then i’m in love with fighting games, when my dad got me marvel super heroes vs street fighter and tekken 1 through 3 on the ps1 and an arcade stick that had this psone look, i was sleeping late every single night, my parents even had to hide my games at night, but yeah that’s pretty much what got me into fighting games.
My buddies and I would play video games competitively against only each other in games like naruto, pokemon, etc. One day we all randomly just decided to get marvel vs capcom 3 because it was super new. Since then, i have moved on to played other fighters like sf4, tekken, and ssbm
My Mom used to take forever at the mall. Coolest game in the arcade was Tekken Tag Tournament 1 and was hooked from then on.
I was left at the mall and was raised at the arcade. Had to watch out for Kazuya Uf+4 ,aka the food court special, in those days lol. I’d play every fighting game, even Time Killers. Tekken 3 would be a factor in me still playing today. Which didn’t release until years later but I feel it was like rock to stand on as the tide of bad games hit players around the world.
I had friends that were competitive players, and one day I decided to tag along to a tournament at Nickel City in Illinois in. Friend played Justin Wong first round in MVC2, and not surpringly gets 2-0’d. After seeing the community, and being a competitive gamer in multiple genres, I felt like itd be a fun thing to be a part of. And it has been lots of fun, til the cable to my stick got severed by a rabbit.
I remember as if it was just yesterday, I was no more then 8 years old and had Playstation/arcade day every friday. And you could compete in several games, among one of them was Tekken 2. We were 15 competitors fighting for the famous smilie popsicle. The tournament went totally button-mashing-ham and was so fierce and fun at the same time, after 2 hours of competing I was announced the winner using OP King. Everything just took off slowly from there didn’t stick with Tekken all the time but fighting games in general was the thing for me. Got back into Tekken 4 eventually for good and stuck with the series. I’m 27 this day, and all the friends I played with in T4 still makes us stick together in Tekken Tag Tournament 2 today.
Mr. Moist out.!
I got into fighting games watching my older brother play street fighter 2 at a local arcade I followed every game he played from mortal kombat, tekken, killer instinct, fatal fury, world heroes, samurai showdown always try to beat him it really brought us together as brother’s trying to figure out moves, combos or fatalities trying to beat every game with the little bit of coins or tokens we had. Now I’m getting my nephew’s and niece into them, they didn’t take to them at first until I got a fight stick pro now they ask to play more often since my arcade closed having a fight stick is the closest thing I can show them to actually being at an arcade.
Honestly it was vanilla Marvel 3 that reeeeeally got me into the fgc. I had been really excited for the game and when umvc3 was announced i had decided that i really wanted to get invested into the genre and start going to tournaments and whatnot, ever since then i have tried to give almost every game a chance before i go on saying that i dont like that particular one
As a kid, I would always tag along with my parents when they attended their weekly bowling league events. To keep my sister and i occupied during, they would send us to the arcade with enough money to last for a good night of gaming. The more i frequented the more i noticed 2 games being played more than any others, Street fighter 2 and Tekken. So, as a curious kid, I would get in line and take my turn at mashing away at these better players. But, the more i played, the more i learned and they began to teach me about special moves and other things. I began to grow more and more excited to go to the bowling alley every week just to play. That’s how i originally got into fighting games.
being a only child at the time with no friends and growing up with my uncles, they all were into fighting games. all they did was play street fighter and mortal kombat. thier competitive drive was insane and i barely knew how to even know how to play but i swear street fighter and mortal kombat were my life growing up! to this day all i do is dedicate my time with fighting games hoping one day i can exceed my uncles in their skill levels haha.
For me i was a G.I.JOE action figure collector at the time. Hasbro made Street Fighter II action figures. So being a action figure collector i Bought all of the Street Fighter II action figures. Never heard of Street Fighter prior to that. Didn’t even own a Game console at all at that time. After i got the action figures i wondered what is this Street Fighter II game they were talkin’ about. So had to go out and get a (Super Nintendo) and get this Street Fighter II game. I then starting playing SFII on Super Nintendo. That got me hooked on SFII itself. Later Street Fighter II Turbo came out got that then later Super Street Fighter II on Super Nintendo! That’s what got me into Fighting games to begin with. Thank You Hasbro for making those action figures back then. Later Hasbro made Mortal Kombat action figures that then got me into Mortal Kombat games. MK1 MK2 MK3 and Ultimate MK3 on Super Nintendo! Later moved on to Sony Playstation 1 to continue buying any new SF or MK games. then branched off to other fighting games like King of Fighters… Tekken, Virtua Fighter, Soulcalibur, Dead or Alive, Marvel vs capcom games, And many many more. Any that were on PS1, PS2, PS3, and hopefully one day all that will be on PS4. Today i play all the fighting games. But SFII was my first fighting game and the start of it all. (Fightin’ Games) (Fightin’ Games) (Fightin’ Games) oh Yeah! By: DCS
I got in to fighting games since I was like 6, had some older cousins that played SF2 on SNES and I would be the annoying little cousin that would bug them to let me play lol. I would get to play every now and then and always ha a blast, would do my best to try and beat them. After that I was playing A LOT of KI on snes, got pretty good at it and I was hooked after that, the challenge of learning how to play a good fighting game and the strategy behind playing fighting games in a smart way is what’s kept me going. Almost 30 years old now and I’m even more into it now : )
I used to randomly play SF2 at the arcades as a little kid, but I was never good. I would only play the computer since playing other people meant I would probably lose after 1 game and waste my quarter. I just used Chun Li since I could just mash kick. I would play a few games of pretty much any fighting game that came out on consoles during the 16bit days. Watching others play at the arcades was pretty fun too. Primal Rage was probably the best game to watch.
When I was on vacation in Asia for a month I was bored and my mom bought me a Dreamcast. I got pretty much all the accessories and a few games. I got MvC2 with the Dreamcast joystick, but even then I didn’t get into it as much as I thought.
It wasn’t until SF4 came out that I really started to play a fighting game for real. My brother brought it home with the SE stick. At first I just used an XBox controller. There was a gaming site I always watched called 1up.com and they had Magus1234, Haunts, and a few others talk about the game. I watched their videos and it really taught me there was more to the game than mashing. That got me into watching Team Spooky streams and other streams and seeing people play really helped me figure out what to do. That was also the time I tried using the stick and haven’t gone back.
I’m still not that great at SF4. I never bothered to practice links or really learn a character, but I had fun playing with friends and family. It wasn’t until MvC3 came out that I just got super hooked and tried to learn all the hard stuff. It was also around the time I purchased my own TE during that weird XBox stick drought. I could only find a BlazBlue TE on eBay and regret not getting in on that 2 for the price of 1 deal during EVO.
What got me into fighting games was the hype of all the events when I would watch streams on twitch. My first fighting game was Street Fighter 4. I started with Honda Blanka. They were ok but I fell in love with Rose 🙂
As a kid, I really wanted to play Sonic the Hedgehog on the Sega Genesis, but I didn’t a console of my own yet. Then around 1995, My uncle decided to pass down his model 2 Genesis to me with a stack of games. I was ecstatic at that time because finally I had a way to play Sonic, but among the stack of games that was given to me, there were only only sports games and a bunch of action type games. One of them was Street Fighter II Special Champion Edition. Because the other baseball/football games weren’t really fun for me, so for some time, SFII was the only thing I was playing on the Genesis. Next thing I knew, I had friends coming over and we’d be playing SFII and Samurai Shodown for hours on end. That was my first real introduction to Fighting Games.
– hibachi
My 1st rime playing a fighting game was early 90s when me and 1 of my best friends would save our quarters walk afew miles to a 7-11 across town to play StreetFighter 2 World Warrior. It was the coolest thing to play at the time and will never forget my 1st HADOKEN and then i actually learned how to do it!! LOL Then when i was about 16,another best friend of mine moved to town and tought me what a 2in1 was and it was all over. I thought i was pretty good till he moved to town but he helped me take it to another level and we lived at an arcade acouple towns away after that!!
Tekken 6 got me into fighting competitively. I always played fighting games. But my brother was the only one around and he wasnt a competitive person. My first tourny was a Tekken tournament. i went 0-2. i hope to improve more
My uncle got me into fighting games when he let me play Street Fighter 2 with him on his SNES. When he moved out of my grandparent’s house he left the NES and SNES behind. I “inherited” them when my grandmother put them out for trash pickup. Growing up I would play SF2 here and there, but never got into it where I would learn anything other than special moves. Quick note my aunt got me Killer Instinct on SNES after I saw 2 guys go at it at the local movie theater (Fulgore for life). I would then very casually and infrequently play fighting games for the next 10+ years. Fast forward to 2008 where SF4 is out and my interest was immediately piqued; not because of the character models, but the fact that it was supposedly reminiscent of SF2. MadCatz announced their TE and SE sticks, but I was very weary of the brand. Their history wasn’t exactly the most prestigious, but I kept the joysticks in the back of my mind. I tried joysticks at the arcades in the past, but was horrible at them. I picked up SF4 Collector’s Edition when it came out (big mistake – should have just gotten a regular copy) and the magic was back. I was still bad at the game, but I fell in love with SF all over again. The PS3 pad was nice, but I could never play too long since my thumb would hurt from sweat and rubbing against the D-pad. Weeks went by when I decided I was going to get a MadCatz joystick. As always I did my research and wanted the best. The TE was the way to go with the full Sanwa parts. By that time people had already gone crazy over the MadCatz joysticks so it was nearly impossible to get one. One day at work I read on a forum a new shipment was arriving for Amazon.com so I stalked the site. Whenever a TE would pop up it would be sold before I could get my hands on it. I left work unable to secure one, but still kept my eye on the page and refreshed here and there. Eventually a stroke of luck came my way and I got my order in. The TE arrived and that was pretty much the beginning of it all. This was the time I started learning about the FGC and the various players. With Daigo as my primary motivation I actually learned how to play SF4. I learned about canceling moves, links, different combos, and once I was comfortable with the joystick I learned how to plink. Since the TE I have bought a MadCatz SE (to transplant the innards to the TE since the TE PCB went bad), Hori VLX, Qanba Q4 Ice Red, Hori Fighting Edge, MadCatz FightStick Pro Sanrio Edition, and most recently a MadCatz V.S. from PhreakMods’ KickStarter campaign for The Link shaft. USF4 can’t come soon enough!
When I was first out of high school and moved to a new city, the group of people that I met at the local game store always played fighting games, and those are still my best friends to this day, Watching two friends play 100 rounds of Tekken and Dead or Alive with all the trash talk and nonsense is still one of my best memories
The GGXX soundtrack and finding Arcade Infinity BB ranbat videos!
I got into Fighting games because my sister thought she could beat me with Chun Li. She was right 😦 SF2 changed everything
My older brother was the one who got me started. He was a big fan of them while I was mostly into racing games. Both Street Fighter and Tekken were the starting points. Specifically, Street Fighter Alpha 3 and Tekken 2.
Got into fighting games after I’d been hanging out with my friends for a while. They talked about Street Fighter and Tekken a lot, and I wanted to be a part of that too. Eventually I got my own stick and started playing those games with my friends, and obviously did really bad. As time went on, more and more people got added to our group, and I started looking around locally for players to play with. Fighters have really gotten me out and about to meet new people and it’s been one hell of an experience to see myself improve from the point I started.
The Fascination of a child dazzled by this new world of lights and sounds.
The Interaction among my friends of fights, improving my personal skills.
The Passion for competition in the explosive thrill of Victory.
I’m an arcade bodega rat from NYC and fighting games even before SF always had the hype. Dem feels when your parents send you out to buy groceries and you take 2 hours instead of ten minutes because you beating everyone on the block with Blanka. But the best part about it was making friends out of it which I still do to this day.
i got into fighting games because at the age of 6 i was obsessed with pixel art and the way animation was done! first 2 games were sf2.ww and fatal fury
What got me into fighting games? My older brother and cousins. Literally at the age of 4 I remember playing Street Fighter 2 on the Super Nintendo with my family and them teaching me how to throw fireballs! From that point, over the years I started playing old school gems like rivals schools, star gladiator, darks talkers, soul caliber, killer instinct, and more! Ever since then I’ve always wanted to get better and play in tournaments. Now I am active in the fighting game community in the state of NC with friends trying to educate others and get them interested into fighters as well.
my first fighting game was Street Fighter II Champion Edition on Arcade , then Street Fighter II turbo & MK (but my favorit is MK3) on SNES and i fall in love fighting games, after this, i knew Neo Geo with fatal fury , art of fighting , then when have,Samourai Showdown, King of fighters ’94,was like WOW! FF & Art of on same game…ive played in all king of fighters until 2002 but from kof 97 and the first real bout,i remember it was really the first game ,we could make big combos with SA etc.. & playing All FF Real Bout,like 4 /6 hours in home er days minimaum & go in area around in my city to meet other player,try to be better,i was like no life with school lol,participated in tournament here in France ,with bruno Vaysse, sometimes in london with Ryan hart ,at the room Sega in trocadero…in kof 97 & 98, i was (still now) very fan of capcom & Snk,then have new license, Breakers , Street fighter Alpha, street fighter III ,Marvel Vs Street fighters…was AWESOME new gameplay,then Capcom Vs SNK etc..and of course without forgetting,3D games ,Street fighter EX,Tekken ,Tekken 3 was my favorit in ps1 ,Soul Edge,totally different 2D games but was very funny.
about now, UMVC 3 & Street fighter IV ,KOF 13,(for 2D games) Tekken & Soul Edge (for 3D games)
are the best games currently fighting,of course the most played,since the first vers of SF IV , i fall in love arcade stick (Madcatz) mainly mainly SF4 blue edition chunli TES,and was very hard to get it,my favorit for the confort,weight,big…
is Street fighter Cross Tekken VS edition (daigo) thx at u markman for all of theses stick!! keep it real
i hope one time go to EVO (when i have money)
to meet another player of worldwide, see the best player 🙂
Well I was 13 and had just moved to Puerto Rico with my family. I didn’t know squat of Spanish despite being puertorican. Obviously I had no friends so I was a loner. My neighbor was another kid but a little bit olde maybe 15. One day he invited me to his house so I asked for permission. We went to his room and he had a dreamcast which I had never played. The funny thing is he only had fighting games nothing else. I found that weird. I had played sf2 before but not for at all serious and never against a human opponent. I just hit buttons on the sega genesis controller. So he popped in Cvs2. And we played for hours I found it so much fun fighting against someone else. It was a rush lol. Even though Spanish that well yet I felt like we were communicating perfectly. After that I would always go to his house and he would pop in different fighting games to play and that introduced me to many kids who played in the neighborhood and the experience was even better. Now I only play fighting games. Lol. I’m 28 now and he’s 30 and till this day we still play. Hell, just yesterday we played for hours and he is truly my best friend we have been through so much and to think it all started with a fighting game.
