Origin part 3: Return of the scene

My last entry took me off course, but now I can get back to my early college years and where they lead me up to today.

I was a pretty good student most of the time. I had a work study job with the college library so I had plenty of time to get my homework and studying done while making minimum wage. I had friends, but none were really into gaming, so that aspect of my life was sort of phasing out.

There was one person who pulled me back to the gaming world. I met a sweet girl on the internet named Caiti (who would one day, many years later become my wife, more on that another time.) She, like myself at the time, held a great interest in anime, gaming and Japanese culture. I hate the term "soul mate" but for lack of a better description I could believe it. The only catch was that she lived 2 hours away from me.

For a time we decided that we would just remain friends. I think feelings were still forming regardless, thus a lot of time was spent in chat on the internet conversing with one another. The friends idea didn't last long, and soon after meeting we started dating. Calling each other was expensive (before cell phones went mainstream kids) so it was either abusing 10-10-220 (haha, remember that?) or chatting online. In this time I became a bit of an internet addict. When I wasn't chatting with Caiti I remained online just kinda digging for data; educational and extremely nerdy data. That was when I happened upon Shoryuken.com.

"Hey I remember this Street Fighter thing!"

What was this? Street Fighter wasn't forgotten after all? People still play this? Needless to say I was thrilled. I lurked on their forums for a long time before finally joining up, late 2001 I believe. I didn't post all that much though. I found the place to be rather rude and a bit off putting for a new comer. Regardless, the flame wars were hilarious and the growing collection of Street Fighter information was enthralling.

Alex Valle was my hero. Back in the day I think he was the best Ryu player around, which was my main character for the longest time (still is in a few games). Every time there was a video somewhere of him playing I had to download it, which usually took a very long time (if you're still reading, YouTube didn't exist and broadband connections were very rare outside of schools or businesses). Still, it was worth the waiting.

In the following weeks the fighting game collection for my Dreamcast grew tremendously. I had even begun playing my dusty copy of Street Fighter 3 double impact I had bought early on. When Capcom vs. SNK 2 released in Japan for Dreamcast I imported a copy and bought a gameshark (worked as an import swap disk) to play.

The same problem remained from long ago though. I didn't have any friends that played other than Caiti (I miss those 3rd Strike sessions baby). It improved mine and Caiti's game, but you can only get as good as your competition. Reading the SRK forums awakened a sort of fire in me. A drive to seek out people better than me, to learn and get better. If I couldn't find anyone near me to play me, I would try introducing new people to the game. I guess to bring more people along with me on my "warrior's journey."

I found the venue to accomplish this through the college's anime club. Typically at the time an anime fan and a gamer went hand and hand. After joining, I quickly instigated game events on the college campus. The one that drew the most people was a Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter tournament as we had a standup of it in the cafeteria area that students frequently fed their spare quarters. These events were fun but no one ever showed up that wanted to take the game seriously. At least people were playing though, it felt like I was on the right track.

In the following months we decided to expand the anime club into the local community for more members outside of the college setting. We found our home in the Bristol location of Mountain Empire Comics. It was at that comic shop where I would meet the regulars of the Bristol Virginia fighting game scene today; Ryan Hamilton (Rockstaryano), Steven Beck, Jamie Smith (I eat Bamboo). Those were the firsts anyway. It was a while until I discovered they were into fighting games though.

We had a get together at Ryan Hamilton's place where we tried some gaming instead of watching a film. First we played Halo for a long while, and then some other choices of the group. When it got to my choice I picked Capcom vs. SNK 2. It was then they admitted to me that they were fighter fans, but mostly played the Tekken series, which was like my polar opposite. Regardless everyone was still excited to play.

I thought to myself "yeah we'll just have a casual romp around for a while and switch to something else" but I was too quick to judge. A few matches in everyone was already asking questions about character strengths and matchup strategies. While these guys hadn't spent much time with 2D fighters since SF2 back in the day, they did have a strong knowledge of fighting game dynamics and wanted to get better. We ended up staying on CvS2 late into the early morning. Many more evenings were spent alternating between Third Strike and CvS2 until the sun came up. It was exactly what I had been looking for, the fabled "scene" I had read about on SRK since joining.

To this day we still get together at least once a week depending on everyone's schedules for fight nights and also travel out to tournaments. I've learned a lot from these guys. That goes for fighting games and life lessons and I hope the games continue for many years to come. With the current resurgence of the fighting game genre I'm sure that wont be a problem.

So that's the tale of my interest in the fighting game genre and Street Fighter. It ended up being a lot longer than I planned, but at the same time I feel like I've left a lot out. I'll visit more memories in later posts, such as my relationship with Caiti in all that.

If you finished this, thank you for your time. I know I'm not a big name in the fighting world by any means but I enjoyed the trip down memory lane and writing this up. I enjoy reading about how people got their start in gaming and I would encourage others to write similar entries.

Peace!