At the risk of sounding like a crotchety old man, I am going to open up a topic that is very passionate for all of us admins of 3GK. The topic in question is the dumbing down of games, or more specifically, the destruction of competitive one on one fighting games.

This article was inspired by the previews of Street Fighter 4, a series that has been beaten into submission by a fan-base that no longer wants a technical fight… For old school fighters like me… Street Fighter 3 and Virtua Fighter 5 was the apex of fighting games. The skilled should always conquer the unskilled.

The bulk of us came up in the arcade, I used to have my mom drop me off at Malibu Grand Prix with $20 for my birthday (as a youth) and would spend the first hour burning through my tokens, only to stand around for three more hours watching the people who still had tokens play. I learnt how to adapt, survive and stand my ground in the arcade when facing opponents in Street Fighter, Street Fighter 2 and Samurai Shodown. There were the times when you would run up on a god gamer on Mortal Kombat, or a real cheap player in the original Tekken, but all in all, the arcades were about win or lose your spot. No-one liked to lose their spot and people would get pissed, punch the screen, cuss at you or quit before you delivered the killing blow. I loved seeing that competitive spirit come out in people and nothing was as exciting as watching a close friend walk over guys for an hour then give up the joystick because it was simply time to go… this was a thing that went on for years until the arcade died, a death that was based on technology. Arcade machines could kick a consoles ass every single time when we were playing, and when a game ported home, it lost frames, looked uglier and was generally bought for nostalgia. Until the consoles got better…

For a time after the strength of the arcades reigned supreme, the consoles were making a strong fight. The Sega Saturn could deliver the fighters damn near flawless in 2D and the Playstation had a decent 3D engine… but the competition stayed in the arcade. Weekends would yield myself, Thomas, Shinzo and the Batman333 in the arcade showing and proving. Myself on an SNK fighter (my company of choice) and the other guys on the newest Capcom game, we’d lose, win a whole lot and watch each other beat the so-called badasses into going home. The consoles were meant for practice and the arcade was the big dance; We would enter tournaments, learn a few things and get stronger at our game. Think this is lip service? I dare anyone to try us old schoolers on any 2D fighter or 3D for that matter, our mettle of gaming is beyond the cheese of today, we flat out came up in the school of hard knocks so competition is second nature. This is true however until the surface of Marvel vs Capcom 2.

Pause…

Why MvC2? Well this marked the period of time when the US Arcade scene was pronounced dead. The 3D fighters kept getting better and less technical, the world that brought us 2D fighting perfection in gems like Street Fighter 3 and Garou: Mark of the Wolves was being overshadowed by button mashers like Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 (A button masher is a game that you can wiggle the joystick while simultaneously mashing random buttons to win without strategy.) Us old school gamers were being told that our games of choice were too technical, it was not fun for the new console gamers with less patience, and less drive to excel in… our Virtua Fighters and Tekkens were being replaced with Dead or Alive and Soul Caliburs. The arcade had one last breath with the influx of rythm games like Dance Dance Revolution, but eventually the fire was gone and all the gamers retreated to their homes for RPGs and the occasional buddy vs buddy fighter.

Rusted and angered by the turn of events in our arcade gaming, we found solace in computer game emulaters. Guys were fighting each other over engines like MAME and you could log on and take on skilled players over the internet in classics like Street Fighter 2 and Last Blade. Woot! But even this was short-lived due to technology AGAIN. The newer consoles brought about net gaming and we found that the PC was unnecessary and we could race against our Japanese brothers in Gran Turismo or fight people on the newer fighting games. This should have made us happy right? Well somewhere in the journey something was lost… I am not jaded into believing people fought honorably when we did it in the smoke filled arcades of yester-year but it was different… not the players, the games were different. Gone were the moments of desperation where you were down to no life and could parry a super into a disgusting retaliation combo, and gone were the tools to win because you were flat out that good. Now the playing field is a button masher’s heaven, games are simple, parries are reduced to laughable and combos are damn near automatic… it is ez-mode.

So I wonder, is there no room left for us old hats that fight? Or should the 3GK crew pack up and move to Japan where the competition and aspiration to get better at games is still strong? The imports that I see now like Melty Blood, shows that there is still a market for this type of gaming offshore. What is our problem here, why must everything be so mind numbingly easy all the time? Games should be challenging… but hey thats just me, I’ve played through Rush’n attack, I’ve beaten the first three Castlevania’s so I know hard games can be beaten. It just seems as if we have stopped trying, we now play games because we want to see the pretty stages and not get stopped too much on the way. Hell remember the 3rd Ninja Gaiden with limited continues… can you imagine them trying that now!? Ha! The age of the titan gamer has closed for the United States and its sad but very, very true.