I’m old school so I got into it because of the arcade scene! Those were the days.
No lie I believe it was bloody roar 2 and tekken 2 on ps1. I dont exactly remember which came first but I know those were my favorite fighting games back in the day. There was also power stone on the sega dreamcast and street fighter alpha 2 on ps1. Every since I got those games, I just stuck to them. I barely played any genre outside of fighters and if I did I couldn’t beat them or lost interest in them because it wasn’t a fighter that was fun enough to keep playing and prove to friends I was better than them. Just the simple fact that your on your own with no one to blame made things easier for me. Teams just weren’t for me.
Good luck to all those that entered and hopefully there’s a winner in need of a arcade stick.
Street fighter 2 and CVS2 got me into fighting games. I was always really into video games, but something about fighting games, especially 2-d ones, made me really wanna play, and SF2 had to be my first fighting game ever. I never started playing competitively though until CVS2 came out, and that game really had me hooked from then on. I’ve had sticks that unfortunately broke, and currently unable to afford shoving 90+ dollars to buy a new one, so this new stick would be amazing to get for Ultra street fighter 4 and P4 Arena Ultimax! May the best person win! 😀
When i saw the parry vid daigo vs Justin on a german game TV Show, in this way i found srk and tekkenzaibatsu.
I’m since 2004 in the fgc found friends and my. Future wife
My cousin and I loved to play fighting games casually when we were younger. Mostly the older MK games. One Christmas, I got CVS2 on GameCube (as was disappointed because it didn’t have Mega Man, haha)
But I didn’t get into the competitive scene until I was given a copy of vanilla SF4. I hopped online, got my ass beat over and over, and just kept wondering why. I figured that there had to be more to fighting games than what all I had seen. I went online and found this gigantic community of people, sharing combos and tech. And so, I joined the FGC.
It all started with a 3 way rivalry between me, my brother and my uncle in tekken 2 and other fighters such as power stone, street fighter alpha 2, Bloody roar 2 and many others. But tekken and super smash bros 64 were the games. As we all got older, the better we got and the more the competition rose. We actually continued on and ventured out to play competitively outside of just playing with the 3 of us. Now we enter tournaments and still enjoy playing fighters to this day. What we all had in common was the love of the genre an having no one to blame.
When I was about 5 years old, I was at the airport going to Japan. There I saw my first arcade machine, and I instantly fell in love. The game was SF2. Years later with the lack of money, a local arcade, and a scene I satisfied my need of fighting games with Mugen and other fighting game related flash games. Then on my 12th birthday I was gifted the Nintendo Wii, making my first real fighting game Tastunoko vs Capcom and Super Smash Brothers Brawl. Soon I switched over to PS3 with my Nova/Firebrand/Ammy in UMvC3.
I like to do some training! I always train my wright vergil wesker/deadpool as hard as I can! Because… I do it for fun and competitive, I like fighting games because: we need a hardwork to get a good combo, thats why I like fighting games, and I play it since young with my brother and sister!
When i was in the 10th grade my house had burnt to the ground. A i had left were a few outfits because i was at a band clinic for the weekend when it happened. Anyway my school put together some money and cards that got donated. One of the gift cards was to the Electronic Boutique. I ended up getting Metal Gear Solid 2 and didn’t have enough money for a memory card or even a preowned or greatest hits game so i was going to keep the money on the card. I knew i had some extra money on my card so i just started looking around. The person behind me was returning tekken tag and the store was telling him since he didn’t have the box or anything that they weren’t going to give him very much at all. I knew i couldn’t get another game, controller, or memory card so i asked him what game he had and if it was a ps2 game. I found out that it was ttt1 and i them offered to trade him my card for the game and we were both happy.
I immediately went home and the mgs2 into my ps2 and played the game for a couple days with no memory card until i beat it. Ttt wasnt really on my mind but it was the only other game i had so i decided to pop it in and play…. I liked it and all but it really didn’t sink in until i saw a ttt at the arcade and i got beat down. I started practicing and i was HOOKED after that. years later and the only console games that i have yet to buy any game other than a fighting game. I’ve owned other games but it’s cause my buddies would beat a game and just get rid of them.
I love Tekken and i don’t think that will ever go away. Family Tekken Country Corps….
I got into fighting games around mid 2000s. I used to play my older brother a home and hated to lose to him. After that we got various games like street fighter, Umvc3, Tekken series, and KOF. Fighting games bring a certain kind of element to the table unlike other games do. I strive to be the best as I can be I and proud that I can thrive in this kind of community.
i got fighting into fighting games since the very first time i went to the arcades back in the 90’s my brother made me play street fighter 2 with him and he kept on beating so easily and beat everyone else at the arcade so i went to the arcade every chance i got could to beat him. i just only wish arcades are still around cuz i really hate using controllers.
What got me into fighting games is the sheer adrenaline rush you get when you’re down 75% of your health bar and your opponent is rushing in being uber aggressive. Knowing that one mistake either from you or your opponent could result in utter disappointment. Unfortunately for me I was disappointed at a young age and lost to my grandma in “King of Fighters”. So ultimately my grandma got me into fighting games because deep inside I know damn well I shouldn’t have lost!
Got into fighting games major in 2010 when I decided to turn on EVO 2010 Stream and seen my cousin Ricky Ortiz kicking ass. I haven’t seen my cousin for years after our grandparents passing. When I seen him on the big stage against Daigo it was amazing, although he didn’t get the feat he still played amazing. It made me take the time to learn the fighting games in and out. Now I practice daily, got myself TE sticks a few years back and also got my buddies into the fighting games and we would attend team tourneys like Tight or Fight and GolfLand tourneys.
What got me into fighting games was EVO 2011 and going to my first tourney in the same year. With the hype finals of KoF, that awesome lv.3 from PRrog against Viscant in vanilla Marvel, and Latif kicking Daigo out of the tourney and becoming the crowds champion was awe inspiring and so hype I was in tears I knew this was a community I wanted to be in. I also went into my first tourney that October for third strike and I came in sixth with Makoto/Chun-li. My cousin also have me my first stick there a Korean wooden stick that last me that whole year for it broke down.
When I was ten or so, there was a liquor store down the street from my house called Eddies liquor. I used to walk there and buy candy and ice cream. One day I walked in and saw two arcade machines sitting next to the door just inside. One was Altered Beast. The other was Street Fighter 2. Needless to say both of these games became very near and dear to me and all the money I would spend on candy and junk food became money I used to play. I loved it when I would walk in and someone else was already playing Street Fighter though. That’s when I really began to appreciate competitive fighting games. Fighting a real person was amazing and gave me such a rush of excitement. It makes me quite nostalgic just to write this post so thanks for the question Markman.
I was 11 years old back in 1991 and I was always hanging around in the street with friends and I went walking to the liquor store to buy some candy. That’s when I noticed a bunch of Asian kid’s crowded around this arcade game so I walked over to see what the hype was and boom Street Fighter 2 the world warrior was to my surprise and I waited for a chance to try it out a couple days later because that game was always being used then I was hooked ever since.
I was casually interested as a kid in smash bros., and I started watching youtube videos of melee which got me hype. As a middle schooler, I didn’t really know anything about any competitive scene. Later on I got an Xbox360 and my friend was into Street Fighter 4, so I started watching TeamSpooky’s stream back when the youtube channel was AkumaHokoru and the local tourney series was called Guard Crush. Around this time, I tried out SF4, BlazBlue, and MVC3 was just coming out. Kept playing MVC3 kind of casually, and started college at UT Austin. Found other freshmen who played fighting games – Danke is one of them – and we started having MVC3 meetups and went to Arcade UFO for ranbats – and started traveling to regional TX tournaments. Got like 13th at Texas Showdown 2014 in UMVC3, despite playing terribly on stream both of my chances vs Ranmasama and Young Chow.
When I was 5 years old I had 4 cousins who would play street fighter 2 religiously. They beat me up and down the alley ways of Chun-Li’s stage until I was black and blue. I’m now almost 26 years old and I’ve been at it ever since, needless to say thanks to all my hard work I make my cousins look like scrubs. I do have to thank them for never letting a 5 year old win one.
Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat were the first fighting games I ever played. But what really got me into fighting games was a Vietnamese coffee shop. It was somewhat on the route to my middle school, but that was taking the long way. Location doesn’t matter though. This coffee shop wasn’t that nice. It was just a mom and pop spot that had to be in a perfect location because when my friends and I walked by, we saw arcade machines in there. This isn’t the first place that had arcade machines. The thing though was it had all fighting games. It had X-Men Vs Street Fighter, Tekken 2, and Marvel Vs Capcom. My friends and I started frequenting this coffee shop during the summer. We didn’t have any arcades close by. You had to go all the way downtown so this coffee shop was the next best thing for us. I played mostly Tekken 2 and Marvel Vs Capcom. I already had X-Men Vs Street Fighter for the PlayStation at home. So many quarters were spent on these machines. I remember one of the times my friends and I were playing there, we were taking turns playing against the computer trying to beat Marvel Vs Capcom. One of my friends was playing while I was playing Tekken 2. I had just lost my match in Tekken 2 so I went to go watch my friend play Marvel Vs Capcom. Someone walked in and decided to place a quarter in the second slot and play him. He got nervous. He was getting his ass kicked and on the verge of losing. He only had Mega Man left with very little of the health bar left. He yells, “Help me!!!” and gets out of the way for me to take over. With what was probably one of my memorable matches, I beat this guy that challenged my friend. My friends and I started cheering in our victory. The guy left and my friend resumed his quest to try to beat Marvel Vs Capcom which was unsuccessful that day. That match made me love the competitiveness in fighting games. I also knew then, the only way to replicate that feeling was playing on an arcade machine or on an arcade stick at home. Controllers don’t do fighting games justice. I eventually got the Dreamcast when it came out and bought Marvel Vs Capcom with the Agetec arcade stick, my first fighting stick ever. But that memorable day in the coffee shop, was what really got me in to fighting games.
I got into fighting games about two years ago watching MarlinPie just style on everybody. Every time he was playing he always brought something new and fresh to the table that would make your jaw drop. He made marvel look easy. After that I got into watching some Street Fighter and loved watching the people’s champ Mike Ross. He not only played E. Honda differently than everyone else he did it while winning. Then EVO 2013 was the first EVO I watched and wow was it a great one. Justin Wong’s comeback against Chris G is what secured fighting games for me, it was so hype.
When I was really little, I had a PS1 and this was during the gen of Xbox and PS2, so my family was pretty late, but I loved it anyway. Tekken 3, Soul Edge and SF Alpha with my older brother was life, and that pretty much continued until about a year ago ( I was 14 at the time, now 15) when P4A came out. Up until then, I didn’t know anything about the competitive scene, or anything of arcade sticks and the like, but I got the chance to use one and play P4A, at a convention that year. I loved the feel of sticks, and ended up joining the Blazblue/P4A community of my city. From there I got my first and second sticks (I got 2 because they sent me the wrong one and let me keep it) and ended up getting seriously into fighters. Now I compete in TTT2, and SFIV, and am an active member in my FGC.
I picked up Street Fighter EX2+ up at the rental store for a sleepover and ever since then I’ve been ridiculously competitive. I got alpha 3 and would only stop playing it to trade it for my friends Tekken 2. Here I am years later with almost 40 fight games on my ps3 hard drive
To be quite honest, it’s been so far back that I really don’t know what got me into fighting games. As far as I can remember, I have always liked it, but it felt really lonely since nobody really wanted to play me back then. I wasn’t good or anything, either, it just wasn’t anyone’s cup of tea. The odd part is that I never really knew I was big into fighting games as a kid until my cousin brought it up last year and said I always did like it. Thinking back, I really did. And man, did I play some poverty FGs, too lol
What got me into the FGC, however, is a story only a few close people will know, cause I owe a lot to this community, I only found out about the actual FGC in 2011 and short to say it really saved me. For much of my life it was just me and arcade mode, and I spent hours playing by myself. Now, I can’t even play arcade mode anymore cause it’s boring compared to playing with my friends. Of course, that’s not even half of the story of what brought me here, but it’s been such an adventure these past 3 years, and I don’t regret it at all. Nothing can even hope to describe how grateful I feel towards this community for bringing me back to life and I hope that when the right people come up, I can share it fully.
I went from being a kid to a young adult with zero clue about actual fighting game technique, but kept playing for the hell of it in a sickbed, to a guy who does tutorials and commentates in front of 20k+ viewers about a game I’ve loved since I was a child, in the span of 3 years. Yeah, I love fighting games!
What got me into fighting games was my aunt she kept telling this game was so cool and I was 6 at the time and the game she was talking about was street fighter 2 and from there I was playing fighting games ever since then
I have my brother to thank, for getting me into fighting games. Cause between two brothers their just isn’t anything better than a little bit of competition 🙂 My first fighting game was probably Double Dragon for Sega Master system, which only escalated when we got Street Fighter 2 for the snes. Ever since then me and my brother have always had something we shared as a common interest, but I believe it was more than that to us! To this day we still find time to play some fighting games like we did growing up, and I couldn’t be happier that it brought us more together.
When I was younger I used to go with my brother and cousins to the local arcade. Where they would play money matches against much older people than them at the time in Super Street Fighter Turbo II(ST). Then eventually Pocket Change at the mall got a Killer Instinct Arcade cabinet. Which then lead to constant beat downs from my older brother. So I really wanted to learn the game so I could just Ultra him back. Eventually learned Chief Thunder on the Snes version and would constantly beat down on my friends as my training. Eventually i got my revenge and Ultra’d my older brother and then proceeded to pop off! That’s when I knew fighting games were for me and how I got into them.
Mortal Kombat on the GameBoy! Oh, the memories of being able to uppercut your way to the top. From there it was Street Fighter with a few of my friends and then MvC. So much fun over the years.
When I was a kid my dad used to body me with E-Honda on Street fighter 2 Turbo. In that game he could constantly keep his hundred hand slap going and slide across the screen while doing so. The attack had ridiculous range and damage so I didn’t know how to beat it at the time. I vowed to never get cheesed again.
I remember games like Ye are kung Fu, Renegade, Kung Fu Master by the 80´s, that was my first attempt on fighting games. Then in 92 I start to play SF2 and the things come more competitive, later I stopped for more than 15 years but with the arrival of Sf4 I came back to play again. So the main reasons are SF2, SF4 and collecting arcade sticks(one of my lovely hobbies)!
