It was nostalgic reading some of these posts…even though I was only about 8 or 9 when sf2 came out, I remember playing at arcades when I would tag along with my older brother and his buddies down here in Australia. Nearly every petrol station had a machine of either SF2 or MK not to mention so many arcades as well. This thread sorta brought back the old feeling of how the scene was.
Oops, I completely forgot about my post, and that I needed to continue on with it. Well, that pretty much sums up my life these days. Family, work, and bills… and barely any time for anything else.
Anyhow, so back to my story.
Street Fighter 2… man, what an incredible time, 1991 - 1992. I was 21 years old, in college, with only a part time job, and lots of free time.
I remember playing at lots of convenient stores, where I thought the competition was fairly decent, considering my lack of knowledge and experience at that time. Although they were kind of hit or miss, in terms of consistent competition.
I went to a few arcades on my side of town, Sharpstown Mall, Westwood Mall, and Memorial City. But I didn’t frequent those arcades as often as I should have, in hindsight.
Simply put, I just didn’t know that there were more serious players out there, and I didn’t know how serious the competition was. More importantly… I didn’t know where the REAL SF2 hot spots were. I mean, I was really getting hooked on the game, and I was literally trying to play it at least a few times every day. But for some reason, I just didn’t catch the right wave, or hook up with the right person, in order to guide me into that realm.
Perhaps it’s because I was in college and maybe trying to focus on that too. I can’t remember exactly why, or what was going on in my head at back then. But nevertheless, I did love the game, and I was trying to soak up as much as I could wherever I was playing. I remember seeing a guy at a convenient store playing by himself, and it was the 1st time I saw someone do crouching fierce, into shoryuken. I was amazed, and I asked him how he did it. After he left, I stayed and played for a few hours practicing combo into shoryukens.
There were moments like that with SF2, when some new revelation or some new technique or tactic was discovered, and it opened up new possibilities and created new excitement.
I don’t know why, but the few times that I can remember getting beat down, didn’t have the effect on my ego or my pride that it would later on. When I got beat during the SF2 days, it was only a slight frustration or disappointment. I mean, I didn’t like losing, but I didn’t have the urge to keep putting up more quarters and keep on fighting the same guy, over and over… my true competitive nature had not been awoken for SF… yet.
Had I known about the competition at SuperTrack arcade, or at the University of Houston arcade… or had I met players like Jumpsuit Jesse back then… I have no doubt that I would have joined the ranks of the true hardcore SF players in Houston at that time, and my history would be very different than it is today. It is one of my deepest regrets in life that I didn’t venture out a little further during my SF2 days. I missed out on so much of the truly greatest period in the history of SF. The period from SF2, to SF2 CE, to SF2 HF is probably the golden era of Street Fighter. The craze was at it’s highest, and there were machines and players all over the place. And the game was in it’s purest, most fundamental form back then.
Getting back to my story. Like I said, I loved the game, and I played it a lot. I just didn’t play it seriously enough, and I didn’t play it at the most serious places. So I kind of progressed along, slowly. I was a mediocre player. I could go 50/50 against most of the comp at the places I played. And every once in a while I’d run into a much better player and lose badly, but I wouldn’t sweat it, and I wouldn’t keep on fighting. Shame on me, what a scrub I was. My future self wouldn’t quit even if I lost 50 times in a row to someone. (And there were some times like that in my later SF years)
I remember being in San Antonio at the Riverwalk when I first saw SF2 Champion Edition. I hadn’t been playing all that much and I didn’t even know CE was coming out, so it was a surprise to me. Of course the major new things were the bosses being playable and the ability to mirror match, both concepts were very exciting. I played a few games. I remember a young kid picked Vega and he didn’t really do much with him, so I beat him with Ryu. Then another kid picked Bison and he kept torpedoing me (psycho cruscher), and I couldn’t believe how effective it was. It seemed so cheap.
Speaking of “Cheap”, I must talk about that term and that aspect of SF for a bit. Back in SF2, in Houston, tick throws were considered “cheap”, and it was almost a golden rule that they were, if not forbidden, at least severely frowned upon. They could lead to fights. Very, very few players accepted tick throws as part of the game. Perhaps only the few enlightened ones… who knew the game on a deeper level.
And it was that way for almost all of the golden era of SF. Heck, even when I was hardcore into SFA2, playing at the U of H in 1996… tick throws were still off limits and frowned on.
In 1997 and 1998 some of us hardcore players were kind of accepting tick throws as part of the game. But it wasn’t until around 1998 when our SF crew from Houston went to Apoc’s Las Vegas Tournament, and we saw TRUE tournament caliber play from all of the East and West coast players, that we fully embraced the “tick throw” as a major function of SF games.
Anyhow, back to CE. So that Bison psycho crusher spamming seemed so cheap and abusive. I don’t remember much about my playing during the CE days. I was still just a casual player, although I did have an underlying SF junkie mentality, it just wasn’t surfacing yet.
Of course I remember all of the bootleg Rainbow and Thunder Editions. I played them for fun and out of curiosity, but they were pretty weak in terms of game play. It seems like they were only around for a short time.
When SF2 HF came out I liked it a lot. It was faster, there were some new moves and new characteristics, and it was still very fun and competitive. Again though, I was still only a casual player, playing only on my own side of town. Plus, this was around 1993. I was 23 years old, still messing around around in college, hanging out with friends, and hardcore into the Houston Rockets… who were right on the verge of putting together their Championship squads, built around the greatness of Hakeem Olajuwan. My cousin and I had season tickets during the 1993- 1995 period. So my mind was also preoccupied with other things during that time.
