Well, almost. It’s still a couple of days left until the end of 2007. I sit in front of my computer, preparing for an otherwise private annual tradition. A tradition, with origins that can be traced back to 1991. My first “Summer”.
Life was relatively simple, and full of a lot more potential back in 1991. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING was a brand new experience. It had been roughly six months since I arrived in the United States.
Having come from a place where the school system offered, at most, a month off; and the one & only TV Station aired their daily broadcast from 5:00 PM to 12:00 AM and heavily edited Cartoons were broadcast for roughly 20 minutes, once per day. With 15 channels that broad cast 24/7, and cartoon “blocks” lasting for hours on end I was in heaven.
It was also the only thing I could do to pass time in the otherwise foreign and alien land, since my friends were half a world away, and my parents were busy working.
As luck would have it, the TV stopped working a few days into the summer vacation, so I had to find other ways to pass the time. Namely, spending most of it at a local comicbook store, which had two arcade games and a “Terminator 2″ pinball machine near the back.
My favorite game was Konami’s “The Simpsons”. It was based on a cartoon I was familiar with, it was relatively simple/easy to play, and it was a hell of a lot less crowded. Unfortunately, my financial resources were limited, not to mention I sucked (and still suck) at arcade games; so most of the aforementioned time would be spent watching other people play the other game. People would line up and wait patiently to play the other game.
The other game? Capcom’s Street Fighter II.
Now, why people obsessed over this game, I couldn’t figure out. It was intimidating in it’s complexity, atleast to my simple little mind. But then again, it was fun to watch other people play, especially with one character in a white Karate uniform that just oozed coolness. My skills (or the lack there of) kind of guaranteed that neither me nor my character ever went past round two; but it was kind of interesting watching other people, especially the experts, pummel their digital oponents into unconsciousness with a certain finesse.
As my first summer neared it’s end, and we moved relatively far away, and bought a working television; so I figured, would be the end of Street Fighter II.
Not quite.
Much to my surprise, the impact of Street Fighter II lasted well past the summer. When school started, people were still excited about it, and talking about it, and getting excited talking about it, and talking about it quite excitedly, I might add. I had found another comicbook store near by, and inevitabley, it had the latest incarnation of Capcom’s cash cow, Street Fighter II Champion Edition. It was growing on me. I had discovered that Guile, the man with the hair of Steel, and M.Bison the final opponent, were comparatively easy to control. I even managed to win a rare round or three. Against CPU opponents. For the first few bouts…
Most of my hard re-allocated dollars were still being spent on “important” things like comicbooks, but the occasional quarter three would try to make it’s way into Capcom’s pocket. Eventually, anyway. 
Then, around 1992, stories spread of Street Fighter II coming home. It was being ported to the relatively new Super Nintendo Entertainment System. At the time, when porting arcade games to home consoles involved liberal amount of downgrading for the graphics & audio; Street Fighter II did a pretty amazing job. Some people bought the newly released SNES to play Street Fighter II. Hell, I bought my copy of Street Fighter II before I had an SNES. At $83, it is the highest amount of money I ever spent on a single videogame.
The Super Nintendo port of Street Fighter II was a miracle packed into sleek plastic casing adorned with ugly artwork. My mind was filled with possibilities of being able to play Street Fighter II within the comforts of my own home. I could actually practice the complicated special moves without having to worry about running out of money. I could hone the skills I was severely lacking in, perhaps even to the point of being able to play with the guy in the white Karate uniform, whom I came to call Ryu. (Mainly because that was his name.)
Ultimately, it would be a downsized port that would ensnare me in something I have yet to break free of. Not that I want to break free of it, mind you. ;D
You see, I had chanced upon a seemingly insignificant thing while playing Street Fighter II. Nostalgia. By 1993, New York was no longer a strange and alien place, it was something resembling home. Life had become mediocre again. Playing Street Fighter II would helped my mind drift into the warm & fuzzy nostalgia laden memories of the summer of ’91. An effect it has to this very day.
Not to say that the game laks merits in other areas; Street Fighter II is one of the few games that manages up to hold up pretty well, even after 16 years. However, it’s the ability of this game to affect me on a personal level that convinced me to incorporate Street Fighter into my new year’s tradition. Although it would be a few more years until I decided to do so.
If memory serves, it was December 31st, 1996. I was playing Street Fighter II Special Champion Edition on my Genesis-SegaCD combo, pimped up with five speakers. (One speaker from from the TV; set of speakers from the stereo, hooked up using the using the stereo AV output; and a pair of PC speakers, plugged into the Headphone jack.) I was going for the “special ending”, accessible only by beating the game on a single credit (i.e. without continuing once)… and it kind of hit me. What if I made it into a personal little tradition of sorts? Street Fighter II would be the first and last game that I would play, and finish every year. On a single credit. With Ryu. (By that time, I felt, and still feel more comfortable playing Street Fighter, and it’s myriad of incarnations as Ryu.)
From that point on, the last and first videogame I played every year has been a game of Street Fighter II. Single game. No continues. With Ryu. (Well, a game from the original Street Fighter II “lineage”, anyway. SFII, SFII Champion Edition, SFII Turbo, Super SFII and Super SFII Turbo.)
Ofcourse, a decade ago, Street Fighter II was something I played on a frequent basis, mainly because it was one of the few games I owned. (Although, admittedly, I ended up owning more than one copy of Street Fighter II, for more than one console.) So come December 31st, I’d pop in a cartridge or CD to whatever console I had hooked up and beat the game in one sitting. On a single credit. With Ryu.
Now a days, I actually have to start practicing for December 31st. *sigh*
I leave you with looped animation footage from Ryu’s Ending, slightly filtered to give it that Television-y “feel”. (You’ll need Adobe Flash Player 8.0 or higher.)
And that, as they say, is that.
Recent Comments