What got me into fighting games was the sibling rivalry me and my brother had. Since I was the younger brother I was usually always the one to take the losses in most physical competitions. But i found out with a little determination and research fighting games were the way to have the edge against any competitor no matter what size or age. As we played games like tekken 3 or street fighter 2 we looked into the newer fighting games when they came out and learned how to be good at the more recently released games. With great interest and love for fighting games made us continue doing this until this day which lead us on the path to becoming a part of the FGC.
I first started to play fighting games when I was 3 years old. I remember my dad buying a Super Nintendo and getting Street Fighter II. I didn’t know what I was doing but I couldn’t help but be so excited to play because it was my first game. When I played Street Fighter II, I picked Guile and started button mashing like crazy and won my first match against Zangief. After, I started to just keep playing and playing until I beat M. Bison
The competition. I’ve always been drawn to games where I could sate my competitive drive. Counter strike, WC3, DoTA, Quake, and Starcraft were my roots. I actually saw Evo 2010 and really liked what I saw, and continued to watch fighting games and events. It was only about a year and a half ago that I decided to dive in as a player. I felt like I needed a competitive outlet that was strictly 1v1, man vs man, and fighting games are in my opinion the purest game for that. Picked up Street Fighter and Injustice and the rest has been history.
What got me into fighting game would have to be tekkan 2 for the old school playstation in the early 90’s. Ever since than i always have had a love interest for fighting games and the FGC.
When i was 6 years old i didnt have too many friends, just knew a few kids from my neighborhood.
One day a kid that i barely knew game to my house and ask me if i wanted to play street fighter 2 on the snes, because the we’re missing 1 guy for a tournament.
I gladly accept (i only had a nes at the time) and that was the first time that a play a fighting game…and beside i made a lot of friends 🙂
(Sorry the bad english)
What got me into fighting games was when I was little getting babysat by my mothers coworker girlfriend. He had some guys over and they were having casuals in Street Fighter 2 on the super Nintendo and let me join in. That was the spark for me and ever since that’s the only genre I play in games. Sonic Boom!
Competitive fighting games weren’t really on the agenda when I first started playing fighting games. To say the least it would start when I was 5. I wasn’t born in the arcade era but I started playing when consoles were getting huge. My very first video game had to be street fighter 2/mk 2. I feel in love with these games and even though they weren’t my games, they were like a precursor of what was yet to come. Years later, I would be playing mvc2 during my elementary years. I never had anyone to play with except family members and I remember prior telling me I was obsessed with the game. Keep in mind I still don’t own a game console and every time I had the chance to pay it at my cousin’s house, I would take it. The only person that understood my love for fighting games had to be my brother. Regardless of how much he didn’t care for them, he would always play with me. This would lead up to when I would first buy my own console. Mvc3 came out and it changed my life. I was 16 at the time and hearing one of my favorite franchises coming out made me ecstatic. I would spend days/month doing nothing but playing it. I would still pay into my college days and I had friends who played it with me. They told me that I was pretty good and randomly found a tournament in my area. They encouraged me to sign up. Little did I know, this tournament took my life into another direction. I ended up getting third but I was just a newbie in the FGC in my area. I lost to some really awesome guys that idk existed. All my life I was playing family members and friends who I was always better than. To lose to other people, gave me a hunger to play more. Now playing competitive fighting games is a pastime and a hobby. I met many life long friends in the competitive scene and they both help and encourage me to get stronger. But it also helped me become the person I am today. Without the FGC, I honestly don’t know where I would be. I love to share my experiences and I would love to do the same to people new to the community as well
Well, I really haven’t gotten into fighting games until recently. I played UMVC3 and SFxT occasionally, but what really got me into the FGC and competitive play is Killer Instinct for the Xbox One. Traveling and meeting a bunch of people is one of the greatest things within the FGC for me. I literally put about 9 to 10 hours a day in this game. I’m attending MLG, CEO, EVO, and TFC for KI. I got top16 at ECT but that isn’t enough for me. I’m a college student majoring in psychology. So I’m pretty quiet. And whatever issues I have at home or within myself really comes out when I play. It’s just something I love to do. The mind games, footsies, game psychology, the hype, everything just feels perfect for me. I plan on picking up Ultra to further develop my gaming IQ. I always wanted to play on stick, I used to own one but it got pretty messed up, wasn’t a mcz stick lol. I love the FGC and KI really got me into it. Also the streams and watching majors.. It turned out to be much more than watching it, I wanted to live it as well. I plan on staying around for the long haul and grind until I become one of the best!
I was asked to cosplay at a local fighting game tournament. I did, and met my boyfriend (of two and a half years now!) there. After we started dating, I wanted him to quit bugging me to try playing with him, so I finally gave in, played a bit, and realized I loved it. My first birthday present from him was even my very first arcade stick, and it’s the best birthday present I think I’ve ever gotten in my life ^_^
I play Tekken now and I love it – it helps that the scene here has been extremely helpful in my learning process and are some of my closest friends now.
The daigo parry video leading up to daigo a street fighter 4 concept matches.
What got me into fighting, was when i first played street fighter 2, It was also the same day i had my first real Mexican food at 3 years old. My auntie took me to a restaurant she frequently visited. and when I walked in the store, I saw the machine, brand new character I’ve never seen kicking each other butts. I didn’t even ask my auntie if i could play, she just gave me a $3 worth of quarters to play. Yes i lost every match, BUT MAN I WAS HOOKED!!! The day i heard it came out for systems, I begged my mother if she could buy it for me. Every since that day my auntie got me into fighting games from the start of my life. My gaming adventure and love for fighting game had begun.
My brother, cousins, and myself played a lot of fighting games on SNES and Walmart use to rotate out machines. We didn’t live to close to an arcade. We would rent SFII and MK plus all those other fighters, even the janky ones. I think the first time the video store had SFII in I played it non stop for hours on end. We would get together on weekends and play against each other and make up rules like no cornering, and backing up once you swept the other guy. If you broke them the other guy got to hit you hit for free. We would get so mad. I remember loving my Sega Saturn because of all the Capcom fighters I got for cheap on it. It’s stayed with me ever since I was a kid.
I got into fighting games when I always watch my brother play Street Fighter II on the SNES or Soul Blade and Tekken on the PS1. Because of my brother, I’ve always been interested in getting the next Tekken, MvC, or SF game. Around 2004 I believe, my brother came back from Baghdad, he brought home a copy of Capcom VS SNK 2 for the PS2, and that’s when I wanted to get competitive. Sadly I couldn’t get competitive because I didn’t know what to do but only Hadouken and Tatsumaki, but when I was about 10 I was learning Melee from my friend who himself played competitively and entered local tourneys. Still couldn’t get competitive until Brawl came out, and that’s when I finally became competitive. Since then I’ve wanted to get competitive in SF4, MvC3, and such, so I got myself a fightstick and started practicing. At 19 years old I’m mainly a UMvC3 player, I’ve finally got into TTT2, and now I’m wanting to get back into SF4 because of the new ULTRA update. And hopefully I’ll give Blazblue Chronophantasma a go.
I remember getting into fighting games at my first con in the 90s, playing a Third Strike arcade machine for hours and just ripping people up. I somehow earned the nickname ‘Waffles’ from it, STILL don’t remember why. But I remember playing Dudley and Ken and getting so hype as you wrecked people and getting wrecked by Ryu and Chun-Li. From that I moved to Marvel 2 and onward and my induction into fighting games was complete. But its the respect and hype and urge to put on a good show that made me want to play fighting games.
My dad used to work at this Italian restaurant in SoCal that had this arcade in the back. Place was rad as hell. They had Marvel 2, Tekken 3, and a bunch of other games. When my dad couldn’t get a babysitter, he’d take me to the restaurant, give me a 20, and just leave me in the arcade until he got off work. I’d literally spend hours playing Marvel 2. Eventually they got CVS2 and a few other games. I went there for like 5 years until they eventually sold all the cabinets. Had some of the best times of my life at that place, killing grown men for free at Marvel 2.
From an early age (9) my friends and I would go to the local fast food restaurant where they had a Street Fighter II cab. I remember putting my coin down and waiting my turn just to get bodied by an older kid. I wanted to beat that kid! As a young adult after leaving the scene for a long time it was seeing Evo Moment #37 that got me back. I wanted to be able to do that!
What got me into fighting games? An accidental rental from BlockBuster. At a time in the early 90’s where violent video games were considered “bad”, I tried to avoid them. One time at BlockBuster, instead of renting the infuriating platformer, Plok, I somehow rented the SNES version of Mortal Kombat. Still not sure to this day if my dad switched it on me or if one of BlockBuster’s employees messed up. When I got home, I was originally discouraged, but gave Mortal Kombat a try, and ever since then, I’ve been a fighting game fan. Still have a lot of fighting game memories, such as the time I broke and learned about the quarter rule while playing Mortal Kombat 3 at a local arcade, the first time I saw Primal Rage, or the time I left a Playstation — which had also been rented from a BlockBuster — on for over 24 hours just so I could finish unlocking all of Tekken 2’s cast. I even develop my own fighting games now, which I should get back to working on.
I first got into fighting games when I was around 5 years old, and I played SFII and MK with my older brother during the weekends. Later when we found out about a Playdium arcade in our city, our parents would occasionally bring us there. My brother and I noticed that there was always a huge crowd around the MvC1 cabinet, and so we mostly played there to join in on the hype.
I got into fighting games after a friend beat me 20 to 0 when sf4 came out in Japan, I was so pissed I went over to his place days and night, now Im the #1 PSN BP abel, and will continue to be on the top in usf4
I got into fighting games because when I was little in big family gatherings, my cousins would play KOF and Street Fighter. Though I never got to play back then, I was still fascinated by it and when I started gaming I immediately jumped into fighting games.
My parents bought me Tekken 2 and ever since then I play every Tekken, not really knowing what I was doing in the game. It wasn’t until 2011 where I met friends who talked about competitive Tekken players like Mr. Naps. And that’s when I took an interest. I looked these people up on Youtube, I found the Super Arcade streams and the major tournament streams. Watching it, I was like “I can get into this.” Then started diving deeper into Tekken. 3 years later and I’m still ass at it, but I’m having the time of my life learning about the game and meeting the people who kick my ass in the tournament.
Growing up with my older brother and a Super Nintendo. Of course street fighter 2 was in the mix, plus he thought me how to play. Now I’m in love with street fighter especially after seeing the daigo parry. Can’t wait to teach my kids so they can join the hype!
I only got into fighting games because of my brothers. When I was young, they were always playing either Street Fighter and Tekken, and when I was about 3 or 4 years old, I started playing Tekken 3 for the first time, and I loved every second of it! When a cousin of mine got the PS2 and Tekken 4, of course I had to play it as well, and I beasted it. Eventually, I geared into Street Fighter around 2008, and getting into it competitively, but I’ll never forget how my brothers taught me never to give up in any fight and try as hard as I can. That, for me, is the best life lesson fighting games ever gave me, and I’m proud of it.
June 1995. Stageshow Pizza. I was 6 years old, at a friend from 1st grade’s birthday party, and there was this little game called Tekken set up that everyone was playing. I’d played Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II a little, but being a little kid, I didn’t really have a clue what I was doing so I just stuck to my Sonics and my Power Rangers. But everyone was playing this, so I decided to give it a shot because, hey, I wanted to fit in, y’know? I get in there, and immediately I’m drawn to Yoshimitsu, mainly because ‘none of these other guys have a sword, they’re so uncool!’. My friend played as him too, and neither of us knew what we were doing, but it ended up being a ridiculously hype match for two six year olds. it ended up going to the third round, and we both were at a ‘next hit ends it’ situation, and I somehow got incredibly lucky and got the last hit. I may have been a little brat at the time, but I knew enough to know that I wanted to feel that kind of excitement again. That match was legitimately all I could talk about the rest of that week, and I was bummed I couldn’t play anymore because that arcade was rather out of the way, and a PSX wasn’t affordable at that time for my family.
And then Christmas ’96 happened, and my parents somehow remembered ‘that game with the sword guy in it’ and picked it and a PSX up for me, and I just couldn’t put it down at all. And that led to me getting the rest of the series ASAP, as well as other fighters like Alpha 2 and Mortal Kombat Trilogy, and eventually snowballed into, a few years later, fighters becoming my biggest passion in gaming. Almost 20 years later, that dumb little match evolved into a thing that, maybe I’m not exactly Evo caliber at, but I’m damn proud of my skills in, and a thing that has gained me more friends than I ever thought I’d have, as well as the person I plan to marry one day. My preferences as far as characters (ditched Yoshimitsu for Asuka and Leo) and games (I still love Tekken, but give me BlazBlue or Persona over it or SF any day) may have changed, but my love for the genre definitely won’t.
Playing Fatal Fury in a hotel arcade as a kid on vacation. It was never as crowded as the SF2 machines were at the arcade. I seemed to gravitate towards teh machines without a crowd. So I played a ton of crap like Pit Fighter. What it did was give me a taste for the non-capcom fighters like KOF.
John velociraptor Guerrero and myself purchased street fighter as a way to settle who did housework. Neither of us were very good, we were both pad warriors, and didn’t understand how to cancel into fireballs. Loser did the dishes, winner bragged. Many a class was ditched, many dishes were saltily washed.
I’ve always played fighting games but mashing. Then a friend of my brothers showed me a tournament in I playwinner.com i got interested in it. I watched Airs guide to ryu and started to study normals and frame data, footsies, hit confirms. Now I try to play high level all the time and upgrade my knowledge further. Mostly street fighrer, although I am medium at execution, I like using the fundamentals.
At the age of 6, I got a Snes for christmas, packed with killer instinct. The neighbor kids played it all the time with me until 98 or so. In ’99 I saw an ad for the dreamcast, I had to have it. I come from a poor family, and mom was battling ovarian cancer so I did chores through the extended family to earn a bit. By august of 99 I was still $200 bucks short. Turns out everyone pulled what they could And I ended up with quite a bit, Enough to get a few games with the system. Oh man I was so Hype. On 9/9/99, midnight launch, I was first in line at the local shop. I got My dreamcast, two controllers, a VMU, Soulcalibur, and sonic adventure.
When I took it home, I saw my whole family, aunts and uncles, even granny wanting me to hook it up and play it. We all played a bit of soulcalibur and awwed at the graphics. It was the last happy memory for a long time.
October 29th, 1999, I woke up to find my mom had lost her battle with cancer. I had little friends at this point in my life, so I just kept playing soulcalibur in a fit of grieving. I hold that system in a high place in my heart. As well as the fighting games on it that introduced me to the FGC Like 3rd strike, Marvel2, CVS2, and even stuff like plasma sword. If it wasn’t for games like those, in that critical time, I might have been worse off.