But for whatever reason… when Super Street Fighter 2 came out… I jumped back into SF a bit more hardcore. The game was slower, the graphics and sounds were a bit different, and there were 4 new characters… 2 of which became some of my favorites… Deejay and Fei Long.
To be continued:
string on coin trick FTW…
haha i remember doing the spinning coin trick all the time for 2x or even 3x credits(depending how fast you spun it)…not with string though…that’s next level cheap lol.
Just wanted to pay my final respects to the most legendary old school thread of all time since they’s shutt’n down SRK.
Thank you to everyone who had a post in here or even read the first page or the whole thing. A small page in history, but it was ours.
ggpo
Man, hearing about old school arcade stories is the best. There’s something about that era that we’ll never be able to replicate sadly.
I have been reading this thread little by little since it was brought back in 2017. Thank you to all who posted their stories, amazing stuff guys. I will be sure to finish the entire thread before the end of the month…
I decided I’d post an arcade story. Its not SF specific, but this is Fighting Game Discussion. Its not even that good, but I’m aggravated I can’t lurk anymore or search for info on the old arcade games here.
It was somewhere between 95 and 99. Arcade was Aladdin’s Castle at my local mall. I didn’t know anything about fighting games beyond the home copies of Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. There were a few kids lined up at a versus arcade machine. I couldn’t even tell you which one as I was quite young only being born in the late 80s. I simply don’t remember.
They looked to be having a lot of fun, so I wanted to join the older kids. They said I could play as long as I had quarters or if I put a quarter up–something like that. I proceeded to play twice and get completely annihilated. I didn’t even know for sure how to do fireballs as my uncles taught me it was hold back then do forward on the home version of Street Fighter. I moved on to playing games that only cost 1 quarter instead of 2 or 3 like the fighting games always seemed to.
Just a sad fighting game memory like these forums are going to be soon.
LOOOL, even my OGSF account got unbanned!!!
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god i wish mike watson would come out and tell his story like jeff schaeffer did or alex valle but mike came first so his story would be more authentic when sf was at its height
Okay, the SRK forums are back up, so now I’ll continue with my story.
It’s 1993, I’ve been casually playing SF2 - HF in the arcades, and on the SNES. (I always hated playing on pads) As I said before, I never really knew that there were some really good SF hot spots for competition in those days. Supertrack and the U of H probably being the most notable places. Had I known… there’s no doubt I would been a hardcore player. I was 23 yrs old, I was in college, I had a car, and I had plenty of freedom.
But that didn’t happen. Unfortunately, it took a few more years for me to discover the right circles, and end up in the “hardcore zone”.
In 1993 Super Street Fighter 2 hits the arcades. I got a job working at the Time - Out arcade in Sharpstown mall. Let me explain why.
For a couple of years I had been contemplating the idea of opening my own arcade. I loved arcades and video games, and when SF2 came out I started to get into the idea of having an arcade that specialized in SF games. I didn’t really know anything about tournaments and such, I was mainly just thinking about having a really good arcade for high quality SF play. And by high quality, I simply imagined lots of machines, and working joysticks and buttons. (because as most of us remember, joysticks and buttons were notoriously poorly maintained)
So because of my interest in opening an arcade, I figured well… I ought to start by working in an arcade in order to learn exactly what working and running an arcade is really all about. I had no knowledge in business matters, or in arcade electronics or technology. So I figured I’d go ahead and take a cheap $5.25 per hour job at Time-Out, and try to use it as an education.
And I did learn quite a bit in my short time working there.
While I was working at Time-Out, Super Street Fighter 2 was out, and I got pretty serious into it. Far more serious than I ever got with all of the previous SF2 games. I was playing it practically every day, at least 2 - 4 hours. The game was noticeably slower, the graphics were slightly changed, and the sounds were different. And there were the 4 new challengers of course, of which DeeJay and Fei Long were my favorites… especially Fei Long because of his Bruce Lee connection.
I still didn’t know about the hardcore SF places in Houston, so I was pretty much just playing in my own small area of town, primarily at my arcade. I was one of the top 5 players there, and I was pretty content with myself for a while.
Meanwhile, the arcade had another game that grabbing most of the attention away from SF… Mortal Kombat II. I never liked the MK game play, so the game didn’t interest me at all, although I did think the fatalities were pretty cool. The important thing to note here is that MK was competition for SF’s popularity, and SSF2 was the 1st SF game to start losing the interest of the players. It was the beginning of the downslide for SF in the 1990’s, and the beginning of SF becoming more of an underground scene, for many years.
But back to SSF2. The top guys at Time-Out all thought we were pretty damn good, and we had plenty of heated battles with each other. But I’ll never forget this one particular day when this random Asian guy came in and started playing with Guile. He was straight up beating everyone down. He wasn’t doing anything fancy, or using any new or unknown tactics either. He was just more methodical, more precise, and more experienced. At the time, I couldn’t really understand how he was beating us so easily. He ended up just quitting after going on like a 40 or 50 game win streak, mostly against the 4 or 5 of us, plus a few other random people. That day stayed with me for a long time. The more I thought about it, the more I was forced to realize that he was just far more advanced than us at SF. That was important, because it showed me just how low on the totem pole I really was, in terms of SF skills. And it was a clear indication that there must have been a lot more better players out there… and many other places where these better players were playing.
To be continued…
Sticky this indefinitely
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What’s the spinning coin trick? All I remember is the coin on a fishing line or a floss type string trick.
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Nobody stickied the GOAT thread on SRK?
It was stickied on the old forums before it moved to this one.
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If you had a choice to either have the fighting game scene back to how it was in the 90’s with packed out arcades every single day, but with mediocre netcode at home… or completely lagless online gaming regardless of which country your playing against but with a dead arcade scene, which one would you pick?
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Packed arcades all day.
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