LogFAQs > #951793486

#3. Street Fighter IV (Xbox 360, 2009)







Fighting games were pretty cool when I was younger. I got into Street Fighter 2 during that huge boom in the early '90s. I would rent fighting games from Blockbuster, because even if they were actually bad, they would be fun for a couple days (yes Clayfighter, this includes you). Rival Schools was a big time sink for me in the PS1 days. I got into Street Fighter 3 and Marvel vs Capcom 2 when I was going to arcades in my DDR days. Guilty Gear XX was a big hit in college among friends. The King of Fighters games were fun to push buttons in and had a nice sense of style. I played a lot of fighting games over the years. And I was bad at all of them.

I didn't play many fighting games with friends. It was mostly single-player as a kid. When I did play against friends, they were much better than me and I don't know if I ever really improved that much. I just kind of did moves and hoped they would hit.

Street Fighter IV came out at just the right time. Fighting games needed a bit of a revival, and this was a big brand that put a lot of energy back into the genre. But more importantly, the internet was just at the right place for Street Fighter IV to thrive. Youtube had become big enough for people to upload and share game footage, so people could post techniques, match videos, tournament footage, and funny & cool moments. It was also easily the biggest name fighting game to have online play at that point, allowing people chances to find opponents beyond their local arcade or group of friends. I was not great at SFIV when it first came out, but I really leaned in to these new tools.

I originally used Dhalsim as my main character. I wasn't good at the combo system SFIV had, and Dhalsim primarily relied on poke attacks to keep people away. He had some combos, and they were trickier to perform than most characters, but it was okay that I couldn't do them. Playing a lot with Dhalsim against strangers online, I started to get a sense of spacing & patience on defense. I was still losing quite a bit more than winning when Super Street Fighter IV came out. This upgrade had two of my favorites from Street Fighter 2, T Hawk and Dee Jay. I ended up settling on T Hawk as my new main character, partly because his combos were shorter & simpler. I was still playing this a lot in 2011, and decided to buy an arcade stick. The XBox 360 d-pad was not the best, and I saw a lot of top players using arcade sticks, so I got one too. Making a big purchase like this meant I was pretty all-in on SFIV at this point.

In 2012, I heard about an anime con that had some fighting game tournaments, including SFIV. It was maybe an hour drive away. It had been 6 years since I had last entered a DDR tournament, my last game tourney of any kind. I decided I had been playing and improving enough that it was worth seeing how I stacked up. Surprisingly, I won a match at this tournament, so I didn't have the 0-2 performance that many people find at their first game. I also talked to someone at this tournament that headed up weekly events in the Detroit area, and got info so I could start going to those every so often.

Not long after this first tournament, I met up with some friends from college. These were the friends I played DDR with, and went to tournaments with, back in those days. I found out they had been playing Street Fighter IV too, and a couple of them were trying to plan a trip to Evo in 2013. I had only seen them a couple times since college days, and this gave me an unexpected reason to all reunite for a weekend in Vegas. Evo 2013 was also the year I was in the same pool as Marn and Daigo. I prepped as hard as I could, and although I didn't do well enough to even get a match against Daigo, I managed to score an upset win over Marn. I already had a strong desire to get better at SFIV, but this moment gave me the drive to really work at it.

I played a lot of Street Fighter IV. I mean a lot. From when I first got the game, I played it at least once every single week until 2015, when I got married and went on a week-long vacation. I drove 90 minutes to play casual games with a community way too many times. I played some online matches that appeared on Excellent Adventures. I entered tournaments in 4 different states. I got matches against a lot of well-known players, even winning some. It's because of this game that I went to strong on other fighting games, finding new games to love and get good at, finding new friends locally and across the country, and reuniting with old friends.

The competitive scene moved on to Street Fighter V, along with a bunch of other newer fighting games. I play a lot of those other games too, so I don't turn on SFIV nearly as much as I used to, often months between games. But every time I turn it on now, I still have a fantastic time, whether I'm trying to play seriously, or just mess around with whoever. SFIV had a lot of tough mechanics to get the hang of, maybe even some weird choices with combos, but the thing it was best at was being a fun time when playing against other people.

Here, have some videos of matches:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_xb5wmI2aI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h59a6MoFHxg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r6Ev7FvwtI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm8pta29C4A

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