I still have the dreamcast. It’s been fixed up a few times. Got the green goblin stick too.
My cousins introduced me to fighting games back when I was still young and Tekken 3 was new; however, I didn’t really start to get into fighting games up until SF4. I had starting going to Arcade Infinity (RIP) to play a racing game, Wangan Midnight, but I noticed AI’s two large SF4 cabinets. I thought to myself, “Man, I’d really love to play on there, but I don’t want to look like a scrub.” SF4 released on console shortly after and I didn’t hesitate to pick up a copy of the game, and also my first fight stick. I spent countless hours doing trials, training mode, watching youtube videos and twitch streams, and playing with others online. When I thought I was ready, I headed over to AI; however, my first game was against ComboJack and he mopped the floor with me lol. I always kept this match as a reminder to get better as a player, and it’s probably what has given me my competitive drive today. Unfortunately, because of the closing of AI and me now being in college, I don’t really get to play games as much as I want to anymore. I am thankful for the chance to have played in one of the greatest arcades and also with some of the best players.
I got into fighting games when I would play my older cousin in Tekken 3 as a six year old kid. All those nights and days of learning characters, bonding with friends and family over strategy, and just trying to get better has made fighting games my top preference when it comes to choosing what kind of game to play. I’ll never forget the first day I went to my cousins house and saw him playing Tekken 3, after that, the rest was history.
I’ve got into fighting games and specially with the Tekken series since i started playing Tekken 3 arcade on a local arcade area, since that i love playing Tekken and getting more into it, im not that good thought but itll be really nice to get that fightstick to start dominating more advanced techniques like wavedashing, electrics and backdash cancel.
And because Jin Kazama!
SF2 TURBO when I learned how to do a two hit Fierce/Jab dragon punch. Which later led to the Medium elbow/Jab 2 hit dragon punch.
that’s my word,
SM
Either playing Tekken on the ps1 at my cousins’ place or vampire savior in a local arcade.
Drive and ambition to get better. It’s always been there ever since I first played MvC1 ok Dreamcasy and MKTrilogy on PS1 there’s always been a desire and drive for me to always wanna be the best and get better than everyone that still continues now with AE and Ultimate. Marvel 2 was the first game I ever got competitive in and that game taught me to go hard or go home and always be hungry.
My friends held me down and forced me to play Street Fighter.
I loved fighting games since I bought the very first Street Fighter and Killer Instinct on Super Nintendo as a kid. I remember sitting on the floor playing with my brothers all through the night non stop. But what got me to really start watching the FGC and play fighting games again was watching CEO 2013 (because CEO2013 was trending on Twitter) marvel teams and seeing Marvel Frauds upset Team Florida and Team New York. That’s when I started watching Marvel 3 and street fighter at the same time. I also remembered the name Justin Wong because I’ve heard of him back in the day as well. So now watching him dominate has been enjoyable and has brought my love back to fighting games and competing in general. Now I can’t leave this scene and strive to be a better player because it’s so fun to play knowing there’s a scene to be apart of.
This is kind of a 2 part story.
I had a friend who was a casual player in Marvel VS Capcom 2. I played it for fun on the arcade cabinet at our local theater but I knew nothing about what made you good in a fighting game.
One day he comes over and says “Hey, the new one comes out in like a weekc (Marvel VS Capcom 3) and I’m like oh cool, whatever. I was not really into fighting games. Then he says” yeah and you like Megaman right? Well, Zero is gonna be in it instead!” I was really interested now. Megaman X being my favorite game growing up, I knew I had to have it. We buy it launch day and just mash buttons left and right. Months go by and I happen to come across a “Combo Video”. I didn’t know there was such a thing. Immediately I had to know more. I need to know how to do those combos! Even better, the footage was of Justin Wong at WNF. I didn’t know there was tournaments, i didn’t know there was a “scene”, I didn’t know there were people who practiced day in and day out to be considered “a top player.” immediately I thought I had to be one of these guys.
I start looking up tips to help you better at fighting games, weird terms and words I knew nothing of. Players to look for. Guides and tutorials. I start getting down ABC combos and I think I’m decent enough. I can beat my casual friends, I can beat my little brother. I am now the best in the world (in my eyes.)
I start thinking, maybe there’s something like Wednesday Night Fights on my area? I go on SRK and I find my local Boise, Idaho group that I know so well now. I start getting the courage to go to a tournament 2 weeks away. My wife at the time seemed to not care about all the time I invested so I was head strong on this whole thing. I invite my brother to go since he’s been interested in it like I was.
Fast forward 2 weeks and I go to the tournament. I do decently (not 0-2 lol) and I meet new great people. They have a BBQ and we end up staying till midnight. I was sucked in. It was over. This is my new life now. I’m one of the guys now.
The night I come home from the tournament, I open the door to my house and it’s just my wife sitting there. Our 14 month old son is asleep. I think to myself “oh no. Well I’ll see him in the morning and we can hang out then.” To end the great night, we finish it with a few drinks.
The morning comes and I’m startled by my wife. She says to me “Izaak (our son) is not breathing!” I jump out of bed and rush to his room. I go to pick up up and see he’s not breathing. Immediately my heart drops and I’m struck with the worst fear imaginable. I put my head to his chest to hear his heart beat and the only thumping I hear is my own.
He’s gone. He’s passed. I missed the opportunity to tell my soon good bye the night before I left to the tournament. Immediately I regretted everything that led to that point. I should have stayed home and maybe kept him up all night. My curiousity killed me as to what I could have done to keep the inevitable from happening.
My son, Izaak, suffered from a disorder called “Failure to Thrive.” something the elderly also come across. Basically, his body had stopped growing from 10 months to 14 months (up until he passed). No weight gain, no height gain, his motor skills hadn’t been developing fast enough, he still wasn’t walking on his own. His body gave up on him. Just like the elderly in their final days.
The day after my son passes away, I find out my wife has been cheating on me for about 6 months. A younger guy she works with. We had been on and off but she led me to believe there was no one else. He came to see her to comfort her. I was in awe. I still don’t know how to explain how I felt. His funeral is 4 days later and we argued for days why her new boyfriend is not allowed to be at his burial. It’s just not his place. 1 week after the funeral, she’s kicked me out of my house, with the kids (I have 3 other beautiful daughters, all older than Izaak) , and moves her boyfriend in. I’m served with divorce papers the day after.
My son’s death is still fresh in my mind but atleast I still have my kids with my for support. They need me as much as I need them. I find a job packaging weight-loss materials into boxes so I can start finding our own place. A week into my new job and I get a phone call at work from my brother. He was baby sitting the kids for me while I worked
“Your wife just showed up with court papers and she took the girls”
My heart explodes again. Everything is gone. Everything I care for is not mine anymore. Nothing in this world makes sense anymore. How can everything I care about he stripped from me. My life has taken a turn for the worse. And unfair turn. I don’t care about anything anymore other than just being alone for the rest of my life.
I have a few friends who are helping me rebuild my life and they are the only ones who are around me at that time. They move me in, keep my company. Slowly, things become bearable.
Fast forward about 3 months and I’m at our local Hastings. I’m with a girl who I’ve started to have feelings for but nothing serious. I’m browsing the video game section and I see a familiar face. It’s the face of the guy who held the tournament and BBQ at his house. His name is Brian and I can never begin to tell you how much this guy has impacted my life. He says “Rival??” (that’s the alias I went be at the time) and I say “oh hey, man. It’s been a while.” and then he proceeds to ask me why I came around that one day and never returned. He’s holding his sons arm tightly as I explain to him why my life is where it’s at. All the things that led to this point.
After I was on my own, the only thing I could do to get my mind of things was to mash buttons in Marvel. My first stick was the Madcatz Brawl stick I saved hard for. My son used to beat on that thing like crazy. He used to try to eat the joystick but I’d teach him to grab it instead, hit the button with your other palm. I still have the stick, I can never get rid of it. But I put more hours into marvel after my divorce than any other game.
He says “my man, I’m so sorry to hear that. Please take my number, let me know if there’s anything I can do”. We text and about a month later, I find myself at the locals again. Everyone was so welcoming. My scene knows my story now and they’re always there for me. These guys are my only friends now, and I can’t pick a better group of guys.
If it wasn’t for fighting games, I definitely would not have come most of my troubles at this point. Fighting games were always a way for me to escape real life. It’s easy to pour everything I have into a game and get better at it. Fighting games helped me escape the worst moment in my life and I definitely appreciate all the people I’ve met through it. Nothing compares to all the positive experiences I’ve had in my scene. Sorry for the typos, this took a lot to get out.
Have a good Memorial Day, guys.
Shout outs to Big Damage Arcade in Boise, Idaho
I got into fighting games because Evo moment 37 gave me goosebumps. Never has any other gameplay shown the soul of a game and the community at the same time.
My dad bought me a fake SNES back in 199x (originals were not available in Estonia) And it came with some sf2 bootleg I believe, that got me interested in the genre. Later in my life I rediscovered Street Fighter and started getting more into other games (Garou, Breakers, kof etc.). FGC 4 life!
I’m old enough to be from the arcade era. I’ve played on cabinets. The 7-11 that used to be my house had sf2 champion edition. My friends and I would be there till we got kicked out. I played on consoles (snes) bit it never felt the same, so when I got a dreamcast, I knew I had to get the green goblin stick to fulfill and get that feeling I had at 7-11.
Ever since SFII, i’ve been playing fighting games. I started drifting towards 3d fighters later in life but slowly getting back into 2d fighters. Winning that stick would be awesome!!
My entry into the fighting game genre is a bit of a (mildly embarrassing) love story.
Way, way back in the 1990s during the Christmas of ’92, Santa left my older brother two of the greatest gifts of all time: the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and a copy of Street Fighter II: the World Warrior. He and a ragtag gang of snot-nosed seven-year-olds from the neighborhood would sit in front of the television box all day trying to mash buttons until one of them managed to pull off a hadouken.
I was a mere two years young at the time and, in the fashion of older brothers, mine forbade me from touching a single sticky sausage finger to one of his SNES controllers. So, in the fashion of younger brothers, I watched him and his buddies wail on each other every time they played.
I do not remember if it was an immediate attraction or something that grew over time, but I do know my toddling heart fluttered every time Chun-Li’s portrait would appear on the screen. To the dismay of my brother, I interrupted countless matches of his by footie pajama waddling to the taller-than-me screen and trying to plant a smooch on all that pixelated goodness.
Who knows what drew me to those thunderous thighs at such a young age; all I know is that as soon as the new console smell wore off the SNES and I was able to experience the glory of Street Fighter, I picked Chun-Li as my main (if you could call it that at that age) and have stuck with her in almost every game since. Fighting games have always been my favorite genre and, even in times of catastrophic saltiness, they remain so to this day.
I first got into fighting games when I was 4 years old. My mom bought my brother and I a Super Nintendo and with it, it had killer instinct, street fighter 2 and super Mario. But my brother and I had such a huge rivalry!! He was legitly they Ryu to my Ken because well I played Ken and he played Ryu. Anyways I’m 20 years old (turning 21 this week on the 30th) and I’m still enjoying fighting games to this day. I compete in local tournaments and I just love the feeling of enjoying a variety of different fighting games with other people. Fighting games mean the world to me. 🙂
I got in to fighting games through Mortal Kombat. I remember hours upon hours of trying to guess how to do fatalities (I was about 5-6 at the time). Now that I look back I have no idea how I figured them out lol Next big fighting game for me was Tekken 3. I loved that game so much I had two copies of it. Next came CvS2 (on Xbox). Some years later I really got into AE & Marvel and that’s when I discovered the FGC. The rest is history.
Damn, it’s been way too long since I can remember my first fighting game. I want to say it was the original Street Fighter II, but I have memories of playing kooky games at the arcades as well such as World Heroes.
I guess what got me into fighting games was the special moves. At my age, discovering and learning them was satisfying; inputting commands and arching them execute on the screen were such rewarding feelings.
As I grew older and raised myself to understand the normality of special moves and commands, it became about competition. I’m not a regular competitor of events or anything like that. I grew up playing against strangers at arcades or friends at home. I felt like I was pretty decent at it. “Good” even.
I know better now, and I can’t compete with the pros. But my fascination with fighting games has never left me. The Platinum trophy I earned in Vanilla SF4 is one of my proudest.
I was at a rough time in my life. Couldn’t really seem to make any friends, undergoing some emotional problems, and all my hobbies were ephemeral at best. That was just part of being a teenager, though, and everybody found a way through it. Mine was fighting games. At the start of my junior year, I met a guy who played 3rd Strike and Blazblue CT, two games that I also played (rather casually, in hindsight). I thought that I could take him when we fought at a LAN party for my school’s tech club. He utterly stomped my shit in.
I couldn’t even tell what was going on half the time. I asked him how he did what he did, and he opened my eyes to the millions of underlying nuances and mechanics of fighting games. From there I went on to discover that fighting games are more than just a passing method of entertainment: They’re a way to better yourself as a person; To discipline yourself, even. More than that, they’re a culture. People come together from across the country to collaborate techniques and develop strategies, then test their mettle against the best. It’s as real a sport as any other, and it’s also something more.
As an aside, it’s been a good few years since I started playing fighting games in general, and now I’m able to stomp the guy who got me into them in any game of our choosing. You can go far when you find your drive.
My fighting game quest started 2 years ago with SF4!
It took me 23 years to step aside all my silly assumptions about fighting games and finally take the courage to give it a try!
Needless to say, I’m now completed hooked to this genre! starting from SF3S to KOF 98 all the way to the more recent UMVC3, BlazBlue and SF4.
Thanks to this I’m now discovering the local FCG community and I’ve been fortune to get to know all this amazing people, full of love for the genre and willing to help new-blood on their first steps towards a solid competitive playstyle.
I got into fighting games because it’s almost a sport that is engaging and challenging yet requires little physical assertion to get a decent result while building great hand to eye skills and learning to control the character in an enclosed space.
It’s fun to challenge others based on the amount of time each and everyone has spent on the game itself. It’s like you’ve finally train and done your best in learning your character before moving on to this “grand stage” where you showcase against other people. And when you thought you’ve capitalize the potential of a character, new stuff appear and the fun never ends! It’s also awesome to move the character based on your intuition because it’s as though you’re inside the game.
I got into fighting games with my best friend back in the Dreamcast days playing 3S, imported CvS2 and SFAlpha3 (we never had an arcade here). From then all the way to 2013 our friendship lasted and so did our mutual appreciation of fighting games (even when we’d get salty and get pissed at eachother in KoF). He passed away in November but I’m sure he’s still doing Joe combos in KoF wherever he is now.
