Street Fighting Man

[Andy]

To view the article that these comments correspond to, please visit http://thisismyjoystick.com/editorial/s ... ghting-man

[Rico2099]

It started off for me with Street Fighter 2 as well, but in Debenhams department store in Romford, Essex. I must have been around 8 at the time

They had a demo Snes unit on display and some guy was playing on it and I asked if I could have a go. This person then proceeded to not only let me win a few times, but also showed me how to perform some of the special moves

I then went onto be quite the gamer in the arcades, beating everyone on virtua fighter, killer instinct and virtual on

For me the height of the whole thing was when I was in college and had a local arcade. Many a lunch time were spent playing the Capcom VS series, plasma sword and virtua fighter 3. I would draw a crowd with those games

[Trent]

Maybe Nottingham is different, but when I was a kid and used to go to the arcades in town there used to be 3 kinds of people there; my friends, people using the gambling machines and chavs. The chavs would either hog the machines for hours on end because their mate worked at the arcade and flipped the dip-switch that bypassed the coin receipt or stand over us while we played and laugh when we lost. On the rare occasions they did play with us they'd gloat like motherfuckers when they won and accuse us of cheating when they lost, threatening us with violence if we called bullshit. My arcade experience has always been one of public ridicule and tense anxiety so I suppose that's why I'm not so enamoured with them.

I think the think online has over arcade for me is the simple fact that no matter what you do or how much of a wanker the other guy is, the worst he can do is send you a nasty message. I remember playing Skate 2 online once and this guy was being such a knob to everyone I started arguing with him. Then when he came last in the next challenge he claimed we'd all cheated and said if he was in the same room as me he'd knock me out. I just laughed and told him to fuck off; he could do absolutely nothing to hurt me at all. I feel the days of random camaraderie in gaming have passed. Even in co-op games like L4D and Horde on Gears 3 there always seems to be some shithead who wants to ruin the fun, or act a twat or is only out for himself. Online multiplayer on a massive scale like COD has bred a mindset of 'must win, must win' that people carry over to every game, even the ones where individual winning is not the objective. People in Battlefield will leave the command point to get extra kills and lose us the game, people in Gears will leave fellow players to die in Horde so they can snatch the top spot at the end of the round.

Great article though boss