Capcom Vs SNK 2 was what sparked my love for fighting games. I saw it at Planet Hollywood and whenever we rented movies I always had to rent it. It was the Gamecube version so it had the shortcuts for the moves. Very simple way to play the game but I had a blast. I even forced myself to try and learn the actual controls but the Gamecube controller isn’t really the best for 2D fighters. I did play games like Mortal Kombat and Tekken but there is something about Capcom Vs SNK 2 that jolted my love for the genre.
Ever since I was a kid, I was very active and sporty. I joined tae kwon do and became entrenched in flexibility and hitting potential, I was barely 7 years old. At this time, arcades were still popular. Street fighter was the hit at the time. Than super nintendo came out, and with it, Street Fighter. My oldest brother came into the house with that beast of a system packing a street fighter II cartidge. Coolest thing I’ve ever seen and I was hooked into the world of gaming. Instead of practicing with nunchucks, my weapon of choice was my controller, and my enemy, M.Bison, who we all know was a bastard. At this time we still frequented the arcades and there was this 3d game that I always admired but never had the courage to play because it seemed awkward, and 50 cents being kind of expensive at the time for a kid with no allowance but I spent half my dollar because I like to experiment and it was like I dove into a brand new world of fighting! The character were so big and they moved fluidly and the first fighter seemed way to easy like I was getting set up. Than came the 2nd fighter and time slowed and I tried so hard to win and tried so hard not to button mash but I didn’t know what I was doing and it came down to the wire and I lost to the second fighter! I just stared at the arcade defeated, it was mesmerizing just watching the computer gameplay, a guy with a tiger head and a eraser head karate man, it was indicative of a game you had to be really good to play and it was obvious I wasn’t one of them and there were no moveset decals one would expect on a fighting arcade game to assist scrappy beginners like myself. At this time PS1 was the system of choice, Street fighter ended up bringing in more and more characters bringing in the big bucks off the systems and we would invest encouragingly until namco came out with Tekken 1 for the snes and ps1, the Street fighter fans would stick to their street fighter or move to the alpha series but I dropped Street fighter after experiencing tekken it seemed other games were more rudimentary and it was a fun game. The 3d aspect was impressive and it seemed like it would grow into something big. I enjoyed the moods of both installments. Playstation 1 and Tekken 3 arrived, and on that day life for me got slashed by hours. While other kids would play outside, I was arm lock flipping with the eraser head karate guy that took so long for me to understand that the character name was Paul since our first encounter. I was still training in Tae Kwon Do and I respected the sport but I wanted to break a joint and pile drive my punching bag, I prided myself on my roundhouse and sidekick but there something about learning a throw that Tekken got me anxious about in life. As soon as playstation 2 debuted Tekken 4 you’de figure I would have picked Hoawrang, but no, my favorite character was Jin! His moves seemed way more beneficial for fighting and realistic for my case and that aspect of his moveset are what intrigued me the most about him. The fact that Namco also included other fighting styles with respect to their execution was profound for me at that time considering I used to watch a lot of kung-fu movies and read a lot of Batman comics and the animated series brought about my intellectual acuity in details for strengths and weaknesses and when the Tekken animated movie came out, I was shocked by it’s visceral portrayal of fighting. THE KING OF IRON FIST TOURNAMENT, a one punch destructive bone crunching fists of steel with a crazy storyline of a family torn into the struggles of an external fighters nightmare, unique among all of the other great animated hits of their time not to mention the 3d animation trailers that keep getting better each installment. I started to shift with age and become more curious of the world as both a fighter, a gamer, and animator, a student in life, Tekken was profound for my growth because I than fixated on 3d animation and mastering the trade which I am thankful to be doing.
Today, the Tekkens from Tekken DS, Tekken 6, TTT2, have come so far in all of these attributes of gaming and 3d animation, Tekken: Blood Vengeance, with their new full 3d animated feature showcasing their versatility and talents with animation, fx, and characterization. I both know and hope they continue to be a success and take risks and make more films. Today, Jin still remains one my most held onto main selections because he struck so hard from home. And although every game can be improved upon especially with the advent of these next generation consoles, and programming languages continuously challenging production, and animation, the Tekken series remains to be ahead of the curve in the competition and become the status quo of all 3d fighters, doing an excellent job in keeping me playing their game and influencing my life through the culture that was birthed from their hard work and dedication.
Let’s just make this a thank you note,
Thanks for being there Tekken!
My older cousin and I both got into fighting games around the time Tekken 2 was released mainly because his father used to play the original one with us all the time. after Tekken 2 he stopped playing fighting games all together, Me on the other hand kept playing all the time even to this day
Watching Daigo play SFIV at EVO 2009.
The first time I saw Street Fighter II at Park Playce Arcade in Severna Park, MD I was drawn in by the gigantic characters and hooked by the opportunity to beat up strangers!
Started playing fighting with Street Fighter II: Championship Edition on Sega Genesis. Back then, me and the homies were using original Sega 3 button controllers. Controllers have come a long way since then, I’d love the chance to play on that TTT2: TE S+.
Honestly the love for the characters got me into fighting games. I was a 90s baby so marvel vs capcom 2 came out when I was 6 already a big fan of spiderman. I saw the game in the arcade and had to play it despite the line to beat the best player there. First team I’ll never forget spiderman, venom, doom. Needless to say being complety new to the game I lost but that’s where my live for fighting games and specifically for the marvel vs capcom series began. I begged to return to that arcade so that I could one day beat that guy. I never saw him again sadly, but hey I did beat a couple people in the process. Ever since then I pretty much stick exclusively to the fighting game genre just because at how fun it is to play other people also that fact that I can always hop into training mode from home instead of dropping a couple dollars on the arcade machine is a plus now a days.
I got into fighting games from being exposed to a large number of them from my family and friends.
First games I ever played were Street Fighter II – World Warrior, Tekken 2 on the PlayStation, and Mortal Kombat for arcade.
What got me into fighting games is the hype always surrounding the game itself. For brief moments, no matter who or where you are, or who you’re with, you can do something that amazes an almost unlimited amount of people – from your peers in your immediate surrounding to millions of people world wide.
Fighting games have this instant attraction – flashy lights and easily identifiable confirmation of who’s winning. With this attraction, it’s easy for anyone to nearby to get involved. Whether you’re putting on a show for your friends at home in a game that isn’t widely known for tournaments or a professional scene (like SNES Killer Instinct or TMNT fighters) or amazing onlookers in public at the local arcade in Street Fighter 4, there’s no greater feeling than having your peers cheering and celebrating your accomplishments. This feeling puts you on top of the world; you’re unstoppable, indestructible.
This feeling propelled me to find friendships within my local community and get involved. This furthered me to compete in tournaments and actually pushed me into my first tournament bracket win. I had made it out of pools many times, but could not advance in bracket and always left 0-2. At the next tournament I was on the verge of losing the first game against my opponent in bracket, when unbeknownst to me my friends had gathered to watch. I hit a crucial combo and heard everyone start yelling; I had to take a quick peek behind me since I had no idea who or why anyone started cheering. I ended up winning the match and finally advanced in bracket.
This feeling is embedded in the memories of players and spectators alike. People remember where they were and who they were with when looking back at moments like mine or bigger, well known moments like Justin Wong vs. Daigo. It draws a crowd and builds relationships. It creates moments that people want to be a part of. The hype surrounding fighting games is what got me into fighting games.
I have been watching fighting game streams since 2009 and was always interested in the whole concept. How the thing looks so simple but has levels of depth you can’t understand until you start playing the game. My friends have been playing since Street Fighter IV came out, but I somehow missed that big rush around the release of that game. I was a bit intimidated because the fighting games of that time didn’t teach you how to play them well.
When Skullgirls came out in 2012 I saw how it had the best tutorial ever, and using that along with playing the game with friends really got me playing fighting games ‘seriously’ for the first time. I bought an Eightarc, a bunch of games, and just took the plunge. Been playing ever since.
I remember watching my brother always playing fighters at the arcades when I was really young. I never got the chance to play until we got SF2 HF on the SNES. Been hooked on fighters ever since and started playing more as time went on. SF2 HF remains to be one of my favorite fighters because of the memories I’ve had playing it.
I remember playing KOF 2002 at a community center that plays a lot of old games. My favorite time was watching these teens playing with these weird SNK characters and then I slowly went into fighting them. It’s the hard competition that got me riled up. I then played other fighting games but was stuck playing Street Fighter 4 for most of my recent activities.
What got me into fighting games is EVO moment #37
I played a handful of fighting games as a kid throughout the years and I always enjoyed them, but what really got me into fighting games is this:
I was born three months premature. I had a 20% chance of living. I got off light, with only some motorskills/coordination issues and no vision in my right eye. When the first Guilty Gear came out, a game magazine printed a movelist with short descriptions of characters. They described Baiken as possibly the first handicapped fighting game character. Now I know they were referring to her arm rather than her eye, but that really stuck with me.
Years later when I got to college I picked up a copy of Guilty Gear XX, and with the college environment I managed to cultivate a small GG scene. I’ve been playing fighting games heavily ever since, and some friends from those days have even come with me to a few tournaments.
A combination of my cousin kicking my butt in Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat on SNES, and me seeing all of the flashy arcade units in the mall and movie theaters that I couldn’t play because I couldn’t afford it! When I became an adult with money I bought all of the fighting games I could and became immersed in the hobby.
i got into fighting games to take people’s money in sf2. who didn’t.
What got me into fighting games was the arcade scene. I just loved how they played and loved the whole competitive aspect of it. I grew up around arcades and learned to love games like KOF98 and Xmen vs SF.
Tekken 3 got me into fighting games. I played the game at a friends house and I was totally hooked. The style, the gameplay, the characters, the looks, the feel, it was a perfect game for me. I asked my mom to buy me the game as soon as I got home and I was hooked on fighting games ever since.
My first win against another human being got me into fighting games. My first loss made sure I’d never get out.
I remember watching Evo Moment #37 which piqued my curiosity in fighting games for the first time. After searching around a bit I found Cross Counter on YT and watched a lot of AE and Marvel 3.
A while after that my brother happened upon a stream of EVO 2012 and we watched it together and that was when I decided I actually wanted to try and commit myself to a fighting game and put in the time and work to get better. It’s still a work in progress but It’s always been fun and I don’t see myself stopping anytime soon.
What got me into fighting games was the debut of Street Fighter 4. at first, I always saw fighting games as being too hard and complicated for me. Especially when playing with friends that were well experienced. When Street Fighter 4 came out, I easily saw the hype everyone had for it and I decided to give it a chance. Surprisingly enough I found myself enjoying it and decided to get into some more fighting games and haven’t looked back since.
My cousins got me into fighting games. My family didn’t have a lot of money when I was growing up, so we resorting to stealing gas station snacks and whatnot for food. It…wasn’t a really good time for me. My cousins came over one day and took me to an arcade to get my mind off of things, and lo and behold I got hit with a face full of shiny fighting games! I think I played games for 10 hours that day, scumbagging quarters and whatnot. Eventually I joined my community’s FGC and learned to play past my personal problems and become a better person.
It was definitely a mixture of MvC2 nostalgia and EVO hype. I remember mashing buttons on MvC2 at the local pizza place when i was young. I bought MvC3 for nostalgic reasons and didn’t really think much of it as i wasn’t too into video games at the time, I was in that teenage rebellion phase where all you want was sex, drugs, and money. sometime in the summer is see a link for EVO and started watching cuz i was wasn’t allowed to leave my house and It was so fascinating to see these guys do things i didn’t even know was possible. At the time Mad Catz ran a promo code and I immediately bought an arcade stick to try and emulate what i just saw. The cherry on top was PR Balrog’s Level 3 super with Tron. I was jumping up and down like a child and 3 years later, i still get the most childish of grins watching fighting games.
I first got into fighting games when i was 7 or 8. Every time I went to the movies I would always play Marvel Super Heroes on the way out. Of course at the time I had no idea what i was doing but Iron man and proton beam cannon was always my favorite. Eventually MvC2 came out and each month i would pick up Tips and Tricks and look to see who won tournaments. Usually it would be Justin Wong and Duc Do finishing first. Eventually found SRK in 2007 and everything since that has been history.
What got me into fighting games was my dad. My brother and I would go with him to his bowling leagues as young boys. I was around 8 and my brother was 10. My dad and his friends would give us and the other boys hand fulls of quarters to kill time in the arcade while they bowled. I spent a lot of time as a child in bowling alleys playing pool, darts, pinball and arcade games. For some reason I was always drawn to fighting games and soon became hooked. I would spend hours playing classic games like Karate Champ, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter 2 The World Warrior, Pit Fighter and my all time childhood favorite WWF Wrestlefest. As I grew older and my skills got better my love for fighting games only grew stronger. I am now in my 30’s and my favorite games are still fighting games and they always will be.
Got into the FGC originally through smash. Entering my first tournament, meeting so many cool people, and seeing that even though I was good enough to terrorize my city, I was far from the best. One of my best friends from smash got me into street fighter, and I’ve been an avid stream monster and local tourny-goer since. Being that the struggle is real, I’ve never been more than a pad warrior, but would love the opportunity to take my game to the next level. What keeps me coming back is the wonderful people in the community, the crazy hype of events, and the thrill of competition. Please help me go from stream monster to tournament winner by upgrading my controller :3
Kind of fell into it playing with people at the liquor store over the years.Started with Mortal Kombat, then Street Fighter 2, then 3rd Strike, and then MvC.
Martial arts were part of my life since childhood. When I saw Tekken 3 in an arcade the motion capture felt so real that I started to follow the series. But it was only a couple years ago when I learned about the complexity of the game.
I was always playing fighting games with my older brother growing up. I always enjoyed playing even though I never won, Then when SFIV came around and I was grown I finally had the chance to get revenge. SFIV reignited a passion I always had for fighting games and I’ve been hooked ever since.
It’s hard to say specifically – as a kid, I grew up playing Smash Bros. for most of my life, though never competitively (wavedashing looked hard). I tried to get into fighting games in my later teens after seeing the Daigo parry – so much so that I imported a crappy (yet expensive) joystick to play stuff like Third Strike, Guilty Gear, and Melty Blood with – but I never found anyone else who was into them. Finally in college, I found a friend who loved Garou and KoF 02, both games that appealed to my hipster tastes. From there, I started playing more, learning more, practicing more, and now I’m practicing KoF XIII every day and making hour+ drives to find people to play it with. What have I done with my life. (ノД`)・゜・。
I saw someone playing Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo Revival on the Gameboy advance. All he would play is break the barrels with a variety of characters. So I bought street fighter to break barrels cause it looked fun. Also someone told me that Guile was born with American flags on his arms which I found hilarious and so I picked him up. What kept me in the game is that whenever I beat someone they would get angry or ask me “how did you know?” Best feeling ever. That’s all.
I only recently got into fighting games, about a year ago, I always played tekken with my brothers with some street fighter up until my oldest brother first told me about Evo, i watched stuff on youtube for Street Fighter and UMvC3 videos, saw Filipino champ owning people in most videos for marvel and saw Alex Myers and PR Balrog on street fighter began idolizing them and been striving to get better ever since. One year i’m going to make it to the big stage tho and make a name for myself in the FGC
SFII is what got me into fighting games. The older kids kicking my ass is what got me addicted lol. Had to get that revenge!
Compared to other games, fighting games have a certain pace that I’ve always liked. Playing mk and sf with my family when I was a kid was so fun and I just wanted to step it up a notch. Now I can’t stop playing them.
I got into fighting games because my dad managed a property that had an arcade in it. Some days I would go with him to work, and he would leave me in the arcade. I discovered Street Fighter 2, and it was a wrap. I was hooked. I learned about competitive fighting games several years later, when I was talking trash in a random IRC channel about how good I was at Street Fighter Alpha 2. Two brothers that were in the IRC channel agreed to meet up with me in a small arcade in Seattle’s China Town to play. One of the brothers slaughtered my best character with almost the entire cast. It really opened my eyes in terms of what was possible in fighting games. I went back to the IRC channel for more help, and with a new attitude I tried to learn as much as I could from the players in the channel. 15 years+ and hundreds of tournaments later I still love fighting games.
Those two brothers that initially agreed to meet up with me ended up creating a little tournament series you may have heard of called… EVO.
Congratulations! You are one of the winners (we changed it to 2 prizes! We’ll be contacting you via e-mail shortly)!
I’ve played fighting games occasionally here and there, but it never consisted of much more than button mashing from either player.
Then, one day, at PAX East 2013, I saw this booth with loads of people crowded around it, and big controllers with only two big arcade style buttons on them.
The game was a lot of fun, the crowded booth was filled with hype, and I kept coming back for more.
Fast forward a little bit to my first fighting game major, UFGTX, also unfortunately the last in the UFGT brand.
I managed to make it to #2 in the Divekick tournament, and it was absolutely fantastic.
My first great experience with a big FGC gathering left me wanting to diversify into the rest of the genre, starting with Ultra once it comes out.
Seeing that tournament atmosphere really has me pumped to break into more fighting games, and that wouldn’t have happened without Divekick, a fantastic game that gets a lot of unwarranted and uninformed hate.
I’ve been playing randomly since Street Fighter II and got really into it with Marvel vs. Capcom 3! I first heard about the FGC with the Fight For Relief when the japan earthquake. I really liked how much passion the people had for their game and just followed the scene since.
for me it was being lonely. i had to travel a lot with my mom when i was a kid, two or three weekends a month. so i didn’t get to see my friends back home, and i didn’t have any friends in whatever random city i was in for two or three days at a time. we spent a lot of time in hotels, and in the early//mid 90s it was hard to find a hotel that didn’t have street fighter in some corner or another.
street fighter provided a built in connection, a built in community, at a time when i had nothing of the sort. it was one thing for a lonely kid in the middle of nowhere to strike up a conversation, and much, much easier to put your quarter up. thanks, fgc.
i just got into fighting games because i straight up liked them, so many memories of playingMK, kof, sf in the arcades as a kid with my friends
Back when I was 4, I went to my cousin’s house where he introduced me to capcom vs snk 2. Back then I was small and didn’t really understand but I loved it. I grew up with the street fighter, kof, tekken, and mvc series, and I am lucky that I was able to enjoy all of them. Ever since, I have constantly been playing fighting games and watching streams of others play. The games all attach to me and will continue to probably for the rest of my life. It would be great to win the fightstick and all but what’s important to me is that the FGC community continues to grow. I want it to be bigger and better as years come for our community of gamers.
Started playing the OG Mortal Kombat when it first came out, and that’s what did it for me. Just recently got back into them when I picked up Injustice last fall. Now I can’t stop playing SF4, and cannot wait till USF4 comes out next week!!!
I started to play kof 94, then had about 10 years. passed through a mall and caught my attention at the entrance to a local watch a game in which there was a small thing to fredy the player of horror movies, followed by this character appears another even stranger, a man very fat man carrying a huge steel ball attached to a string, then I ask how could this be possible? further I looked amazing the amount of blood he drew the small player grabbing his opponent’s head, I found it very, very entertaining that game and I could see things in reality were impossible, but he allowed the game to handle your characters as you wanted, each time discovering the strange things on occasion that everyone could make. thank you very much
I got into fighting games because my brother was a douche growing up. We had a Genesis from the time I was 4, and he was always hogging it to play Sonic, Shining Force, and all the other countless 1-player games we had. One day, maybe closer to age 6, we were at a best buy or a babbages or whatever the equivalent was back in the day, and my brother begged my dad to get MK, after watching all the cool commercials and reading about it. Dad said no and instead picked up SF2CE, mostly because of the “wholesome lookin’ soldier” on the cover in comparison to the gore and violence of MK. It was our first 2-player game PERIOD and we basically spent the next 48 hours glued to the screen. I found out how to do fireballs first (he still has trouble to this day) and from then on I absolutely dominated him. I really liked the feel of doing a fireball or DP motion, and it stuck for the rest of my life as I was introduced to other great fighters, like World Heroes, King of Fighters, 2nd Impact, CVS2 and MAHVEL, BAYBEE
I first got into fighting games with my father growing up. We had a Sega Genesis with the first Mortal Kombat. We used to play that back and fourth. He would get mad really easily if his younger son would always beat him. Then we started playing Tekken together when it came out for the PlayStation. It was a bonding thing we had even though he is not much of a conversationalist. It is the one thing we can really bond over since I never really got to see him much as a kid growing up, only seeing him on the weekends due to how the family was split up. Even now with the Newest Mortal Kombat game, we will watch the fatalities and shoot the breeze about what games we are playing now. So thank you fighting games, you formed a bond between my father and myself.
I first got into Fighting games when my dad got me my first Playstation console. Along with that he got me 3 games. They included Disney’s Hercules, Destruction Derby 2, and Soul Blade. (The Original Soul Calibur) I was about 9 back then. and I was hooked on Soul Blade!!! I loved everything about it. Awesome intro music, awesome graphics (for that time anyway), epic scenery of the levels and last of all Misturugii was the most awesome character of them all. I had never seen anything like it. Totally blew my mind. At first, I could never get past like stage 3 Until I started playing with Rock. That bad ass axe wielding savage was one that enabled me to defeat Souledge. Most memorable game of all time.
Soon after that, my uncle got me a copy of Tekken 2. Yet again, I was totally hooked. I loved it soo much. Law was my favorite (and still is today) At first, wasnt bale to make it past stage 7, But when i eventually did, I could not believe my eyes. I was challenged by a new character!! After beating him, there was another character i had never seen as well. Boss character named Kazuya and then eventually beating devil then you win. I still love the soundtrack even to this day.
Form then on, I got into all the other fighters, Street Fighter EX, Street Fighter Alpha 3, Tekken 3, Dead or alive, Street Fighter III, Tekken Tag, Tekken 4.. all the way to today SS4 AE, Tekken Tag Tournament 2, UMVC3. Still my favorite will have to be Tekken series.
I got into fighting games very young, because I was a latch key kid along with my two brothers. We were products of a divorced family and our Dad couldn’t ever really find a better way we could spend our limited time except in this awesome arcade called Fun N Games. Of course the shooting games and the racing games were out for me because of my size (I was about six when we started going) and I couldn’t reach the pedals or the guns (they were the old school machines that had the guns very high and bolted [Aliens and Terminator I think, as well as that Aerosmith gun game]) so of course the appeal for me was the fighting games, where I didn’t see many kids my age playing it, but I did see a lot of people playing it. So I watched and saw that everyone that played were so excited and had so much fun, they were really getting into it. Even though there were winners and losers, no one had walked away sad, but rather were excited and thrilled to have played the game, even giving tips to each other for the next time they fought. It was the first thing I felt community and camaraderie, it helped me cope with society and I have made a lot of friends just through one match. I can say, if it weren’t for fighting games, I don’t have any idea who I would be today.
I’ve been playing fighting games since I was a kid. But the scene was never really that big here, so every time I hit the arcades, I always played against the AI. Same thing at home. Whenever I had the game on console, not much kids played. If i remember, my first fighting game was actually Tekken 2. I did have Tekken 1 and Mortal Kombat Trilogy, but Tekken 2 was something I always played, at home and when I see it in the arcades. But the first fighting game I really liked was actually Tekken Tag Tournament 1. So later down the years, and I mean when Tag 2 was announced, I was super excited.
Now that the history lesson’s over, it wasn’t until Tekken 5.0 on console was when I got the motivation to get better. Because a good friend of mine, who is still my rival in Tag 2, seriously kicked me around the bush. This kept going until Tekken 6. Because of that, I decided to look into how to get better when Tekken 6 console came out. He still beat me around, but just not as bad. And now that we’re playing Tag 2, I’ve gotten better, and now able to defeat him just as he defeated me like nothing before. The hype that also comes with fighting games are just the best part about playing the games. Either watching or playing, I always love the rush!
Fighting games are fun.
TOP PLAYER FROM TIMES OF ATARI DDDDDDDDDD, THE MOST IMPORTANT>>>COMPETITIVE FIGHTING GAMES FROM SF2 FROM DAY ONE NEVER MASHING TO TODAY GAMES, I`LL NEVER LEARN TO DOMINATE A PAD IN MY LIFE, Y TRY :3, NEED A GREAT ASTICK TO COMEBACK TOP PLAYER LIST, YEAH
I first got into fighting games because of my dad. I was like 6 yrs old, i was playing tekken just mashing the buttons and playing happily with my dad. So i was like “this is so addicting”. Every weekend we will go to the mall and play. Near the entrance at the parking there were arcades (Timezone). They would leave me with my Dad and my mom would go shopping (girls right?) :)). We would spend like $20 just to play all the arcade fighting games in that area including 2D fighting games but most of all tekken. I stopped playing when i was in grade 2 because i was really studying hard and they won’t let me play. There was this one tragedy that lead me into fighting games more seriously. My dad died because of a heart disease because of this every time i feel sad i would play tekken just to remember my dad and would think that he’s just here playing with me. I became more seriously in fighting games when i was 14 years old. We bought a psp and a UMD of Tekken: Dark Resurrection. Learn to juggle from that game because of the cool features. I love fighting games it gives me the hype and covers my sadness with happiness. Now i’m 2nd year college still playing Tekken and know i’m still learning to play UMVC3 and Super Street Fighter IV. Thank you fighting games for the happiness that you gave to me so i can go through to my sadness.
I’ll make it short and sweet!
I got into fighting games as a young teen and found it was better excitement then real fighting and the only thing that hurt after it was over were my thumbs. (Mike Tyson’s Punch Out) I remember seeing Street Fighter II arcade for the first time at a local pizza cafe and was HOOKED! (Both packets full of quarters every time I went there.) Fast forward through almost all the fighting games from the late 80’s up till now ~TEKKEN is my fix, has been for years now. My thumbs NEED a break MarkMan your they’re only hope! ONLY THE POWER OF THAT ARCADE STICK CAN SAVE THEM! ~ Echo’s…
Highly technical and flashy competition got me into fighting games. Along with the feeling of community that the FGC can bring when you meet cool, mature people.
I first played sf2 on the snes like many others my age. thanks to my uncle who was a teenager at the time. I was never allowed to go to arcades so I was just home with my little brother and sf2. fighting games just kinda stuck with me as i got older, fast forward and I’m an adult now being able to afford my hobbies and with the revival of fighting games I naturally wanted to be a part of the fgc and learning the game at a whole different level and seeing yourself improve is one the most satisfying things I can experience in a video game.
I was born with fighting games as a young kid as it started with the Super Nintendo with super street fighter 2 given by my mother
Growing up on street fighter 2 and marvel vs machines in local pizza shops. My local LAN center “That Gaming Place” really helped realize my passion for competitive fighting games.
I started playing fighting games when I was little and got SF2 for the SNES. I ended up loving Street Fighter and continued to play it as years went on. From then on, I branched out to try our other fighting games and having fun while appreciating all of the different games out there. Although I don’t play competitively, I enjoy and follow the fgc a lot.
My passion for fighting games started when I was about 6 years old. My babysitter had street fighter on the sega genesis and I would play with my babysitter, but would always lose. I would always lose due to my inability to figure out how to hadouken or do any special moves. It made mad but at the same time it was intriguing and it made me want to learn more about the game as I got older. Sega Genesis and Street fighter awakened my passion for the fighting game genre.
What seriously got me into fighting games was watching WC maxi skill projects for SC.
My eldest brother would sit me down and force me to play fighting games until I got into the rhythm of playing them myself.
Now I am a monster that only my boyfriend likes to play against! hehehe!
Staying home from middle school and unlocking every character in tekken 1.
Super Street fighter 2 at my local laundry mat lol. It was mrs.pacman and street fighter every time I when went in there as a four year old. I’d save all the change I could during the week then on saturday it was go time.
Tekken 2 on my very first PS1. That started it all. It wasn’t until DR that I got competitive.
And here I am now, 15 years later, still playing.
Shout outs to Namco for an amazing game series.
I got into fighting games when my friend got an Super Nintendo. At the time I still had the NES so I was blown away by games like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. From the time I first saw them, I could never get enough.
Growing up as a kid, i was a huge fan of karate. From Van Damme and Steven Seagal movies to Ninja Turtles, it was only fitting to be a fan of fighting games for years to come. I used to go to this bowling alley in Berkeley, CA when i was 6 and play Final Fight for what seemed like an eternity. I was hooked and that was just a small dose of what was to come. Then in the summer of 1992 my family and i went on vacation to visit relatives in New York. They took us to the Splash Down Beach Waterpark and they had a Street Fighter 2 Championship Edition arcade there. This was my first sighting of the game and there was no one playing. I threw in a few quarters and chose Sagat. I knew nothing of the game but i was beating the computer with random punches and kicks. When i finally lost, a kid next to me said that he (Sagat) was so good that he didn’t even need fireballs to win. I initially though to myself “fireballs?” what is he talking about? Then a couple of days later we went to a galleria and then the madness began. I saw my older brother surrounded by a huge crowd at the arcade and it was Street Fighter CE that had the attention of everyone. He was using Chun Li and all i can remember seeing was these legs moving up and down non stop. I was in awe of what i was watching and that interest would never go away. It was a good time for fighting games as there were countless games that you could play. One in particular that kept the juices flowing was a genesis game called Deadly Moves. I still play the game on my gens emulator and it will hold a special place in my heart as one of the first fighting games that was easy to play and understand at my age during the time. Time has passed on and the passion is still there. I doubt it will ever go away.
my friends played fightiing games and while i thought they were ok i wasnt really interested until injustice came out something about being able to play the characters i love and have read about for years while beating other ones i despise senseless got me into the game and now im branching out to different games
Tekken 3!! no doubt about it! It started my whole addiction when I was 10 I woke up one morning and my dad was like ” I got you something” bam!! my 1st console a Playstation with TEKKEN 3. I would play it and not be able to put it down!! later on I got into primal rage, mk trilogy, sf alpha 3, and MVC2. Man ever since that game I can not stop playing and collecting! I have 5 tv’s set up in a garage now w/ 5 systems hooked up just in dedication for fighting games!! I could really use this stick for my ps3 as my other se doesn’t work 🙂 here’s a clip of my set up from my crappy phone lol! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hp996mLgiEo&feature=youtu.be
i wanted to do dope ass combos wit my friends
I got into fighting games because of arcades and my older cousin. I had always looked up to him and I tried to get better by playing the PS1 ports of games like Tekken 3 and Marvel Vs Capcom. I would practice for hours and hours on PS1 because that was one of the few consoles I had and I hoped to get better so I could put up a fight when my cousin was able to visit me.
For me, it was the sound of elephants from Dhalsim’s stage that caught my attention. Our local arcade has 5 SFII cabinets so you can just imagine how loud it was. Yeah, I know its weird but I owe it to those gigantic mammals who continuously blow their noses every time the round ends. I will not be lured in to those cabinets if it wasn’t for them. Cheers!
What got me into fighting games? The spirit of team work and competition from the 2 vs 2 Gundam VS series games from 2001 to this day with a good friend! Street Fighter IV brought out the spirit of competition and community after 2010 with the Super version as I started attending the local casuals making new friends and every week from that day, I’ve supported my local casuals with a Xbox 360, PS3, Asus(now BenQ) monitor and fighting games.
More than once a week now, I spend time with the friends I’ve made from casuals and I get to assist them with any stick mod like custom graphics, parts replacement and fixing.
I was a typical gamer before but thanks to Mad Catz(TE series for being more accessible in Canada) and the FG scene rising up again, I enjoy fighters, arcade platformers and SHMUPs/STGs.
When I was a kid, I wanted Star Fox for the SNES. My mom took me to Toys R Us to get the game for my birthday. I went to the games section, found Star Fox, and I was happy. However, another game there caught my eye, because of how awesome the cover art looked. It was a green creature barreling through a trash can, who was about to give a lady dressed in blue a bad day. The game was Street Fighter 2. I had no idea what a fighting game was, nor I had no idea how this game was suppose to be played, but I loved the cover art so much, I begged my mom to let me have the game alongside Star Fox. She said yes.
When I got home, I tried out Star Fox for a bit and loved it. Then, I tried out Street Fighter. I picked Blanka (because I want to play as that creature on the front cover) and the rest was history. I was hooked. I went to Blockbuster with my dad one day and got the Street Fighter 2 strategy guide from Brady Games (which I still own). Read how to do Blanka’s moves and combos. I was untouchable…against my family and friends that is. I still get killed by Bison and his goons. However, Street Fighter 2 is technically the first video game I have ever beaten and I did it with my favorite character, Blanka.
I loved Street Fighter, but after playing it so much, I wanted more. I was a kid and this was before the time of the internet. I had no idea how much of an impact Street Fighter made in the world of video games. So much so, other fighting games began to come forth. I noticed this when I walked into the arcade portion of my local Discovery Zone. For those who don’t know what Discovery Zone was, think Chuck E Cheese without the creepy mascots and the best indoor playground known to man. Their arcade was amazing too. It introduced me to other fighting games, such as Mortal Kombat and King of Fighters.
It was then I grew up with the arcade mentality. Lose the game, you lose your turn, run back to dad to get more tokens, get that runback. This was often with Street Fighter and King of Fighters especially. For years since then, I’ve been going to other arcades and friends houses to play fighting games. From Killer Instinct to Bloody Roar, I have so many fond memories in my life that involved fighting games. Friends past and current, we’re all fighters. To the Tekken sessions at our local movie theater, to the late night MvC2 sessions at multiple friends places, and to the CvS2 sessions at Flippers arcade in Town & Country mall…so many to recall and so many that brings me such joy, knowing that I bonded so well with my friends, because of fighting games. That’s why fighting games holds such a special place in my heart. Especially when we found out about the FGC. We wanted to get better and show the world what we’re made of.
Sadly, Flippers is gone, Discovery Zone is gone, the local movie theater is gone, and I lost a good chunk of the friends I made over the years due to a variety of reasons. Though these things are gone, I still remember the good times. Now, it’s new memories to make. New experiences, new friends, and new fighting games. I’m now consider an “old man” in FGC terms, but I still fight. Will continue to fight, whether competitively or casually. To continue doing what I love to do since the days I toppled a dictator with a boy from Brazil named Jimmy.
I still use Jimmy today. With him, I carry alot of history and alot of love for the game and for the community. That’s never going to change no matter how old I get. Let the good times roll.
What got me into fighting games was seeing my brother’s friends coming over to my apartment to play fighting games when I was little. I grew up more interest from martial arts movies and playable arcades from the laundromats. Up until Mortal Kombat 4 it died down when people are focusing onto to their lives. My love was still there after reading news and engaging discussions over the internet during the ps2 era. My interest return again from the release of SFIV and KOF XIII. I found out there was a community out there close to me who also love to play fighting games.
Evo moment 37. The classic video definitely made me think that I should play this game. I played Super Smash Bros. Melee with my friends and we were getting tired of playing it. I just so happened to run by the evo moment 37 video and from then on I’ve been following sites like shoryuken.com frequently. I even bought a ps3 just for sf4.
My buddy Alain got me into it he has showed me hot to preserver in hard times and we’ve shared many a fun times behind the sticks. 🙂
Mortal Kombat got me into fighting games way back in the early 90’s. I saw it in the arcade for the first time and was blown away by how real the fighters looked. Then I saw “the pit” for the first time and it was like some wild illegal martial arts tournament like you’d see in movies or something. It was nuts. Blew my 12-year old mind.
I remember dropping by some stores with my dad and hearing the classic hadoukens from Street Fighter 2 machines and Storm yells from MVC2 cabinets. From those tiny experiences, I got into playing Guilty Gear X2 and MVC2 with my brother and cousin but the one game that brought the salt onto the table was CVS2 for the PS2! My team consisted of Terry Bogard, Ryu, and Haohmaru. My brother chose Iori Yagami, Kyo Kusanagi and Joe Higashi. We were pretty even on skill level, until I just broke away with Haomaru’s stand fierce which cut away a huge chunk of life whenever it landed. It was cheap, but it worked (pre-footsies I guess lol). Because of that, we kept running games back and forth until we would get blisters on our thumbs. Eventually my brother grew out of fighting games, and I eventually started playing Vanilla Street Fighter 4 in 2009 by coming to a friend’s house. My friend was sleeping at that moment, so I got my hands on his hacked Xbox 360, which happened to have SF4. With my little knowledge of quarter circles and shoryukens, I entered the online world immediately. Wake up Ultras and DPs were all over the place, and I had no shame lol. Eventually, I got into playing a little more serious by playing a friend in high school who was really into the FGC as a Balrog player. I learned the ins and outs of the game and the characters. The game began to release newer versions, which had me switch mains from shoto to shoto, and a little bit of Cody. Now that Ultra is coming out, I have taken my competitiveness to the highest point in my fighting game career. Trips to CSULB, UCI, Alex’s Arcade, Round 1, and online adventures have really helped me with high level gameplay which sharpens my focus for EVO2014 this year. With the acknowledgement of my obsessed participation with fighting games in general, I realized that these games generate a community that is truly a unique one with the nicest and most talented people that I have ever met. I know this was a long one to read, but my love for fighting games have come a long way, which makes me even happier to know that there is an alive and fighting community out there to support those games.
– Jimmy Vu
Well as early as I can remember, tekken was the very first video game I played. I was 5-6 when I played the original Tekken, then for my 9th birthday (Dec1998) my father bought me a Playstation 1 and Tekken 2. Since then Tekken has been a huge impact on my gaming life. I’ve owned every tekken with the soundtrack from Tekken 6 to be my favorite (I’m 24 now). So because of you and your team, I Live for Tekken.
What got me into playing fighting games was seeing people play street fighter on twitch. Also my sisters boyfriend also helped me get into fighting games. He even lent me his only stick so that I could start playing.
My brother had a PS1 when I was 7 years old
We play tekken with but if I win the game then he will get angry and hit me and that’s when I often succumb to him …
When I started playing TTT1 appeared in arcades and i stay at my friends house to play until the morning (because I dont have a PS2)
When TTT2 appears I owe to my friends to buy the PS3 and pay it off a few months later and from there I go into the game Tekken is because I always lost the race and the subject of ridicule
Ridicule it motivated me to become even more powerful and it becomes a reality
My dream is to become a Pro player like KNEE
I am thankful Indonesia has received attention from neighboring countries and we became friends
I realized that I still many shortcomings and I have always wanted to learn to become better
Regards,
R-Tech … Christian
I got into fighting games after watching Ken Bogard’s videos. That was so hype, so I bought SF4 Vanilla and love the gameplay. I saw the potential of that type of game !
Now, I play competitively BlazBlue and SF4 !
Mortal kombat on the megadrive
For me it was basically that I was getting bored of multiplayer shooters, and I’ve always had interest in fighting games but felt somewhat intimidated by them. Last summer I finally convinced myself that there’s really no reason I can’t learn a fighting game, so I started looking into getting a fight stick and a copy of Blazblue: Continuum Shift Extend to practice up some before Chronophantasma released, since I figured it’d be best to learn a fighting game shortly after release when there’s other new players online. I was particularly interested in Blazblue because of its similarities to Persona 4 Arena, which I had bought after playing through Persona 3 and 4 in a single summer, but unfortunately I never really got too into it beyond the story mode after going online and learning how clueless I was at using Yukiko.
Right around that time someone from IGN’s boards sent me a message saying they were finally getting the PS3 version of Persona 4 Arena, since they remembered I had been looking for other players before giving up on the game. With that, my attention shifted from Blazblue to Persona until Chronophantasma’s release. Another coincidence that helped me get into fighters is right after we started playing Persona, someone else made a thread on IGN looking for Persona players, and we ended up getting a small group of mostly beginner-level players that were interested in learning the game.
Since then I’ve come to consider fighting games to be my favorite genre, and there’s many other series I’m interested in learning eventually (Street Fighter, Virtua Fighter, Tekken, Skullgirls, Guilty Gear, Under Night in Birth, and a few others), but for now I’m mainly focused on just trying to become good at Persona and Blazblue, as well as Guilty Gear when Xrd releases. I’ve even started going to local fighting game meet ups, and with how much fun I’ve been having I don’t see myself quitting fighting games any time soon.
First experience with fighting games is with SF2 and then Turbo.
Then played in the arcades for X-Men: Children of the Atom doing one thing: “ICE BEAM! ICE BEAM! ICE BEAM! ICE BEAM! ICE BEAM! ARCTIC ATTACK!” Branched out to Battle Arena Toshinden and the rest is history.
I got into fighting games playing Tekken 3 and Street Fighter vs Xmen on the Playstation and being a challenge to people 2 – 3 years older than me!!
Nothing is better than beating down a total stranger am I right? now all those strangers are long time friends and our hobby as become our passion. This was my life in the late 90’s around the time that street fighter alpha had come out which is also the game that hooked me, soon enough I was going to every bowling alley,every bar,every mall arcade,pizza shop whatever its an addiction and a good one lol
Tekken was the game that got me into fighting games. My ex’s brother showed me how to play and we had an intense competitive but friendly rivalry with each other. I had so much fun playing with him that eventually I started to pick up and learn other fighting games. Now I’m the Skullgirls and BlazBlue: Chronophantasma guy among my friends and we all still have a ton of fun. Thanks for holding this contest! Hopefully I win, but if not I hope it helps get the winner even more interested in fighting games 😀
I first started playing fighting games when I 2-3, when my cousins boyfriend let me play Mortal Kombat 1 and 2. After that I was an arcade rat playing Killer Instinct against people 4 times my age. I just wanted to compete even at a young age. After Killer Instinct, my arcade go Tekken Tag and some of the early versus series, and while I sucked at both, I loved playing them. Finally, after a hiatus from the arcade, I got back into fighting games with Street Fighter 4 in 09. I don’t know what I would do without this community.
What got me in to fighting games was good friends that hung out at the local arcade. Those friend I made in that arcade I still talk to today. Learning tekken tag and street fighter while traveling to different tournaments all over that south. Nothing says good time like some good friends playing some fight games.
what got me into fighting games was every kid on my block was nearly ten years older than me and they all played sf mk ki everything and anything even eternal champions they had a clique and as a kid i thought it was the coolest thing just to be able to hang out with 8 or more friends at a time just playing a game all trying to destroy each other in a virtual world
What made me play fighting games?
Uhm, growing up with many cousins who almost share same interest like sports(basketball), cartoons(anime) and video games(from super mario, donkey kong to contra , final fight and street fighter series to tekken) tend to be a little more competitive. Every one wants to be the best and brag about their achievements like how he can do infinite 1up(lives) in super mario, have an infinite gun at contra, do super moves on guile & vega etc. But one of the memorable times are the times we play fighting games. sometimes it comes to a point that we also fight in reality lol. (we were kids then so i thinks its just normal >_<) but these developed into serious gaming especially into fighting games.. we were so into it that we almost talk about it everyday, every night, going to school, coming home from school even during recess and lunch. we played almost every fighting game but each one of us excels at a different game. one prefers street fighter the other prefers marvels vs capcom series and i'd prefer tekken (IAMTEKEN). Each one of us teach one another to the game that we always play even though we play different genres of fighting games we are one, those are the times that i missed nowadays. (Shout out to my bros in different parts of the world ^_^). In my opinion fighting games not only promotes good rivalry between friends, brothers or sisters but also promote a brotherhood that unites individuals whom share common interest into one genre of video game. I play (i mean we all play – speaking for everyone else) simply because its fun, addictive and it builds a bond that last until we grow old.(i'm see myself still playing fighting games even i'd be already called grandpa.. haha) That feeling of mini heart attack of the last health bar would already do an K.O. to you, that feeling that you got beaten by a tekken chick(girl), that feeling you've finally defeat the last boss stage. that feeling you finished the street fighter's bonus stage(barrel bonus stage because its hard.. lol). these feeling doesn't go even as time goes by. So I'm pleading to every fighting game developers(Mr. Harada/Yoshi ono), fighting game enthusiast, casual players(myself included), online players and everyone concern about fighting games, please make more fighting games. Let us make the fighting game community more active in all of our countries. ^_____^ go fighting!
What got me into fighting games was the competitive feel and strive to improve whether by facing friends or the cpu. My first fighting games were KI for SNES and Tekken Tag 1, I loved how both those games were completely different but both equally as fun to play. I now have SSF4, Tekken Tag 2, and UMVC3 and play the old schools still. While watching live streams of fighting games, its nice to see that professional players are able to be competitive but at the same time still teach and learn from each other.
I only love to play fighting game whit a FightStick cause its feel more like an Arcade. And cause my brother allways beat me cause he got a FightStick lol. 😦
I got into fighting games after my dad bought me a ps1 and a copy of battle arena toshinden and tekken 3. I found them to be more enjoyable than any other game I got down the line.
Watching justin wong play street fighter X tekken at texas showdown 2011. I had recently bought cross tekken not realizing the bad rep it has. But from that moment ive been following the fgc and personaly got involved with it. Recently went to my first major but had stick issues. Would be awesome if I could get this one so I can fight at my best next year
I first got into fighting games casually when I was very young because games like KI and Tekken looked cool.
The first time I got to know the concept of true competition in a fighting game was when I played a friend on Tekken 3 Jin VS Jin 101 games in a row. It finished 66-33 to him, with 2 draws.
I didn’t discover the greater depth to fighting games until playing VF4:Evo and finding forums full of information.
The final thing that got me into fighting games was playing SSF4 at a friends house, and then buying it myself and facing opponents online. From there I found a local scene and once I had regular competition I realised I was well into fighting games.
For me, it started with “Street Fighter 2: The World Warrior” at age 10 as I played alongside my cousin. As time passed, I had a serious crisis in terms of what game I should really play. Beit in arcades or consoles, you name it, I played it: “Tekken”, “Mortal Kombat,” “Battle Arena Toshinden,” “Dead or Alive,” “Soul Calibur,” “Marvel Vs. Capcom”, “Killer Instinct,” and so on. It wasn’t until attending the 2010 MLG in Raleigh that my mind was made up. “Tekken 6” was on the circuit that year and aside from falling in love with the game again, the high play of players really drew me in. It felt like everyone was there: KOR, Redd, Big Boi, Mr. Naps, Pokchop, and the eventual champ, JustFrameJames. Despite the muscle memory of playing “Marvel vs. Capcom 3,” those two days of “Tekken 6” motivated me not only to pick it back up again, but to strive to play it at a high level..
Played off and on but never really got up in until I tried playing CVS1 at a pizza place and lost in front of a group of like six people. Vowed to never let that happen again. It happened again. And again.
We’ll it all started when I was very young. My dad was very competitive an used to beat me helplessly in: ki Gold, street fighter 2 turbo, soul caliber etc.. He took me to my first tournament when I was 11, it was a soul caliber 2 tournament because that was the game I was most decent at. That day I had gotten 3rd at the tournament actually beating my dad in the process! It was a glorious day for me and although I’m sure he was a salty I’m sure he was proud at the same time. Growing up now I compete and he doesn’t really support it which makes me pretty sad. After placing 4th at Evo this past year in 2013 I said,”pops I got 4th at Evo.” He replies,”you didn’t win.”
street fighter got me into fighting games 🙂
My boyfriend showed me the video of EVO moment #37. I instantly got hooked on the idea of fighting games. I started watching fighting game tournaments on twitch and YouTube. But at some point watching alone was not enough. After some struggling I picked up UMVC3 and recently SF4. I am still learning. But my love for the genre is strong and that’s why I am flying to Vegas in order to attend EVO 2014. Not only to play against the best, but mainly to experience the hype I only were able to get by watching the streams.
Now why did I get into fighting games? Is it Street Fighter? Nope. Marvel Vs Capcom? Nope.
IT’S GUNDAM!!! EXTREME VS!!! FULL BOOST!!! (MAXI BOOST?)!!!
Oh, and Tekken too! Love to spam cartwheel kicks as Lili 😉
And who can forget about Soul Calibur IV? (Not Soul Calibur V, cuz they nerfed my poor lovely Ivy </3)
Ever since I got my hands on the controller. Started at the age 5 from street fighter and tekken :). JDCR all the way
I got into the FGC after playing and designing ARTS (now called MOBA) for like 6 years. I got fed up with relying on team mates to succeed. I knew so many people who would blame their loses on RNG or their team and I found comfort in knowing that losing in a fighting game was entirely MY fault. I had to hold that and get better, instead of just complaining. 3rd Strike was my first game and I just went from there playing any game I could get my hands on.
The search for Friendship got me into fighters. Although I didn’t know it at the time, as I was only 9 years old playing the arcade game “Karate Champ”.
I practice enough to get better than our local arcade champ, but then no one wanted to play with me any longer.
So I started visiting other arcades to find people who had fun, winning or loosing. People who had love for the game, that they just loved to play it.
It wasn’t till SFII that I found more people like me, and then Tekken was my true first national community that accepted me, and wanted players like me.
Playing for the love of the game. Winning or loosing doesn’t stop you.
We play because of the friendships, and the love of the game.
That’s what got me into fighters, and keeps me there today.
I got into fighting games with the NeoGeo AES playing King of Fighters. Then I got into tekken with the first psx release.
i got into fighting games because i knew it was something i would love. the climbing never stops. to get better is a lifetime of commitment, but the fun and excitement keeps me going. just knowing that on the other side of a match, there is someone who is working equally as hard as me to win, its something that i’ve only found in fighting games (while other multiplayers offers the same concept, the ability to block changes everything for me). its not just about attacking but also understand the difference between offense and defense. understanding that i cannot force my will with anger and recklessness, but rather having to work hard with patience and tactics to achieve some sort of advantage. it didn’t just motivate me never stop getting better, but to also helped shape my ability to think different, in the game and in life. learning to accept defeat without getting angry, and learning to win while being humble, isn’t this something that everyone should want to achieve in life?
I got into fighting games because some of my IRC friends were playing MVC2, and shorty after MVC3 came out and I got sooo in that game, I got into various other fighters because of it. I say the moment that got me into fighting games for real was PR Balrog’s Tron comeback in the Evo 2011 MVC3 Grand Finals to reset the bracket, I was sooo amazed at that moment, I just know that I will be playing fighting games to years to come
I always was familiar with fighters either mashing on arcade cabs in the arcade or playing the console releases for characters and story. It wasnt around till the time of MK9’s release did I learn that there was a huge community of playing fighters competitively. While I am still just an online monster with a group of friends, I have been to Evo for the past 2 years and have met alot of cool people and have had a good time.
I got into fighting games after REALLY hyping up Marvel 3. I’ve been playing that and 4 other games ever since and learning at a snail’s pace. I’m hoping one of these days I can convince myself to go compete
I have a younger brother who is just one year younger than me. He is my best friend in the world and has been ever since I have a use of memory. He has also, always been (and still is) my training partner in fighting games.
Our very first videogame system was a NES, and my dad always tried to get us games where we could play together (either versus or co-op). So from a very ripe age I learned to prefer games where I could play with other people as opposed to the 1 player experience.
Two of the first games we ever played together were Track and Field II (my dad is a track & field coach). And Karate Champ (also a sport of which he’s always been a fan of).
From T&FII the event we played the most was the fencing game. We also couldn’t get enough of Karate Champ.
I guess ever since we’ve been hooked on Fighting games, and to this day entering our 30’s, we still find time to get together and play, as well as try to help build our local fighting game scene.
I got into fighting games (and games in general) about ’94, thanks to my cousin who had SF2WW and Mortal Kombat 2 on SNES. We’d play for hours until my mom came to pick me up from his house, even though I never wanted to leave! Fighters have been a big chunk of my life ever since.
Started age 5 with my dad w/ world warrior w/ snes beating the game with ryu on hardest difficulty. I vaguely remember him zoning with sweeps, hadokens, and srk. no fancy combos or anything. Did the same thing to ssf2.
Did not know there was competitive fgc until high school when I entered smash tourneys then played smash for the rest of high school at peoples houses/during lunch and then learned about competitive mk2, t5, st. Saw evo moment 37.
Stayed.
I credit my oldest brother for getting me into fighting games, and video games in general. In the late 80s, he asked our parents for a Nintendo Entertainment System for his birthday; with that, we became instant video game fans. Around 1993, we borrowed a Super Nintendo Entertainment System from a friend. One of the games that came with it was Street Fighter II. I was intrigued by this game because it was unlike anything else I’d played before—I mostly played platformers and puzzle games at that point. It was just really fascinating to both watch and play a competitive game based on two characters duking it out with their own special moves. What really drew me to the game was the characters themselves, each one with their own unique look, fighting style and backstory. I was naturally drawn to Chun-Li and picked her almost every time, being she was the only female fighter in the game. There were not any butt-kicking Asian female characters in US media at the time, so it was super-cool to play a character I could identify with. During the Alpha era, I was introduced to Sakura and she’s been my favorite Street Fighter character since. I just thought she was a really cool female fighter with a fun personality and awesome style.
Several years later, Tekken 3 dropped for the PlayStation and my brother quickly bought it. I think what really drew me to the game was how polished it looked compared to other games/fighters at the time and felt it was a bit easier to pick up and play, compared to other fighters. It might just be the most memorable fighting game I’ve played to date. I instantly took a liking to Ling Xiaoyu–she was cute and fun, much like Sakura. Plus she owned a panda! I especially thought she was cool because she practiced Chinese martial arts, an interest of mine still to this day. I would play Tekken 3 for hours with my brothers, cousins and family friends, as it was a big hit during our family gatherings. My brother and older cousin were known as the “experts” because they actually knew moves and could beat both the CPUs and the rest of us kids, the button mashers. One memory that really stands out to me is Eddy Gordo being everyone’s favorite because of how cool he was, how much his fighting style looked like breakdancing (A really popular thing amongst us suburban AzNs at the time) and how easy it was to win with him through button mashing.
Looking back, I really just enjoyed just hanging out with family and friends, all of us bonding over fighting games. It wasn’t even about competition, it was just about having fun, messing around in the game, attempting to learn combos or pull off some special moves of our favorite characters. In addition to Street Fighter and Tekken, I have fond memories of playing Mortal Kombat 2-3, Battle Arena Toshinden (Another very memorable game for me), Darkstalkers, Samurai Shodown: Warriors’ Rage (Don’t hate!), Dead or Alive 2, and Marvel vs Capcom 2. No trash-talking, no sore losers, all fun!
These days, I want to play fighting games a little more seriously and would love to have a better understanding of the basics; with that, I can feel more confident playing others locally and online. Watching high-level play on streams just makes me want to level up my game tenfold.
I think it was when I was 10 or so, we played with some classmates a lot of Killer Insctint on the SNES. Then, a few years later stumbled upon the game again and with a friend, we started to crack the game and find all the posible combos, linkers and such.
Well it all started about two years ago, when i and my friends were playing random XBLA games and then i noticed that i could download full version of Street Fighter II HF( My friend has bought account from America and transferred it into his Xbox 360, after that he decided to sell his 360 and i wanted to buy it from him and now i got that “America” account which had DLC’s, Games etc). And after 2 weeks my friend decided to buy SSF4AE and that was my story how i got into fighting games.
I didn’t even know there was an FGC until I worked at an arcade in San Antonio that had Tekken 5. The dudes that would show up on half-price days to play Tekken were some of the coolest dudes I’ve ever known.
Since then, I’ve been a judge at EVO, helped/ran several tourneys, and I don’t know what I’d do without the FGC. They’re wonderful.
I got into fighting games when I was three years old the same year I started playing video games. When i was growing up I was always exposed to video games because all of my family played them at my house. Curious as I was I would ask to play with them. The first fighting game I played was mortal kombat and it went on from their. The first tekken I played was tekken 3 and tekken is my favorite fighting game franchise to this day. I didn’t get into the competitive fighting game community until 2011 when the new mortal kombat came out. Then i realized what I was missing out on. This made me think about what would tekken or any other fighting games look like in the hands of pros. This is why I love fighting games to this day. Their so satisfying!!! This is a little long story sorry lol
I was 4 years old at EVO and I remember watching the match between Daigo and Justin. That is what got me into fighting games.
It start with sf2 and then just kept going but I’d have to say the real culprit is my ego and my love of finding patterns and solving puzzles. Each game/match/fighter was a new puzzle to work out. Everybody has a tempo or a pattern/habit and it’s addicting as hell learning it and then exploiting it. In short it’s really high speed chess. Mind games no mater where you play them are just too fun.
I was born in the streets, struggling for respect, I needed to fight. I went to a karate dojo and trained for several years. One summer a friend of mine showed me super street fighter 2. When I saw Ryu’s intro launching the Hadouken I was stunned and my life changed. I’m devoted to every fighting game, and I’m still practising karate. Fighting is my life!
Growing up, my siblings and I have always played Super Smash Bros. Melee. Every weekend we would gather around the Gamecube and smack the snot out of each other. I was always coming back for the chance to win. Then one day I went to my uncle’s house who had a Street Fighter II arcade cabinet. None of us could do special moves yet but my cousins and I lined up every visit to play Street Fighter. Several years later, we got an Xbox 360 and Soul Calibur. I was the only one who stood around after the battle to memorize the command list for my main, Siegfried. After that my friend lent me his Injustice game, and I was the king of Injustice around my house! I picked up a Street Fighter 3D edition copy to get into the game while I was at school (in my free time of course!) and downloaded some MAME Roms to see all kinds of fighter games. Now I’m looking for ways to up my game to a professional level, and I go to my local Gameworks to challenge people on Street Fighter and Tekken.
My local Arcade called Neo Crash in the Bronx got me playing fighting games. Ever since then i been playing casually until Sf4 came out getting me to the competitive scene. Years later a good friend of mine that i have not had contact with in a very long time met up with me while i was organizing Tekken Tournaments in a place called 8 bit and up. We later formed a team that year called Kick-Punch-Block!
I got into fighting games starting with street fighter and mortal kombat on the swag genesis. But it wasn’t until I found my love in tekken 3 that birthed my love for the franchise and fighting games in general
I started playing when I was a kid. Tekken 3 was the first fighting game I played. My uncle made me play it and beat me all the time. Now look who’s beating his uncle >:)
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